Divine inspiration for working out
People find inspiration for getting fit in many places: a wedding, a vacation at a tropical resort or a health warning from their doctor. But Barbara Cleough says she found her motivation for a healthier lifestyle in a less likely place: the Bible.
“I was reading the Bible and I made a commitment to follow the standards of Christ,” said Cleough, 65, a member of the Heart Mind Soul and Strength Fitness Center in Anaheim. “It’s made a huge difference in inspiring me to get into shape.”
The gym is one in a growing number of health clubs and private trainers in Southern California that are incorporating religion as a motivational tool for people who want to live healthier -- and more spiritual -- lives. For many of their members, these gyms offer an environment more in keeping with their spiritual beliefs -- one in which Christian rock tunes rather than obscenity-laced rap music blare over loudspeakers and dress codes call for conservative attire.
Aaron Brown, a 26-year-old exercise physiologist and founder of the Heart gym, describes his health club as “my business and my ministry of how I serve God.”
Brown said he was influenced by a biblical passage in Luke (10:27) in which Jesus instructs disciples to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
With $30,000 in savings from his work as a personal trainer, Brown leased a modest space in an Anaheim strip mall two years ago. He began with five pieces of exercise equipment (the club now has more than 85) and five original members (150 today).
In addition to Christian-inspired music and a strictly enforced modest dress code (no Britney Spears-like bare midriffs or visible cleavage allowed), Brown’s gym includes prayer sessions before and after classes. The gym, closed on Sundays, has daily catechisms posted at its entrance.
John P. Crossley, director of USC’s School of Religion, said it’s no surprise that religion plays an active role in people’s quest for optimum physical health. “It’s long been known that serious religious faith is a motivating factor for a lot of things,” Crossley said. “Religion has helped people stop smoking, drinking, doing drugs. That Jewish, Christian and Buddhist ethics all stem from religion is proof positive of the motivating power of religion. Whether or not God wants people to use it in this way is another story altogether.”
Paul Juris, 44, director of fitness and training at Equinox Gym in Pasadena, said people who feel a sense of personal empowerment are more likely to be successful in sticking to a fitness regimen, and spirituality can assist in that goal.
Dino Nowak, a private trainer who specializes in Christian-influenced fitness sessions and general manager of Equinox in Pasadena, also has a large clientele of Christian clients.
For the last eight years, Nowak, 29, has offered private-training classes to many devout Christians, including some Hollywood celebrities. During a typical session, a client might be asked to perform leg curls while Nowak discusses Christian liturgy. Or a client will complete cardiovascular sprints as Nowak urges him on with a favorite prophetic passage.
Kacem Benyoucef, an Algerian-born private trainer in Los Angeles, works with Muslim clients who either can’t go to health clubs because of religious restrictions or who prefer to work out in an environment that combines faith with fitness.
Benyoucef, 33, blends bits of health wisdom from the Koran together with the secular science of sports fitness to motivate his clients, who also include some non-Muslims, in training sessions near Muscle Beach in Venice.
“Islam teaches us that it is our responsibility to take care of our body,” said Benyoucef. “It says in the Koran, ‘Anything that hurts your body is forbidden to you.’ ”
Running in the fresh air, dragging their feet through sand, Benyoucef’s clients get a strenuous workout that feeds both body and soul.
“The body is a treasure that God gave us,” said Benyoucef. “If you’re healthy, it’s the best thing that you can have. And nobody can take that way from you.”
But certain fitness routines can conflict with one’s strict adherence to a particular faith. Take yoga, for example, the ancient meditative practice providing the basis for Vishnaic religions. For many Jews who want to practice yoga, chanting Sanskrit during a sun salutation and then skipping off to a rabbi’s house for dinner is a dramatic conflict of faith.
Yoga Garden, which opened in 1987 in Ida Unger’s backyard in Santa Monica, is a place where Jews can relax, meditate and get their bodies in shape while honoring the commandments of the Torah.
“Jews deserve a real yoga practice,” said Unger. “We don’t have a Jewish framework for exercise other than in the Torah [Book of Exodus], where it says the Jews walked 40 years across a desert....”
Raised as an Orthodox Jew, Unger, 49, started practicing yoga more than 20 years ago as a way to relax and get into shape, separating it from her religious life. About a decade ago, she was hit with an epiphany. “I was doing a trikonasana [triangle pose],” Unger said, “which is essentially the shape of the Hebrew letter aleph and it was a revelation. The shapes of the letters are shapes of energy flow.”
Today Unger, who is certified to teach the Iyengar Hatha method of yoga, offers about 20 classes at Yoga Garden, including an Introduction to Jewish Yoga class. Her classes are more likely to end with the class saying a collective “shalom” rather than “om.”
Still, Unger is careful not to imply that yoga is Judaism. “I would hate to see Jewish people only want to practice yoga in a Jewish environment,” she says. “Yoga came to us from another culture, and it’s a mandate within Judaism to be a light unto other nations. You can’t be a light unto anyone unless you’re open to them as well.”