My Holistic Queer Fitness Ministry
A Holistic Approach to Fitness, Through the Lens of my Father
He has a shrine dedicated to Alabama Football, which he places between himself and the TV on game days, donning two crimson-tide-themed jerseys. The intensity with which he witnesses to the team’s successes and set backs often scare away the dogs.
He also reads, recites, and writes poetry. He loves Pablo Neruda and Federico Garcia Lorca. I chose to study Spanish because of his love for these poets. I once memorized Neruda’s “Ode to the Artichoke” when tasked to report on a poem in High School. Probably, my own mediocre poetry, ever satisfying to me and my four Wordpress followers, is due originally to his affection for the art. I still send him stanzas via text message.
I can’t decide whether I would have been good at sports. Certainly, my father wanted this for me. He wanted for me what he had enjoyed — the OG BMOC experience. But I don’t know, I was gay (still am!) and maybe this complicated things. Recently, I joined a Queer kickball league, and it turns out I can’t catch for sh*t.
Through my early teens, my father helped me establish a discipline of exercise that I have managed to maintain. My willingness to embrace his cajoling to join him was partly a result of the guilt of choosing not to play baseball, football, nor join him in his ‘bama worship. I took dance, singing, and piano lessons instead. I wanted that triple threat realness, as with any self-respecting, teenage mutant drama club queen.
And as with all children of fathers, I looked for whatever we could share together; I wanted him to be proud; I wanted his approval.
He also loved action/sci-fi/fantasy flicks. Among our various outings, I keenly remember Speed, with the beautiful and young Keanu Reeves. I remember the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film, on which the show staring Sarah Michelle Gellar is based. …Star Wars and Star Trek. There were so many. Reflecting on our selections, it’s a wonder that my father can’t be blamed for making me a queerdo. Is it possible he sensed my attractions to these cultural artifacts and stretched himself into them?
In his early to mid-twenties, my father had already spent several years a Southern Baptist Preacher. Then in grad school he met a progressive mentor who introduced him to the posthumously published journal of John Woolman, an influential Quaker of the early 19th century. Later on, he met my mother, a living Quaker. Between the two, and after witnessing in horror what he describes as the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Church, he left preaching to become a Quaker and, eventually, a Chaplain.
In the 80’s he was a Chaplain in an AIDS clinic; most of the patients were in various stages of dying. He has talked about the different ways people come to terms with mortality; he wrote poems about this. I like to think of his ministry then as a stewardship of our queer elders all of whom should still be alive — too early, they made the journey into ancestry.
My father was certainly complex. Maybe he was a straight cis white man ahead of his time, fashioning for himself an inescapable depth and breadth, giving all of himself over to projects of love.
I know that I benefited from his ability to integrate disparate pastimes, making our connection sustainable. Above all, my father has a predisposition for complexity, perhaps, even an embrace of it. Talking about poetry, going to the gym together and watching what he called, “bang’m up shoot’m up movies,” – a femme queer son (who is also white and cis) and my reformed southern Baptist pastor turned (ostensibly passivist) Quaker Chaplain father.
I am that product, still, looking for ways to tie disparate threads — I am living a vocation of eclecticism. The more I ponder this reality for myself, however, the more I realize that this is likely true for everyone. In one way or another, we are all a sweet knot of threads that might at first seem incompatible.
So How Does this Relate to A Holistic Approach to Fitness and Queers?
If you wanna get fit, we need to ask what you even mean by that. CrossFit has some definitions. Beyond this, as a fitness trainer, I want to know your life story, your goals, what has challenged you, who is important to you, who you are in this world, and who you are becoming. While I will follow a methodology called functional fitness, this is just one layer of our work together.
The story of my relationship with my father informs a core part of how I move through the world and how I approach my own fitness journey. It's one thing I need to hold as I find motivation, as I decide the ideal lifestyle for me, and even as I negotiate my relationship with my body.
Starting with nutrition, for example, we can develop all the necessary knowledge for ascertaining where you are and how you want to change for greater wellness. Yet motivation, lifestyle, relationship with body and self each impact whether we are able to implement your nutrition-related goals and to what extent.
A holistic approach to fitness means that we start with regarding everyone as a system, of mind, spirit, and body – of identity, life experience, and meaning making. We have to get at some of the essential parts of you to express your greatest potential for growth. That's easier to do with a trainer (me) and as part of a larger community.
We have such a hard time finding supportive, body-positive, holistic spaces in general, and Queer folks struggle with this I'd say in our own special set of ways. It's become a bit of a ministry of mine to offer any type of accompaniment in any of the above aspects of fitness with any Queer person who asks. Just hit me up!
Instagram: @healandtell