Working out, working within : the Tao of inner fitness through sports and exercise

Zen meets "The Zone" in this guide to combining physical fitness with spiritual awakening. During physical training, we can experience something deeper than just the burn of working out. We can achieve spiritual awareness and feel what it's like to be alive and healthy. Working Out, Working Within offers readers techniques and suggestions to avoid fixating on winning the game, scoring the goal, or building the perfect body. Our workouts become tools for personal transcendence as we get to know ourselves, test our limits, gather inner strength, and build physical vitality. We can learn how to find harmony between body, mind, and spirit using breath watching, a simple Tao technique to encourage calming and an awareness of our bodies, and to discover our "Tao minds"; visual recording, through which we imagine our bodies in motion, employing all of the senses in our visualization; affirmation reciting, a way to confirm our thoughts by repeating them aloud; and valuable ancient Tao wisdom and strategies to synchronize body and soul. Chungliang Al Huang is the founder and president of the Living Tao Foundation and director of the Lan Ting Institute in China.