A Little Known Yet Powerful Way to Grow Spiritually

Will Bochkay has been an Independent Team Beachbody Coach since 2009. He started his physical transformation at a weight of 256 pounds, was a 2 pack a day smoker, on depression and anxiety medication and admits to having zero self esteem. To say that Beachbody changed his life would be like saying rain is wet. Since then he has had the most incredible journey of weight loss, fitness, nutrition, learning to love myself, gaining confidence and getting more out of life. He loves helping other people do the same thing. Whatever it is that you need help with, he is there for you as a fitness coach and spiritual supporter. Visit his website at thegetfitmission.com or listen to his Get Fit Mission podcasts.

Just three months prior to me taking the dive in to being a health and fitness coach I had started my own physical transformation journey. I was very surprised at all the things I found.

I honestly thought getting fit was just one of those things people did because they wanted to lose some weight or do as a hobby. I didn’t know the journey that was about to unfold for me, yet this is what I found.

Your physical fitness effects just about every area of your life.

It’s a as Charles Duhigg puts it ‘a keystone habit.” This means it’s one of those things that you can do that will influence many other things in your life. It affects self confidence, esteem, boldness, helps reduce stress and so much more. One of the really surprised things to me was it effected my spiritual journey.

My spiritual journey through getting physically fit

I honestly never really thought a lot of myself before this. Growing up, I was the kid who was picked on and bullied. I was the weirdo and the outcast. I had a severely broken home. I tried a lot of subcultures and a lot of ways with coping that were extremely unhealthy and then I found a God who rescued and transformed me. Sorta. That was part of the journey.

When I started going to Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, I went through a lot. I found love. I found forgiveness. I found so many amazing things that broke me open and rebuilt me.

I got comfortable with the new me. — the new life I had. I let myself get very out of shape and just figured that’s just the way life was. I still struggled with a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing. Yet I knew I was loved and forgiven.

When I started a program called P90X, at that point in time it was the hardest thing I had ever done or tried to do. Tony (the instructor) just kept up with the positive self-talk of “You can do anything for 30 seconds!” and “Don’t say I can’t, say I currently struggle with…” and so on. And the P90X yoga portion is 90 minutes of yoga going from vinyasa flow to balance poses to core work. It's both beginner and advanced at the same time. I looked into it before I did it the first time and I was like... yoga... this will be easy…

Five minutes in my quads burned so bad and dripping sweat (and this wasn’t hot yoga), I was absolutely amazed at how hard it was. When I got to savasana at the end, I was blown away by how good and relaxed I felt! Over the course of 90 days I changed my body, my spirit and my mind through a variety of exercise, including the yoga that was included in the program.

My physical and spiritual journey as one

What I learned was I had power — it was up to me to choose if I was going to have self-discipline. And every time I stuck with it, I felt the best about myself. I had a renewed life and a renewed energy to focus on all the things that God wanted me to focus upon.

I believe whole-heartedly that your physical journey to health and wholeness can be a spiritual practice. Over the past nearly 7 years I’ve seen people transform their lives in amazing ways — inside and outside.

“We should have taught more carefully than we have done, not that men are bodies and have souls, but that they are souls and have bodies.”

— Rev. Dr. R. Thornton

It has often been attributed to C.S. Lewis yet Rev. Thornton said that we are a soul that has a body. I don’t think it does us good to neglect either of those things. I think when we wake up in the morning and we don’t like what we see, there is at times a reason for that, and it’s because we know we’re not doing the things that we should be doing to nurture our body and soul. I won’t discount or negate the role our culture and media plays in all of this yet at the same time, I know when I’m over indulging, I literally DO NOT feel good when I do it. And those decisions can add up over time.

SO make the decisions to focus on things that do make you feel good, whole and healthy. Your physicality is an excellent way of offering praise and worship to God. And it is a tool to often lean further into God by praying “Oh please God let me get through this!”

Don’t neglect your physical body! And never view it as just some vain thing. You’ll be amazed at the spiritual journey that can come from a soulful physical fitness practice.