Dance and other forms of movement can be a spiritual practice. Yoga explicitly is about joining the mind and body and the individual and the divine (the word “yoga” has the same root as the English work “yoke”). Tai Chi does the same. And for some, running a marathon, or lifting weights can have the same spiritual result.
Today we’re looking at spiritual practices that involve the body.
The kinds of spiritual practices that first come to mind for most of us are probably not physical practices but mental practices. We think of meditation, or prayer as spiritual practices, maybe reverently lighting a candle or reading scripture. Spiritual practices are silent and still. The practice is to focus our thoughts, listen to the silence, empty our mind. We don’t think of spiritual practices as being active, or noisy, or busy, or fun. But some spiritual practices certainly are all of those things.
I’ve pointed out over the last few weeks that effective spiritual practices are holistic. That is, a spiritual practice is a total experience: involving our minds, bodies, and emotions. Effective spiritual practices require attention, concentration, and some form of physical discipline. You can’t do your spiritual practice while you’re also doing something else. Even if what’s required of the body is just to be still, maintaining stillness is a physical discipline. It’s not always easy just to sit still, is it?
And so, although different spiritual practice mix the mental and physical to different degrees, there is always a physical component. The body is doing something, or purposefully not doing something.
Tai Chi is a spiritual practice related to the Taoist tradition. You may have seen persons moving through the Tai Chi series of movements in a park or other public place. A Tai Chi teacher once told me that the motions are designed to manipulate spiritual energy. A practitioner manifests a ball of energy in front of them, and as they turn and twist and push outward or upward, stepping forward or back, the intention is to feel that they are moving the spiritual energy around them, gathering energy, building energy, mastering the energy, mirroring the Taoist worldview of creative energy flowing around us that the healthy person learns to align themselves with.
Yoga is a physical spiritual practice. Yoga is effective for developing physical strength, balance, and flexibility. But yoga as a spiritual practice, coming from the Hindu tradition, is about using the body to develop mental strength and spiritual balance. While performing the physical poses, the yoga practitioner strives to maintain a quiet mind. Be calm. Keep the breath quiet and even. Keep the mind still and focused. The spiritual purpose of yoga is not actually to test the limits of the body but to test the limits of the mind: in a stressful situation where the body is being challenged can you maintain your mental equilibrium?
The Sanskrit word, yoga, has the same root as the English word, “yoke,” as in: to yoke two animals together. What is yoked, in yoga, is the human mind and the transcendent nature of the universe. Yoga was developed as a training to help a person master the spiritual challenge they will face after death. In the passage between one life and the next, the spirit will face a stressful situation; there will be challenges, temptations, and fearful sights, but if the mind has been properly trained, the spirit can resist those distractions, stay calm, and stay focused on the spiritual goal of achieving moksha and reuniting with the Brahman: the divine essence of reality. If you have the strength of mind to remain calm while you are balancing on one foot with the other leg behind your head, you’ll be well-prepared for the reincarnation journey.
One of my spiritual practices is lifting weights at the gym. Like yoga, my goal is to move through the physically challenging exercises, but to maintain a calm and quiet mind. To stay focused on my breathing. To keep my heart rate down, even as I start to sweat. I’m not trying to train my mind for an after-death experience, but I see the spiritual benefit of training my mind and body for this life, to be strong, to be calm, to set goals, face challenges, and develop mental and physical discipline.
Is my gym routine a spiritual practice? Spiritual, yes, in the way I think of spirituality as an exploration of identity, purpose and meaning. A practice, yes, because it’s an experience I repeat regularly. Intentional in that I have a deliberate spiritual purpose beyond merely working my muscles or staying physically fit. Holistic in that weight-lifting is a physical activity, but also requires mental focus and concentration, unless I want to drop a weight on my foot. And ecstatic?
Well, yes. Ecstasy, in a spiritual sense, means breaking down the narrow sense of self that we usually feel when hiding behind our own egos and opening out to feel connected to something larger than ourselves, or to all that exists, at one with the universe, or Brahman, or God, or whatever the ultimate is for you.
My gym routine does that for me because most of the time, I spend most of my life, inside my head, engaged with mental activities and intellectual pursuits. I’m a thoughtful person. My job requires me to think. I read. I write. I sit at a desk. I plan. I imagine. I sit beside someone and talk.
So for me, what I need to create balance in life is to connect with my body. So weight-lifting is a good spiritual practice for me. It’s good to get in touch with my feet and legs and arms and chest. It’s good to breath heavy and get the blood pumping. My mind is still engaged, but my body is the focus.
And so, sometimes, when I’m in the midst of a workout routine, for a few minutes, I lose that usual sense of self that I create for myself. My identity isn’t just “thinking mind” but also, “material body.” I’m not standing apart from the world, I’m standing on it. I’m not a disembodied “I” observing existence, I am a body, being.
Perhaps running is a spiritual practice for you. I ran a marathon once. It was decidedly not a spiritual experience for me.
Perhaps hiking is a spiritual practice for you. We will talk more about the spirituality of nature in a few weeks.
Cycling used to be a spiritual practice of mine. I don’t ride my bike any more. When I was riding my bike I did the AIDS LifeCycle three years in a row: a week-long bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles raising money for people with HIV and AIDS. That ride was an intensely spiritual experience for me: physical, mental, and emotional. And training for the ride, taking my bike out for weekly training rides was a spiritual practice.
Many folks participate in an intentionally spiritual practice of walking a pilgrimage route. I have a friend who walked the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Thousands of people do this every year. Santiago de Compostela is a town in the northwest corner of Spain, above Portugal. The Cathedral there is supposedly the burial place of St. James. The most popular walking route begins in France and covers about 400 miles. Most people take several weeks to walk the whole route.
There are dozens of other pilgrimage routes around the world, attached to many of the world’s faith traditions.
One intention I have for this series of sermons about spiritual practices, is to open our minds to the idea that a spiritual practice can be many things. Not just traditional forms of meditation and prayer, but worship, singing, eating or not eating, going to the gym and so on.
But I also want to be careful not to cast the idea of spiritual practice so broadly that it loses its special quality. A spiritual practice can be many things, but not everything.
Lifting weights is a spiritual practice for me, even though while I’m doing it I’m surrounded by gym-goers who are not having a spiritual experience. Yoga is a spiritual practice for some people. For others it’s merely a form of exercise fostering balance and flexibility. Some Buddhists practice a form of meditation called a walking meditation. Other people just walk.
What makes a mundane activity like walking or knitting or gardening, a spiritual practice has to do with qualities of intention, attention, and also goal. To walk and to meditate. To knit a sweater and to contemplate the interwoven fabric of existence. To grow a tomato and to grow a soul.
A month after Henry David Thoreau died, in 1862, The Atlantic magazine published his final essay, titled “Walking.” Thoreau begins his essay by giving us the derivation of the word “Sauntering” or to saunter, and then gives us the difference between those who walk for errands or for exercise, and those who walk for spiritual purpose. He says:
“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la SainteTerre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes aSainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. “
Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”
To “saunter” is to walk, purposefully, to the Holy Land. Whether that land is a physical place, or a holy land of the soul, a location deep within your self, or a holy land that exists beyond you everywhere but is still somehow searchable and reachable. To walk toward that goal is to saunter. Or to cycle, or run, or bicycle toward that goal. To knit toward that goal. Or to lift weights toward that goal. To have that spiritual goal in mind and work toward it deliberately, transforms a common activity into a spiritual practice: a holy quest, for holy purpose, toward a holy land.