The Sacred Effort
The anchor of the Fun-Maxxing Exercise Split
Carving out ‘Sacred Time and Space’ in Exercise
This week I am talking about finding a rhythm between hard efforts and easy efforts when it comes to your consistent exercise routine.
Yesterday I introduced the idea of the Fun-Maxxing Split, a way to generally structure your weekly routine to capitalize on both hard and easy effort, while positioning fun and enjoyment on a defined physical activity or sport at the centre (read it HERE).
Today I want to highlight the hard effort, or more properly defined in this split as the ‘Sacred Effort.’
I created this idea based off the work of Mircea Eliade, a scholar of comparative religion, who documented ideas of ‘sacred time’ and ‘sacred space’ in the ritual practices and myths of people all over the world and throughout many different time periods.
The basic idea is that we separate time and space into two categories, sacred and profane. The profane is the ordinary, day to day, reality, while the sacred is the true and original state of understanding and connection. It’s a way to understand how and why we create religious rituals, spaces, and practices with a striking consistency in how they are applied and experienced over cultures and eras.
When thinking about exercise, not all of our sessions will be sacred, but we can order and structure our routines to aim at one of these becoming ritualized into a sacred activity that creates deep meaning and reminds us of our original aim in using exercise as a spiritual practice to bring about our individual potential to its fullest realization.
Making it Meaningful
The important idea here is that in order to create meaning, you must carve it out intentionally and to precise standards. There is a loose structure we can follow to bring out more meaning in any activity, and Eliade’s ideas help up create this in our exercise routines.
In both concepts, sacred time and sacred space, there is an escape from the profane, the meaningless, into a world of deep meaning.
Connecting with the divine
Engaging in mythic ritual
Realizing place in the center of the world
Forging with a cyclical understanding of time
Renewal of virtues and self
Becoming at peace with your place in the world
By defining one of your efforts as sacred you elevate it’s meaning. It becomes a religious experience, just like attending weekly services or celebrating the annual festivals.
It’s set apart from all the other activities. Especially the profane one’s that make up your day to day routine. I designed the Fun-Maxxing Split to capitalize on this important distinction.
The HARD effort of the weekend becomes the sacred effort that ties all the other days together. It threads them into a tapestry of opposites despite being the same activity.
The sacred ONLY finds meaning in contrast to the profane. This is why easy efforts make up the bulk of the split. They are meant to keep you going until the day of the sacred effort arrives. Also, they build you up to take advantage of the sacred effort through cross training, not burning up your energy and motivation, and always aiming you towards the thing you care most about, enacting that sacred ritual.
Constructing Your Own Practice
Now it’s time to craft your own sacred effort.
Let’s use the structure Eliade to help you determine how to make this your own while also maintaining these universal elements that bind spiritual practice across humanity.
Ritualize
This is why the weekend is the time for this effort. The week is just too hectic. But the weekend, you can carve out the space intentionally.
You can’t establish a sacred practice if it is not consistent.
Also think about the place, make it the same.
I go for long trail runs in forests that I’m not able to during the week. I take advantage of the ability to drive longer to explore places I can’t during the week. I always give myself 90 minutes to run as well.
Invigorating
The activity MUST revitalize you. Even though it is physically tiring you should feel mentally and spiritually rejuvenated. That feeling of renewal. A fresh start. Washing away the stains of the week.
Every time I finish a long sunrise trail run on the weekend I’m immediately filled with gratitude, appreciation, and love. Those fill me up and allow me to look forward to another week of profane responsibilities with enthusiasm and vigor.
Experiential
It’s not about the numbers or even the logic, it’s about the feel. The experience must be totalizing. It can’t be normal, where you are distracted, one eye on the road the other on the phone type of energy. You have to GET LOST inside the activity to realize it’s separate nature from the ordinary.
Run through a forest during the golden hours of dawn and sunrise and you will get it, I don’t even need to describe it, words only distort what you feel in those moments (this is why I write poems every Friday, to try and FIND the words)
When you choose an activity you love to play, it’s simple to craft a sacred effort using these three structured ideas. You’re already internally motivated, spirit turned towards excellence, with a willingness to struggle against and triumph over adversity.
The Fun-Maxxing split works on many deep levels to keep you consistent but most importantly it keeps you aimed toward the true nature of sport.
A spiritual activity of self discovery to become heroic in realizing your potential.
If that can become fun, well, now we’re really onto something deep and powerful.
When I say ‘the truth is in the training’ this is what I’m getting at.
Happy Training Team
I like this. I wonder if we can link more to this. B and A races may be like low and high holidays/festivals. Once-in-a-lifetime efforts could be like a pilgrimage. :)