Working out at the Gym: A Spiritual Practice!

Many spiritual teachers are talking everywhere now about the practice of Gratitude in all that you do.

Or maybe, I’m now hearing them. And when I recently heard a Jewish Rabbi as a guest speaker at a local church talk about the ongoing Jewish practice of trying to give "Thanks" at least 100 times a day, I realized where this message of “gratitude” may have originated.

Whether the practice of giving Thanks several times a day truly started with the Jewish people or didn’t, it’s a great practice. I became more willing to practice gratitude, the more I saw results of that practice in my life. i.e. the more thanks I gave, the more reasons I was given to be truly grateful. Now, saying thanks has become a way of life for me. Recently, I took it to the next level.

Working out two to three times a week at my local Bally’s is not the most exciting thing in my life.

But it’s what I feel obliged to do for 1.5-2 hours each time, and I have been doing this for many years i.e. at least 20 years. Over the years of course, I’ve found many, many excuses over the course of a week or month as to WHY I couldn’t go to the gym...until my body begged me to...run there for my workout.

Now, I’ll be running to the gym because my body begs me to do so, and also because my Spirit, too, is feeling empty.

You see, I do resistance training at the gym.

This is where you use weights to do 10-15 repetitions in “Sets” on all parts of your body...from your legs to your thighs...to your torso...to your abs...to your arms...shoulders. There are a lot of machines at the gym, and you can do about two to four Sets on each body part. You use your body part to push the weight forward and slowly bring it back, of course, setting the weights at an appropriate level for you. Unless you’re into bodybuilding, or working out is a passion for you, going to the gym for many of us others can be a mind game: “I will; I won’t. I will; I won’t” on our workout days, knowing that EACH time we finish we feel so much better.

I truly now have solved this problem. The gym now has become my place for Spiritual Practice.

I now use my time at the gym and my resistance training to give “Thanks.”

Each time I take the machine out, I count. When I bring it back, I say, “Thank You.”
By doing this on each and every machine...can you imagine how many times I have an opportunity to give “thanks” during my workout?!
You do the math.

Each time I’m at the gym, I work out on more than 15 machines with four Sets of 15 repetitions. In addition, there are three or four machines where I do only Two Sets, with 10-15 repetitions. For example, if I’m working on my thighs, I push the weigh out or up, Count…”One”...slowly lower or push the weigh back, watching my breathing, and saying “Thank You.”

This has taken the monotony out of my workout. It gives it focus, and it also provides me with a way of staying in the “NOW.” By having to focus on Counting and Giving thanks, I’m staying in the Now moment. My mind can’t go wandering any place because it has ONE FOCUS, “NOW”: STAY IN THE MOMENT. NOW… COUNT, BREATHE, THANK YOU! COUNT, BREATHE, THANK YOU! COUNT, BREATHE, THANK YOU!

The day I discovered this practice was on the same day I heard the Jewish Rabbi. It took all that I had in me not to shout to him, “Hey, buddy, a 100 “Thank Yous” in a day? That ain’t NOTHING! Try 1,000.”

I smiled instead, thinking of my next workout.

Give it a try the next time you're at the gym. You, too, might be able to say “Thank you,” a thousand times!

Namaste’,

Che’