The Joy of a Physical Spiritual Practice

Aging, whether we like it or not, involves physical changes that may take us by surprise. When I was 75, I found myself in the hospital with a blocked artery after years of clueless eating habits and my frequently sedentary lifestyle. The treatment went well, and I was home in a few days, yet I had the strong feeling that I was at a crossroads, that Spirit wanted to show me something new. “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands,” wrote author Richard Bach in his book Illusions. Little did I suspect how transforming that gift would be.

I was told I had to spend a month exercising in cardio rehabilitation. My previous daily routine had not included walking on a treadmill or pedaling a stationary bike. I started, came back the second day, and stayed with it that week and the next.

Exercise as Play

When I first started to exercise, I went at it like a man possessed. One day a fellow exerciser, watching my face as I attacked an exercise like King Sisyphus rolling his immense boulder up a hill, called out, “Hey, Phil, having fun yet?” We laughed, but then it hit me: What if I really approach all this as play? Suddenly with the word play came a wave of relaxation. At the next exercise, I laughed as I said under my breath, “This is fun!” and looked around to see if anyone actually heard me. A sense of enjoyment was opening up.

Then the unexpected happened. By the end of the third week, not only was the physical effort becoming easier, but there was slowly forming in me the positive contours of a physical spiritual practice. I was hooked. The treadmill was becoming a place of energetic meditation. Here was a new, intriguing path before me.

Like a healthy heartbeat, every rapid step was forming a tempo of healing and life. And with increased physical demand came the practice of surrender—surrender to the body’s own wisdom.

A Tempo of Healing

The first thing that came was the rhythm. Like a healthy heartbeat, every rapid step was forming a tempo of healing and life. And with increased physical demand came the practice of surrender—surrender to the body’s own wisdom.

With vigorous walking, my world was slowly drawn down to a sharp focus and an inner stillness, like the runner’s “zone,” and a clear sense of God’s working presence. Here was a renewed awareness that the body is not a fixed thing we carry around with us but a dynamic system of spiritual energy, a continuous creation, and a close, responsive friend. And “the only way to have a friend is to be one,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson once pointed out.

The Body as a Friend

So we struck up a friendship, what Kahlil Gibran called, “a sweet responsibility.” And this meant welcoming the body as a devoted ally and for the first time regularly listening to what it was telling me. It meant hearing and responding to its ongoing plea for physical activity and giving the body the opportunity to increase that activity, knowing that it knows its limits.

A dozen years later, this steady and reliable conversation now gives me a realization of progress. It is, in fact, a life of renewable energy that had been waiting and a friendship I had long overlooked and taken for granted. The adventure continues.

This article first appeared in the Unity booklet Spiritual Keys to Aging Well.