Gary Keil appreciates the old joke: “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.”

Keil, who co-owns the Beautiful Mind, Strong Body yoga studio on Route 52 near the Mendenhall Inn, is working with that “one bite at a time” concept in both his personal and professional lives.

He recently took part in the Pine Creek Challenge, a 100-mile run that participants have to complete in 30 hours. He finished the run in 22 hours.

Keil laughed when asked why he would even attempt such a thing.

“Many people ask me that,” he said, “but my reason was just to see if I could and to see if I could enjoy something that traumatic.”

He said many runners approach such activity with the thought that the first 50 miles are run by the body and the second 50 are run with the mind, but Keil did something different. What he did to finish the run and to create enjoyment for himself was to break the run up into little bits, viewing the run as five 20-mile runs.

It was a course in positive psychology — and a book “Being Happy” by Tal Ben-Shahar, the lead instructor in that course — that brought him to that type of thinking.

The basic idea is that no matter how big or daunting a task is, it should be broken down it down into those bite-size bits.

Continuing the elephant analogy, Keil said, “If you look at it as something big, you’re paralyzed. You can’t do anything. If you look at it in much more manageable sized bites, you start to look at this as manageable and [learn that] those bites are actually a lot different. When you’re eating the trunk it’s a lot different than eating the ear.”

Each part requires a different approach, a little different seasoning.

What he developed for the run — and what he is now bringing to his teaching table — is something he’s called the “fifth’s approach.”

“You can get through life using a fifth,” he said while miming that he was drinking from a liquor bottle, “or by looking at something as if it were five completely different stages.”

Those five phases are warm-up, cruising, appreciation, meditating to maintain and going deeper.

Every athlete knows they have to warm up before beginning their activity. Muscles need to be warm while joints need to be relaxed and flexible.

Once the warm up is over and you’re actively engaged, let yourself cruise.

“Once you’re warmed up, you feel great, you might even be feeling indestructible. But in reality, you’re not even halfway there yet. So, don’t get cocky,” he said.

That’s the time to be smart, don’t rest on your laurels, he added.

Being smart in that cruise portion leads to the next phase, that of appreciating where you are.

“You’ve now done, gotten through or endured, however you want to think of it, half of your event, so appreciate where you are. In a 100-mile run, you’ve done 50 miles, something most people never do. And yet, there’s still 50 more to go,”Keil said. “Appreciate you’ve gotten there, but appreciate there’s still more to do.”

According to Keil, the next phase is critical because you’re between 60-80 percent through. He calls this phase “meditate to maintain.”

Meditation is more active than most people think, he said. They view it as just sitting there, but it’s much more than that. It’s a matter of focusing, but focusing on the positive, not the negative.

“That’s the key point where people think they can’t make it, or that they should quit and be happy. Either way, you’re not finishing what you set off to finish,” he said.

The meditating phase is realizing you’re into the mental aspect of your activity, “and that you can capitalize on the positive, not succumb to the negatives.”

Keil calls the last phase a twist on something most people have heard for years. For Keil it’s “go deep,” not “dig deep.”

The subtle shift to “go deep to get there” is more than just semantic.

“Digging is an active process that requires a lot of physical energy…When you’re at the 80 percent mark, there’s hardly anything left, you have to go deep. I like the analogy that the freshest water is deep in the well. That’s where you have your energy, but it’s still the mental part. You know the end is in sight. You’re not going to be screaming like a little kid, happy to hit that finish line, but you can get there,” Keil said.

He said the phases are not strictly linear with one following immediately after the former is finished. They start and stop, loop back and repeat, and that people should not see that seeming reversal as a negative. It’s part of the process that builds resiliency.

The ability to be resilient is built in, he said, but it’s trauma that brings it out. The idea is to use non-threatening trauma to develop that innate ability.

Training and practice represent those non-threatening elements of trauma for the athlete, even the weekend warrior. But those concepts can, and should be extended to other aspects of life, whether they pertain to business or academic pursuits.

Keil advises people to be non-judgmental of themselves as they go through the process and that non-judgmental attitude is the first step to mindfulness and happiness. And that happiness comes before success.

“Give yourself permission to be human,” he said. “The prize is in the process, not in the end.”