Body and Spirit (cont.)

In the last post, I began exploring the idea of physical training as a tool for spiritual development in Eastern cultures and in Christianity. Here, I want to explore some of the ways that physical exercise can contribute to spiritual growth for Christians.

We need to start with a definition of spiritual growth. I am going to part company with many people who talk about this subject, who see it almost exclusively in terms of cultivating our relationship with God. I would argue instead that true spiritual growth is developing every aspect of our being to become more fully what God made us to be. This includes our relationship with God, of course, but any area of personal growth can be an element of our spiritual development, as long as we do not get obsessed with one aspect to the detriment of others. There has to be balance if we are to grow to be like Christ, which should be the goal of every Christian.

How does physical training fit into this? On the most basic level, the Bible tells us that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This means that we need to take care of it. To do otherwise is to dishonor the Holy Spirit who lives within us. This means we need to adopt a lifestyle that keeps us healthy, including such things as good nutrition, exercise, and rest.

Taking this one step further, when we do not feel well or are tired or in pain, we cannot concentrate; it thus becomes very difficult to pray, read and study the Bible, meditate, and so on. This observation led people across the ancient world to build educational institutions around the idea that it was necessary to develop the body and mind together.

According to legend, Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, taught physical exercises that became the basis for kung fu at the Shaolin Temple in China because the monks were in such poor physical condition that they fell asleep during meditation. Daoist and Buddhist temples became centers of both education and physical exercise. Korean dojangs and Japanese dojos did the same for the nobility in their countries. In ancient Greece, philosophy and athletics were both taught together in the gymnasia, and Roman education had as its ideal “a sound mind in a healthy body” (mens sana in corpore sano).

There is great wisdom in this. Our bodies are the vehicles through which we develop our minds and hearts. It follows that cultivating health and physical energy can be an important, even in some cases a necessary, prerequisite for spiritual growth.

We can take this still further. Hard physical training develops our bodies, of course, but it also develops focus, concentration, and mental toughness in a way that few other activities do. Virtually all professional strongmen, past and present, talk about how crucial the mental aspects of their training are for their success. And the focus and concentration they learned from the iron carries over into other parts of their life as well.

You don’t need to be a professional strongman to reap these benefits, of course. For those inclined toward it, hard physical training can develop character and focus that affects all parts of our lives. It doesn’t do everything: the Apostle Paul tells us it is of some benefit, but godliness benefits us far more (1 Tim. 4:8). This is where balance matters. We must practice the other disciplines and consciously cultivate godliness as a higher priority than physical ability. But that doesn’t mean that physical training isn’t valuable. For those inclined toward it, it can be a form of spiritual discipline.

In some cases, athletics may be a calling as well. In Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell tells his sister, “God made me for China, but he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Liddell’s ultimate call was to be a missionary to China, but at least for a time, it was also to be an Olympian. Each of us has a calling that God has given to us that we are to pursue in obedience to Him, and whatever that calling is, we are to pursue it wholeheartedly in obedience to Him and doing it for God, not our employers. In other words, it is a spiritual activity. For Christians such as Tim Tebow or Jeremy Lin, athletics is thus an integral part of their spiritual life, a point David Brooks doesn’t really understand.

These last two points are central to a concept known as “muscular Christianity.” While it can be taken too far or pushed inappropriately as a universal requirement for believers (or at least for Christian men), it is nonetheless a legitimate expression of the faith for those who are called or inclined toward it. And for all believers, cultivating health and energy are important elements of taking care of God’s temple and enabling us to pursue those disciplines and activities that are important for our personal growth.

And now for something completely different, a post on exercise

Learning to love God with all our strength involves taking care of and developing our body. Key elements of this include adequate rest, proper diet, and regular exercise. Chances are you already know a lot of what you are supposed to do, but the question is, do you do it?

Here, I want to focus a bit on exercise, and in particular, one form of exercise most people do not know about.

Probably the most common approach to exercise breaks it down into three basic types: cardio to strengthen your heart (e.g. jogging, biking, or swimming); resistance training for strength and to maintain muscle mass and bone density (e.g. “the bells”—barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and clubbells—or bodyweight exercises such as pushups); and flexibility exercises (e.g. stretching or common approaches to yoga).

There’s a lot of information out there about these three kinds of exercise, some of it better than others. But there’s another class of exercises that is just as important that few people discuss: joint mobility training (JM).

JM systematically moves all of your joints through their full current range of motion (ROM) in every direction the joint is designed to move. A full routine includes the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, thoracic spine, lower back, hips, knees, ankles, and toes, working either from top to bottom or from the periphery to the core.

JM is different from flexibility training. To understand why, do the following:

1. Lie on your back.
2. Keep your left leg straight and on the ground, and bend your right leg at the knee.
3. Bring your right thigh toward your chest and notice how close you can get it.
4. Lower and straighten your right leg.
5. Keeping the right leg straight, bring it toward your chest again.

With your leg bent, you can move your leg far closer to your chest than you can with the leg straight. In a nutshell, that’s the difference between JM and ROM exercises and stretching: in stretching, the flexibility of the muscles is the limiting factor, while in properly designed JM routines, muscular flexibility is largely taken out of the equation.

Why is joint mobility important? In the former Soviet Union, scientists studying the human body determined that biological age was directly related to the condition of the connective tissue in the joints: the better the connective tissue, the more youthful the body. They also discovered that JM can improve the quality of the connective tissue and even repair some kinds of joint damage, and as a result it can act as an anti-aging program for your body.

Done consistently, JM can also improve ROM, eliminate early morning stiffness, and lead to better, more pain free movement. It is also very useful as a warm up for exercise, as a kind of “pre-hab” to prevent injuries, as well as for releasing residual tension from exercise in your cool down.

The best joint mobility programs that I have found come from one of two places. The first is China: tai chi and some qigong programs include very good JM work, which is why many Chinese tai chi masters move so well into their 80s and 90s.

The other source is Russia. Pavel Tsatsouline, the “evil Russian” who re-introduced kettlebell training to America, has a JM program called Superjoints. Superjoints includes several different routines, some of which combine JM work with conditioning. One of his instructors, Andrea Du Cane, also produced programs called The Ageless Body and Kettlebell Boomer that include both JM and kettlebell work. These have different levels graded to condition and ability. If you use kettlebells, these are excellent programs. All of these resources are available from Dragondoor’s website.

Scott Sonnon, who studied in Russia, has produced JM programs including Intuflow and Ageless Mobility. These are graded for different levels. Scott’s routines take less time than Pavel’s and advance by increasing movement sophistication rather than by increasing repetitions. On the other hand, the higher reps Pavel prescribes can be very helpful for repairing some kinds of joint damage. Scott’s programs are available from RMAX.

Steve Maxwell, one of Pavel’s former instructors, also has a series of JM routines for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels that are instantly downloadable via the internet. These can be accessed through the link at the bottom of this page.

Two notes: first, all of these sites deal with high end strength training, fitness, and martial arts; don’t let that throw you—the JM programs are for anyone. Second, in the interests of full disclosure these are affiliate links, so if you order through them, I will receive a commission.

And the standard warning: do not start any exercise program without consulting your physician.