The Physical Culture Movement: Then & Now

Links to videos

Chapter 4: India & the International Physical Culture Movement

·         Encyclopedia of Indian Physical Culture 1950:

•      “You are meant to have a fine looking, strong and super healthy body. God cannot be pleased with the ugly, unhealthy, weak and flabby bodies. It is a sacrilege not to possess a fine, shapely, healthy body. It is a crime against oneself and against our country to be weak and ailing.  Our own future and that of our nation depend on good health and enough strength”. (ii)

·         Monier Williams: 1897-

•      “We should strive to develop our youthful Indians physically as well as mentally, morally & religiously. We should endeavor to introduce something of our public school manliness of tone into Indian Seminaries”

·         First half of the 20^th century is to a great extent a dialogue between colonial India & the physical culture movement. Looking for a suitable regimen for Indian bodies and minds.

·         Modern Olympics, Raja Yoga (1896) & launching of physical culture self instruction guides coincide temporally. Worldwide unprecedented enthusiasm for physical culture.

·         1893 first ever modern body building display

·         Dawn of Physical Culture in Britain & Europe

o   European interest in the body as a way to regenerate the moral and physical mettle of a nation (19^th century)

o   Gymnastics became a way to build manliness in German & then spread most notable to Britain, France, Prussia & Scandinavia

§  “their gymnastic exercises were not only meant to form healthy, beautiful bodies, that would express a proper morality, but were designed to create New Germans” (nationalism at its finest).-Mosse 1996

§  Donald Walker’s British Manly Exercises (1834)

o   Economically as well as patriotically motivated. One could not afford a weak constitution in the industrial world. Man against machine.

o   “Manliness, morality, patriotism, fair play and faith is found through physical culture along with a “means for molding the perfect Englishman” (Collingham)

o   “Muscular Christianity”  (Charles Kingsley 1857)

§  Found in public schools, YMCA movement, & salvation army

o   Eugenics Movement: improve their own bodies and the collective national body

§  Anti-intellectual…revalorized the body of the body/mind/spirit triad which was perceived to be neglected. Restore wholeness to individual and collective life.

§  New forms of yoga were developed in the Indian diaspora as an alternative, but in response to the same desires a European physical culture.

·         Scandinavian Gymnastics:

o   Pioneering work of Ling (1766-1839) Ling’s Method

§  Concerned with the development of the whole person.

§  Free form standing work without apparatus-saved money-accessible

§  Similar system later developed in Denmark.

§  Danish system was incorporated by the British as the official training method of the royal army and navy (replaced Maclaren Method) & became the basis for physical education in schools.

§  Moved from Britain to Indian system under colonialism

§  19^th century America adopted the Swedish system in the YMCA & the “harmonial gymnastics” of Genevieve Stebbins

o   Movement Cure: pioneered by C.J. Tissot & others sought to conquest disease through movement, often called “medical gymnastics”

·     

Yoga As Physical Culture I: Strength & Vigor (Chapter 6)

---beginning in the 1920’s Yoga & gymnastics begin to assert themselves as a contemporary expression of the hatha tradition. We see this expressed initially in a plethora of self-help books aimed at the new “physical culture” audience.

• Foundations of postural practice were laid principally during the first four decades of the 20^th century.
• Contexts of Physical Culture as Yoga
• Swami Kuvalayananda

• Became one of the most important figures in the renaissance of yoga as therapeutics and physical culture
• Trained in combat techniques and gymnastics under nationalist physical culturalist (Manik Rao), he also studied yoga for two years under the Vaisnava sage Paramahamsa
• Established a teaching & research institute (Kaivalyadhama) in Lonvala (near Bombay) in 1921.
• Used paraphernalaia of modern science to measure the physiological effects of asana, pranayama, kriya & bandha & used their findings to develop therapeutic approaches to disease.
• Developed a physical cultural regimen based on yoga that was eventually adopted across the nation in schools in India.
• Yogendra & the Domstication of hatha Yoga

• Entered yoga after many years of study in physical culture.
• Also a student of the Vaisnava sage Paramahamsa
• Passions were gymnastics, wrestling, physical culture
• Gym rat: known by the nickname “Mr. Muscle Man”
• Yoga Institute of Santa Cruz (Bombay 1918) was set up for research into health giving aspects of yoga
• 1919: Yoga Institute of America (Bear Mtn. NY) working with avant guarde doctors & naturaopaths & may have given the first asana demonstration in America. Was prevented from returning in 1924 because of the Asian Exclusion Act. Focused then on India.
• The victim of racist Eugenic policy, he became interested in the potential yoga had for creating permanent Eugenic changes on the Indian “race”.
• Creating simplified & accessible asana courses for the public
• Self-styled yogi householder. Indirect opposition to the secretive mystical hatha yogi
• Democratic mission: “Yoga ought to be taught in the public streets in broad daylight” refashioning hatha yoga as medicine and modern physical culture, where as Vivekananda had dismissed it as mystical (sucked the mystical out of it & gave it to every man).-RATIONAL, UTILITARIAN, SCIENTIFIC
• Postures borrowed from, Ling, Muller, Sandow, Delsarte & MacFadden-although he dismisses all of them as “fads”
• “yoga is a comprehensive practical system of self-culture…which through interchangeable harmonious development of one’s body, mind & psychic potencies ultimately leads to physical well-being, mental harmony, moral elevation and habituation to spiritual consciousness” (1928)---matches the ethos of physical culture at the time. (YMCA as well) & harmonial gymnastics.
• Yoga is a uniquely indigenous Indian movement cure superior to European styles that had imposed as the standard form of exercise in India during the 19^th century.
• EUGENTICS: saw the concept of evolution and later social Darwinism as originating with  Samkhya Philosophy. Fascinated with the prospect of human GENETIC MODIFICATION THROUGH YOGA. (LAMARKIAN)
• Such change” affects not only the yoga practitioner himself, but by inheritance also becomes transmitted as the germinal instinct of the progeny” ...“This transformative technology is the crux of the entire metaphysical perspective in ancient India”
• Iyer,Sundaram, Balsker: Yoga Body beautiful

• KV Iyer:

• Throughout the 1930’s posed for international physical culture & body building magazines
• Great admirer of Sandow, MacFadden & Maxick (muscle control)
• Held ongoing correspondence with Charles Atlas
• Declared himself “possessed with a body that the gods covet” & claimed to be”india’s most perfectly developed man” (1927)
• Known as a body builder internationally, but a great proponent of hatha yoga as part of a larger, highly aestheticized physical culture regimen based on western models.
• “hatha yoga had more to do with making me what I am than all the bells, bars, steel springs and strands I have used” (Muscle Cult 1930)
• Epitomizes the way that hatha yoga was “appended” to physical culture as the shift from “perfection of the body” (conceived as the conquest of the five material elements) to a modern cosmetic or fitness model (Alter 2005)
• Self-conscious marriage of body building & yoga
• Indian yogic synthesis was viewed as a hybrid alternative (Indian) to the predominant but ineffectual Ling system and aimed at a national revolution in physical culture.
• EUGENICS: “will our women bring forth only healthful, useful children to save our motherland from degeneration, from this slavery? (1927) “Physically deficient mothers and devitalized fathers are producing helpless derelicts and weaklings…take up physical culture to forestall all this” (1930)
• Offered Suryanamaskar, yoga & weight training as hybrid activities. Sun salutations were not yet part of yoga.
• Creator of the suryanamaskarsystem (1897), PRATINIDHI PANT was himself a devoted body builder and practitioner of the Sandow method.
• Widespread reputation for curing disease with his yoga & special abdominal massage of his own invention.
• Patron, who he cured of the effects of a stroke was the Maharaja of Mysore, who later became patron to Krishnamacharya & the founders of modern asana practice. YOGASALA WAS ONLY METERS AWAY FROM A MODERN GYMNASIUM ALSO ON THE PROPERTY.
• Yogacarya Sundaram: student, friend & collaborator of Iyer who ran the Yogis School of Physical Culture.

• Yogic Physical culture (The Secret of Happines) 1928 was published…photographic very successful do it yourself yoga book, reconceptualized as gymnastics, hygiene & body building.
• Physical culturaists in the West are great, but “ in spite of their great advances, however, such innovators are deemed to lag far behind the ancient sages who have handed down a system perfected thousands of years ago” (NICE!!!).1928.
• Reenacts the reversal of Orientalists fulfillment narratives, such that they, plus ultra of modern “scientific” physical culture is only an inferior imitation of the wholly perfected system of the ancient Hindu yogins”.
• “men & women in sedentary occupations who were not born for saintliness, might utilize it as a system of physical culture" (1928) the sociopolitical situation moreover calls for a new synthesis of asana with muscle building, in order that the sons of India might obtain super-strength to make their Mother an equal sister among Nations!...In the present situation, giants of muscles-even devoid of brain power, arean inevitable necessity” (ANTI-COLONIALISM).
• Aesthetics: “a human body is not worth looking at without properly developed superficial muscles” Emphasis on BUILDING A BEAUTIFUL PHYSIQUE
• Religious wholeness through aesthetic perfection of the body: a physical Culture Religion. (1928) “Religion for the highest perfection of the body to attain the greatest realization of Self” (looks to Hindu renaissance & Sandow.
• Religion separates the material West from the Spiritual East….YOGA HAS RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL SUPERIORITY.

Yogasana journals of the 1930s are PREOCCUPIED with the aesthetics of the body.

• New Thought Yogis: para-religious movement permeated yoga in India, America and Europe from the end of the 19^th century . New thought remained when the emphasis shifted to asana.
• Originally a breakaway movement of Mary baker Eddy’s Christian Science, new thought began in New England in the 1880s preaching the innate divinity of the self and the power of positive thinking to actuate that divinity in the world, usually to the ends of personal affluence and wealth (scientology???).
• Yoga became a repository of these NEW REDISCOVERED TRUTHS (the secret)
• William Walker Atkinson (Ramacharaka???) authored a steady avalanche of esoteric yoga manuals and new thought self-help books between 1903 and 1917 (like NEW AGE now). Hatha Yoga envisioned as NATURE CURE and NEW THOUGHT…borrows heavily fron VIVEKANANDA’s Raja Yoga (1896)
• Relies on the practitioners ability to “throw the mind out into the body”. Then positive messages can be sent into the physical frame to cure disease.
• AUTO-SUGGESTIONS & AFFIRMATIONS (mantram): reconstrues the traditional meaning of mantra as mystical sound of ritual observance and meditation (Eliade 1969)
• Paramahamsa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi) (1946): taught muscle control heavily influenced by new thought and European body building in the United States.

• Muscle recharging through will power (1946) “efficient merger of cosmic & cosmetic”
• Displays of muscle mastery through will power. (Maxick rippling muscle technique)
• BC Ghosh (Yogananda’s younger brother and internationally famous body builder): Introduced a Htaha yoga that was a fusion of asana, physical culture and muscle manipulation techniques that Ghosh had learned from his brother…referred to as YOGA exercises.

with his "favorite student" Bikram Chodouroy

• 1930: Muscle Control (photographic book): weights free & apparatus free gymnastics & physical training through will power (Maxick’s identically titled manual).
• Feats of abdominal muscle isolation Nauli, appear in both books.
• 1923: opens college of physical education in Calcutta, India.where he trained Bikram Choudhoury
• Tony Sanchez says that Ghosh worked to develop a system with Sivananda based on the original 84 postures.
• Celebrity, physical culturalist, brother of yogi, nationalist
• New Thought & The Body
• Jules Payot (1893) The Education of Will (New Thought manifesto)
• The body holds the secret of spiritual advancement, and it is through developing a healthy animal that the god in man would be revealed. The physiological conditions of self-mastery were to be attained through a regimen of muscular exercise and respiratory gymnastics that would function as a primary school for the will. (1909).
• Ideas were taken up by the New Thought movement
• Affirmations are combined with physical exercise to create the corporeal conditions for cosmic flux
• Albrecht Jensen (1920): Identified muscle control as an Indian invention,
• but its identification with yoga is more a result of its association with alternative medicine (like Jensen’s “medical massage” and new thought.
• Probably got ideas from Yogendra (NYC 1919)
• Yogi Gherwal (Indian Export Guru in US)
• (1923) Practical Hatha Yoga: Science of Health- published from his base in CA
• Earliest photo manual of hatha yoga & advertisement for Gherwal’s correspondence course. (modeled on Sandow’s very popular “postal courses”) were already big business at the time. SELF-HELP MODEL
• Physiology of the postures and their application in therapeutics
• Modern medical & Psychologized new thought physical culture interpretations of physical practice
• For many Americans, MOVEMENTS LIKE THEOSOPHY, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, NEW ENGLAND TRANSANDENTALISM AND NEW THOUGHT, functioned as way stations between participation in institutional church and an identification with [neo] Vedanta (Gjerwal is an example of this)
• West Coast Yogis: Wassan, Hari Rama, Bhagwan Gyanee
• All contemporaries of Yogananda and Gherwal & all peddled a comparable formula for spiritual and material advancement through NATURE CURE and NEW THOUGHT religion.
• Wassan (1924) The Hindu System of Health Development
• Opened with healing chant meant to “vibrate the brain, body & business” (preparatory)
• Hindu System of Physical Culture (1925): series of exercises derived from modern gymnastics like Muller’s system & bears bo resemblance to hatha yoga postures (look like Western physical culture manuals)
• Very successful on the lecture tour
• Hari Rama (1926) Yoga System of Study (same system)
• Bhagwan Gyanee (1931) Yogi Exercises
• Authored a plethora of New Thought self-help manuals
• Exercises explicitly presented as yoga’s equivalent to the “allied branches of magnetism, osteopathy, nature cure and naturopathy”.
• Look like European gymnastics, but attributed to original 84 postures
• Only recognizable “asana” is Ardha Chandrasana (Iyengar) which was popular in bodybuilding well before Iyengar identified it.

THESE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL VARIETIES OF POSTURAL YOGA ENACT A REDEFINITION OF THE INDIAN SYSTEM TO SUIT LOCAL TASTES AND EXPECTATIONS, MUCH IN THE SAME WAY THAT VIVEKANANDA’S VERSION OF VEDANTA MAY LEGITIMATELY BE SAID TO REPRESENT A DEGREE OF STRATEGIC “GLOCAL” TWEAKING OF RECEIVED HINDU TRADITION

Physical Culture II: Harmonial Gymnastics & Esoteric Dance (Chapter 7)

·         The yogic body regimes described are congruous with Protestant religiosity called “HARMONIAL RELIGION” (1972 Sidney Ahlstrom). New Thought is the most practical expression of this movement which reflects a rejection of Calvinist denigration of the body in favor of the soul.

• ·         Spiritual composure and physical health and even economic well-being are understood to flow from a person’s rapport with the cosmos.

• ·         “Harmonial Gymnastics in America”(Genevieve Stebbins & Cajzoran Ali)-fashioned the harmonial gymnastics that became associated with the “spiritual stretching, breathing and relaxation regimes in the popular practice of yoga today.

• ·         In Britain, Mollie Bagot Stack of the Women’s League of Health & Beauty” during the 1930s.

·         Both of these movements which were popularized for WOMEN during the height of men’s physical culture movement form a straight progression to what we would identify as modern postural practice.

·         Genevieve Stebbins & American Delsartism

o   French teacher of acting and singing (Francois Delsarte (1811-71) developed spirito-physical exercises and rules for the coordination of voice, breath and bodily gestures. Stebbins was the foremost proponent of his methods in America through his student, Steele Mackaye

o   Member of the Church of Light (order of practical occultism)-links to Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

o   Started a whole movement of Delsartism in the US, most notably with the turn of the century oriental dance genre featuring Ruth St. Denis (sum yogi) and Maud Allen. Part of a larger general assimilation of Asian inspired techniques such as Transcendentalism, Theosophy, modern Vedanta and yoga.

o   Upper socioeconomic white protestant women that took up this Asian practice of dance & asthei=tics also took up yoga

o   Teachers claimed to be teaching (like European & American Yoga Teachers) the ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC YOGA OF INDIA, inspite of the many patent innovations.

§  Dominant currencies of spiritual and cultural capital in the romanticized Asian marketplaces of the West

§  Drama of appropriation & legitimization-nationalist aspirations & cultural regeneration

The physical culture movement of the 19th century owed its origins to several cultural trends.

As a result of the Industrial Revolution, there arose a perception that members of the middle classes were suffering from various "diseases of affluence" that were partially attributed to their increasingly sedentary lifestyles. In consequence, numerous exercise systems were developed, typically drawing from a range of traditional folk games, dances and sports, military training and medical calisthenics. Many of these systems drew inspiration from the classical Greek and Roman models of athletic training and were organized according to more-or-less scientific methods.

Physical culture programs were promoted through the education system, particularly at military academies, as well as via public and private gymnasiums.

Increasing levels of literacy, the increasing democratization of printing and the relative affluence of the middle classes spurred the growth of a genre of magazines and books detailing these systems of physical culture. Mass production techniques also allowed the manufacture and commercial sale of various items of exercise equipment. During the early and mid-19th century, these printed works and items of apparatus generally addressed exercise as a form of remedial physical therapy.

Certain items of equipment and types of exercise were common to several different physical culture systems, including exercises with Indian clubs, medicine balls, wooden or iron wands and dumbbells. Combat sports such as fencing, boxing and wrestling were also widely practiced in physical culture schools, and were touted as forms of physical culture in their own right.

By the later 19th century, the ethos of physical culture had expanded to include exercise as recreation, education, as preparation for competitive sport and as an adjunct to various political, social, moral and religious causes. “The Muscular Christianity” movement is an example of the latter approach, advocating a fusion of energetic Christian activism and rigorous physical culture training.

As physical culture became increasingly popular and profitable, there arose intense national and then international competition among the founders and/or promoters of various systems. This rivalry became informally known as "the Battle of the Systems". Both public gyms and educational institutions tended to take an eclectic approach, whereas private physical culture clubs and organizations often promoted particular exercise systems according to nationalistic loyalties.

The German Turnverein promoted a system of what became known as "heavy gymnastics", meaning strenuous exercises performed with the use of elaborate equipment such as pommel horses, parallel bars and climbing structures. The Turnverein philosophy combined physical training with intellectual pursuits and with a strong emphasis upon German culture. Numerous events in modern competitive gymnastics originated in, or were popularized by the Turnverein system.

The Czech Sokol physical culture movement was largely inspired by the Turnverein.

By contrast with the German and Czech systems, the "Swedish System" founded by Per Henrik Ling promoted "light gymnastics", employing little, if any apparatus and focusing on calisthenics, breathing and stretching exercises as well as massage.

At the turn of the 20th century, bodybuilder and showman Eugen Sandow's system, based upon weight lifting, enjoyed considerable international popularity, while Edmond Desbonnet and George Hebert popularized their own systems within France and French-speaking countries. Bernarr Macfadden's system became especially popular within the USA, via the promotion carried out through his publishing empire.

Hans Bjelke-Petersen founded the Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture in Hobart, Australia in 1892. This version of physical culture, often informally referred to as "Physie" (pronounced "fizzy"), is generally performed by girls and women and has evolved into a combination of gymnastics, ballet, and aerobics.

From Body Tribe in Sacremento…THE NEW

“The body is a tool for greater purpose, not just the end result of your training. Therefore, training is the means to an increase in the quality of life through movement. The Physical SubCulture is the modern organized effort to incorporate centuries of physical rituals and beliefs in exercise and movement into an integral part of all aspects of culture. Whether through lifting heavy objects of all shapes and sizes or finding new ways to move the body by itself, the Physical SubCulture movement is about strengthening the spirit through pushing the limits of the body.”

 “Character can now be communicated to a prospective client or new employer by the relative fitness of one’s body.  A lean, hardened body suggests discipline, control and personal responsibility.  Great stamina suggests dedication.  The qualities that a businessman admired - commitment, steadfastness and forbearance - are just as important today as they were a century ago.  But now they are communicated differently.  They are expressed through one’s physique.  The interpretation of character is now a completely visual process.”  - Ronald Dworkin, The Rise of the Imperial Self

Nowhere in the definition of fitness do the words “look better,” “ripped abs,” or “toned and defined” appear, yet aesthetics make up for probably 90% of the Average Gym Members (AGMs) in the world.  If the premise of Dworkin’s statement above is true, then many folks want to appear powerful.  Judging a book by the cover, perhaps, but it’s the quickest estimation of character we have.  It may not be fair, but what else do you have to go on in the first few seconds of meeting someone?  Although the premise may be accurate, it shows a gross inaccuracy of character judgment.  What may be initially perceived as dedication and forbearance may simply be narcissism or shallowness.  Strength of character may correlate with strength of joints, muscle, spine and spirit, but rarely with just how pretty those muscles look.

The age-old correlation between aesthetic appeal and practical achievement is not entirely accurate, but the butt-whuppin’ drive it takes to conquer our fitness demons is the same piss and vinegar we need for all other obstacles in life.   Though Dworkin discusses simple appearance and how it relates to impressions, that belief exists because it’s understood that by attaining a higher awareness of oneself through the fitness medium, the impressions of power, control and dedication won’t be superficial.  When we witness high levels of power and fitness in the gym (or out), we witness people who don’t doubt their ability and set no limits on what they are capable of.  That often correlates with other areas of their life (hopefully).  Unfortunately, people believe that looking the part equates to being the part.  Common gym experience will belay time and time again how untrue that is.

Who’s to blame for the emphasis of outer appearances?  No one and everyone.  “Blame” isn’t exactly the right word.  Our bodies process information quickly through the senses, sight usually being the first.  It takes more time and effort to incorporate deeper judgmental skills, to assess the worth of someone through achievement, ability, personality, etc., so our initial visual judgment holds until our minds process more information as we receive it.  Since our initial perception is sensory based, it’s a direct link to all our other sensory judgments, like physical attraction, which can easily override the brain’s ability to create a fairer opinion based on more intrinsic and internal qualities. In other words, we can overlook a lot of personality flaws in physically beautiful people.  Hence, the one night stand, or the long term, tumultuous relationship.  Usually both are completely physically based, sometimes despite efforts to try to like or accept qualities about the other person that actually are very annoying or downright disagreeable.  It’s easier (not better) for passion to exist from physical attraction – kickin’ bod, nice smell, seductive smile - then from more profound attractions, like wisdom, common dreams and ideas, sense of humor. And our ubiquitous media is the largest exploiter of this.  Therefore relationships and desires are created in greater numbers from the physical world, though they’re often fickle, short lived and erroneous. The strongest relationships, though, might begin with the physical, but then incorporate the spirit.

Our strongest pinnacles of culture, be it artistic (musicians, painters, writers) or cognitive activists (philosophers, religious idealists, politicians), have become attractive to us through a deeper, more powerful lust - the lust of the mind and spirit.  After initially hitting our senses, we found something inside of us that embraced them, which replied back to our senses to ask for more.  Our senses then were a means to an end, not the final decision, with the ultimate choice being a fulfilling internal and eternal one.  This is what we can become, and the tools needed for a true fitness lifestyle - dedication, focus and intensity - can be applied to all aspects of life. This is a definition of fitness:  becoming better at life through movement.  By improving the connection between body and mind we will make ourselves more useful, more inspiring, more “attractive” than just a pretty little flesh packet.

Incorporating the Spirit 

“Spirit” often has religious or New-age connotations relating to foo-foo guru-ism or far-out fanaticism.   Spirit, though, may be simply thought of as the untouchable, non-physical aspect of what drives our flesh packets.  Fitness, then, is beyond physical.  When our bodies, which house the ethereal essentials as well as the solid vitals, transcend the menial task of just holding everything together (in other words, when your body is fully alive) only then does the wall between flesh and spirit lower.  Intensity, the quasi-tangible prerequisite for accomplishment, helps bridge the gap between body and soul.  When we are pushed to the limits - intense pain, intense pleasure, intense terror, intense joy - concrete “goods” and “bads” fall on their foundations. Inner strength, sense of being, those obvious times when the spirit steps in to run the show, usually can be traced to a sensational intensity.  We push our limits - physical, sexual, artistic, sensational - with a primal, subconscious desire to accomplish the incorporation of the spirit.  But often the mind/body/spirit merger isn’t completed, so steeped are we in just the physical, so content with our insecurities. We pull a “let’s-just-be-friends” with our spirits, achieving only rare and brief samples of our potential in dreams, inspirations and epiphanies.  We’re too secure in our insecurities to accept the spirit through the threshold we often create for it.

Since intensity is a key to acknowledgment of the spirit, our workouts can make pretty strong bridges inward.  This isn’t to say that fitness should be a complete self-actualizing quest.  Heck, where’s the fun in that?  But applying respect and appreciation for the art and science of movement will fulfill deeper needs than the constant struggle to look better.  Let’s face it. Through working out, you will automatically increase the benefit to your physical appearance.  It’s a required by-product.  When that focus dominates a workout, though, the accomplishment is rather shallow, a minor victory in your grand scheme.

Inspiration and celebration for life       

We need basic functions and actions to provide ourselves with the ability to transcend basic functions and actions.  We wake up, brush our teeth, pretty-up ourselves, dress and eat before we attack the greater tasks of creating, accomplishing and providing.  Though your protocol might not match the exact pattern above, we all have routines to move us through the day so we can focus and function better on more important tasks.  Routines are thoughtless actions that meet basal requirements.  Routines do not offer inspiration or purpose beyond our most simple needs.  Routines, albeit necessary, are droll.  Plain and simple.

Fitness goals are more often vague hopes than thought-out plans.  Most folks in the gym “will know when they get there,” which is to say they don’t have measured steps and progressions that can be manipulated to ensure progress.  Fitness goals are rarely about life enhancement (unfortunately) and have more to do with simple, often erroneous or obsessive, aesthetic goals (which actually negates them having anything to do with “fitness”).

Movement, especially in extreme forms, is an open spectacle, an individual parade for existence.  The ability to overcome very real and physical obstacles, be it in the form of several hundred pounds lifted off your body or conquering new terrain on a cardiovascular journey, should never be a routine.  Let’s not take motion for granted. ritual?

When asked “how do we live spiritually?’ Joseph Campbell replied, “In ancient times, that was what ritual was for.  A ritual can be defined as the enactment of a myth.  By participating in a ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life.  And it’s out of this participation that one can learn to live spiritually”

When conscious thought or meaning is applied to a movement or task to invoke a greater good, then it is a ritual.  When considering what Dworkin wrote, instead of gaining the appearance of power and discipline, why not actually BE powerful and disciplined?

“People create images of themselves in the world and guide their action according to such images.  The images are not only myths that capture the meaning of past experiences but lead to anticipation of future events.” - N. Fredman and R. Sherwood, Handbook of Structured Techniques in Marriage and Family Therapy

The meaning of myth in ritual is not folklore, or storyteller’s fantasy, but the correlating metaphoric representation of a very real emotion, aspect or quality in life.  With ritual within a workout, a lift cannot only be a literal display of power, but can be representative of power in other aspects of life, a very real myth of power.  Much of the fitness literature out there makes wonderful, if not oblique, claims of self-empowerment, stress relief or ability to deal with stress better, esteem building, and the overcoming of many non-physical obstacles. But these aren’t just automatic byproducts of fitness.  Unless some cognitive effort is made not to take physical ability for granted, these potential qualities are wasted.  Obligatory fitness, which is fitness under duress of guilt, usually stemming from erroneous pressures of physical ideals, will not meet any of the above claims.  Obligatory fitness makes up for that giant dessert from last night, or a weekend of bingeing.  It is fitness without ritual, fitness without passion.  It yields little true gain and satisfies daily guilt, not any actual goal.

Okay, so now what?

“To derive power from a ritual it must, in some way, stand apart from our ordinary lives.  It is not uncommon for us to have so much of our energy and attention directed towards our daily routines and our goals that our focus becomes narrowed.  We may even have become preoccupied with our doubts, our fears, or our pain.  These things can isolate us.  We may lose connection with the rhythm in our lives and the passage that we share as human beings on the planet.  This is what the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger called a state of ‘forgetfulness of being.’” - Renee Beck and Sydney Metrick, The Art of Ritual

A common and easy way to dwell in the “forgetfulness of being” is to live in routine.  Now routines can have an acceptable, if not required, place in survival as mentioned earlier.  But a routine will never produce progress, routine will never breed inspiration.  By being self-aware, and “conscious of being the creative composer of one’s own life” (Beck), we achieve the condition of “mindfulness of being.”  We can take a little responsibility, using our workout as one of many possible vehicles, and choose to be aware of our movements and action, maybe even using a little metaphor or fantasy to shift the focus from the micro process (sets, reps, mechanics) and view its place in the macro process (being better at life).  If we view our workouts as ceremonies of intensity and commitment and apply them to an organized set of cyclic goals, from baby steps to the grand scheme o’ things, the workout can become a ritual, not just a routine.

Even famed malignant Englishman Alister Crowley wrote “magic is the art and science of making change occur according to will.”  If our true will is simply droppin’ some fat to satisfy a scale, then we should be damned to a life of obligatory fitness.  If our workouts are rituals of the celebration of movement, ability, and therefore life, we’re pretty magical."