Running to Receive

An interview with Casper ter Kuile on how to make running more than a routine.

In the beginning, God created the running shoe and the GPS watch. The training schedule was formless and confusing—or worse, grueling and injury-prone—and the runners only cared to finish their workouts as fast as they could. And then God said, “Let there be more reasons to run,” and there were more reasons to run: confidence, connection, and even spirituality. 

I’ve been thinking about running as a spiritual practice a lot lately. It’s kind of the whole point of this newsletter—the idea that moving your body doesn’t have to be about a means to an end. But I’ve also been actively trying to find ways to bring more intention into my running ever since I read Casper ter Kuile’s book, The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, earlier this year. The basic gist of the book: You can turn the habits and practices you already do into rituals that create more space in your life for reflection and connection. All you have to do is add a bit of intention.

Rituals are important because we don’t have a lot of opportunities for spirituality today. In the past decade alone, the number of Americans who identify as religious “nones” have grown by 11 percent—from 17% in 2009 to 28% today, according to Pew Research. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club have fallen out of favor as well. Meanwhile, loneliness was already an epidemic before Covid-19 brought social distance and quarantine into our everyday experiences. 

If you ask me, a religious “none” myself, there’s a lot to celebrate about the shrinking relevance of organized religion. But at the same time, I’ve struggled a lot as an adult to find my place and to make friends. I’ve often wished for the kind of instant community that a church or temple can provide. More than that, I’ve yearned for something more abstract and harder to describe, a way to reliably connect or be grounded in the sense that life is meaningful and magical. I think it’s why I’ve gravitated towards things like astrology, tarot cards, yoga, and yes, running, too. 

I spoke with Casper, who is also the founder of the Sacred Design Lab and co-host of the award-winning podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, over the phone this month about why it’s so hard to find connection today, why running (and fitness more broadly) make great rituals, and how to make these habits truly meaningful. Ahead is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. 

How has the loss of religion and the sort of bigger changes to how we find community affected us?

There are a lot of things to say about that. Young people are less and less religious and that is very much aligned with the growing experience of social disconnection. Congregations, which were place-based, often had a nethnic or linguistic connection to a community. But it wasn’t just a place where people worshipped together, it was also a real center of social life and frankly also a source of political power and practical health. It was very normal for people to be welcomed to the neighborhood by a local congregation when they moved there, for example. [So without that] it’s just shifted how we understand how we're in relationship with our neighbors and our local community. And it’s not just religion I want to stress. There were many other routes social groups that were created mostly in the 19th century, all these different organizations that also had a real place-component to them. So that’s the first thing is that there’s been a real decline in local community organizations. 

But there’s also the fact that without a shared language for the things that are most important in our lives, the relationship to meaning, the experience of a connection to something bigger than ourselves, without a shared language and a story of shared references for that, it’s actually very difficult to communicate. So not only do we have this practical experience of just having fewer friends or relationships, this part also gives us a sense of a sort of cosmic loneliness. 

So why are rituals so important then? How do they help us fill that void? 

Rituals can be a real interruption of the kind of flow of stressful continuous time. Rituals demand our presence. A ritual is not something you can do while you listen to a podcast or while you’re doing something else. A good ritual is really about the quality of your intention, and what makes it powerful is it interrupts the background of busyness. 

Even if your ritual is not something you necessarily share with other people, it can still be a way to be connected. Whether it’s a community that performs a ritual at home and then talks about it together later, or whether it’s an online community of runners, for example, that has an opportunity to make meaning of it together in conversation. When there’s an opportunity to share those experiences and be part of a bigger whole that can be an opportunity to feel connected to something bigger. 

And even if it’s not mediated through relationships, let’s say it’s not about a community. A good ritual can still be a way for you to create a sense of belonging to the world and that’s really important, too. A lot of people have that sense in fleeting moments in nature for example. Those moments that are kind of like a remembrance, you know? Rituals are ways to remind ourselves that we belong to one another and the world. 

Since you mentioned it ;-) let’s talk about running. I definitely think of running as a ritual. Certainly, a lot of runners feel a near-religious connection to their training plans and their workout for the day. But it can also be more routine, more about grinding, and less about connection. And a lot of people listen to things while they run, for example. So what do you think: Can running be a spiritual practice? 

Yes, so I think one of the things that struck me when you were describing this newsletter is that you’re kind of inverting the traditional focus of running. It’s not about self-improvement. And I think one of the ways in which something becomes a spiritual practice is it becomes an offering. 

So it might sound silly, but the times that I have gone running, there have been moments where I’ve felt moved. Maybe it’s the runner’s high or whatever. But I’ve felt almost like “oh this run isn’t about me,” but it's more like a gift. There’s a latin phrase which means “For the Glory of God”—and it’s that feeling. So one of the ways it becomes a ritual is when you think of the practice as not just about you but as an offering to the world. 

There are all these ways you can layer a sense of meaning onto a practice. And it doesn’t mean you have to do it for the entire run. Maybe it’s just the first 5 minutes of a run, and then you can put in your headphones. But really a spiritual practice is something that helps you pay attention and helps you become more of the person you want to be in the world and helps you connect to something bigger than yourself. 

Are there things you can do to make your running more of a ritual? 

You can go into that triptych I mention in the book of intention, attention, and repetition.  So the first thing is, it’s essential to set an intention of who (or what) you’re running for today. Think about dedicating the run to someone. Or it can just be something you hold in your heart, a quote you found that you really love that you’re trying to meditate on while you run. You can have a mantra, or you might want to meditate on a virtue that you want to grow into: I want to be more generous, more compassionate, more patient. In theological language, you’re centering that desire. But it’s got to be something that’s good and not just about you. 

Then attention is basically being present. This is where you don’t want to have music or podcasts because it stops you from being in the moment you’re in. It might not be that you’re running without music the entire time, but maybe there’s one place that you stop and stretch and you really pay attention to the way the leaves are changing every day or the birds are singing. But in a ritual you have to be present. This is why in traditional worship experiences there is so much embodied design. There’s incense and beautiful stained glass windows that capture your attention. There’s music and movement. The senses are engaged and partly it’s just about helping you be embodied in the moment. 

And then repetition is maybe the obvious part. It’s coming back to a practice over and over again. Some of this is still about discipline. Not everything is going to be great every time you do your ritual, it’s not always easy to do. But that doesn’t mean it’s not working or that it’s not worth sticking with. 

Yeah, that’s running for sure. There’s times when it feels really bad. You don’t want to do it. But being dedicated to it is also what makes it wonderful and special. 

And one of the things that is beautiful about that is that we learn that nearly nothing is done alone. So whether it’s finding an accountability buddy or someone you can run with, no one can really do it every time and certainly no one can do it alone. Spiritual practices show us that we need each other. 

It’s interesting how fitness communities are really central to how a lot of people find connection today. I went to my first fitness class since the pandemic started recently, and I was reminded why I love working out in a group. Even when it’s people who I don't know. I didn’t even speak to anyone in the class, but just being in the room with them, I almost started to cry on the treadmill because I felt so happy. It’s weird how performing an activity even with strangers can have that effect? Why does that work so well?

Yeah, it's so powerful. It’s important to point out because so often when we talk about how do you connect with others, or how do you build a relationship we think about conversations and storytelling and that’s great. But something that’s often much more effective is doing something literally, like, moving our bodies in the same rhythm. Whether it's dancing or working out, whatever it is, things like that build something shared. Singing is one of my favorite ways. You can't all talk at the same time, but you can sing together. As you sing, you're breathing in a similar pattern. Your heart beat starts to go into sync. It becomes a physiological experience of being part of something bigger. 

That’s why people use movement in conflict resolution. They’ll get a group together to move for 20 minutes before they start to discuss the problem. People’s perception of who they are in relationship to each other changes when we move together, so it’s sort of an elemental experience that we’re wired for as human beings. 

One description I really liked when I first read your book was Mark Jordan’s definition of the spiritual as a place of “unpredictable encounter or illumination that cannot be controlled.” I wanted to bring this up in the context of running because that’s sort of why I do it. It is this thing that interrupts my life and kind of forces that illumination on me. I’m curious if you think that’s also part of it. Can the ritual also be just an important way to create these experiences? It’s like spiritual homework or something? 

I love that! Yes. There’s a couple of things about it. So yes, rituals are about creating intentional spaces for growth. But they’re also really spaces for receiving. It creates space in our day, literally, for us to hear something or to be reminded of something. This is often why people are like oh I have my best ideas in the shower because there’s no screen or anything to distract you. If you are always doing something else, then those moments don’t come because your brain is occupied. When we allow ourselves just to be still those things can arise in us that just can’t otherwise. 

This is especially true when we’re doing something embodied. Running is a perfect example. I think partly why so many people are finding what they need spiritually in fitness communities is because a lot of our cynicism is broken down by sheer exhaustion. Some of our resistance to these bigger questions—which are not always pleasant, to be sure. It’s not like everything you realize is a joy. Sometimes you really are encountering something that is difficult. But you need that space for those things to be received.