Carry on

Every day, all over the world, the ritual of physical exercise is practiced, yet few bow to the Temple of Glory before attempting to remodel it. The human body is routinely pushed, stretched, twisted, exhausted, and laid to rest—all in the name of self-betterment. Rarely is the body consulted during the reform. Programs are written like computer code, designed to pressure the body toward a desired outcome: more muscle, less fat, greater strength, increased stamina. Aesthetics and metrics predominantly incentivise the pursuit and guide the design phase. Progress is then measurable, easily explained, or seen—last week I lifted this much, now I lift this much, I looked like that, now I look like this. The same applies to dress size, lap times, and, more recently, the finer internal details: heart rate, heart rate variability, VO2 max, lactate threshold, testosterone levels — all quantifiable, all in the language of control. We’ll live longer, be more resilient to stress, and probably feel better day to day. This is great. We have mastered the body’s architecture. But have we lost sight of the altar?

The intentional transforming of physicality emerged as a human practice long after we made food resources predictable and settled into an agricultural way of life. The ancient Greeks delivered the Gymnasium to the human world during a period of time referred to as the Axial age (800 - 200 BCE ) — a time of rapid global thought evolution. But this bodily engagement came after formidable men were well-formed. The gymnasium was not a means of building men from nothing, but a refinement of those already forged by war and labor. Fighting in their relative Polis when they weren’t farming, the ancient Greeks were masters of self-efficacy, both defending and cultivating their land. It was their ideals of Gods and beauty that inspired the concept of the gymnasium, not necessity. Through gymnastics and unarmed combat, they could foster a man’s maturation to an idyllic representation of humanity. In honour of Zeus, these idols were presented to the public in games held in Olympia. The public could look on and marvel at the glory of the fully formed human being, relate the sight, and feel close to the gods.

The megalithic institute of the Grand Greek Gymnasium, with its towering colonnades and sculptures that beckoned your divinity forth, has long since crumbled. And the aspirations of ancient athletic ideals from the West that once directed the physical prayers of the faithful have split, evolved, and mutated. Metrics and aesthetics, once the natural outcomes of an inward and upward connection through physical commitment, have become the primary focus in modern recreation and leisure centres. This disconnect is akin to the blinkered horse running astray without the divine cart — aimless and pointless in comparison.

Rejoining the horse and cart was known as yoking, and the quest to unite body with spirit was not unique to the West. Across the world, another lineage of physical devotion sought communion—not through outward spectacle, but inward pilgrimage. In the East, yoking found another form: Yoga. To maintain cosmic order, before the Axial age (1500-800 BCE), grains, ghee, and animals were delivered to the gods through sacrificial fire. The Brahmin priests of the Vedic religion held these rituals to sustain the universe and secure health and prosperity for the people. Approaching the Axial period, questions arose not only about the validity of the practice but about the very nature of the divine. Food was not always abundant, and watching it consumed by fire led to growing doubt. The Sages of the Upanishads — men of faith cultivating their own wisdom — observed the fire rituals growing more elaborate, expensive, and exclusive. They questioned whether the priests, in their growing authority, still delivered true wisdom—or, whether the gods existed outside of us at all. They argued that ultimate reality (Brahman) was not an external deity but an all-encompassing formless essence. A new faith was forming, not dependent on external offerings but on inner transformation. The altar of flame (Agni) was alight within, and the renouncers would burn their ignorance and ego through sacrificial practices of fasting, celibacy, and meditation. Liberation was not granted by external Gods but discovered through discipline. The self (Atman) was declared identical to Brahman. The inner route to Nirvana was mapped through a systematic practice of conscious breathing, bodily postures, and meditation. This was a radical shift spanning hundreds of years—from offering sacrifices to embodying devotion. Yoga internalised the cosmic ordering ritual.

But like the gymnasium, yoga has also been commodified and repurposed. An endeavour that once started with the renunciation of daily life, and seven years of isolated stillness, before finding a guru to guide the path to Nirvana, has itself evolved and mutated from the Axial age to today. A mat is the only requirement in most cases, also, to reform body. The horse from the East is too running cartless and wild on Western shores, misdirected by aesthetics and metrics with degrees of flexibility being the focus, rather than, and often at the expense of, inner peace.

Western gymnastics was an outward physical homage to the gods, while Eastern yoga sought inward connection. Both were quests of a divine communion. Today, en masse, they are quests of approval if not a management of anxieties. We, as a digitally integrated, and mostly sedentary, society, have arrived at an understanding that the more we move, the better our mood. Because physicality alters our state—runner’s high, gym pump, yogic ease—these practices have become a Huxley-like Soma*, a means to escape the bewilderment of modern existence. But would these anxieties even exist if we recognised the good fortune of having these rituals of communion present in our everyday lives?

The transcendence accessible through physical practice is nothing short of a superpower. Not only can we steer our physiological makeup to morph our becoming, while doing so, if we are willing to truly feel, we can elevate our experience of being — we can become acutely aware of being bodied. As an international community we have never been so close, and liberated, to realise we collectively share a common transcending unifier — the wisdom of the body. Unlike the Axial age, where the emergent gymnasium only permitted a certain class of men, and when Yogic pursuits required renunciation, we moderns are free to be in our becoming, daily. But alas, we are without elders, we are the age of distraction. We’ve climbed the stairway to heaven, but haven’t knocked on the door.

The misdirection of attention is like an archer focusing only on the bow. Without a clear, or even vague, target, there is no tension or release, no miss or hit—only decoration and neurosis. Yet the simplest of bows, when drawn with full attention, can deliver the point to centre: total acceptance of bodily presence—This is all me, here, now. Aligning sight, moving from the outer ring to centre, a 3D appreciation of self, a textural comprehension, is required. The gravity-enhancing properties of physical practice, particular resistance elements, draw the flesh body onto the imagination. The task then is to become a single muscle in movement, reorganising the firm and fluid inner world to buoyant the skeleton with life. Within this ring is the emotional scape—where the tides of sensation ebb and flow mood. Closing in is the weather of thought patterns, perception, and observation — the interplay of mind composing bodily experience. And at the very centre? Something beyond tension, beyond technique—a moment where the act and the actor are no longer separate. Where you are moved rather than moving. As Eugene Herrigel put it in Zen in the Art of Archery, “The hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality.”

Everything human-made, from the gymnasium to yoga, and the faiths that formed them, stemmed from the imagination. Money, for example, holds value only because we collectively agree on the imagined story of paper and numbers equating to wealth. Similarly, stories painted into the collective imagination unify people into cultures—whether through Comic Cons or Christianity, we feel safer in environments of shared belief. Modern physical culture, in all its forms, could become the largest "church" of all time if the pilgrims realised their shared faith — the body as a sacred site, a living temple—a guide to, and expression of, the mystical.

The body requires a simpler story than superheroes or gods to validate its worth. Every experience of life happens within the body: joy, grief, awe, desire, and all the things that make us human. Everyone has a body, but not everyone is truly embodied. The imagination, however, can depart from the body, leaving someone feeling depersonalised. Yet, these modern physical rituals, within reach to all, have the power to reintegrate the imagination with the body, and onwards to something grander.

The modern Gymnastic and Yogic communities, by and large, possess one of the two essential ingredients that the forefathers used to come closer to the divine: discipline. The other ingredient, faith, has been forgotten. The faithless, attached to the certainty of metrics and aesthetics, need only loosen their grip, not let go, but soften to sense their true incentive; communion — welcome and at peace in The Temple. Then carry on.

Leann ar aghaidh!