I’ve surprised quite a few people recently by embarking on a strength training program.
About four years ago I was given Ken Wilber’s excellent ten CD set Kosmic Konsciousness. In amongst all kinds of learned and insightful material on a wide range of spiritual topics was something that I wasn’t expecting. Wilber started citing research showing a strong link between muscle mass and health, longevity and (most relevant to the matters he was discussing) concentration and the capacity to meditate.
He described how, upon learning about this in his forties, he started working out. Before that point he described himself as “basically a brain with a body dangling beneath it”. Anyone who has seen pictures of him since will see how buff he soon became!
At the time my daughter Lara had just been born and I was struggling to find the time even to get any work done, let alone indulge a new interest in strength training. But I made a mental note of it, that when my family’s needs had diminished sufficiently, I’d take another look at it.
And so this summer I contacted my friend Chris Alder, who since I last saw him has become one of the few Integral Coaches in the UK, certified by Wilber’s Integral Institute, and I asked him “who does Ken Wilber recommend for strength training?” Chris put me onto Shawn Philips.
Shawn has long been involved in the world of body building and fitness, but has in recent years gotten involved with Wilber’s work and is now on the board of Integral Institute. With a recommendation like that, I felt comfortable diving into this stuff.
A bit like Ken Wilber, I’ve been pretty cerebral most of my life. I have done yoga most days for the last 14 years, and yet in the three years since I turned 40 I’ve started to feel my physical strength waning, and it’s actually quite alarming. My back starts to weaken and I find myself slumping in my chair, stooping as I walk and groaning as I get up. Worrying…
In addition to this, I feel like I am channeling more creative energy than ever. My performances for adults get more and more potent and dynamic, I am leading workshops that feel more and more aligned to the stuff I really want to teach. My meditations get deeper…
Yet my body doesn’t feel strong enough to handle it all. I have regular bouts of waking early in the morning, wired and unable to sleep. It’s as if I’m not grounding all this energy. I feel strongly drawn to creating a stronger body, a more solid container for my soul, so that it can come into expression more fully.
So I’ve bought my adjustable dumbells, strange futuristic objects with multiple round weights and dials at each end. And an exercise bike now sits in the porch of my recording studio.
I feel a bit nervous talking about this in public. At first I didn’t want to tell anyone, out of a worry that I wouldn’t be up for this. But now I’m telling just about everyone I meet!
The worry is that somehow I don’t have it in me. That I’ve been a tall, skinny, cerabral guy for so long, that this will be too much of a stretch.
The hope is that I can make working out something of a spiritual practice. Or, even better, that I can make it blissful.
Shawn Philips is onto this principle, and like how well he understands it. No practice can be sustainable unless it’s enjoyable. The key to a sustainable strength training program is that you want to do it. My goal with all this is to link the training to the thread of gold that I’ve found in my inner life, the thread that tells the stories, that calls me on into more and more expression of that mystery.
I want to make that thread central to the training, so that as I train I am aligning to it. To thread my soul more fully into my body, there to shine its light for all the world.