Underwater pogo-sticking. Extinguishing matches with your tongue. Ashrita Furman's broken hundreds of world records...and he has a secret weapon to do it.
Ashrita Furman broke the world record for underwater hoola-hooping in Florida, where a pod of dolphins watched from afar—in what I presume was utter confusion.
I've been in the presence of some pretty fascinating people. The voice of Porky Pig, a haunted house architect, a scientist who's close to bringing back a T-Rex (albeit in a less menacing, chicken-sized form). But Ashrita Furman is in a league of his own. He has world records out the ying yang, including:
He holds so many records that he snagged another one in the process: the world record for the most world records. He's broken over 800 in total, with more than 200 still standing. His secret?
Meditation.
(And a child-like sense of curiosity. Because when you can be anything, why just be one thing?)
Credits
Curious State is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast hosted and produced by Doug Fraser.
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The Quick and Dirty Tips network is a division of Macmillan Publishers in partnership with Mignon Fogarty, Inc.
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Ashrita
I'd always been a lover of the Guinness Book of Records, and being totally non athletic, I never thought I could break a Guinness record.
Doug
Looking through the book Ashrita Furman came across jumping jacks.
Ashrita
The record was 20,000, I could only do 50 at a time. And I just decided I'm going to do this and I'm just going to try to increase the number each time I practice, and it worked. Within two or three months, I was able to do 10,000 in a row, and then I just went for the record,
Doug
and he beat it. Okay, “beat” is an understatement. Ashrita smashed it with a bonkers number of jumping jacks: 27,000.
Ashrita
I was not allowing myself to be convinced by my mind that I couldn't do this or that I had to give up. That was almost 40 years ago, and I've never stopped. So I'm the guy with the most records in the Guinness Book of Records. And at this point, I have close to 800 official Guinness records with more than 200 currently standing.
Doug
So what's a secret for performing hundreds of superhuman feats? As it turns out, it's meditation. But how can calming the mind lead to pushing the body beyond its limits? I'm Doug Fraser. And this is Curious State. When I was a kid, I read through the Guinness Book of World Records almost every year. And I remember thinking two things: the world is full of amazing people and damn, this book is big. But as weighty as it was, the annual publication contains only a small fraction of the total possible records. That's what the website’s for. There, you'll find around 40 to 50,000 world records, everything from the world's longest fingernails to the tallest person, and everything in between. And today, we're venturing into the “in between”. Ashrita’s world record choices are a bit peculiar. For example, He's beaten the record for the most matches extinguished on your tongue in one minute: 37. Also the most blow torches extinguished with your tongue in one minute: 47. He's opened the most beer bottles in a minute with the chainsaw: 24. He's even broken the five kilometer skipping record.
Ashrita
I did it in a safari park, and I finished up with an Iranian tan on my back while I was skipping. And it was just the greatest feeling. I go between the book and the Guinness website. I'll spot something. Or else you can come up with your own ideas like this skipping record, you know, and a lot of times it's just pure inspiration. I mean, I was actually meditating one time, not supposed to have thoughts during meditation, but I actually was meditating and I saw myself pogo stick jumping underwater. And I said, alright, you know what? I'm gonna try that. Is that even possible? I grabbed my pogo stick and grabbed some weights, ran off to a pool nearby and I jumped in when the lifeguard wasn't looking and almost drowned. But it is possible. And I ended up doing a record for the longest time, pogo sticking underwater, which I did in the Amazon River. And my teacher has a really nice saying, he says, “there's only one time to be happy. And that time is now.” Part of this philosophy is that we should try to be like children, like seven year old children. Because children, they're not so much in their mind. They live, you know, many times in joy. And I think that was, again, it's another thing with the mind where we sometimes get too bogged down in our problems and the outer world. Like if we can sort of pull that joy from within ourselves, we could be happy and just, you know, be more spontaneous and intuitive.
Doug
So, does that influence the types of records that you choose to break? Because it seems like there's a theme of child likeness to the records, you choose.
Ashrita
100% and you're absolutely right. I love doing kids type things. You know, there's a saying, “jumping for joy”, and I found that it works the other way as well. Like when I jump, I get joy, and I love jumping. I mean, like hopping, jumping, skipping, rolling, you know, juggling yodeling. I mean, like all these are kids things.
Doug
In performing these acts, Ashrita is able to transcend his mind and his pain tolerance.
Ashrita
A lot of the things I do are also balancing like I had a record for balancing the longest time standing on a Swiss ball, those big rubber balls you see in gyms, it's very difficult and it's painful after a while. I did that at Stonehenge for two and a half hours but someone broke that record. And the funny thing at Stonehenge was tourists would come by, and they would try to distract me or make me laugh so that I would fall off the ball. But you know, it worked out fine. But so someone broke that record, and I got it back. And anyway, the last time I did it, it was around five hours. And someone did five and a half hours, so I'm trying to break that record. Our mind just goes from one place to another to another, and we don't control it. When we meditate, we try to quiet the mind. You learn to turn off your mind and to go deeper within yourself. And there's unlimited capacity, you can get closer to this deeper part of yourself through meditation, and through sports, which was a complete epiphany for me.
Doug
Ashrita’s record breaking may have started with jumping jacks. But using meditation to obtain athletic Nirvana started with a 24 hour bike race. At that point in his life, Ashrita had been studying meditation for just a few years.
Ashrita
Many of my friends who were involved with a meditation group, were doing physical activities, and there was a 24 hour bicycle race coming up in Central Park. This was back in 1979. I had never done anything physical, sports, or anything as a kid, but I felt kind of guilty because of this philosophy of self transcendence. My teacher really was advocating that we try to push ourselves to go beyond what we think our limits are in every way: spiritually, mentally, and physically as well. And I decided 10 days before this 24 hour bicycle race that I was going to join. I was using my mother's bicycle, like with the old banana. I said, “All right, I'm gonna buy a bicycle”, and I started training. You can't train for a 24 hour bicycle race 10 days before the race. I mean, that's basically when you start, you know, stopping to train. The night before we had a meditation with Sri Chinmoy. And there were about 200 people who were going to be in the race the next day.
Doug
For fun, his teacher asked him, “How many miles do you think you can do?” The previous year's winner had ridden 435 miles. And the best riders in Ashrita’s group were shooting for about 300 miles, all in 24 hours.
Ashrita
I figured I'll say 200 miles. I mean, that sounds pretty amazing for me. When my turn came instead of my teacher allowing me to say anything, he said, “Ashrita how many miles? 400?” And he knew that I wasn't athletic, and I didn't really consider sports as part of my life. So anyway, I was shocked. And I went home and I decided, I am going to try to do 400 miles in this 24 hour bicycle race. And I wrote out my will. I mean, I was only 23, but I had birds and a rabbit. I used to do kids magic shows on the weekends. And so I wanted to make sure that they were taken care of, and I wrote a little sort of chart, which I taped to my bicycle of how many miles I would have to do each hour, you know, to do 400 miles.
Ashrita
My legs started hurting. I started doing visualization, right? You know, I started getting exhausted, I started doing breathing and chanting. It got to the point where after 12 hours, it was midnight. And I was riding in the lead group, the lead pack. And it was just exhilarating. I mean, like the next morning, my friends told me that I was tied for third place overall. And I was of course exhausted, but I kept going and I tied for third place. And I did four hundred and five miles. And it was one of the highlights of my life.
Doug
And what was the furthest you'd biked previously at one time?
Ashrita
Maybe 30 miles.
Doug
If you attempt to record and you don't succeed, do you consider that a failure?
Ashrita
I've failed a few times. And I just decided, you know, I'm going to try to change my technique. I'm going to train harder. I'm gonna train differently. There was a record for running the fastest marathon, 26.2 miles juggling three balls, going back quite a few years. And I don't have that record anymore, but someone else had that record. It was a juggler and it was around three and a half hours. And I decided I was going to do it, and even the people at Guinness told me you'll never do it because this guy is a professional juggler. Anyway, I trained for it. And I went out there in Queens and Flushing Meadow. There was a marathon, and it was a very hot day, and at 20 miles, I had to stop. I realized I wasn't going to break the record and it was very disappointing. It was a half page article in the New York Post and it was going for the jugular. And it was kind of embarrassing, but I just took it in stride. I said, “Okay, I'm just going to train harder.” I ran another marathon without the juggling, and I decided I was going to fly out to Idaho. There was a marathon and it was cooler up in the mountains of Idaho. With eight miles to go, I got a bug in my eye. And I had to struggle juggling three balls because I couldn't stop to get the bug out. I did end up managing to break the record, of course, since then, which as the world goes, which is the way it should be, some really good runners have been doing it, and then they've gone under three hours.
Doug
His most challenging world record yet is, well, one for the record bucks. Okay, I know what I'm about to say next. And yet, I can hardly believe this is a thing. Ashrita’s most difficult record was somersaulting for over 12 miles.
Ashrita
You know, one of my best experiences doing a Guinness record was when I did Paul Revere's ride in Massachusetts. I did it by doing forward rolls.
Doug
That's right, 12.25 miles of somersaults on concrete pavement, and likely plenty of gum. And who knows what else? It was his toughest record yet, but it's a treat. And we're talking about Ashrita here, guys. He's a dude who ups the ante, even when he might not mean to,
Ashrita
I was really trying to be focused spiritually, but because I had four slices of pizza the night before, I was throwing up constantly throughout, and I was gonna stop and then somehow I got this inspiration. And these words popped out of my mouth, and I started chanting on each roll. At this point, my abdominals were cramping on every roll, I was just completely exhausted. I would be going for eight or nine hours, and I started chanting, “I am not the body, I am the soul”. And just with each roll, “I am not the body, I am the soul.” And it really worked. It detached me from my body. I mean, the mind is an instrument. We need our mind. And, you can do great things with the mind. But it's not, you know, it's not the ultimate part of us. I finished up the 12 and whatever it was quarter miles. I was in bliss. I mean, I had transcended the human. And I had really touched on that divine part that we all have, through this physical activity. I was on a high for two or three weeks after that. And then you know there are always new things on the horizon. It's a great adventure. And I think my message is we all have this unlimited capacity within us. And I'm sort of encouraging people to learn how to meditate. It's your purest self, all those qualities that you're seeking are within yourself. And that's what we're searching for: this inner truth for satisfaction, fulfillment, but it's all within us. And so when you have a good meditation, you feel awesome. It's like you're floating, you're blissful. It's peaceful. I mean, you're discovering yourself.
Doug
The Guinness Book of World Records describes breaking a record in a similar way. They say it's more than just an accomplishment. It's a way of getting to know yourself. I wonder if there's an element of healing that's a part of that as well. To mend cracks within yourself. It helps to break through something else to find new dreams, then sprint, somersault, or underwater pogo stick after them to see the impossible and add it to your to-do list to transcend yourself and become something that legends are made of. To learn more about Ashrita Furman, visit his website at ashritafurman.com. For more information about the show and where you can find us across the internet, check out our show notes or visit quickanddirtytips.com. Special thanks to the Quick and Dirty Tips team: Adam Cecil our Audience Development and Podcast Manager; Morgan Christiansen, Podcast and Advertising Operations Specialist; Holly Hutchings, our Digital Operations Specialist; Davina Tomlin, Marketing and Publicity Assistant. Curious State is hosted and produced by me, Doug Fraser, for the Quick and Dirty Tips network, which is a division of Macmillan Publishers in partnership with Mignon Fogarty, Inc. Until next time, stay curious.