Entertainment or Education?

Two fundamentals of group and personal training exist: entertainment and education. Entertainment is the attractive qualities that draw a crowd. Education is the qualitative properties that challenge, grow and change the lives of participants. While both qualities are important, simply drawing a crowd through entertainment is dangerous: it leads to injuries, lack of change in participants and is deceiving in nature. On the flip side, education only instructors can be confusing, too technical and leave participants wondering what that class is all about. Each instructor needs to balance the needs of teaching educational fundamentals, while providing an atmosphere that aids participants’ ability to learn and grow. Lawrence Biscontini writes about this in his book, Cream Rises, encouraging instructors and personal trainers to become “edutainers”, blending the best of both fundamentals into an easy to follow format. Biscontini’s insight into superior personal training and group instructing is a basic fundamental of any teacher, regardless of their field. His apt and easy to understand description of entertainment and education in the fitness industry easily translates into the spiritual sphere.

As we dig into this spiritual truth, let’s examine how these properties play out in two exercise classes.

I once attended a class labeled Pilates. It used Pilates moves, but in a Yoga format. We were doing Pilates exercises, but using Yoga breathing and relaxation techniques. We did exercises very slow and in sync with our breathing. It was not Pilates. It was Yoga in Pilates form. The Pilates instructor emphasized core positioning, but she didn’t do a great job describing how to maintain that position. She unsuccessfully tried three times to bring us back into proper position by using a simple centering technique, but used the same verbal description each time. I was confused as to what she wanted, and it didn’t help that she often spoke about how important it was to maintain proper position. Lastly, she decided to let us break proper form to perform a rocking plank. She stated it was fun, but not good technique and encouraged us to do it anyway. So it’s very important for us to maintain proper posture, except when we want to have fun. Her messages were mixed, her theory of exercise was incorrect, she couldn’t explain the most important fundamental which was key to the class, but it’s all okay because we were learning and one day, if we practice enough, we’ll get there.

The other class I attended was Yoga. The instructor calls out body positions, describing the motions our bodies need to move in, emphasizing what muscles and joints need to move and how. She did not use the Sanskrit names or the English slang. She walked around the room verbally correcting our positions, giving fuller than standard descriptions and gently realigning our bodies with a slight touch. She also demonstrated more difficult moves from the front of the room, so we could see what proper form looks like. She encouraged us to play with the forms and postures, not chastising us for falling out of position, but laughing with us as we make our best attempts at unnatural and improbable positions. She clearly and concisely described what we need to do, personally demonstrated and corrected, and encouraged us while we discovered how to attain the more difficult positions.

The difference between the Pilates instructor and the Yoga instructor? One gave simple descriptions to follow, while the other reinforced their importance but couldn’t describe them. One encouraged the class to keep attempting proper form, but the other gave up entirely. One encouraged participants to laugh and have fun, the other was strict and inflexible. One held to the teachings of her discipline, while another tried mixing disciples: teaching neither Pilates nor Yoga.

When it comes to spiritual disciplines, there are good and bad instructors. There are instructors who try to supplement their lack of knowledge by building in other philosophical formats while trying to say they have not changed their ways. There is a way to utilize truth found in culture, better enhancing and describe core fundamentals of a religious group, but discarding the fundamentals of the original teacher changes what is being practiced. It is no longer the same, what participants learn and practice becomes less, missing the intentions and standards of the founder.

Spiritual Fitness is about two things: using the practicalities of the fitness world to enhance physical health & well-being and promoting Jesus. The challenge is to maintain excellence in both fitness and in Jesus. For it would be a shame if this blog simply entertained using fitness and it would be a double shame if it lacked any educational relevance to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. I fundamentally believe studying the fitness world can bring one closer to Jesus, helping us understand his teachings and living them out. I also believe the most difficult truth and the foundation of the good news about Jesus cannot be found in fitness: Jesus sacrifice, death and resurrection.

There is some good in fitness, and there is much we can learn and glean from its principles, but it will never take us before the cross: suffering for someone else’s sin and dying so others might live. This is unique to Jesus. It cannot be found in other religions, though they have descriptions of death and resurrection. It is like our so called Pilates class: the movements look one way, but the core is something else. The stories may sound the same, but they are fundamentally different, pointing to something else entirely. I believe in total fitness, of the spirit, mind and body. This blog is about spiritual fitness, founded through the exploration of the body and using the comparisons to describe what it means to follow Jesus.

The goal of following Jesus is not to become a better person, although following Jesus changes who we are for the better, the goal is to make his resurrection known through all our words and actions. His resurrection means we can be connected to God: that God wants to be connected with us. Not that God abandoned us, but we abandoned God. That God sent his one and only son to re-establish the connection, because we will never be able to remake what we broke. His only son is the only way to him; meaning we need to humble ourselves before God, asking forgiveness for what we’ve broken and being restored into a right relationship with him. Without forgiveness we will never be right with God, no amount of good deeds will cover our mistakes, only Jesus can. Why? Because Jesus is God. It is from God that our healing comes. As we are healed, we seek to live rightly with God, actively working to restore our broken world. This active work is not simply a trial and error mending of our world, it’s God’s way of mending the world, which often runs counter to the way we believe the world should be mended. This is why we study Jesus, this is why we read God’s word. We believe God has given us simple and easy to understand ways of righting the world, even though the simplicity is often hard to understand. We are all given an equal opportunity before God, he’s not hiding the truth or being deceptive, he’s genuinely giving us a free chance to be made whole. This is called grace. It is by God’s grace we are healed.

If this is true, then why the need for Spiritual Fitness? Though God heals us of our brokenness, we still have broken habits. We need to re-learn how to run, because our old way of running hurts our knees, ankles and hips. It is not God’s desire that we run in a way that hurts our bodies. We need to seek and find ways of running rightly, practicing and teaching them ourselves. The best way to seek this healing is to read the Bible, spend time in communities who follow nothing but Jesus, and to pursue a relationship with God through prayer. This blog is a supplement to the nutritional needs of the spiritual life, and it is practical fitness wisdom. It’s goal is to point to Jesus through the plain language of fitness, so that some would understand who God is. What is Spiritual Fitness all about? Education and Entertainment, but the proper use of both to promote Jesus and a healthy life.