An Unconventional Lenten Practice
The great Buddhist monk and spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls taking time for rest and relaxation our “most basic peace work.”
Writing from the Catholic tradition, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton says, “To let ourselves be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects … is to succumb to a kind of violence.”
Such a frenzy of activity, Merton adds, destroys our “inner capacity for peace.”
The liturgical season of Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday. It’s a good time to sweep out the dust that’s accumulated inside of us over the course of a year and re-orient ourselves to what really matters.
This year I’ve decided to focus on reducing the things that cause stress in my life and increase my capacity for impatience, anger and frustration — the enemies of peace.
While I try to keep up some semblance of a prayer life by attending daily Mass, engaging in spiritual reading and pausing to meditate, there is another practice that never fails to enhance my sense of inner peace. It’s a practice that nourishes not only my spirit, but my mind and body as well. And that is my one-hour-a-day-five-times-a-week ZUMBA fitness practice.
ZUMBA moves to the pulsing beat of Latin music, combining traditional aerobic exercise with salsa, cumbia and meringue dance steps. It’s music that enters the heart and lifts the soul. It fills you with a feeling of well-being.
Dance might at first seem like an unconventional spiritual practice, but it has a long history in faith traditions from the ancient Hebrews to the Christian Shakers to the dancing Hindu God of Shiva. Spiritual teachers have long compared the mission of Jesus to an elaborate dance with humankind.
Exercise is work, but dance is delight. Consider it prayer in motion. And as the traditional hymn reminds us, God is ultimately “Lord of the Dance.”
The fitness center I go to is blessed to have a superb ZUMBA instructor in Lucy M. Croft. Lucy understands what the ancient Greeks referred to as eudaimonia, an overall sense of well-being that emanates from creating harmony between mind, body and spirit.
Trained as a nurse, Lucy first tried ZUMBA over a decade ago to help with a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome and found it worked better than any pharmaceutical.
What drew me to Lucy’s classes was the ever-present smile on her face. Despite teaching 25 one-hour classes each week, that smile doesn’t go away.
I won’t disclose Lucy’s age, but the fact that she is able to do this kind of strenuous fitness work as a middle-aged woman makes her not only my role model, but my heroine.
Largely through the care and respect Lucy shows for each person, our class has transformed into its own unique community. When a member lost her husband suddenly last year, the women in the classes poured out their support.
When another member of the group, a brave cancer survivor, was selected to light the Tree of Hope at our community cancer center last December, several members of the class came out to support her too.
My ZUMBA friends offer their encouragement every time I’m scheduled to leave town to give a public presentation. They are more of a community for me than the people I see each day at daily Mass.
ZUMBA is the spiritual coda to my day. I usually go to the evening or late afternoon classes. In that way, I can lose in the dance any struggles that might have arisen in the course of my writing work that day. I can let go of any petty annoyances that might have stained the day.
No matter how tired I feel coming into class, I’m always energized leaving it. And more peaceful.
We often think of Lent as a time of to abstain from something. I like to think of it as a time of moving toward a greater good. As this important season begins, can we work to nourish our souls by reinvigorating our bodies?
Perhaps we do it by something as simple as taking a slow, meditative walk each day — another form of prayer in motion.
Or perhaps we do it by experiencing the unabashed delight of dance. As we say in ZUMBA, “Let it move you.”
