Shawn Phillips & Ken Wilber & Stuff

Shawn begins the dialogue by passionately explaining how strength training is one of the most powerful ways to bring clarity and vitality to your entire life—not simply your physical well-being. Ken responds, “Right. You see, I don’t have time not to do this practice”—which is one of the central ideas behind an Integral Life Practice. There are four core modules to an Integral Life Practice—Body, Mind, Spirit, and Shadow—and extensive evidence suggests that these are four aspects of your own being-in-the-world that you truly cannot afford to ignore. Plus, there are fun, easy, and fast ways to address all of them—so why not touch on all the bases?

Ken goes on to share his own experience with weight training, and how it has become an essential part of his life. In fact, he remarks that, after meditation, strength training has been the single most transformative practice he has engaged. Ken continues by commenting that he’s extremely suspicious of claims of “transformation,” but this is one of those rare cases where such a claim appears to be justified. After several decades of meditative training, Ken was uniquely adapted to being able to notice the interior shifts of consciousness associated with his weightlifting program—and, put simply, the shifts were profound. On a purely physical level, mainstream research has shown that six months of moderate strength training turns back the physiological clock an average of 10 years. Jogging, on the other hand, has been shown to actually lower several important health markers (though, of course, an ILP can easily accommodate whatever form of exercise one enjoys).

Shawn and Ken go on to discuss some of the heightened states of consciousness that can occur while strength training. Shawn explains that before he had any knowledge of meditative techniques, he would focus his awareness in other ways—like squatting 800 pounds. “When you have 800 pounds on your back, you absolutely have to know at the deepest, deepest level that I can do this. That’s the ultimate pushing through.” And it’s pushing through barriers that can yield very powerful experiences of witnessing awareness and even nondual oneness with everything that is arising. Ken jokes, “Men experience God when they leave their body, and they do that in war and in sports—hopefully more in sports.”

Shawn closes the discussion by sharing his appreciation for the Basic Moral Intuition of an integral/AQAL approach, which is: protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span. As Ken notes, weight training is the single most popular form of exercise in the US today—in other words, it has tremendous span. What it doesn’t always have, they agree, is depth. It’s very easy for weight training to simply be using your gross body to pick up gross weights while inhabiting gross consciousness. But, as both FIT and ILP demonstrate, there are many simple ways to bring greater consciousness, depth, and even spiritual awareness to a practice that 50 million Americans already do on a regular basis—and as Shawn says, “That’s where I see my opportunity.”

We invite you to join in on this incredible dialogue exploring the leading edge of fitness, which, as we discover, includes a lot more than just being fit....

(To listen to Part 1 of this dialogue, click here.)

(To learn more about Integral Life Practice, click here.)