We see it in Michelangelo’s David, in da Vinci’s anatomical sketches and in Indian and Tibetan renderings of enlightened beings: the persistent concept that strength and beauty are part of the divine design of the human form. The couch potato lifestyle that’s so easy to live in the Western world, circa the 21st century, can make this seem like an impossible ideal, but it doesn’t have to be. The first step in reclaiming it is to appreciate your body as it is this minute — and trust its ability to gain fitness, grace and elegance at any age.

A growing collection of research tells us that this doesn’t take a great leap of faith, but it will take some time at the gym.

A Temple of the Spirit
We know that, at any age, the body requires cardiovascular exercise (continuous movement, such as walking or running within your training heart rate range), resistance exercise (weight training) and stretching to maintain flexibility. Current recommendations suggest doing cardio at least four times a week for a minimum of half an hour, full-body weight training two days a week (with rest days in between) and stretching after every exercise session. One or two yoga classes a week will give you even more flexibility. Fitting these into your life can be a spiritual commitment as well as a healthy discipline when you add the following to your routine:

• Look at regular exercise as a sacred trust. The body is a gift to care for, and it was engineered to move. In his classic Invitation to a Great Experiment, author Thomas Powers tells readers to arise an hour earlier in the morning to be sure there’s ample time for prayer, spiritual study and physical exercise.

• Explore those types of exercise that have an inner component. In addition to yoga, tai chi and sacred dance, innovative programs that invite students to go within and find the metaphysical underpinnings of physical activity are cropping up around the country. “The soul can only be present when body and spirit are one,” says Gabrielle Roth, the author of Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice. Roth and her son, Jonathan Horan, founded New Vibration Wave, an exercise program in New York City where prayer and panting are part of the workout.

• Include your spiritual self in the exercise you do already. You can recite affirmations —“I’m healthy and strong” or “Thy will be done”—while you’re on the treadmill; or you can walk or ride your bike outside with the commitment to see and appreciate the wonders of nature wherever you look.

Exercise and Your Inner Self
Most of us grew up with clear distinctions around which activities were physical and which were spiritual: you had gym class and Sunday school, and those two weren’t being tossed together into a combo class any time soon! When yoga hit our hemisphere full-force, we met with the novel notion that physical culture and soul maintenance could take place in the same hour in the same room. 

“We really can connect to the spirit through the body,” says Judi Bar, a yoga therapist who works with the Lifestyle 180 program at the Cleveland Clinic. “Movement can be a meditative state because it gets you focused. In my classes, I support ‘meditative motion’ — being in the moment [while you move]. When we calm our mind in this way, it affects our physiology.”

The foremost “spiritual exercises”— yoga and tai chi (the slow-motion Chinese movement art that also includes inner awareness) — are excellent, but they aren’t your only option. Any movement can bring us to that in-the-moment state that Bar calls “clear focus and presence.” To get there, though, you have to be doing exercise not just to check it off. Rather, you have to really be willing to experience the sensations and what’s happening in your body. Only then can you experience mindfulness.

The well-known “runner’s high” is a result of this mental focus and the body’s own endorphins, the feel-good chemicals it produces in response to vigorous exercise. The combination of movement and music gives dancers a sense of elation that doesn’t “crash” later like a sugar rush or a caffeine buzz. And regardless of the exercise you choose, there’s always the after-it’s-over triumph, knowing that you’ve done something terrific for yourself. Call it instant karma or just desserts, it’s yours for showing up and going through the motions.

Legendary choreographer Martha Graham stated that whether “we learn to dance by practicing dancing, or to live by practicing living…one becomes in some area an athlete of God.” Now that’s some motivation for getting to aerobics class!