Article
Creed
Sport
6 min read

Sweating the soul

A mantra-laden spin class generated more than sweat for Alianore Smith, it raised philosophical questions too.

Alianore  is a theologian, communicator and author. She works for a global charity based in London.

A spin class rider smiles and gives the thumbs up sign in front of other riders.
SoulCycle.

Last year, I learnt an important lesson: cycling and spin classes are not the same thing. 

Of course, they both take place on bikes – one moving, one stationary. And they are both exercise. But the similarities stop there. 

Let me explain. 

I’m a cyclist – and a smug one at that. My cycle commute to work, three times a week, comes to a round trip total of about 15 miles.  

So, when I was invited last summer to take part in a SoulCycle class in aid of a charity I care deeply about, I jumped at the chance. How hard could it be? I can ride a bike. My cardio-vascular fitness is above average. It’ll be an easy way to raise awareness of the charity, and maybe have some fun in the process. 

How wrong I was. 

My first clue that a SoulCycle class wouldn’t be like my normal commute was found on my visit to its website. The About Us page informed me that at a SoulCycle class – a ‘sanctuary’ – ‘tears will be shed’ and ‘breakthroughs happen’. The only time I ever cried whilst commuting was when I got my second puncture in a week, three miles from home, in the January rain. And, quite frankly, when you’re dodging taxis and swerving around pedestrians, breakthrough feels a long way off. 

And so, I headed off to my SoulCycle class, equipped with my padded shorts and my charity-branded cycling jersey. I arrived, hired my shoes, and headed into the changing rooms. And it was there that I was greeted by the SOUL Etiquette sign: 

SOUL Etiquette ‘To preserve soul sanctuary, we have a few simple requests’ 

  1. No text & chat 
    No cell phones or communication devices in the studio. If you are a doctor or your child is sick, kindly leave your phone with the front desk and we will get you if there is an emergency 

  1. Skip the cross talk 
    Talking during class is a major distraction for the spiritual folks around you 

  1. Laundry 
    We ride close together so we can feel each others’ energy. That being said, your neighbour does not want to feed off your odor. 

  1. Kindness is cool 
    Respect the rider on your left and your right. Treat the front desk the way you would like them to treat you. 

  1. The pack 
    There is a direct correlation between your energy and your neighbour’s ride. If you want to do your own thing, please don’t ride in the front row. 

I was fascinated. What lay ahead of me? 

Well, let me tell you: nothing could have prepared me for the class I took. 

A dark room, filled with mirrors, motivational quotes and – for some reason – grapefruit scented candles. About 30 stationary bikes, lined up in three rows. An instructor whose enthusiasm knew no bounds.  

I took a bike at the back.  

Within 10 minutes, I was sweatier than I have ever been, and questioning all my life choices up until that moment. Within 15 minutes, I had removed my charity-branded cycling jersey and drunk half of my bottle of water. There was still 30 minutes to go. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. 

And yet by the end, I was buzzing. Whether it was the endorphins, the sense of community, or the relentless cheerleading of the instructor, I wanted more. It was… remarkable. I very nearly signed up for another class there and then. 

From the signs in the changing rooms to the instructors’ soundbites, I was continually told what I could achieve if I tried. 

The instructor – a bouncy brunette whose name I can’t remember – led the class with an exuberance that I am yet to see anywhere else. At one point, she got off her bike and danced up and down the aisle in front of the class. Quietly rasping for air at the back, I had no idea how she had the energy to speak whilst pedaling, let alone dance. 

The thing that I found most fascinating about my SoulCycle class, though, was the ‘spiritual’ aspect. From the signs in the changing rooms to the instructors’ soundbites, I was continually told what I could achieve if I tried. That the ability to breakthrough my problems, to succeed, to achieve my dreams, was all held within me – I just needed to dig a little deeper, peddle a little harder, put my mind to it. 

At one point, the instructor made us repeat after her: ‘I can do all things…’ it was there that she paused. As someone who grew up in the church, learning memory verses of Scripture week after week, I immediately wanted to yell ‘through Christ who strengthens me!’, but instead was encouraged to complete the sentence with something (I can’t remember exactly what) about my own abilities and force of will. 

The whole class was deeply motivating. I left feeling like, quite frankly, I could achieve anything.  

Thing is, though, I’m an able-bodied, middle class, professional, white woman. I come from a two-parent family, and I’m happily married to a non-abusive partner. I have a stable income. Although some of these things are because of the work that I’ve done or choices that I’ve made, many of them are an accident of birth. The odds are – for the most part – stacked in my favour. The very fact that I would have been able to afford to attend this class if I’d wanted to (new riders pay £16 for their first class, and £26 per class from then on) shows a level of privilege that was seemingly completely overlooked.  

When things are working in your favour, it’s easy to assume that it’s because you’re the one doing something right. That was the philosophy that was shouted in catch phrases from the front – you can do it, just try a little harder.  

Breakthrough is on the other side of this spin class. Mind over matter. That’s the message of SoulCycle. 

But every life philosophy, every ‘spiritual experience’, has a flip side to it. 

But the problem with that philosophy, of course, is its flip side: if things go wrong – if you’re in an accident, if you get made redundant, if you lose your house or your health fails you – then, logic dictates, it must be that you’ve done something wrong.  

If you can no longer afford a SoulCycle class, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough, or you didn’t peddle fast enough, or you didn’t put your mind to it. 

Of course, this was never said during the class – it was far too positive for that. But every life philosophy, every ‘spiritual experience’, has a flip side to it. If everything happens for a reason, then sudden seemingly random acts of cruelty – cancer, the death of children, natural disasters – must be there to teach us something. If we can control the good things in our lives – the promotions, the achievements, the relationships – then if stuff goes wrong then it must be our fault as well. 

Is that really true? 

Human beings are relentlessly fickle. And we have a deep and overwhelming desire to think that we’re in control, that life is in our hands. And it’s comforting – when things are going well. But what when they aren’t? 

In her book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved, professor of the history of Christianity and Stage 4 cancer patient Kate Bowler writes that ‘control is a drug, and we’re all hooked’.  

I can see how SoulCycle could get addictive. In fact, the day I was there, someone was celebrating their 750th ride at SoulCycle London. The endorphins, the encouragement, the relentless pursuit of ‘breakthrough’ and ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ – it’s intoxicating.  

When you grow up in the church, you learn a different way of existing. It’s not that you can do all things through yourself, but – as aforementioned – through Christ who strengthens you. The idea of relying on something outside of yourself, something all-powerful, all-loving, is one of the ideas at the heart of Christianity. It’s less of an emotional crutch, and more of a ‘catch-all’ reality for those of us who have realised that we’re not as in control as we once thought, or as we would like to be. 

 

Column
Creed
Monsters
5 min read

The short road from normality to evil

The Liverpool’s parade ramming reveals society’s watermark
Aerial view of a yellow-jacketed police forming a cordon within a crowd.
Aftermath of the Liverpool parade incident.
ITN.

Sometimes football is interrupted by real life, and you remember how trivial it ultimately is.  

On 26 May, the city of Liverpool was gearing up to do what it does best: celebrating. Specifically, celebrating the parade for Liverpool’s lifting of the Premier League trophy the day before. I’ve written before about the day it was confirmed that Liverpool would win the league. The joy, the relief, the tears; the community of it all. Cody Gakpo with his top off.  

Here the whole city would be involved, and many more besides who had travelled just to be there. Not even torrential rain can dampen scouse joie de vivre. The city alive in red, joined in adulation of its team as the Premier League Champions’ bus paraded across the city. What a day. 

And then, an interruption. Reports begin to emerge that someone had driven a car into people on the parade route. You fear the worst. And then it’s confirmed, and you fear even more.  

Suddenly the parade feels trivial; football feels trivial. You’re just waiting for news that everyone is okay. 109 people are injured and it’s a miracle that no-one is killed, although you imagine many more will live with the trauma of the day for years to come. 

The immediate and (quite literally) uninformed commentary and misinformation spread by many on the far right was as predictable as it was racist. The same people seemed genuinely disappointed when the perpetrator turned out to be, not an immigrant or an asylum seeker driven by ‘non-British’ values, but a 53-year-old white British man from the city. As ever, the far right demonstrating once again that the first reaction is very rarely the right reaction. 

We still don’t know the full details of what happened and why, but the man’s neighbours described him as “normal” and expressed their surprise at him being caught up in something like this.  

I was surprised by how surprised everyone was at this. 

The Christian Bible is full – full – of ‘normal’ people committing abnormally evil acts. David, Israel’s most beloved and highly praised king, rapes a woman called Bathsheba resulting in her getting pregnant. He then tries to convince the woman’s husband to sleep with her so people will think the baby is his. He doesn’t, so David has him killed. Israel’s most beloved and highly praised king. 

David may be one of the starkest examples from the Christian Bible, but he’s certainly not the only instance of a normal, or even seemingly ‘good’ person performing unspeakable acts of violence and evil. Time would fail me if I tried to recount them all here.  

People are fundamentally good. I will die on this hill. People are fundamentally good. But the road from normality to evil is shorter than we often care to admit. 

The Slovenian philosopher and professional eccentric Slavoj Žižek tells a joke in his helpful little book Violence. Workers are suspected of stealing from a factory and so have their wheelbarrows checked every day at their shift’s end. Only when it’s too late do the factory owners realise they’re stealing wheelbarrows.  

We have so many frameworks and watermarks for identifying what constitutes ‘violence’ in society. And yet Žižek’s point is that these frameworks and watermarks are themselves upheld by violence. There’s violence inherent in the system.  

This is one of the central points in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, too. In one memorable scene, the Joker is talking to Harvey Dent while strapped to a hospital bed. He says:  

“Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan’, even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, no one panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan.’ But when I say that one little old Mayor will die? Well then everyone loses their minds!” 

But the Joker’s point is that none of this is normal. Not really. 

This is the true crime of the world we live in today, that it has convinced us of the normality of evil while undermining the normality of loving one another. 

But they are all symptoms of the same sickness. The repulsion we feel towards the ‘normalcy’ of the driver at the Liverpool parade is the repulsion we ought to feel towards any act of violence, be it the violent persecution of immigrants and asylum seekers, the enforced annexation of sovereign territories, or the attempted genocide of unwanted people groups (to conjure up some obviously hypothetical situations …). 

To be surprised at the violence seen in Liverpool on 26 May at the hands of a ‘normal’ man is to miss the fact that society’s very norms and standards are, themselves, deeply violent. Fashion business built on modern slavery and child labour; banking corporations paying their bosses obscene bonus wrung from the pockets of people barely able to make ends meet; at least 354,000 people homeless in England alone by the end of 2024.  

All these things are acts of violence. All these things are normal. They are the norms and standards against which we look for violence in our world today. But they themselves are deeply violent evils. They are the violence inherent in the system. They are the workers’ wheelbarrows. They are the Joker’s truckload of soldiers.  

We live in a society that functions precisely because of deeply unjust and violent systems and structures. The violence is necessary for the functioning of the system. 

But while Liverpool’s Champions League parade demonstrates this, it also shows us the correct response to the normality of evil: love. 

In the aftermath of the incident, people took to social media to offer beds for the night, lifts home, food, drink. Anything and everything that anyone might need. And do you know what the most remarkable thing about this was? It was all so … normal.  

Of course this is what you do in situations like this. You love, and you care, and then you love, and then you care. What else is there to do? It’s the most normal things in the world. People are fundamentally good. I will die on this hill.  

And this is the true crime of the world we live in today, that it has convinced us of the normality of evil while undermining the normality of loving one another. In such a world, to love one another, to care deeply and meaningfully for those around, is nothing short of an act of resistance to the violent established order.  

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