Care of My Body as Spiritual Discipline
by Howard Clinebell, Ph.D.
The ancient Hebrews held to a unified understanding of people and their health and salvation. This understanding is what is called "holistic" today. Health and sickness are understood to occur in a unified, inclusive, interrelated world encompassing body, mind, spirit, and community. Such a holistic view is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and is in harmony with contemporary views that reject a divided understanding of our humanity. This is a view that Jesus undoubtedly learned as a boy in his religious instruction.
The religious laws and rituals of the Hebrews regarding eating, drinking, and resting reflect a belief that God's activity and concern are involved in the everyday well-being of people's bodies. Their dietary laws are based in part on beliefs about healthy living. They also reflect a theological view that food is a good gift of God and that eating is a life-sustaining activity that has spiritual as well as interpersonal significance. The psalmist declares: "you cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, . . . and bread to strengthen the human heart" (104:14-15). God is seen as one "who gives food to all flesh, for his steadfast love endures forever" (136:25).
The Sabbath principle of a regular day of rest has its roots in the first creation story in which God rested on the seventh day after completing the work of creation: "So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it" (Gen. 2:3). This understanding illuminates why devout Jews respect the Sabbath as a day of rest.
Jesus' ministry, reflecting the Hebrew, nondualistic view, was very down to earth. He obviously attended to his own bodily needs as well as to those of others around him. Numerous illustrations of this are found in the Gospels. They include his feeding the five thousand hungry people who had some of their soul hungers satisfied by his message. Jesus healed people of a wide variety of illnesses, and he used his miraculous powers to provide good wine for a wedding party. He honored his own need for rest by taking a nap on the boat during a storm. By leading his closest followers to a wilderness place for rest and renewal, Jesus respected his own needs and those of his disciples for quiet and for seeking spiritual renewal away from the needs of the crowds.
The Christian belief in the incarnation of God's Spirit in Jesus has profound implications concerning the human body. In Jesus "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14, RSV). This speaks volumes about the interrelationship of spirit, mind, and body in us humans. The very idea that the divine Spirit would express itself in a human body and mind affirms the view that there is no separation among body and mind and spirit. Thinking that divides body and mind or body and spirit does not reflect the best in biblical understanding. The glorification taken in mortifying the body, which has happened at times in the church's history, reflects a basic misunderstanding of incarnational biblical theology.1
Physical Self-Care and a Christian Lifestyle
In light of these biblical understandings, we Christians are on target when we recognize that taking care of our bodies is an essential part of a Christian lifestyle. Doing this is really a spiritual discipline with multiple mental and physical benefits — and spiritual benefits as well. The flowering of our minds and the blossoming of our spirits needs to be supported by keeping our bodies as alive and fit as possible. According to one Gallup poll, people who work out regularly are over twice as likely to be happy as a group of couch potatoes. Regular exercisers also reported feeling more self-esteem, a greater ability to relax, healthier eating habits, and greater control over their health; they also were more likely to have lost weight.
And in case you are having trouble with the idea that body-care is an important spiritual discipline, consider the most surprising finding of this poll: Those working out regularly reported being more open to spiritual experiences than the people who did not exercise.2
I'm glad to report that current psychosomatic medical research confirms these fascinating findings. They make it clear that whatever affects our bodies also influences our minds, and vice versa. In addition, whatever affects the quality of our spiritual lives influences both our minds and bodies. The opposite is true — whatever affects our bodies and minds has a significant influence on our spiritual lives.
On a personal level, when I neglect my early-morning, vigorous aerobic walks for several days or have a junk food relapse, my mind loses sharpness and my spirit feels as though it is covered by a thin layer of dust. Conversely, when I get too busy to attend to my spiritual nurture for a while, my motivation to give my body needed self-care is diminished. Have you had similar experiences?
Another potential benefit of befriending your body with enhanced self-care is that this may help your spirituality become more sensual. Pioneer body therapist Alexander Lowen reports that people who have long neglected their bodies often reclaim their "forsaken body with all the fervor of the lost child finding its loving mother."3 Such an awakening can be described as a welcome rediscovery of what creation theologian Matthew Fox calls "sensual spirituality." This means spirituality that is not detached or "up in the air" but is empowered by being rooted in the rich energies and sensual capacities of our bodies.
Christians should view their lives as a precious gift of God to be used well for as long as possible. Consider an additional reason that good self-care of your body is a potentially valuable spiritual discipline: The evidence from the science of aging (gerontology) increasingly supports the view that the physical aging process can be slowed or accelerated by how well or poorly we treat our bodies. And in terms of the quality of life, even if self-care does not add many years to our lives, it certainly will add pleasure and productiveness to our years.
Healthy body-caring is a must for Christians. Love is the most indispensable ingredient in a good life or a good relationship, according to the New Testament (1 Cor.13:13).
What is the most powerful motivation to replace unhealthy habits such as smoking, overeating, or excessive consumption of toxins such as junk food, nicotine, drugs, and alcohol? In one sentence, it is to learn to love your whole body-mind-spirit self more.
Learning to love your body is the often-hidden key for which many folks are searching. Loving our bodies and knowing that God loves our whole selves, including our bodies, is the key both to cutting down on body-hurting behaviors and to increasing our loving body self-care. This has been confirmed repeatedly in my personal and professional experiences of working with people struggling to control "bad habits" that are damaging their health.
Take a few minutes to close your eyes while you ask yourself and respond to two questions: How would I treat my body differently if I believed more deeply that it is really loved by God as a precious temple of the Spirit? How can I welcome God's love and grace more holistically by loving my whole body-mind-spirit self and treating myself with more grace?
Overcoming Inner Roadblocks to Self-Care
Most people seem to know a lot more about healthy self-care than they put into practice. In my own experience, inner resistance and rationalizations often get in the way of exercising and other body self-care that I know I should do. This is especially true when my life is particularly hectic. This is not a new dilemma. The Apostle Paul described his self-sabotage in this way: "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Romans 7:19).
If you resist doing the self-care things you know you ought to do and perhaps even want to do, let me review some strategies that may help:
- Find yourself a wellness partner4 and do things together that you'll both find enjoyable and good for your bodies. When either of you backslides in your self-care, you may help to motivate each other. Sustaining healthy practices is usually easier if you don't try to go it alone.
- Start small. For example, instead of trying to find time for a long walk on a busy day, start with a short brisk walk. Plans that will require large time commitments often fall victim to backsliding.
- Whenever possible, do things that have immediate, built-in rewards. For example, if you're trying to resist the high-fat, sugary, caffeine-laden snacks at work or the fast-food lunch, take some healthy snacks to share or make a healthy lunch that is also delicious. It's difficult to forego immediate oral gratification if you have only long-range, hoped-for rewards such as making your body feel more alive and trim.
- Make sure that you keep your self-care rooted in your spirituality. It is well documented that people who have a meaningful religious life tend to be healthier than those who do not have that spiritual sustenance. The benefits reported include being better adjusted in marriage and personally happier, as well as experiencing greater longevity and faster recovery after life-threatening illnesses and heart surgery.
- It's important to make body self-care an integral part of your lifestyle in addition to whatever times you specifically set aside for it. For example, when you walk, stride fast enough to get some aerobic benefits rather than just meandering. The latter is fine and healthful when you want to reflect, meditate, or connect more intimately with the world around you as you walk. If you keep your physical self-care wants and needs in the back of your mind, you can gradually build small opportunities for physical self-care into your day until they become a natural part of your lifestyle. For example, briefly doing simple stretching exercises several times during each day can help keep your body more relaxed, energized, and flexible.
- Don't give up if your first efforts to change unhealthy behavior patterns fail. Such change is a process. Most people who succeed do so only after several relapses.
Each day, spend at least a brief time imaging prayer for the healing and wellness of your body and the bodies of others you care about. Visualize yourself and them enveloped in a warm healing light of God's love. Ask for insights and guidance about new ways to glorify God in your body and to respect both your own body and those of others as temples of the divine Spirit.
To summarize, by keeping your body as fit and healthy as possible, you give yourself a valuable gift: a firm foundation on which to develop a spiritually centered well-being lifestyle. Regardless of your physical limitations, improving your body self-care will tend to make it more energized, functionally fit, pain-free, and supportive of your spiritually centered well-being. I like to think of caring for my body as if I were a loving mother or father, remembering the biblical image of God as loving parent.
If you do this, you move away from an I-It and toward an I-Thou treatment of your body, to use philosopher Martin Buber's familiar terms. This is an expression of that embodied, sensual spirituality that is crucial for living life in all its fullness as a Christian.
Endnotes
1 You may be wondering about Paul's statements about the body's being at war with the spirit in people. He used "body" in these passages as a symbol of impulses and primitive drives, not the physical body per se.
2 Reported in American Health, March 17, 1987.
3 Alexander Lowen, The Betrayal of the Body (New York: Collier Books, 1969), p. 231.
4 Joyce Buekers has discovered that this partner approach works well in congregational and hospital well-being groups.
Adapted from Anchoring Your Well Being: Christian Wholeness in a Fractured World. Copyright © 1997 Howard Clinebell, Ph.D. Used by permission of Upper Room Books, Nashville, TN.
A pioneer in pastoral care, Howard Clinebell is a United Methodist pastor and a prolific author.
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