I’m at the gym – TV screens in front of me all showing different things, music playing from the speakers and I’m having to focus a bit more on staying present with my walking. And I’m wondering why there are so many distractions at the gym? Is it deliberate, and if so, why?
I imagine that some would say that it helps them having something to focus on and that it makes the workout easier – that is, having music playing and a TV show to watch. But in what state does that leave our precious body? If the body would have a say, I reckon it would probably also be wanting to join the show. Not the show on the television in this case, but wanting to be present in and with the workout.
My experience is that if we are focusing too much on something else, like a TV show or the music from the speakers, then the focus on the body is left out of the equation, when the whole purpose of exercising is to get healthy, alert and present in the body, is it not?
It’s a bit like driving a car – we need to be present with the driving otherwise we will have a car crash, even though many these days do focus on other things, such as looking at their phone, or messaging or whatever we might be up to in these modern vehicles of ours. My point is that preferably we would be focusing on the driving and, if we relate this to exercising and working out, my question would be how present are we when we work out?
Are we deliberately checking out while we are ‘driving’ our body and where does that leave it? When we drive a car and look away for a split second, we can easily drive off the road or have a front on collision. For some reason we seem to be blessed from that happening too much considering how many of us are doing other things while driving, but we are still bound to keep a certain amount of focus, otherwise we will eventually end up having an accident.
But how about the body and not being present while exercising? Does that not have an effect on the body? Surely it has to. But maybe it takes longer for the body to manifest an ‘accident’.
When I say ‘accident’, I’m referring to the body giving us clear signals that something is not quite right and this can be experienced as an injury or some other physical ailment. In other words, the body says no more of that please. But do we correlate the two? Do we consider that not being present in and with our body can lead to the body having a breakdown?
One thing we do need to consider here is what actually happens when we are not present with our bodies. What happens is that we are not fully attentive to what our body is communicating to us, and in that state, it’s easy to push beyond how the body would otherwise perform the exercise. If we have music pumping, we can easily push ourselves more than we would without the music, as most of us can attest to, but is that really healthy? I would claim that it’s not. Eventually our body will have to show us whether what we are doing with it is healthy or not and if we find ourselves having accidents, injuries and feel overly tired, then we know that something is not quite right.
Something I’ve discovered over the years is that the more present and in tune with my body I get, the more aware I become of how much more present and in tune with my body I can actually be, like there’s no real end, just a continual deepening.
With that in mind, we could easily suspect that many of us do not have a very strong connection with our bodies and all the so called entertainment, in the forms of music and TV screens in the gym, make it even harder to establish one. But why so, if being present is important?
I would say, and I’m sticking my neck out here, that if we were to get more connected with our bodies, we would feel a lot more of what is truly going on, both in our bodies, but also in our lives and that is often too terrifying so we keep on doing the same old same old, until of course our body has to take itself “off the road to get a repair.”
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m not going to give a lecture from this experience I had this morning, but I will say this; it’s well worth looking after ourselves and our bodies and pushing ourselves, as we do right now, with a lot of help from the entertainment squad at the gym, is not helping our bodies to get truly healthy – quite the opposite. Hard facts but it needs to be said.
Fact is that our body is super tender and is not made to be roughed up and pushed beyond boundaries, even though we think we have to ‘push through’ to make it perform. It will perform if we give it the proper space to do so, but that might look a bit different from the image we currently hold of how the workout is to look like.
Let’s face it, our bodies are the temples in which we live and we have to look after them as best as we can… only not from an image of how we think they should look, but from what the body says is right and true for it. But it’s quite hard to listen when we have a myriad of distractions all around us and this is not just at the gym, but everywhere. So why is it like this? That is for us all to contemplate – meanwhile I will stick to being as present as I can with myself because I know it feels way better in my body and it also makes me not want to crave too many sweet things, because I get energised just by being present with the way that I move around in my body, which is actually a science in itself.
By Matts Josefsson, Student of Behavioural Science, Stockholm, Sweden
Further Reading:
That’s entertainment? Wired for distraction
Shock! I Achieved a High Level of Fitness with Gentle Exercise
Discovering the Power of My Body Through Gentle Exercise
515 Comments
Something I have noticed Matts is the more present I am with myself during the day the deeper the sleep at night so that I wake up more energised the next day.
Allowing distractions to be the ‘norm’ keeps us away from feeling the beauty of who we are.
I have started doing exercise more lately and oh my do I feel the benefit, more clearer, more stronger and generally more steadily joyful.
I may not go to the gym but I’m no stranger to driving my body to do things in an energy of function. of stress, of getting the job done no matter what. This feels so harmful and what’s done is done in an energy that leaves a residue that confirms the mundane, the functional existence of life rather than the beauty and divinity of who we are.
It is always good to check how present we are in the moment, no matter what we are doing, ‘how present are we when we work out?’ I suspect many of us have been checked out while exercising, ‘Are we deliberately checking out while we are ‘driving’ our body and where does that leave it?’
I have recently joined a gym which seems quite tame compared with the one you describe here. It does have music playing but not loudly and it has mirrors which I find useful in checking my posture. It’s interesting the other day that I went to the gym after a stressful morning and having a smoothie that had fruit in it and I could feel the difference in the way I approached the exercises and how I moved. I was not so in tune with myself and more willing to go with the beat of the music that was playing. I had to keep recovering myself until I was steady again. Going to the gym and exercising is a great way to ‘see’ how present we are and how connected to our bodies natural rhythm that we are prepared to be.
I often observe the determined drive of so many who over work their body in effort to achieve the prized goal of reducing weight and looking strong. It is not the way to do this though. We can strengthen our body effortlessly and lovingly actually.
One ought to not take what you share here flippantly or be ignorant about it. What we are talking about is a serious topic. It is the quality of our everyday lives!
Facts that convey Truth needs to be said.
For me once I started to be present and feel my body while exercising it became a whole different ball game with out the ball! I also started to realise how checked out I had been and was in the my head the whole time. To really feel the body and connect with it as you are exercising feels amazing.
It does feel lovely to be present and feel our bodies, whatever we are doing.
It sure is tough to be in ones body today – we’re bombarded with images of the ‘ideal’ physique from social media, advertising and TV to name a few. Furthermore, inexpensive fast food and delivery services plus generally unhealthy supermarket options make it easy to make unhealthy choices. So it’s pretty awesome to read this post – a reminder to listen to our bodies first and foremost.
At the ripe old age of fifty I have just joined a gym for the first time and have found one that feels quite tame, no pumping music. The older I get the more I am learning to support my body and listen to its needs and I felt the time was right to take that step and give it the extra strength and exercise needed to support me in daily life.
Listening to the body and exercising with that tender love and care is a completely different consciousness to the one of old which is to push, become ‘better’ and achieve (at the expense of the body).
The same can be said for how we choose to work: do we metaphorically leave our bodies behind at home while we spend the day at the office pushing and driving forward work projects? Or do we work in a sustainable way where we support our bodies with what they need, and so it becomes not about trying to get more done in less time but about feeling what’s needed, moment to moment, and honouring that? Simplifying and working with flow, and getting on with it.
“Do we consider that not being present in and with our body can lead to the body having a breakdown?” A nurturing exercise for our body is to listen, with no distraction, to all it has to say.
It is interesting that when exercising, which we feel is good for the body, we allow and absorb all sorts of distractions around us, leaving the body to exercise just like a robot, not at all tuning into the drive and hardness we are putting the body into, until one day the body reacts, and says no more.
If you haven’t been to a gym for a while… It really is an education very very different from the old days 🙂
It is so true, I have been practicing being in the gym and being present with my body but the music and the Television screens are so hooking. I can see that when I get pulled into them I am less connected with my body and far more likely to overdo the exercise.