While I am clearly the minority in our Masters cohort of runners and yogis, my active living weapon of choice is first and foremost the gym, my second home. Most people in my life don’t seem to understand my devotion. Why not play a beer league team sport, or run in beautiful scenery, or hike the many amazing trails the lower mainland has to offer?, are questions I often field. It’s not as though I don’t enjoy these things as well, but they are the addition to my practice, not what sustains it.
I have tried many a time to explain my practice and what draws me to it. While each of my attempts teases out a little something more, I still often am at a loss to truly describe how satisfying it is to sweat it out in a hot, usually crowded space full of others engaging in their own greatly varying practices.
At first I thought my love for the gym was simply a physical translation for my love of routine. I am extremely routine oriented and admittedly struggle with uncertainty and abrupt change. In this regard the gym is a safe and constant environment for me. The environment rarely changes, the hours are constant, and the faces familiar. I am free to follow my routines without having to adjust for others. Unlike teaching kindergarten where there is a constant demand for my attention or help, the gym is a haven with very few outside demands or distractions. Headphones in and I am enveloped in my own world of order, control, and routines amidst any chaos around me or in my life.
However, this explanation for the love of my practice falls short. When travelling, working out with friends, or the always-dreaded maintenance closure of my gym, I am forced to take my practice to new spaces and learn the ropes of a new gym. In the many, many gyms I have been in there are only a couple with which I do not find serious fault. While this is partially because some gyms are very poorly planned, I have come to realize that it is less the physical space I find lacking, and more the community. Not that these other gyms don’t foster a sense of community, it’s just that I’m not a part of it. Despite my gym’s many faults, it belongs to me, and everyone else who practices there. Countless conversations about technique, theory, challenges, and successes shape my practice and those around me. The energy I derive from my fellow fitness colleagues pushes me further and makes my successes acknowledged and celebrated by others. My most challenging workouts are usually when the gym is empty, or when there are no familiar faces. The simple action of joining my body into motion in a room alive with movement, even in a seemingly individualistic practice, propels me through even the most exhausting sessions.
While this is already quite a bit to have teased out of an acticity most would surmise as simply a hopeless gym rat getting their fix, or an obsessive attempt to achieve a bodily perfection that does not exist, it still does not entirely encompass my practice. There always seemed to be a piece missing and it wasn’t until my exploration of somatic awareness, prompted by our class discussion, that I started to view my love of the gym in a new way.
No matter how stressful my day, or how heavy the load I carried to the gym, I would leave feeling far more calm and collected than when I arrived. The gym is my stress free zone. I push myself to hard to worry about anything else other than focusing my body and completing my routine to the best of my ability. I chalked up the release of stress to the science behind endorphins and their role in managing tension and the brain and body’s physiological responses. But as life continues to prove increasingly stressful and I seek to find new ways to effectively deal with the rigors of my life, I keep coming across a key element in my search towards a life of lower stress - breathing. The more I search it seems that the seemingly simplest human action may indeed be the most powerful. As I’ve been incorporating mindful breathing into a variety of my daily activities, such as when eating, at work, or during difficult moments, I have come to appreciate how effective such a simple task is at changing my entire mindset. This revelation started me thinking where else the awareness of breathing could effect my life and it brought me to a realization of how much it already did, only it was happening unbeknownst to me.
I began to think that maybe the true reason for my love of the gym and how invigorating and refreshing it makes me feel, despite working my self to the point of exhaustion, has less to do with routine, community, and endorphins, and more to do with the simple act of focusing on my breathing for an hour or more at a time. In essence, breathing underlines every movement I make at the gym. Throughout my workout I am completely focused on my breath. Whether it’s ensuring I exhale on exertion, or find a comfortable rhythm during cardio, my attention is continually returns to breathing.
When I follow my own routine, breathing comes easier. When I’m supported by a community and know I have a spotter when needed, natural and rhythmic breathing follows. It is not that the other reasons I love my practice are not important, it is only that now I seem them as enablers of enriching my most important somatic experience, breathing.
I am developing a new relationship with breathing and have been enjoying this mindful practice in new areas of my life. It is also becoming an important tool in my teacher toolbox and has been helping my students engage their body and minds and work towards self soothing at school during distress and worry. Becoming aware of how powerful breathing already was in my life, even though I was unaware, is serving as a daily reminder of why I practice something that seems to simple. Putting intention behind an often unintentional or unnoticed act has made me much more aware of the power of the body as a whole. Instead of understanding my gym practice as simply a way to keep my muscles, bones, and physical body healthy, I am now beginning to understand the dramatic implications this practice has over my entire health. My body is a whole and my mind and body do not act separately. My breath is the connection between the two and as I strengthen this bond I strengthen my body.
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