There’s nothing like a workout class. When exercise studios closed last year, I was devastated. I had just renewed my ClassPass membership and I was ready to get back into my body. Classes have long been a womb-like space for me. In 2013 I started taking donation yoga classes after an unsettling event took place at Santa Monica College. Unsure of how to process the anxiety I was experiencing, I took a bus across town every day, hitting the mat until the smell of its smooth rubber became a source of automatic calm. A few years later I took a 200 hour yoga teacher training and led classes around town for a while. Group classes propel me in a way that I can’t access when I’m practicing alone. Maybe it’s the undeniable energy of communal catharsis. Something we all could have used last year and unfortunately I couldn’t feel it through live web classes with my glitchy internet connection.
Now that places are opening up, I’ve gotten back into the swing of things a little bit. There’s a great studio nearby that has outdoor classes and a very ClassPass friendly schedule. A few days ago I attended one of their many HIIT classes. For the unfamiliar, HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It’s a lot of cardio in short bursts and lugging around weights of various sizes. The instructor (we’ll call him Drew) has tattoos up and down his legs, which are constantly moving to the beat of Taylor Swift remixes. Drew is one of those instructors that really sells the program, you feel he believes in it wholeheartedly. When the going gets tough, Drew shouts out encouraging phrases. I’ve been to a couple of his classes and at some point he shouts above the music, come on team you got this.
It always sticks out to me, this casual unifying of an otherwise disparate group of sweaty heaving bodies with a single word: team. While it’s an obvious platitude, I haven’t heard it utilized outside of group sports (from what I’ve heard in the movies, I never played sports). Declaring us a team feels intimate and I almost question if there should be a moment of consent beforehand. Because being part of a team feels sacred to me. It also takes away the priority of the individual, replacing it with the all-important group effort. In order to fully buy in, I must surrender to a communal experience, relinquishing the “I” because (I’ve been told) it does not exist in “TEAM”.
As someone who has struggled to create more room for I, this feels like a big ask. Even (especially?) in the context of a workout class. This time is for me, my body, my health. Who can tell me that I must band together with Girl Who Only Wears Tie Dye and Man Whose Shirt Says Naked Bodies In Facebook Font.
Perhaps my resistance to being part of the HIIT team is all ego. By othering myself from those around me, the implication is that I am better. That they don’t deserve me. A 50 minute class is a short term commitment and we don’t have to give anything up to be part of this group.
I actually love the word team—if you follow me on instagram you know it’s in my handle: Go Team James. This name came from my desire to be on my own team. Everybody is their own team and we must cheer ourselves on. Go Team James came from a place of wanting to feel secure, wanting to want to root for me. Even when I wasn’t sure what exact sport my team was playing. Unconditional #1 fan of myself.
That hasn’t always been easy and I know that I’m still an underdog team but gosh I really feel like I could make it to the finals. Even to the championship.
It’s not even like I’m competing with anyone. That’s something I couldn’t allow my team to do, competing is comparing and that’s like building a house on quicksand. You will always lose.
There’s no easy way to stop the compete/compare cycle. It’s ingrained in our survival instincts, whoever catches the most fish and can outrun the bear will live another day to feed their family. The impulse pops up for me when I see someone doing something similar to what I do. The internet provides countless windows into parallel competitive realms. The mind wants to feed on these competitors, bringing up the most basic question over and over again: if they’re doing it, will there be room for me?
This question ignores all the nuances of message, presentation, time and place. It casts aside the reality that one single person can enjoy multiple streams of information from many sources. In fact, having a handful of people speaking a similar truth or creating art from a related palette only serves to enrich the development of the individual. We are not direct copies of one person’s philosophy, rather a kaleidoscope of many, blended together in a new way. Each of us refracts light from a different angle, through a filter all our own. None of us have exactly the same portal shape through which to let in light.
To think that there can only be one is, quite frankly, giving into the falsehoods and generalizations of a capitalist construct. The design is to keep as many in survival mode for as long as possible, so that we may feel the need to compete to live. If the emphasis were to fall on abundance rather than scarcity, so many defunct systems would crumble once and for all.
In order for this to happen, we need all the light we can get.
At the end of the day light is light. An infinite resource, one that can never be owned.
Anyway, I guess the next time Drew proclaims that we are a team I think I will lean in and see what happens. Perhaps I will transcend the individual entirely and reach the light within us all.
That would be worth the 7 ClassPass credits.
That’s all for today.
I’ll see you on Friday with a Meditative Journal Prompt for subscribers and Sunday with Moments for Now.
If you find yourself struck by a moment of total now, document it as a ritual of presence. Take a photo or write a short description, then send it to momentsfornow@gmail.com - all submissions will be shared anonymously.
If by chance you’re wondering how else to support this newsletter and my work, click here:
Until next time,
James