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
537 Comments
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.
Great exposure of the current workout culture and how it is about anything but true connection but instead blocking out the body’s messages and driving it to a pre-determined point rather than listening to what feels true for it that particular day and honouring that.
We try to avoid what we came to the gym to attend to – our physical body, our fitness level, our stamina, our commitment. Does that really make sense? is it too simple, being in our body? Do we want it hard, arduous and complicated so we have a forever excuse to put it off?
Any distraction that keeps us away from tuning in to the messages from our body will lead us down a one-way street to illness.
Its like we want to exercise our bodies without being in our bodies! Hilarious when you think about it.
Hilarious and very sad at the same time; we don’t want to be where we are but we keep being there for the lack of initiative and will to change what is not working.
I used to bring a determined focus to everything outside and around me during exercise workouts except with my body, to be able to push myself beyond its natural limit for an outcome or goal to distract me from not feeling the true impact of what I was doing to my body. Now that I have learnt to be more gentle and to stay present with myself I enjoy moving my body from a natural flow that feels far more honouring and far less exhausting.
If I am not present with myself it’s easy to over exercise and I feel it the next day. Same as if I am staring at my phone while eating, chances are I will overeat. The point is when not present I ignore the bodies boundaries. Bounderies that when listened to bring vitality to life, the complete opposite to the ‘raising the bar then superseding it gym mentality.
So true that if we are distracted when doing any activity then it’s our body that pays the price of this lack of connection.
My challenge while I do fitness is to be with the loud music they share in the fitness school. I se it as the noise at my work and the many voices of people. I practice to stay really with me, present in what I do and not let that distract me from me. A powerful exercise it is.
When we let ourselves be really honest and get to feel that actually it isn’t just an accident but there is something more to it. It took me a while to fully understand this but thanks to Universal Medicine teachings I have been able to fully appreciate that as everything is energy then there is always going to be cause and effect. How I live and what i choose will determine my future. Makes total and absolute sense.
It’s a great point about how we can have an image of what is good for our body or an ideal of how we think we should exercise but what if we tuned into our body more and listened more to how we feel to move from the inside out rather than imposing on ourselves beliefs and ideals we’ve picked up…
“…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” – This seems to be the essence of this great blog Matts, as it shows what is the source of our many faceted attempts to distract and numb ourselves as you (and I) have experienced at the gym. There have been many times when I felt very settled in my body, went to the gym, and lost that contentment because I had not stayed present with my body as I was working out and before you know it I am lifting way too much weights and stressing my muscles/body out instead of gently working out as I usually do. The level of distractions there are almost comical and shows to me what lengths we will go to in order to not feel what is really going on for us in the inside.
Thank you Matts — workout is so much more than exercising in the gym.. it is as shared above, a movement that we can either choose to be with or escape from! And it is our body that eventually will sit with the consequence of our choices. So let’s be truly clever. And choose to do that which is in line with our body and what it needs, not our mindful needs.
Yes when you write that I realize that vitality and strength come from the body, that is from within the body, and not from outside of it as the focus usually is. We do the exercise because we think that the exercise itself will bring vitality but if we are not connected within first then it’s not going to work. We might get fitter physically but in the long run that approach (just focusing on the body) will eventually drain the body of vitality and energy. Connected first we will feel what the body needs and we will not push beyond what the body says is truly good for it.
and it comes back to our inevitable truth that we can spin and spin around the sun as much as we can, but we do not go anywhere, hence appreciating the quality and movement of who we are, is our everything.
” 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. ”
I would agree. I find that the beat of the music can be a distraction for the heart and therefore distraction of presence with self and ones body.
Like I’ve said, it would be a dream if the gym was pitch quiet, part from the sounds of us working out but I guess that is not everyone’s flavor.
I agree staying present with my body is my choice and on-going learning, ‘I will stick to being as present as I can with myself because I know it feels way better in my body’.
“when the whole purpose of exercising is to get healthy, alert and present in the body, is it not? ”
While this is true, some people use exercise to harden and numb the body so as to not have to listen to what the body is impulsing to them. I find this is why music is constantly on in the gym at a high volume.
Yes, and it is offering the service people are asking for. We are only just starting to consider exercise and over-exercise as a concern as, till now, it has been something we have championed as being healthy. Yet the outplay in the body is now showing us the truth and we are seeing more and more hard bodies that are disconnected and breaking down physically and emptionally. The body never lies and we can only hide the message for so long.
I used to want nothing more than to pound the pavement or play sport as hard as I could and get completely caught up in the competition and distraction of it… so I didn’t feel how sad and hurt I was. I would praise myself if I could get through a really hard workout without feeling it all because I was in my head thinking about how I needed to better my self next. Now, I love the feeling of being present when moving my body. That way I can’t possibly injure or hurt myself because I’m there with what I am doing, I’m feeling my muscles contract and extend and how much is supportive to do or not.
True, not being present with our bodies can lead to us ignoring or even abusing them, when ‘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.’
Also have we misplaced the meaning of fitness and being fit, we choose to be energetic and energized by the quality of our movements. If we choose to walk by stress this energy will go through us, which eventually makes us feel tired.. So, we can and have to look in a different way to our fitness and being fit mentality – as it has not served us any way.
I guess this goes to show that because there is a call for more stimulation in the gym that many people are using exercise as a way to relieve tension and check out from it, but if we don’t change the energy then it is there with us all the time, it might just be suppressed for a bit but it will continue to resurface until it is dealt with.
I was at a swimming pool and watching a training clock as I decided to rest and plan my next lap – that minute I allowed to pass felt long a really long minute! And then I realised that when we give ourselves space and don’t rush with the clock, there is plenty of space and a minute felt like forever – and was also quite regenerating. I remember most of my swimming training used to be focussed on the clock and timings and there is no better way to stress out than race against time.
Beautiful Matts, If we asked the body how it would want to be when doing something such as working out, It would definitely want to be present with its activity – and we reward our abilities to have a show running in the mind while the body has a completely different reality, but this is proving to be very damaging to our minds and bodies.
I recently saw a promotion for children to keep active and in touch with the latest IT gadgets. Attaching an iPad into the inner case of a trampoline barrier. Combing supposedly the best of both worlds. Far from the focus of connecting and enjoy the body with a simple and joyful activity.
“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? A valid point Matts. You see it all the time, people wanting to escape from the body – using TV etc- and not only at the gym, but in everyday life.
I grew up with the belief that if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not working. WOW! that perspective on life certainly didn’t do me any any favours when I later realised that my body was not a machine in a factory. It’s all the programming we are given from an early age that suggests life is hard, and you have to be tough to survive it etc etc. It’s crazy, cause it certainly doesn’t seem to be working for us a whole.
What I see around me at the gym is that people often put a goal for themselves like working out at this speed for this long on this machine and to reach this goal often distractions are needed because it is not natural for the body to do this exercise this long at the speed we want. I have to catch myself doing this too like thinking if I have been long enough on this machine, especially the treadmills do have these time clocks and calorie meters on them which can really make you want to reach a goal. But in the end it is about listening to our body’s and when it is soar it also means you have to stop because pain is the bodies signal you are hurting it and not that we are doing good exercises and we need to keep going.
I get depressed immediately every time I push my body, whether it is at the gym or the thoughts that come in in regards to work, the body is this sensitive and honest that immediately, I will respond/react with depressive and needy thoughts.
That is very interesting Adele and I can relate to that. We are so used to a life of struggle that most probably don’t notice the difference but to what degree are we creating this misery ourselves? And are we able to allow feeling amazing all the time?
When we are are present in our body we are so much more sensitive and in tune with the present moment and, aware of what is occurring around us in our environment.
The analogy of driving a car is a great one Matts – as without being in connection to our bodies we are constantly allowing them to crash and burn, without caring and nurturing the delicateness that they are. As such we forgo the invaluable support and guidance that our bodies constantly offer us.
So true Matts if we are to come truly present and connected to our bodies we will be faced with the truth that the body holds and communicates very loudly.