Imagine yourself as a science tutor. Now imagine that someone calls you up and asks for your help. Your excitement wells and you begin to ask them a little bit about themselves. Upon finding out that they are out of school you ask the follow up question, “Why it is that you want to study science?” They reply, “Because I want to look smart in front of other people…”

I see mental training and physical training as being interrelated, and I use this example to show the parochial view that many take to exercise. Presuming that exercise is all about showy muscles and toned stomachs is the same as presuming that studying science is all about being able to look smart in front of your peers. These may be positive side effects, but the true meaningfulness of training your mind or your body lies in the richness of experience that it can grant you. Developing your brain allows you to more easily take on new information as you form a network of neural connections that gives you greater access to all the other parts of your mind. It can also elucidate the world in a way that brings you greater depth of experience. Knowing about how the earth rotates and orbits the sun can enrich your experience of watching a sunset. You can move with this information from a purely aesthetic experience to a visceral one where you can feel as though you are rolling backwards on a giant ball floating in the universe. Knowing that the nearest star outside of our sun is more than four light years away can change your perception of how vast space is and change your sense of wonder when beholding the night sky. Knowledge is a clarifier that empowers you to exert control on the world in powerful ways.

• To read more challenging and potentially enlightening books.
• To think and respond to others with more options at your disposal.
• To more clearly express your thoughts and feelings.

Developing your body has a similar potential. With enhanced fitness comes a host of positive changes. Most educated westerners are aware of the physiological benefits of fitness by way of joint, bone, and heart health, but without having experienced this, you may be unaware of the psychological and motor learning benefits. From a motor learning standpoint, training your body allows you to more easily learn new physical skills. Sigafit programming puts your body through a range of multi-directional movements and this type of training carries over to other domains. Rotation, lunging, stabilizing, mobilizing —  all of these have applications in other contexts.

Becoming fit also unlocks the world in a way that grants you access to more potential experiences. Hiking a mountain, canoeing a river, biking a backwoods trail, climbing a rockface, swimming a waterway, paragliding an open sky, participating in an obstacle course, running a long race, and even playing with your kids and not getting exhausted all become fun experiences with which you can enrich your life (not to mention unlocking new and adventurous sexual positions!)

I am a big believer in playing for the long game and I see mental, physical, and spiritual development as being worthy life-long pursuits. Not because they will merely enhance your social status, but because they will EMPOWER you and ENRICH your life in ways you couldn’t predict (and may be pessimistically cynical about in your current state.) For many of us, school is a thing of the past. The infrastructure that forced you to study novel concepts and expand your worldview is gone. The ideal benefit of the school experience is an ability to learn on your own. Are you still expanding your breadth of knowledge? If you are a practicing “believer” you may have some infrastructure for spiritual development by way of a church or mosque or temple, but what if you don’t? Can you imagine how spiritual gain could augment your life?

Our western culture, for reasons unknown, has not prioritized health and movement through adolescence. Sure we had gym class, but since left to your own devices, have you been able to implement a movement based practice that develops you physically? What kinds of experiences would a “fitter” you enjoy doing? What skills would you take on to learn if you found your motor learning capabilities enhanced? What would you feel like if you weren’t carrying around an extra twenty pounds throughout your day?

Yes, getting in shape is nice for the superficial, aesthetic reasons, and those are the most touted in our society, but the well runs much much deeper than that. Don’t be fooled by the surface reflection.