![]() As a way station, it’s a blessing.Ĭonsider the evidence. As a permanent exchange, this one is lamentable. Those who yesterday prayed the rosary are now looking for a soul workout with spinning classes and a towel. It can simply be transferred from one form to another. But the first law of thermodynamics applies to spiritual energy as well-it can be neither created nor destroyed. Sure, classes are all too expensive, merchandise all too prevalent, and the messages of empowerment dispensed by instructors too facile to pass for anything approaching real wisdom. ![]() ![]() Those who find this new brand of spiritually infused workout culture distasteful are missing the point. These are “workouts for the self” that your local priest or pastor or imam would be only too happy and perfectly qualified to discuss, although these old-fashioned clergymen are, bless them, more interested in virtue than in market valuation. They call it “Peoplehood,” and it involves sitting around a circle with a moderator who facilitates conversations about fears, hopes, beliefs, and other matters. This line of denunciation received a new rush of life last month when SoulCycle’s co-founders, Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler, announced the launch of a new business venture. They proclaim overwork and exhaustion as virtues while taking in a handsome profit. One millennial philosopher, for example, took to the pages of TheAtlantic to argue that ventures like SoulCycle only further prove that America is a soulless den of all-consuming capitalism. They interpret its wild popularity-some surveys have it growing by hundreds of percentage points over the last decade alone, taking business away from traditional gyms and accounting now for a full third of the workout market-as a sure sign of social decline. Our self-appointed moral and intellectual betters have been huffing about the boutique exercise industry for years. They are, in short, a lot like church.Īdmittedly, this observation is neither new nor original. They invite you to attend a place of significance at set times while wearing special garments and communing with other people who share your most intimate desires. SoulCycle, and the many copycat high-end workout classes that have sprung alongside it-CrossFit, CorePower Yoga, and Pure Barre, to name but a few-promise much more than exercise. Why rub your perspiring elbows with malodorous strangers while paying nearly a dollar a minute for the sort of workout you could get for far less simply by picking up a used Schwinn on eBay? But to think in terms of cost effectiveness or comfort is to miss the point. If you have never been to a SoulCycle class, all of this may strike you as a bit of bobo nonsense. And I felt something very close to transcendence. “It’s time,” he said from his elevated perch in the front of the room, lit solely by votive candles, “it’s time to put some more truth on the wheel.” I closed my eyes. Instead, I was hunched over on a stationary bike in the dark, sweating into a neon green tank top and spinning my legs furiously as an impossibly chiseled instructor whinnied motivational slogans against the background of blaring pop songs. It did not involve a rabbi, or reading from the Torah, and I wasn’t wearing my yarmulke or my prayer shawl. The most moving spiritual experience I’ve had in the past decade didn’t take place in the pews of my synagogue.
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