Attempting Movement, Part 1: I've Always Wanted to Be a Runner

How becoming friends with my body unlocked a lasting love for movement.

I have always wanted to be a runner, especially one obsessed with the sport. For nearly 15 years, I tried to become that person. The formula was always the same: choose a training regimen, set a schedule, and attempt to stick to it. The outcome, too, was the same: success in the first week, boredom in the second week, and failure in the third. Ashamed at giving up, I’d stall for a few months and then try again. On and on the cycle went through high school and college and into adulthood.

Running, along with any attempt to get fit, was always an effort to dominate the body and force it to obey. Derived from the evangelical Christian faith I grew up in and then held on to during my 20s, I viewed the body in two, simultaneous lights. It was sinful, fallen, and full of temptations and desires. To trust it was to be led astray and put in danger of damnation. Where the soul of a person was forever and could be saved and sanctified, the body was temporary and without hope. However, because the body housed the soul, it was also said to be a vessel, a temple for the Lord that required meticulous care so that he might find within it a worthy home. The thought of loving my body and calling it good was laughable at best, blasphemous at worst.

As I came of age into teenagehood, these teachings ran parallel to the societal conditioning that showcased thin bodies as the only acceptable, celebrated ones. Influenced by these merging beliefs, my desire to become a runner originated as an attempt to become disciplined—discipline that bordered on punishment. It would be how I could finally force the body to submit while both becoming hospitable for the Lord and meeting society’s standards.

Somewhere in all that mess, I picked up some of the apostle Paul’s words as a mantra. In 1 Corinthians 9:26-27, Paul showcases the necessity of discipline to achieve spiritual transcendence by comparing the Christian journey to an athlete’s physical training. The verse reads:

Therefore I run in such a way as not to run aimlessly; I box in such a way, as to avoid hitting air; but I strictly discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

(1 Corinthians 9:26-27, NASB)

Various translations choose different words, some harsher than others, but I chose the harshest paraphrase for myself. Over and over, anytime I tried running, I chanted his words to myself—I beat my body and I make it my slave—sidling right up against hatred toward the body I was so determined to force into obedience. Up and down hills, along the country roads, I repeated these words to myself, a misguided attempt at motivation to keep going while my body screamed to stop. When failure eventually arrived, I blamed it on my fallen, earthly body and soothed myself with the promise that it could not follow me into eternity.

Four years ago, I decided to try running again.

It was the same year that I set my mind to doing yoga every day, an arbitrary decision inspired by a friend who had just completed her own year of daily yoga. What I didn’t anticipate was the practice slowly changing how I viewed my body while I was busy learning new poses.

I was fresh out of my Christian evangelical faith, suspended between belief and non-belief, the body and my relationship with it not yet a priority to deconstruct. I only became aware that a shift was happening when, one day late in spring, a phrase I had never thought before rose to me involuntarily. In the shower, looking down at my feet, I thought, “My feet… My beautiful feet!” It surprised me, and briefly, I felt silly before I laughed it off and moved on.

I had been following Adriene Mishler’s YouTube channel, playing through her videos every day, but it wasn’t until the shower moment that I realized more than just her routines had infiltrated my life. The shower phrase was one she said often after prompting mountain pose. Once in the pose, she’d invite us to notice our feet and give thanks for all they do to hold and move us through the world.

“Look at your feet, your beautiful feet,” she’d say.

The first time I heard her say it, I felt as I did in the shower, a bit silly, a bit laughable. I had never before thought of feet as beautiful, much less given thanks to them for carrying me through my life. The body had always just been a tool to control and wield; to offer it thanks felt vulnerable, perhaps even a bit sacrilegious. Nevertheless, I did it. Every time Adrienne prompted us, I said thank you to my feet, and it flipped everything I thought I understood about the body.

What started solely as a desire to cultivate a stronger body had unknowingly turned into a practice of honoring it. I had been so busy learning the rhythm of a new-to-me movement that I hadn’t even seen this mindset shift instill itself in me. Yoga, specifically Yoga with Adriene, was helping me learn how to listen to my body. For the first time in my life, I was discovering that my body had likes and dislikes, that it had something to say about when I pushed myself and when I rested. The body spoke to me! And had opinions!

Religious conditioning had taught me to separate and distance myself from the body, but yoga was bringing me before it again, re-introducing me to it, teaching me that the body was nothing to fear but rather something to regard with curiosity. Adriene’s consistent permission to show up exactly as I was each day, not expecting anything perfect or unrealistic from my body, began slowly uncoiling my unhealthy beliefs and standards. Without intending to, I picked up compassion for my body. Somewhere in the midst of that year of yoga, I even befriended it.

By the time I was ready to try running again later that year, I had almost forgotten those cruel words from Paul. I certainly couldn’t imagine ever chanting them at my body again, my body that was now my beloved friend. It had kept and carried me for all these years. Now, perhaps there was a new way to approach running.

Next week: How a revised approach to running turned out.