Each January, Americans collectively atone for a new festive season of indulgence. Some proclaim sobriety to “dry January.” Others use the dawn of a new year to focus on other forms of self-improvement, like meditation or a new skincare routine. But adopting a new fitness program is the most popular wish.
Fitness experts insist that the best kind of exercise is one you will do regularly – one you can consider a joy, not a chore. And as more and more tailor-made in-store fitness programs pop-up, some devotees seem to take this advice even further. The idea that fitness is a religion – a place where people find a communal, ritualistic and ecstatic experience – has become a common refrain.
Can fitness really be a religion? Given the difficulty of defining religion, this is an almost impossible question to answer. Is religion a matter of belonging? Transcendence? Feel the divine? Are they scriptures, traditions or beliefs? Religions can have all of these traits, or none of them.
Perhaps the best questions to ask are why fitness and religion make such a powerful combination, or why people see fitness as religious – ideas I explore in my research on CrossFit and soul cycle.
Work with God
There is ample evidence that fitness trainers, influencers, and corporations are unabashedly incorporating religious language, sentiments, and practices into their exercise routines.
Take Peloton’s superstar cycling instructor, Ally Love. Former theology student, Love offered sermon type messages on topics such as responsibility and selflessness, and has occasionally played music by Christian artists on its weekly “Sundays with Love” releases, prompting some riders to argue that Peloton should label its content as Christian.
Then there are explicitly faith-based programs that use physical fitness to enhance religious practice. Catholic training SoulCore integrates rosary prayers with core exercises, stretches, and functional fitness moves to “bring others closer to Christ.” A “Neshama body and soulThe course offered by a conservative Jewish synagogue in Saratoga, Calif., combines prayers with jumping jacks, planks and lunges.
Religion, remixed
More common than traditionally religious fitness programs, however, are those that borrow the trappings of religion and tap more subtly into spiritual experience.
SoulCycle, another iconic indoor cycling program, regularly uses aesthetics, ritual and religious language in its courses. Instructors can talk about the cosmic energy radiating from the class or guide riders in opening their spiritual centers, or chakras. In the candlelit halls, instructors praise the great effort by presenting selected riders with a candle to blow out during the “stirring moment” of the class. This moving moment comes at the end of the 45-minute class arc, designed to offer a decisive moment spiritual or personal revelation and catharsis by combining natural high physical intensity with spiritualized self-help messages.
Other fitness trends, like CrossFit and the meetup group November project, are less intentional about incorporating religious messages. However, they have gained a reputation for being religious or bigoted due to the intensity with which they promote community. Special lingo – like “WOD”, which stands for Workout of the Day – as well as annual activities and special commemorations like “hero workoutsthat honor those killed in the line of duty reinforce religious comparisons.
CrossFit, in particular, has also attracted openly Christian practitionerswith some of its most famous athletes publicly professing their faith.
centuries of connection
To understand the relationship between fitness and religion, it helps to look at their history.
First, fitness itself is a relatively new concept. While there are certainly ancient tales of sport and military training, the idea that exercise should be for health, pleasure and community is a modern invention, a response to jobs and increasingly sedentary cultures.
But while voluntary exercise is new, intense physical regimens to connect with the divine are not. People have long experimented with ways to generate a sense of transcendence, elicit emotions, or stimulate self-reflection through bodily discipline. the Siddhas, mystics of ancient India, developed unique physical practices with the goal of attaining enlightenment, making the body divine, and ultimately becoming immortal beings. Or consider the 12th century taoist ascetics who believed that sleep deprivation could bring them closer to the truth. Catholic saints practiced self-mortificationlike carrying an itchy bag, to encourage humility and create greater compassion for the suffering of others.
Religious fixations on the body highlight a persistent paradox: many religions view the body as a temple, but also as a danger to the soul. They teach that the body should be disciplined and tamed, but honored as a conduit to the divine.
Training the body to move the soul on a path to salvation has not disappeared with modernization. Rather, moves like “muscular christianitywas born at the turn of the 20th century, blending fitness and bodybuilding techniques with Christian piety. The YMCA, for example, has opened gymnasiums to train physical and moral strength in young christians. As a scholar of religion Mary Griffith writtensuch moves reinforced a message that “fit bodies ostensibly mean fitter souls.”
Evangelical Sports Ministries took off later in the 1950s, followed by the yoga boom in the United States at the end of the 20th century. Together, these developments underscored the enduring connection between flesh and spirit, and made 21st century athletes readily accept spirituality as an integral part of their fitness routines.
Shopping for fulfillment
This story is important, but it is incomplete. More journalists and cultural analysts who write about fitness as a religion also cite the decline of traditional religious affiliation as the reason people find spiritual fulfillment in other contexts. People’s religious needs have not disappeared, they argue, rather they are appearing remixed and bundled for the modern lay consumer.
Fitness entrepreneurs also use this explanation.
“What happened on Sunday morning in church or in your synagogue is always important to human beings,” said John Foley, founder and CEO of Peloton, in a 2017 conference. People want “candles on the altar and someone talking to you from a pulpit for 45 minutes – the parallels are uncanny. In the 70s or 80s you would have a cross or a Star of David around your neck. You now have a SoulCycle tank top. It’s your identity, it’s your community, it’s your religion.
As Foley’s quote points out, the market does not just fulfill people’s desire for ritual, guidance, spirituality, reflection – and even a sense of salvation. On the contrary, companies also feed these desires and help to generate them.
Religious items and experiences have long been available for purchase, but in-store fitness trends show today’s market logic at work: the idea that if you have a personal, spiritual need, there must be a product for that. Various seemingly secular businesses have tried to sell spiritual fulfillment, but few have been as successful as for-profit fitness companies that can capitalize on the long history of pairing body status with soul status.
The next time you hear a friend claim that fitness is their new religion, know that it might not be mere hyperbole. Rather, it reflects how the religious meanings attached to the body have endured, transformed – and are now available for purchase at the nearest fitness studio.
