Last May I was introduced to Andrew Cohens magazine “What is enlightenment“. In that issue they had a piece about Shawn Phillips and spiritual bodybuilding – ‘Igniting the flame of intensity‘ – and after gazing in amazement over the pictures of Shawn Phillips I read the article over two times. In some weird and good way the article had totally shifted my view on working out and lifting weights! Finally I had stumbled into someone in fitness who wasn’t as egocentric and had much to offer in another perspective than I had previously encountered in my life in fitness circles – it just felt great to know, that somebody had done so much work and I wasn’t alone with my thoughts about doing it for more than just the physical or egocentric perspective…

Later that same year around Christmas time I bought a 4 piece DVD set about “The body for Life Challenge” and yet again stumbled into mr. Philips, whome I now recognized as mr. Bill “Body for Life” Phillips brother – the more I learned the more interesting he became to me!

Well, as you may already know I recently bought the Integral Institute ‘Integral Life Practice’ set – well it happens to be, that when I inserted the disk relating to your three bodies (Gross, Subtle and Casual), Shawn Phillips is actually the developer of ‘gold star’ module practice ‘F.I.T.’ or ‘Focus Intensity Training’ which is embraced and endorsed by Integral Life Practice. And not only did he invent it he’s actually also been interviewed for the Integral Naked website several times during this year and is a key component in developing integral physical exercices.

Here’s an excerpt  -

“For over 20 years Shawn Phillips has brought innovation and excellence to his work as a fitness expert, business entrepreneur, and author. Brother of Bill Phillips, author of the bestselling Body-for-LIFE, Shawn is pioneering a new and comprehensive path to Full Strength living through books, nutritional products, and now, Focused Intensity Training a gold-star body-module practice in Integral Life Practice.

Designed to provide a more integral approach to physical training, one of the unique aspects of FIT is its conscious engagement of gross, subtle, and causal bodies. Weight training is often considered a strictly physical practice (gross body), but Shawn explains how the intentional generation of felt energies (subtle body), and feeling to infinity (causal body) can radically increase the effectiveness of something as apparently simple as picking up a weight and then putting it down.’

There you have it, if you’re into more than just working out or lifting you should definitely check him, his website & his blog.