The Sky Speaks — An Astrologer Responds to Trolls Who Say Bodybuilding Isn’t Spiritual

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today I am going to respond to people who like to give me a hard time throughout the year about my bodybuilding practice. This is something that, although there's really most people on the channel seem to be very encouraging and very supportive, there's the small minority of trolling comments that I end up deleting or removing most of the time, and I want to actually respond to those today, because I'm at a kind of inflection point in my journey with body building, and I have some thoughts that I've taken the time to develop as a way of responding to the kind of consistent nature of these trolling comments that I get.

And I thought this would make for a fun episode, because to me, it's also an opportunity to reflect on the value of physical fitness as a spiritual practice and show you some of the astrology that has been connected to body building coming into my life and becoming a very important part of my growth as a human, as a soul, as an astrologer, as a husband and father.

So I hope that you'll find this episode kind of provocative and interesting, and maybe it'll give you an opportunity to reflect on your own journey in some unique ways too. So anyway, before we get into it, as always, remember to like and subscribe, share your comments and reflections if you've got them, I'd love to hear more about what your own journey has been like with health, spirituality, what practices have worked for you? I love hearing that.

I think that there are as many ways to grow spiritually as there are people you know. So drop a comment. Tell us what you think. Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, which is Nightlight astrology.com this is a weekend bonus episode, so no promotions, all right.

So here I want to start by just reading you guys a sample of the trolling comments that I have received. Now what I have done, for the sake of just sort of protecting the anonymity, even the trolls deserve a little protection. And what I mean by troll, let me be very specific, constructive criticism, debate, disagreement. I love I am a person that really honors and acknowledges that conversation and debate should it's healthy and productive for us to discuss things.

And in some ways, I don't like that. Things have become so divisive that it's like, if we disagree, then I hate you, or if we disagree, then, you know, you go in some bin of bad people. And I just, I'm not, like, maybe it's Mars in Gemini in my natal chart that just, I don't know. It just, I can't get into that way of thinking.

However, there is another category of people who leave comments that are just mean, it's not constructive. It's not, I mean, the difference of opinion may be there, but it's not being conveyed or communicated in a way, in a way that's constructive. So to me, that's a troll. A troll is someone who can't just peacefully or constructively issue whatever their disagreement might be, but has to be rude, mean, aggressive, um, abusive with their language.

So anyway, let me give you a little background, maybe 2021 the summer of 2021 I started seeing a personal trainer, and I started going to the trainer at first three days a week, and then within a couple of months, I upped it to five days a week, because I found it so beneficial. And I was so I just found a passion like, wow, I really like this. This really makes me feel good inside and out.

And I'm began a process of recognizing that there was a need for greater physical self care, physical and obviously there's a mental component to this and an emotional component that I'll I'll speak to in today's talk. So anyway, around the same time, I was in the process of coming to the realization that a bhakti yoga community, a kind of more monastic style of religious spiritual community, was not exactly it just wasn't the best fit for me any longer, although some of the core values and philosophy are still a part of me at a very deep level, and some of the practices, too, prayer, quiet, contemplation, meditation still a part of my life today.

However, I think it's interesting that at the time that this community started, it became apparent to me that this isn't maybe the best fit, an emphasis on needing to be in my body, be more embodied, as they say, and to take better care of my body and to get to know it more was growing in me. And this is actually in some ways, because the focus of this religious and spiritual community was very anti let's call it uh anti, physical material world, like the spiritual world, is what matters.

The material world is something that we want to transcend at some point along the spiritual pathway we're supposed to be getting out of here. Um. That's maybe an oversimplification, and certainly there were aspects of this religious and spiritual tradition that also saw the world as sacred and beautiful. But for the most part, there was an otherworldly focus, let's call it, and a diminishment of the value or importance of this world, this body, the health and wellness of the body, and it was just rubbing me the wrong way, you know, I was like, I just this isn't feeling right.

And I find it so interesting that it wasn't feeling right to me at exactly the time that I started this physical fitness, you know, adventure. So that's a little bit of the backstory. Now, astrologically speaking, I want to show you this because I think you may find you may find it interesting. So all of this was occurring. I'm going to show you my natal chart. It's on the internet. Anyway, so I don't mind someone published on the internet. I don't mind showing it.

But anyway, here is my natal chart and the entry into monastic life occurred as Uranus was entering my first house. I took initiation and changed my name, so it was quite a radical shift of identity as Uranus entered the first house. But then, as it progressed along into the first house, and started getting closer and closer to my ascendant ruler, which is Venus and Leo. The need for greater physical embodiment and the feeling or impulse to completely recreate myself in terms of physical health and even appearance started occurring.

It was like, I need to change. I need to I need to feel better. And I won't it. I won't. I'm not ashamed to admit that there was a desire to look better as well. I want to feel better and look better because I didn't feel the best. And I if you don't love the way you look, I mean, there can be a part where it's like, you need to love yourself no matter how you look.

But then there's also a part where it's like, if you're not being so healthy and you don't feel great about yourself, it's not uncommon for people to be like, Okay, I need to eat different I need to take better care of my body, et cetera, because I want to look and feel my best. So that started happening for me as Uranus progressed in Taurus, in my first house, and started getting closer to a square with my ascendant ruler, Venus.

And so these paths started diverging. So that's the background up until that point in my life, I would say that I had a very strong background in spiritual, intellectual and emotional or psychological development, many years of counseling, many years of working with entheogens, Ayahuasca, yoga, meditation, and in fact, during the years of time that I spent In the bhava, the bhava, the yoga tradition, which was about five years I practiced japa form of mantra meditation daily for at the least an hour and a half, but usually between two and three hours daily, and I didn't miss one day for almost five years of my participation in the tradition so practices like that, the development of my mind and intellect through several graduate school programs and a lot of reading and research and just being That kind of intellectual type of learner and grower, meditation, inward exploration through psychedelics and altered states.

All of that was the primary lens through which I was experiencing myself in the world and going along my path when I was really young, prior to some things that happened in my life that really sort of put me on this spiritual, philosophical path. I was really athletic, and I loved playing sports, and it felt as though when this path of self exploration developed in a philosophical and spiritual way, that the physical and sort of athletic side of me got just set down.

So what felt really interesting to me was as Uranus progressed into my first house, it felt as though there was this call for that part of myself to be picked back up and included. Like, hey, I'm a part of you too. And I was like, okay, cool. So anyway, so again, when physical exercise and body building as a hobby, I'm not, like a professional or I'm not, you know, not. I'd love to do an amateur show at some point, but, you know, we'll see if I can get there or not.

But this path came in at a time where it felt like. It was very clear to me that there was that I was getting to this inflection point where there was so much mind and spirit and emotion and psychology and academic intellectual development, but there was like a hole, you know, just like this physical part of me and a more athletic, I would even call it masculine, but I don't even know if that's that. Know if that's that important, that this part of me just needed more.

It was like, I want more. I need more time. I need more investment. Because I'm a part of you that feels neglected. So that's how, that's the best I can explain it. And so naturally, as I left this spiritual and religious community where I had taken vows and initiation, I went back to my name, Adam. I was going as achuta bhava, which was my initiated name. The thing that came, I mean, quiet time, meditation, prayer, my altar, these have these have never left, right, but they're the you know that two to three hours a day of meditation basically got shifted into the physical practice of bodybuilding, and that gradually took place and has taken off over the past.

Well, I'm going on five years now, so over the past five years, I would say easily, two hours a day, five, usually five days a week, five or six days a week, depending on what program I'm in, from the coaches that I've worked with, has become, in many ways, what meditation was for me for the previous five years. So today I want to tell you five of the ways that I think five years of meditation have been strikingly similar in some of the most profound insights and benefits for spiritual growth that bodybuilding has been for me over the most recent five years.

So I'm going to that's where I want to go, but first, I want to give you a sample of what some of the trolling comments have been like. And again, I don't I'm not like someone who carries grudges or I try to let go of resentments. I just want to show you the kinds of comments that I've received so you have some sense of what they are. You probably never see them, because we have a small team of us at Nightlight that curate the comment sections, and if people are being hateful or rude.

In some ways, we just delete the comments rude to others or rude to me or rude to one of our hosts or whatever. Disagreement. Fine, rudeness. No, right. That's the basic policy on the channel. So these are, I remade these in sort of anonymous form based on the types of comments that I typically get, and I typically get these in any episodes that I share something of the bodybuilding journey, or, like there was, there were some episodes, like a summer or two ago, where I was wearing tank tops and people were ripping on me silly.

Or sometimes in YouTube shorts. I'll share updates on some of my progress within a program I'm working on or something like that, and then, you know, shitty comments will appear so like it's there's never really a time I can promise you, in four or five years of sharing this part of my life through my astrology work that it hasn't gotten criticized. What I find interesting is I can't think of one. I really can't even think of a time where the daily practice of meditation was criticized.

As an astrologer, I think most people can immediately see the benefic and connection between the spiritual path of astrology and doing something like meditation. But there's a lot of reasons that people have, and some of them are understandable. When I want to talk about those that they have to think that something like physical fitness, exercise, body building, is incompatible with a spiritual practice. So these are samples. Number one. I call it the spiritual contradiction. Type of comment. I've made this up, but this is sort of how it goes.

It's kind of disappointing to see someone who talks about enlightenment and astrology gets so obsessed with the body and appearance. Aren't you supposed to be transcending the body, not worshiping it? Right? That's representative of the kinds of like trolling comments that one's not super mean or rude, but it's pretty condescending and, you know, pretty shitty. So the next one I call the pseudo intellectual critique. This is exactly the problem with modern spirituality. People confuse self absorption with self realization.

Building your biceps doesn't build your soul. Fair enough, right? And I've left out I really think that in my representing these I didn't I'm not being as mean as people often are. But anyway, the next one I call the sort of. Uh, mocking, dismissive one liners. Guess you're strong. This is like, you know, on those talk shows where they make people read mean tweets about themselves. Guess astrology wasn't getting enough clicks, so now it's flex time. Real deep stuff. Man, yeah, yeah, that's that.

That's a zinger. I had fun. I mean, I wrote that so but there's lots of those that come through. Let's call it the moralizing troll. I used to respect. I used to respect your work, now you're just feeding your own vanity, or other people's vanity, and calling it spiritual growth. This is a materialistic lifestyle. Oh my gosh. And then we'll call it the call it the cynical intellectual. They're all sort of the same, whatever. But anyway, this one is bodybuilding is literally a cult of ego.

It's the ultimate illusion of control. How can you claim to study the cosmos when you're staring at yourself at the mirror? Oh, I feel like, in some, in some ways, I just, I want to laugh and be like, Yeah, all right. Touche, you know. But I do think that these are misguided. I mean, let me just say this. First of all, any of those comments could be broadly applicable to the bodybuilding industry, but you know what? So they could be applicable to the yoga industry.

I've been in the yoga industry. We owned a yoga studio for 10 years, and while we tried to be a place of thoughtful dedication to, you know, the yogic tradition and to Indian religious and cultural scriptural traditions at our studio, we tried not to be just, this is a place for exercise, right? I mean, we did our best. We had Indian teachers come in. We hosted, you know, authentic, I think we hosted authentic yoga at our studio to the best of our abilities, as we were learning and growing as human people, you know, on the yoga path in the West, but the yogic industry, broadly speaking, could be said to be vain, self absorbed, you know, materialistic.

Those are fair criticisms that I myself would have made at times of the yoga industry, what to speak of the astrology industry that I'm a part of, there are, there are a ton of very shallow, materialistic, self centered, vain forms of astrology that promote nothing but self indulgent, Ego gratifying perspectives, right? So I don't know how far we can get if we stop at the gates of something as broad and big as the field of fitness or body building and say, well, it's all just vain and materialistic.

Because you can really like in this world. I don't know one field that doesn't have, you know, it does. It can show up that way. You know, anything can show up as materialistic and vain and and here's the thing for me, I have to stay very close. This is I'm only speaking for myself. I have to stay very close to, you know, my own culpability. I have to try to stay humble and close to the fact that I can become a hypocrite in two seconds when my mind becomes judgmental, or when I become self righteous, or when I think of myself as better than other people, or when you know it's like what keeps anything holy and sacred is how close We stay to humility, service, heart, compassion, care, forgiveness, empathy, and to me, what's been amazing is that you know, in in my little journey into fitness and body building, if you look for enlightened, special, heart centered people whose Physical exercise self care, bodybuilding habits and programs are very enlightened, you'll find them.

And if you look for vain, superficial, materialistic, ego gratifying practitioners and people in the field, you'll find them. So the difference to me lies in me and the approach I take. So anyway, all of that being said in the background, again, I want to remind everyone kind of where I started coming into what is now about five years worth of five to six days a week. The only time that I've not been in my five to six days a week was when. I had umbilical hernia surgery. I want to say it was like 2022 it's something that I had been needing to get fixed for a while, and then I finally got it fixed, and I was out for like two weeks, something like that.

And then I could very gradually, start ramping up again. But other than that, over about going on five years now, I have been at least two hours a day with weight training and cardio, often two to three hours a day, if I consider some time for stretching, stretching, warming up, lifting, cardio, that's a two to three hour process for me a day that has become my sad Dana. It's become a daily spiritual practice for me, and I want to share five ways in which that practice has been strikingly similar to five years of two to three hours of meditation a day, both to respond to these criticisms and critiques, but not just to try to validate myself, to also share something of what I see, of the value in this, in case, it's useful for other people, you know, and it's a reminder that there's so many different ways to approach growth and healing.

Obviously, astrology is my main practice, my main focus. It's where I spend most of my time, and it sort of is my primary love language between me and God. But meditation has been physical. Yoga, Asana has been 10 years of working with Ayahuasca has been so I've had a lot of different practices throughout my life. I gotta got into a phase in New York City where I was doing Bikram every day for a couple of years. I've always been like that, too.

And I'm not necessarily saying that you have to have something as daily and crazy as I do. You know, that's like, that's part of my it's part of the you don't what's the quote? You know, you don't have to be, you don't have to be everyone's cup of tea, but you can be your own strong cup of tea, you know? And if some people like it, that's enough. And that's kind of how I see it, like I'm someone who likes consistent practices that are focused over long periods of time.

That's just what I like. So anyway, here are five ways that to me, five years of meditation daily has been strikingly similar to five years of five years of bodybuilding, all right, first, just basically both daily weightlifting, cardio, bodybuilding and Meditation demand, daily devotion and unwavering, because you don't see the transformation of your physique, of your health and of your mental and physical well being, all of which bodybuilding accomplishes only if you stay consistent.

And you know it doesn't matter how you feel, you have to sit down and meditate, or you have to go to the gym and do your work and so. But if, no matter how you're feeling, you show up for your practice, the benefics slowly accumulate through the consistency, a kind of strength or faith are built. I can do this. I'm okay if I show up. That's all that is required. Not it's not only in muscle or in mantra, but in the spirit that the muscle practice or the mantra practice puts you in touch with if you show up in the gym every day, and you move your blood and you move your muscles and you contract them, and you breathe and you focus and you do that work no matter how you feel, it's not a lot different than showing up and sitting and doing your mantra meditation every single day no matter what you feel, what the mantra puts you in touch with is, I have an unbreakable, strong, beautiful spirit, and that spirit starts to become the source of your health.

It starts to become the source of your real wealth, your real integrity, your real sense of happiness, the byproducts of which are often greater mental and emotional well being or peace or thoughtfulness or greater discernment or greater awareness, but they come because this daily rhythm cultivates humility, humility, resilience and focus. You develops humility because you have to get through it and you realize I'm pretty weak, you know, I'm not so focused, I'm not so disciplined. There's a lot of voices in me that want to quit or make excuses, and I have to allow for those things to be a part of me, but to sit through them and, you know, listen to them, and it becomes like a group of like, it's like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan.

It's like a whole crew. Of voices that don't love how they are, don't love how you are, or they don't want to be there, or they you know, and you got to sit, you got to let them be present and still breathe and move your muscles, or still move your prayer beads and say your mantras. And this intimacy, this trust, starts forming over time, and I have experienced that in both mantra meditation and you know, the daily practice of fitness.

The other thing that both reveal over time is an awareness of subtle patterns. So years of steady meditation taught me how to notice small, invisible fluctuations of mind, tension, breath, mood, the quieter movements of awareness itself. And I'm not alone in saying this, if you meditate for a long period of time consistently, day in and day out, your ability to recognize small, subtle fluctuations and to have greater relationship with them, not necessarily control, but relationship is profound.

That's one of the most beautiful blessings of meditation, that that greater awareness and sensitivity allows you to flow through life more peacefully, more thoughtfully, with more care. Oh, wow. What that is a deep, profound benefic which is why, by the way, we're starting our silent Sundays, and I still sit in silence regularly, not for my two to three hours, because I have a different practice is taking that big chunk of time, but it's still a smaller part of my life, almost every day, just sitting quietly so check out our silent Sunday starting October 26 come sit with us.

It's free. Just come sit in the quiet and benefic from it. It's amazing. But actually, body build, body building has revealed similar subtleties in the physical realm. And I used to think one was more important than the other, but what I've realized is that both are interconnected and so beautifully relating to one another all of the time. The body is always shifting, adapting, recovering, resisting, responding when I have to go through a process of like, how do my joints feel today? How flexible or open do I feel today? How does my breath feel today? How does my energy feel today? I become aware of how I slept last night, and I become aware of how I slept last night is connected to what I did right before I went to bed or what I ate.

I become aware of how how much time I need between eating and sleeping so that I sleep better, so that when I'm doing my lifts, I can feel that subtle difference in energy and presence and awareness and motivation. Those may seem like small things, but that's the things. Those are the exact things that you learn. You learn how finely tuned and interconnected all choices and rhythms and patterns and everything's connected in our day to day, physical body and its connection to our moon, our mood, our mindset, our ability to be present and do something difficult.

A lot of life is about having to show up and do things we don't necessarily want to do. It helps tremendously to be able to show up for things we don't want to do and make effort, like very sixth house, you know, make effort, but to be able to adapt, respond, move through spaces of effort with grace and flow and like a willingness of spirit. I know that this exertion is not what I want to do, but if I do it and show up with heart and courage and dedication, it actually builds the vital spirit in me, and I feel good, and I feel glad that I did that I heard on a podcast, which was like a Huberman podcast, that there's a part of your brain that grows in parallel.

It grows parallel to your ability to do difficult things, and it gets more capable of doing difficult things. Mantra meditation is a difficult thing for most people to sit down and do something consistent and focused. Body building is the same way. So in both practices, long term attention to small, subtle things becomes a path to greater peace, self understanding and harmony. And in body building, what's really incredible is you actually get to see the results.

I'm not saying you can see the results in meditation, but often they're a little bit more metaphorical or psychological. Sometimes they you know, insights and meditation will lead to changes that you make in your life, which can be really profound and very observable. But what I love about bodybuilding that's sort of unique, is that the awareness of these subtle patterns, the connections between diet and mood, the connection between recovery time, rest time and performance.

In the gym, you start to become so aware of those things when you do it day in and day out over long periods of time. And what I love about that is that you you you then get to see results if you pay attention. Conjunction. And you sort of, you get the message. You hang up the phone, you you, oh, I'm going to make that shift to what I eat, or how long before bed, or how much water I'm taking in, or, you know, whatever the case might be, the shift you make.

You start you in, you make that shift. And then a month or two later, after staying consistent with that subtle feedback you got all of a sudden, you see a development that you never saw before, and you can physically see it in your body. I love that. I think it's so beautiful. It's like, it's like our bodies are like sculptures we can, we can mold and work with. I don't like to think of it as like something I'm hammering on, right? I like to think of it as something that I'm gently softly over time, imagining like a piece of art, you know.

And I love that. I think it's so cool. It's so interesting to have that kind of intimacy with my own body, which I never had before. So I really, I really love that cleansing and purification, both practices, mantra meditation and body building, to me, are very purifying, one through the stilling of the mind, the other through the exertion of the body, but meditation clears the inner atmosphere. Body building clears the physical vessel.

You notice that there's a lot of care and attention paid to the esthetics of temples in India. When I was in India, if someone were to say, oh, you know, spirituality doesn't require anything ornate or anything beautiful or anything well designed or built or structured, it's kind of foolish to say that if you look at any of the houses of the holy in India, I think our modern Protestant kind of Christian background. It's very minimalist. It's very almost like anti art, anti Venus.

It's very clean and sterile and sort of empty. And it sees anything ornate or artistic around the sanctuary as almost like an affront to the Divine, like, oh, that's just worldly, or that's just material. But actually, in my experience, in India, for example, every day the cleanliness and care and hygiene of the temple is so important, but that means flowers and incense, that means beauty, and it's like, so sensory. I've never been to a place that was more holy and more sensory than India.

It was like, this is beauty. You can taste, touch, smell it, and this is CO present with this place where you're connecting with God. So to me, although I totally get the idea that fitness and you know, there can be a lot of vanity, there can be a lot of materialism, but so much of bodybuilding over the past five years, for me, has been so intensely private and so interior, it doesn't seem like it would be, because you know, as soon as you share a photo of your progress and you're proud and you're you know, you're working and everything, it can fall right into this kind of stereotype of like meatheads, and I get all of that.

But actually, the beauty of the temple that houses the body, the care of the temple that houses the care of the temple of the body that houses the spirit soul is, what I'm trying to say, is, in many ways, just as important as the care of the soul itself. There's a hexagram in the I Ching called number 22 it's called grace, and it says basically two things that are part of the teaching of this hexagram.

One is that decoration enhances essence, and decoration can potentially diminish or cheapen the value of what is within, and you have to be aware of the difference. So, for example, if you ever gone into someone's home and it's like, really ornate, but there's no soul. You can feel it. You're like us. It's kind of a it's a beautiful place, but it kind of feels soulless to me. None of us are judgmental people, so we would never do that, but you know, but you know what I mean? At the gym, you may run into people, I've used this example before.

You may run into people where you're like, wow. The Temple of their spirit, soul and this body sure does look beautiful. You talk to them, and you're like, Oh, too bad there's no light on inside. I'm just, I'm just kidding. You know what? I mean? It's like, yeah, so beauty should be something that enhances essence. Is the message. Have you ever talked to someone who's healthy, who's vibrant, who's glowing, you can tell, oh, they must be eating healthy.

They must be taking care of their body. They must be active. And then they speak, and it's like, Oh, wow. They're thoughtful, they're compassionate, they listen, they're interested in me. They're not vain. They're this is like a really. Attractive spirit, soul that I'm talking to, and they look really good, they look healthy, they look happy. Maybe this is romantic thinking on my part. Maybe I'm out to lunch. I suspect that, not that everything in the past is to be worshiped, right, but I suspect that cultures, people, places, times, circumstances around planet Earth, the further we go back, people probably looked healthier and happier on the outside than I think a lot of us, at least in the modern West, do today.

I think part of that is because, to be honest, I think you know, a lot of our food is saturated with addictive chemicals. There's a huge amount of physical health problems, and I think a lot of it stems from a lack of self care, a lack of the appropriate nutrition, a lack of available education, all of that kind of stuff. So one of the things that this has done for me has shown me, Oh, wow. Like every single day, the food I eat is medicine.

It has to heal me. It has to restore me. No wonder I don't feel so good mentally and emotionally. Today, I've been eating like crap, and I can have all of that awareness, and I can have it without there being like shame and self loathing. And that's something that I've really learned, is that taking care of the body every day, just like taking care of the mind every day, the mental and emotional body every day through meditation, is hugely valuable for the sake of staying healthy and sort of clear and clean.

And it's like, it's like good good hygiene spiritually to meditate, but it's also good hygiene spiritually, to clean the temple and to make sure it's beautiful. So meditation may clear the inner atmosphere. The body building clears the temple that houses that inner atmosphere. Both are really important, and I think both probably should have a place in our life, whether it's as simple as food, diet, rest, hydration, or some form of physical activity, as well as interior mental, emotional work, like we need all of it.

Okay, so that's number three. Number four is presence, breath and relaxed control. True Meditation and true training are not mechanical. They require presence in bodybuilding, you will hear a lot of really thoughtful, I think, really cool coaches I've met. I've had the good fortune of meeting some really thoughtful, beautiful souls who are on the bodybuilding path. And they talk a lot about what's called the mind muscle connection. But what they're really talking about, in my mind, as someone who has a long history of practicing meditation, teaching meditation, yoga, etc, is that they require presence.

They're talking about presence. They're saying, you know, what actually creates the greatest muscle health, muscle development, growth, growth, strength development, all of these things, is is when you're lifting, make the connection between your mind and the muscles and body parts doing the lifting. Not only is that safer, but it also requires most of the time. When people teach you about mind body connection, they're also teaching you about the appropriate pace.

You don't just, like, throw weights around, like, one of the things that really it almost like hurts my heart, I swear to God, as someone who's just very sensitive, I guess, I go into the gym, I see both young men and old men and women throwing weights around that are way too heavy, using momentum, clearly, torquing their joints. And I just think to myself, Oh, yeah. It's like in yoga, it can be the similar thing too, where people try to, you know, they try to get into all sorts of, you know, positions, and we don't think about the benefic of a simple forward fold or something just done deeply and sort of thoughtfully.

It's like I've had the benefic of having coaches and trainers who have really taught me slow down, make the you know, you know, effort and presence and controlled breathing and that mind muscle connection. But those when you're lifting from that standpoint, and you'll see, I'm not making this up when I say I don't know. I haven't listened to I've watched some really cool documentaries about pro bodybuilders all around the world, and when they get to that level of developing their bodies at the pro level, although there's all sorts of things that I'll never understand, you know about the kind of dedication and discipline and extremes that people go to in like pro pro body building.

That's a whole different conversation. But one thing that they unanimously seem to agree upon is that you're, you know, the quality of presence and thoughtfulness and like, like breathing and control. I mean, you watch them work out, and it is just beautiful. And. Mean, they are just, they have such mastery over their lifts. And it's, it's really cool to see, and it reminds me a lot of watching very masterful, you know, a younger or Ashtanga practitioners like the the level of body breath muscle awareness at really high levels of the sport is super impressive to me, set aside all of the the the other extreme things that often go along with pro bodybuilding, but that may be another talk.

So true meditation and true physical training in my mind, are not mechanical. They require presence, whether you're jogging or whether you're mountain climbing or whether you're dancing or whether you're lifting weights, whether I'm moving a barbell or repeating a mantra, the real work happens in that delicate space between effort and surrender control and release both invite a kind of transcendence. I'm in the body, yet I'm moving beyond its restless demands. It doesn't want to do this, but I have to keep going and move through it with grace and surrender and trust, and I can't tell you how much I don't want to do a bench press, but then when I find the grace and flow to move through that difficulty, it is not different than sitting through 20 minutes of a two hour stretch of meditation where I feel like I want to set myself on fire.

I'm so restless. So anyway, I think that that level of presence is really special. And anyone who has any kind of physical practice of any kind, I think really can understand what I'm talking about and how beneficial it is to have that, because then I find myself in a difficult parenting situation, or maybe I'm working with a client who's in a really intense space and I'm even getting emotional. Or, you know, I have to stay grounded to hold space for someone I'm reading a chart for.

I know I am familiar with my mind and body, and they're they're strong, steady, willing participants of going through difficult things or of holding space when it's difficult. So presence, breath, relax, control. I honestly have the five years of mantra meditation going on, five years of bodybuilding. I don't see a huge difference. I really don't. Number five living in a constantly changing vessel. Both paths have reminded me, personally, that spirit is living in a in a changing, fluctuating material world, and that the material world needs to be related to thoughtfully, that we need to build bridges between spirit and matter, and the only way to do so is to develop practices of presence, awareness, Care, connection.

I was someone who never really had a connected relationship to my body, to my muscles, to every like right now I could, I could tell you just how just about every major part of my body, how is my back feeling? How are my hamstrings feeling? I could, I wasn't able to do that before. I didn't have the awareness of my body in time and space. For many people, Yoga does that physical Asana, does that dance can do that, you know, exploring movement.

When I was in graduate school, I did the five rhythms for a while. That was something that did that for me as well. But the the life is lifeing all the time, and it doesn't stop. And so as far as I've learned with both bodybuilding and meditation, both are really designed to keep us present and in connected, loving relationship with ourselves and with the life around us, and that requires every rep, every breath, every day, is like an offering to the inner spirit soul.

The more we stay connected to it, you know, the healthier and happier we are. And there's many ways of doing that. Some are more physical, some are more mental or emotional, but to me, I, in all honesty, as someone who has, I can, I know I don't mean to sound like pompous, but I highly doubt that the trolls who left, who typically leave those kinds of comments, have would be able to compare four or five years of two to three hours of meditation a day alongside of the same amount of time over five years dedicated to physical practice, like bodybuilding.

I don't believe that most of the people leaving those comments know what they're talking about, because I don't think they've done the work. Work to know the difference or to be able to make meaningful comparisons, and most of the time that's that's just sort of where I go inside is like, Well, I I know because I've done it, and so I trust what I've learned. But anyway, I'll conclude with this. I was thinking about how to define the value of a life of devotion to physical practices.

We, I think we've, we've, we have mountains of text talking about the benefic of prayer and meditation and inner contemplative practices or study. I don't think much more needs to be said about that. At least for me, it's been more profound to think, Well, what? Because, as far as I can tell, right now, I want this kind of physical self care, which is diet, exercise, rest, recovery, water. It's the whole thing, right? But the tending of my physical form, I don't see as ever going away, although it may change in its expression.

But I was thinking like, well, what would the value of that be over the course of a life, to really care about our physical form as a part of our spiritual development? And I thought of something I think most spiritual practices, especially Christianity has taught us to assume that the body and the material world are less spiritual, less important, less valuable, less sacred. But to me, they are inseparable, and this has been the biggest personal revolution in my life, because I didn't really struggle with the part of mental, emotional, psychological, intellectual, things being of value.

That was always natural to me. But this was not this was counterintuitive, this. I had judgments against this. I had reservations about I could have easily been in the troll comments myself at a different time in my life, to be honest. But what I've learned is that the body and the material energy and the spirit soul are inseparable. It's like yin and yang. They are part of a sacred dyad. That is, that is the cosmos itself.

In some way, to me, the most meaningful part about looking in the mirror isn't vanity. It is the celebration of health dedication, the time that it takes to build anything of worth, which includes my spirit, soul and the temple that houses it. And so one way that I an image that came to my mind like, well, you're going to die someday. So what's the value of putting all this work and effort into how you look? You know, it's not just how you look, it's how you feel, and the two are actually closely mirroring one another for most of us.

But like that, you ever seen those sand mandalas that the monks make? They make these beautiful mandalas out of like little grains of sand, and then as soon as they make it, they sweep it away. And it's this beautiful meditation on the value of things coming together and arising in intricate, beautifully arranged patterns and designs and then getting swept away again. And so what I find most amazing is that that not that I'm under any illusion that I'm going to live forever, that I need to look good forever, that I need to be afraid of aging, that I need to be afraid of mortality, that I'm not aware that everything is impermanent, but rather that this in this life, I can build things creatively of tremendous value.

I can write books. I can create content. I can do something special with my body and build something out of it, and then I can allow it to be swept away. And you know what? Every day training is actually like that for me. Because let me tell you, at the start of my workout, I'm always jacked. Always I'm usually so excited by the last reps, by the last exercise or two, I've got nothing left. And where I started feeling strong, I now feel like, gosh, how, how small is the you ever seen like in, you know, in movies where they have these battles in the battles are going on for 3040, minutes worth of drama.

It seems, you know, actually, I this thing that I read was like, Yeah, most actual physical combat, swords, axes, all this stuff, lasted a very short period of time because of how quickly humans get exhausted. So we imagine that these, you know, battles, like the Vikings, or, you know, Gladiator all the stuff, we imagine that they, they were, they live. They lasted very short periods of time because of how quickly our energy runs out, because how quickly we exert ourselves, and just the tank is empty.

I thought about that so many times when doing these physical exercises, because, you know, you come in feeling like Thor, and then, like, an hour and a half later, I'm like, You. I'm spent. I have nothing left. And there's that mandala again. I come in and I build something, and I gather all these impressions of myself as strong or capable, but by the end, they're all gone, and I'm empty, and I have to go home and feed myself and drink water and rest and sleep.

And there's so there's this, this dance of, like, strength and weakness, full and empty, that I love. I love the dance of that. And what if, what is a human life? What is a physical life, if not on some level, just that, you know, we're we're we're full, we're strong, and then we're weak and we're empty. Embracing that, to me, has been at the heart of my own bodybuilding journey, and it has been truly like 90% 99% of the interactions that I've had sharing this part of my journey with all of you have been encouraging, affirming, sweet, fun.

It's been exciting. I've gotten messages and pictures from people tagging me on Instagram, showing me, hey, I get I'm getting back to the gym. Hey, look at this meal I made. You know, healthy whole foods or whatever like good. Because if I can do anything to encourage people, whether it's prayer and meditation or altar practice or physical fitness or drinking more water or getting enough sleep or taking care of yourself, this language, to me, is not meant to be lived in a vacuum.

It's not just a 411, information line like a self help gossip column. This is a language that's meant to help us move through life like it's a prayer, just like the kind of breath work you do in mantra meditation or in in lifting, this language is meant to be accompanied by all sorts of complementary practices of self care. And if people want to say that the body is less important than the mind or spirit, I just disagree, and that's where my path, you know, has taken me, and it's been really fun to share it with all of you guys.

So hope you enjoyed this episode today, kind of a deeper, probing exploration of and kind of a fun time for me to reflect on it. Just one concluding remark, which is that the idea for this talk came up for me as I got I shared an update in a short that I did recently, got some shitty comments, and I was like, oh look, here they are again, you know. But then Saturn was squaring my natal Mars, and I went through a few of the most challenging weeks I've ever been through in terms of motivation and being like, oh, man, I'm not.

I am just really struggling. And then I, you know, I Saturn, separated from my natal I started feeling better again. And the idea for this talk came up, and I thought, yeah, this will be fun. So anyway, I hope that this has been interesting. Hope you're having a great weekend, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye.