Exercise as Religious Practice

Action without meaning produces limited results. If you’re lucky you can hit a target with enough attempts but at a cost of wasted energy and time. This applies to any effort in life (work, play, and relationships) and it is a powerful reminder that meaning and intent produce high-value outcomes.

Training for a sport or exercising for health is an excellent opportunity to put meaning into practice. The connection between spiritual and religious practices and physical activity is common across many cultures (the act of kneeling and bowing in Christianity and Islam, the act of sema in Sufism, specialized sitting and breathing, in Buddhism and Zen practice, etc.).

Regardless of your own religious or philosophical approach to life, looking upon your fitness journey as something more than the physical will ensure a heightened focus on what you do and that will drive a more intense practice with better outcomes. It will also help you stay on track, fighting the urge to skip a scheduled workout because there is more at stake than just your abs!

To get started, first find that higher power or philosophy that you’ve likely been thinking about for much of your life. Apply its tenets into your thought process as you enter the gym and begin warming up. Perhaps it’s a prayer or a saying, or a breathing and mindfulness practice.

Whatever it is align it with your effort to improve yourself. Give yourself to that moment and the process. The effort, the challenges, and even the pain, will take on an entirely new and higher meaning. When you are done, you will feel more at peace and your efforts will feel more meaningful. You will also want this again and will look forward with more enthusiasm to training again and again.

Taking your fitness journey and tying it to your growth as a person generates a powerful foundation for other efforts outside of the gym. Once you see the positive changes in yourself and your body, applying this mindset to your work and to your relationships will produce the same powerful results and, at that point, not even the sky is the limit.