The Commoditization of Movement and Exercise
A few chapters ago, I spoke about the wide variety of “movements” within movement practices- Specific philosophies, exercise trends, markets, and sometimes cults, that we tend to identify ourselves with and form communities around. Many of these are healthy, sensory rich, and highly enjoyable ways of interacting with our bodies and others humans, and have been around in some iteration for centuries. I think that finding your movement tribe(s) is great.
The example I gave earlier was that of the barefoot movement. Not a specific movement form itself, but a paradigm that can be applied to all movement (walking, running, training at the gym without shoes, etc.) that has brought together a passionate community of people who understand the exquisite relationship the foot has with the rest of the body in motion, and shun the shackles of shoes, whenever possible.
Some other examples of tribes and communities are not paradigms, but are specific activities, movement forms, and training styles that exist as subsets of activities. For example, there are those who identify with the classic sports like baseball, football, and hockey, and those are not athletes but who hop on the wagon of training “like pro athletes” of these sports (sometimes questionable in their approach, but an admirable intention all the same). We have the traditional movement forms like martial arts and yoga and all of their subsets (and then the “fitnessized” abominations of them, one of which we will discuss a little further along). And for those seeking regimented exercise, there are more resistance training, gymnastics, and calisthenics programs than you could ever complete in a life-time, each with their own community associated with it.
At their best, these movement forms serve to connect us with our bodies and build communities around movement. They can be healthy and enjoyable to do, enriching our lives. Yet at their very worst, these community forming movements can become consumer trends that perpetuate unhealthy relationships with movement, congregating similarly consumer-minded people together to feed off of each others insecurities, and for big marketing masterminds to prey on.
The Shared Intention of Community
The wonder and danger of this community-forming around movement culture is that we, individually, tend to exist as a reflection of those we have the most interactions with. These interactions almost imperceptibly change us over time. Those who we seek the company of to move with will begin to shape how we are in other areas of life. For example, those who use movement practice to heal and change the way they move, and who group together with other healers, will flow into a mutual, health-giving trajectory that challenges their current habitual patterns, behaviourally and physically. This mutual path can exponentially increase the rate of change they may experience. Yet the same can be said of those who seek the company of others to engage in exercise while mired in self-deprecation, self-pity, and compulsive consumerism. Their mutual path, too, will speed their trajectory into more of the same. More insecurity. More fighting with their bodies, using exercise to beat their bodies into submission. More commoditization of movement.
The intention you choose for movement, in fact, is a reflection of your larger intention for how you live your life. Engaging in that movement form with your current life philosophy, or set of values, can set you further along that trajectory, or change it completely. As the mystic, Rumi, said, “The body is not an obstacle on the way of the soul. It’s a tool to be used for that journey”. It is important to be aware of this so that we can choose our movement practices and communities based on shared, healthy, intent. The two intentions I wish to zoom in on are that of consumer of exercise, or explorer of movement.
Exercise Consumer or Movement Explorer?
One of the more prevalent attitudes I see towards movement is that of consumer, which is most often a reflection of an unhealthy relationship with movement (and associated with The Exerciser archetype’s compulsive need to perform exercise as a mechanism to control their lives or make up for “bad” habits). In the consumer mindset, exercise becomes something that is used to end-gain. To numb out a negative emotional state without investigating what that state is, much like the individual who uses “retail therapy” to self-soothe when something feels missing or uncomfortable in their life.
When you act as a consumer of movement you treat it in the same way the compulsive shopper does. Movement becomes something you buy- An exercise program, a piece of equipment, a personal training session, a yoga class, a massage. You treat it like a thing you can possess and show off. Like buying a new car, you think that your purchase will enhance the quality of your life, solve your problems, and command respect from others, portraying you in the light you wish for that item to identify you as: Someone of affluence and excellent taste, worthy of respect and belonging. But at the end of the day you realize that you have paid more for the car than the value you get from it, and something still feels like its missing. After a few weeks you realize that the admiration people express towards your car doesn’t translate into their admiration of you, just of something you have, nor does having the car in your possession doesn’t change who you are. In fact, from the very people you wished to impress you may sense jealousy or resentment, when you really wanted connection and respect (qualities that cannot be bought or translated into market value for exchange).
In the same vein, you can’t buy exercise and treat it as a commodity, like a car, hoping that it will create an image around who you are for others to admire, or thinking that paying the money- the gym membership, the fashionable gym clothes, the high-end yoga mat- will change anything about your relationship with yourself and solve your problems. You can’t buy into a community when what you’re seeking from it is validation and a desperate grasping to fit in. You can’t buy exercise and treat it like a market commodity, because the value received from the movement experience is not something that can be owned. Its not something that has reciprocal worth, meaning that what you get out of a movement experience isn’t something with a fixable numerical value.
The Exponential Gain on Movement Experiences
While consuming exercise comes with interest you pay off later, exploring movement has the potential to provide exponential return on investment.
An personal example of this goes back to when I was 25 and in a lot of pain daily. I went to see a colleague and friend of mine who is a chiropractor. With him, the market value of a 30 minute session is $80, but the worth of that session was absolutely priceless.
In those 30 minutes I was thoroughly assessed, received acupuncture, and was taught one exercise. The real value of this session came from what I did with next that 30 minute experience. I invested that $80 through the use of my time: I practiced that one exercise every single day for a year. Each day was a new exploration of its depth and breadth, approaching it differently, and curiously finding new dimensions within it. Doing this changed my life. Not only did it make my body feel much better, it opened up a new paradigm of movement for me, introduced me to a new community of movement educators who I now call my mentors, and has completely changed how I work with my clients and run my business. In retrospect, I would have paid much more than $80 for that session (though at the time this was a lot for me).
But this illustrates my point: In movement, the worth and the market value are often not matched, and it is our choice of intention that dictates the magnitude and direction of this discrepancy. I know a lot of people who pay thousands of dollars every year for exercise therapies, treatments, and classes, and gain nothing from them but more space in their bank account. Yet I know that it is possible to invest in a 30 minute experience, and benefit from it exponentially, simply by a shift in mindset from consumer to explorer. From commodity to gift.
Movement, as discussed in the previous chapter, is more like a gift we are given, or that we make time to give to ourselves. Hopping on trends and buying in to fitness fads devalues movement and treats it like something separate from our regular lives, when in fact, as the Integrator knows, we gain the most from movement when it is a valued part of our moment to moment existence, not compartmentalized into a 60 minute session that we begrudge.
Be(A)ware of Consumer Trends
I’d like to use an example of a trendy fitness class right now that I think illustrates the exercise consumer mindset perfectly: Hip hop spinning. If you haven’t heard of this class, look it up. You may already be aware of the popular chain providing this class, Soul Cycle. Here is a class description I found while “researching” a little more into this trend: “Hip Hop Spin class is a dance party on a bike where you ride to explicit hop hop music and move your arms to the beat of the music”. From another class description: “Our music selection and spin moves make you forget that you are working out!”.
I can understand wanting to use music to enhance the ambiance and boost energy for a training session. I use music to this end, but I could also go without it, be in silence, or train listening to a podcast. And as a dancer, I can understand the appeal of dance fitness classes, like Zumba, and have nothing against them per se (not to say you’ll see me in one anytime soon). What boggles my mind about the existence of hip hop spinning is how it seems like someone conjured it up with the explicit intent to distract the participants from the fact that they are performing high intensity exercise.
There are a few problems with this: 1) The risk of tuning out so much from what the body is feeling that the risk of injury increases (yes you can get injured on a stationary bike, I’ve seen it), 2) The cultivation and encouragement of The Exerciser mindset in which the participant is motivated to exert themselves, feel the burn, and the primary touted benefit is how many “unwanted calories” they are “scorching” (actual wording from another class description), 3) The participant is performing two potentially amazing movement forms poorly, at the same time- Dance and cycling. In my mind, it would be preferable to focus on one or the other, which would take you deeper into the experience of each activity, rather than do both in a sub-par way, taking you out of the enriching experience both have to offer, and focusing only on the “burn”.
What were the creators of hip hop spinning thinking? I would love to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they had the participant’s health and well-being in mind, but it is hard for me to do; all I see is a fitness trend being marketed to the easiest market to prey on: Women Exercisers with body image issues, dieters, and those who lack confidence in themselves and their bodies. These are the exact people who will pay money to tune out of their bodies (which they hate) and swoon at the promise to burn as many calories as possible, while listening to Beyonce. Instead, I image the creators asked, “How can we make indoor cycling more trendy and flashy, and lure more people in? Can we convince insecure women that they’re burning more calories by adding dance moves to a spin class? Do the novelty and ‘additional benefits’ justify our increasing the price? Can we make more profit?”
I think it is quite an interesting notion to aim to make money off of people who hate exercise, but it is a market surprisingly easy to exploit. From my observations, hip hop spinning is a class for those who hate exercise, yet know they should do it, and they won’t do it on their own no matter how much money they’ve invested in their home gym set-up. The only thing getting them into a fitness class is if they find one with excessive stimuli and constant guidance from an over-exuberant coach that will distract them from the unpleasantness of exercise, so they can burn calories and fulfill their “health obligation”. Unfortunately, this usually attracts insecure women- The exact group of people who would benefit from a movement form that challenges them to get into their bodies with their full awareness, and become empowered through a practice of skill acquisition or strength development. Something that helps them appreciate what their body can do, not abuse it with stressful exertion (i.e. flail their limbs to the beat of the music while riding a stationary bike).
But the appeal of hip hop spinning is powerful for this group. All you have to pay is $25 to forget for an hour how much you hate moving and being in your body, with a tribe of people who will bask with you in implicit self-deprecation, and the bonus of burning 500 extra calories that will justify their ice-cream binge planned for later that evening. All this, rather than go out for a peaceful bike ride in nature, as the sun sets. Or take an actual hip hop dance class that challenges the mind and body, both as a physical and cognitive skilled practice.
Hip hop spinning is a prime example of exercise being treated as a market commodity. Something to buy. Something to use. Something that costs more to you than it creates for you. Something you purchase, do, and forget about when you’re not doing it. Congregating people together of a similar, unhealthy mindset. This is not how a healthy movement practice should look. This is not the gift cycle revolving around gratitude who’s worth is many times greater than its market value.
But it’s not all bad…
I must admit that there is good to find in these consumer fitness trends (though I personally find repelling and deem unhealthy for long-term consumption) because if these forms of trendy movement succeed in getting someone moving when they otherwise wouldn’t, then it has use. If hip hop spinning and its cousins can serve as an entry point into a healthier lifestyle with more conscious choices about movement and nutrition, then this is something to celebrate.
Everyone starts somewhere, after all. Most of us start our movement path as The Exerciser (I certainly did). The main issue I see with these trendy forms of consumer fitness is just that: They treat the participant like a consumer, and movement as something to be jazzed up to look interesting and nicely packaged to be sold and marketed. This, in my mind, removes us from the part of movement practice that is designed to connect us with our bodies. It removes the possibility of movement practice being a spiritual practice, a tool for the “journey on the way of the soul”, and reduces it to a market exchange, perpetuating an unhealthy relationship with it and ourselves. It removes the gift from the experience of bodies, and if this is already how we live our lives in its other arenas- as consumers, then engaging in exercise as yet another consumer endeavor does nothing to teach us to live differently and learn The Integrator’s values. We simply repeat the same habits and patterns we are used to, staying safely in our comfort zone, no matter the cost it may be having. When it comes to commoditizing exercise, the cost is often higher than the value.
Value vs. Worth
In The Gift, Hyde differentiates between the terms “value” and “worth”. He writes,
“I mean ‘worth’ to refer to those things we prize yet say ‘you can’t put a price on it.’ We derive value, on the other hand, from the comparison of one thing with another.”
The latter term, value, has to do with market value- The exchange of money or goods for something of comparable value. When we put a set price on the experience of movement, we devalue it, for as I’ve said, there is no price that we can truly put on an salubrious experience that connects one with the self and helps one to reach their full potential. To me, this makes the cultivation of the movement practice a form of art, a gift we give to ourselves. Putting a dollar value on it, packaging it, and mass marketing it removes this quality from movement practice and changes our relationship with it, from experience to product. From gift to commodity. From cultivating an internal experience to showing off of an external state.
Feeding into this consumer mindset is the larger struggle we have as a society- That we think we can buy our problems away. We think we can exchange dollar value for a solution to what we perceive to be an issue in our life, yet we haven’t taken the time to accurately assess the problem. We sense a lack and are uncomfortable with it, but not knowing its true source, we aim to fill it with something immediately available in an attempt to buy a sense of peace. As in other areas of life, this lack isn’t something that can be fulfilled by buying something, but only by honest investigation into the source of the sense of lack. Often the root is an incongruence between the values we act by and the goals we are chasing. Hip hop spinning is insufficient to fulfill a void created by a life lacking congruence and only drains you of the energy you could be using to take action on that very incongruence.
Can’t Buy Me Practice
To close this chapter, I’d like to provide a story that I feel is a perfect depiction of this compulsion to purchase a passively outsourced means of avoidance for the inherent discomfort and challenge of self-investigation.
I recall a client that came in a year or so ago for a Thai massage session with me. From start to finish she had a difficult time relaxing. Her tissues were resistant to releasing, her body was stiff, and she had her eyes open nearly the entire time. Her muscles were firm and dense feeling but it wasn’t the type of tonicity associated with the healthy tone one develops from quality resistance training. It was a hypertonicity suggestive a dominant sympathetic nervous system: The fight or flight aspect of our nervous system that is always on high alert scanning for the next threat, ready to defend itself. I didn’t ask what was going on in her life for her to have gotten to this state. (A stressful work or interpersonal life? An untreated, overlooked traumatic injury or accident? A history of trauma or abuse? The global human struggle to feel worthy of giving and receiving love and belonging? All fair game.) But for her, this semi-tensed up state was as “relaxed” as she could get, relative to her normal, hypertonic self.
I didn’t feel there was anything “wrong” structurally with her body, yet I wanted to let her know what I’d observed, and so, after the massage I mentioned to her that it felt like she had a hard time relaxing and letting her full body weight be supported by the floor; surrendering to the experience. I told her that it felt like her body was holding a lot of sympathetic-tone, and I asked if she had a relaxation practice. She agreed she was very tense and to my question replied, “No I don’t have a relaxation practice and I don’t know what that would look like”. I explained to her that relaxation is a skill that requires practice, it isn’t something people just have (our nervous system is hardwired to scan for threat, not to seek relaxation), but something to cultivate through the deliberate, consistent practice, using portals like meditation, breathing exercises, and restorative movements, and exercising critical self-awareness.
“Oh… That sounds like a lot of work. I wish it wasn’t a skill. Isn’t there something I can just take instead?”
“Morphine. Oxycontin. Valium. Alcohol. Choose your vice.” I joked. I really hope she didn’t take me seriously.
Yet sadly this is the all pervading consumer mindset: I don’t want to do it myself because practice is harder than buying a solution. In the words of Daniel E. Lieberman, author of The Story of The Human Body,
“Even more insidious dangers are those that make your life easier but actually make you weaker”.
Easy, store bought solutions are only band-aids for a larger issue (to boot, the crummy kind of band-aid that comes off as soon as you get it wet).
We can learn to let go of the consumer mindset towards movement practices when we start noticing how the very things we’re told will make us happy to buy are the same things that perpetuate a sense of lack and consumerism. As we drop the exercise-consumer mentality and embody what this means, we also become more conscious of where else in our lives we are succumbing to being marketed to. Where else in our lives do we treat experiences as commodities?
