Becoming Whole
Relationships and sexuality are areas of life that can be beautiful or confusing, life-giving, or painful. Becoming Whole is a conversational podcast for men, women, and families seeking to draw nearer to Jesus as they navigate topics like sexual integrity, relational healing, spiritual health, and so much more.
Becoming Whole
Physical Disciplines Part 2
What if your recovery from unwanted sexual behaviors could be strengthened by simple physical practices you've overlooked? In this episode, we dive into often-forgotten physical disciplines that transform spiritual recovery. From breathing techniques that calm the nervous system during moments of temptation to the profound impact of proper hydration on decision-making, we explore how our bodies are designed to function optimally through specific practices.
Whether you're just beginning your recovery journey or have been walking it for years, these physical disciplines offer practical tools for creating the optimal conditions where spiritual transformation can flourish.
This is part 2 of this podcast, and we encourage you to listen to part 1 if you haven't already.
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Manna - Men seeking freedom from unwanted sexual behavior, temptation, and shame.
Oasis - Women seeking freedom from unwanted sexual behavior, temptation, and shame.
Compass - Wives seeking healing from betrayal and broken trust.
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Free Resources to help you on your journey to Becoming Whole
👉Men's Overcoming Lust & Temptation Devotional
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
Hey friends, welcome back to part two of talking about spiritual disciplines that help you in your physical recovery journey away from unwanted sexual behaviors, as James has been leading us through this conversation, really, we're looking at spiritual, quote unquote, these physical disciplines that are so matter of fact, so basic in some ways, but for many of us we keep them apart from our recovery journey. We think of them as something kind of for those who are working on physical fitness or something like that, and James is making a strong case for just the reality of how they really help us in our recovery journey, because they're how we're made to live. God has designed us. We're creatures. This week we're going to pick up and I'll leave it to James to kind of lead us forward here.
Speaker 2:So diet to kind of lead us forward here. So diet and, by the way, listeners, this is a all this is a little bit vulnerable for me, simply because these are all things that I've. They've kind of been hard one for me, if that makes sense, like I've had to figure out a lot of these over the last, however, many years. I wasn't really taught, you know, some of these things. My parents weren't taught some of these things. They grew up on TV, dinners and whatever. But it was actually this guy right in front of me, josh Glazer, who when I first worked at Regen right out of college, happened to be the same season I was just describing, with sleepless nights and learning about electrolytes. But I also was witnessing this guy eat a salad for most of his lunches. And I was like I was in the season, josh, where I barely knew how to cook and I was buying, like the marketed for men, like frozen meals I think they were called devour and so you know I'd be eating like the Mac and cheese for dinner and but there's, I actually began to learn in this time. I actually had a friend who has gone through regen Sadly he's passed away from a climbing accident. He taught me that he had learned from his mom to have a a green veggie every night and a colorful slash white veggie every single night, and a protein and a carb. And I just remember this is probably not you know, he's not a scientist, like he's not doing research on the food pyramid but like this was a new framework for me that God's actually designed my body to eat healthy. And so back to the salads for lunch. I still do this to this day. I have a protein on a bed of lettuce. I do not enjoy it. This is not like my wife can whip up these like incredible salads, like the oil, the vinegar, the salt, the whatever. I almost never enjoy it, and part of it is when I'm whipping it up myself. It's, yeah, it's just not as pretty. But I'll say this One of my biggest triggers for sexual sin historically was exhaustion, and I would sleep plenty.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm probably one of the few people who went on the opposite extreme of oversleeping. There's a pattern here, josh. But I'll say this when I would eat almost always simple carbs, I'd get home from high school and have a Hot Pocket. I don't know if anyone remembers those. They might not even exist. They might be illegal at this point, I have no idea, but I would have a Hot Pocket and then, as the night went on, my energy was so low. Because what I'm doing is I'm eating stuff that's so processed and it's simple carbs, it's stuff that basically turns into sugar in my body and is eaten up real quick.
Speaker 2:What I didn't realize was if I would change this little element, if I would resist the cookies for the afternoon snack, if I would have the salad for lunch, if I would not overdo simple carbs, I would actually have more of a steady energy. Why is this important One? It means I'm less triggered, especially like I remember in college I'd be so triggered when I had an essay due. I was so tired eating my you know Texas, what is it? The like cinnamon buns from a vending machine. You know like? Unsurprisingly, my brain has no creative energy.
Speaker 2:But actually energy is a really important thing for serving the Lord, for loving people. Well, have you ever tried to love someone? Well, when you just had um candy and now you're having a sugar crash. I don't know about you, josh, but I cannot easily love people. Well, again, we are limited. We there's a design to our bodies. We're made to thrive on a balanced diet. And so, for those who are listening, consider this Could your diet actually be impacting your recovery journey?
Speaker 2:Could your diet be impacting your ability to handle hard things? Well, I just want to throw that out there. It has been for me. I love bread. I grew up in New Jersey with a half Italian mother. All of New Jersey's key foods are bread-based Pizza, bagels, sandwiches. I love bread, and yet I've had to learn okay, how do I limit this, how do I order what I eat? Because if you eat complex carbs and proteins before you have a dessert, a simple carb you actually break down the simple carb in a way that makes you less exhausted. I learned that from my friend, dr Luke. Shout out to Luke, but I'm just trying to propose a vision here that could what you're eating actually be impacting your struggles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am so compelled by this on many levels and just based on my own, on my my own history, like I am up and down over the years with how well I do with what I eat, but um and and I can't say that I I made peace with how to eat. Well, I I tend to like binge and purge, like I don't mean in a bulimic way, but like um, with all grace to those who who do struggle in that way, but when I'm eating well, I typically it helps me. You know, eating well begets eating well. Eating poorly begets eating poorly. And along with that I have found, certainly, that eating well begets more discipline in other areas.
Speaker 1:Eating poorly begets other problematic behaviors, whether it's media, pornography or sleeping too much or dropping other disciplines. So I believe what you're saying and for me, I think some of that, the crash or the brain fog that happens with poor eating does set me up, at minimum, to be less vigilant when it comes to what I'm paying attention to, what else I'm doing. Like I just don't think as clearly when I'm not eating in a healthy way, when I'm eating too many carbs, when I'm eating too much sugar, my brain is not as clear and I don't make decisions that are as wise about anything.
Speaker 2:Fred, this is not a legalism. This is again a recognizing the way God has designed us. So pay attention. Maybe you've never been taught this. Pay attention Next time you have a sandwich for lunch. Not the end of the world.
Speaker 2:Some people don't seem to be as bothered as someone like me, but just notice, like, are you tired in an hour or two? And, by the way, this is a great plug to like get your annual physical. I mean, one of the things that so many people in recovery don't do is actually do basic care, like that, your twice a year dental, your annual physical, and talk to your doctor I mean, they're the expert on this stuff Like, hey, I'm eating this way. If I were to change that like could, could I have more energy? Could I thrive a little bit more? Could I, you know, function in a healthier way? And again, could I have more room for God? Could I have more room to love my spouse, my kids? Would I rely less on something like pornography to prop me up if I was doing what God designed us to do, which is eat healthier? Okay, we got to keep moving. Yeah, so much stuff. We'll go briefly with sleep.
Speaker 2:Sleep is so important for mental health, and I just want to say how many of our struggles happen when we stay up past when it's good for us.
Speaker 2:I just spoke with a client recently about developing a healthy bedtime routine because for him, almost exclusively, he would give in as he's exhausted at like midnight or whatever, and so what we talked about and developed was what could it look like to have a routine that involves, you know, perhaps a shower, reflection, maybe journaling, scripture, prayer, worship, whatever it looks like for you?
Speaker 2:For me, I love getting ready way before I go to sleep, like an hour, hour and a half before I'm actually trying to go to sleep. Get ready, you know, brush my teeth and stuff, and then I spend time reading scripture. It's such a great way for me to end my day. My wife and I pray together when she joins me in bed, and some of that kind of stuff actually can help your sleep and it can be a huge asset to your recovery. I'm going to quote this client actually he's allowing me to quote him, I'm not going to say his name, but he had heard this quote that winning the day begins with winning the night. So if you want to have that great morning time walk with God or quiet time, or whatever ways you want to start your day. It starts with actually caring for your evening as well as you can.
Speaker 1:That's so good. Yeah, I remember hearing a pastor I can't remember his name is Tommy Nelson, pastor Tommy Nelson at a Denton Bible church in Texas when I was in college I don't know if he's still around or not, but who said to? He was saying he was talking to a room full of a hundred or a few hundred college students said look, nothing, nothing worthwhile happens after 10 PM. I was like wait, what nothing worthwhile happens after 10 pm? And I was like wait, what? Like? We don't, we don't even start our evening until 10 pm. But his point was, I think, aligned with what you're saying.
Speaker 1:Interestingly, one of the great revolutions and I use great in quotes of the history of the world was the invention of the light bulb, which radically changed our sleep habits and the way that we would kind of understand the rhythms that we needed in life before the light bulb. And, um, uh, people would use candles, but and, and and. By the way, I don't know if you've experienced this, but when the power goes out in my house and we have candles on, uh, when it starts to get dark, what it does to our kind of our capacity to be awake and our own sense of winding down, yes, changes um, light bulbs, and then that's not even to mention the, the glow of our screens, which is a very different kind of light that actually, um, stirs us up, kind of wakes the brain up. It's very, very, very difficult to like wind down, to go to sleep immediately after being on your screen, even if it's reading news. Very difficult to like wind down, to go to sleep immediately after being on your screen, even if it's reading news.
Speaker 1:Now, my wife can do that. I cannot, like I need at least a good 30 minutes away from any kind of screen in order to fall asleep. Um, and so for those of you who wrestle with unwanted behavior of pornography and you're like, yes, scrolling online, you're looking at stuff, you're dabbling stuff, and then you try to go to sleep and you find yourself your mind racing, that's just evidence to what I think you're saying, james, that we're wired for sleep. We don't want to be doing things right before we go to bed.
Speaker 2:That will keep us up use it to go to sleep. But if you could care for yourself, effectively put down the lights. I do the same thing, josh, if I I kind of have. We have a smart one smart light bulb in our house and it dims between nine and 10 when I'm off and reading in bed. And again well, not again. We don't actually need external melatonin because as the light goes down our brain develops melatonin, which is the chemical, one of the chemicals, that helps you sleep. So this is such a thing that our generation, like our world, doesn't always realize that an hour off the screens, or half an hour at least, putting down the lights, putting on a candle even, and just letting your your eyes adjust to a candle like these, actually help you get better sleep and will make it less tempting to like use porn to go to sleep.
Speaker 1:We don't recommend going to sleep with a candle lit, just by the way. Yeah, that's. That's really good, james, I like that. And again I want to kind of reframe and go back to some of the themes you've brought up over and over again. Like this is a humble submission to the reality that you're a created being who has need.
Speaker 2:And what a humbling need. Needing like seven to nine hours of sleep, Like that's insanely humbling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and recognize also the theology of the body in that need that, for whatever reason and this is worth meditating on the creator of the universe has created human beings actually all living breathing creatures but human beings to need to sleep every night and sleep is a profound mystery that we actually we're still living, we're breathing, our heart is working, our lungs are working, our brain is working, our brain is processing stuff while we are unconscious and there really is a submission that takes place there. We are surrendering our lives and ourselves over to I mean, if we paid enough attention to it, we have to submit ourselves, humble ourselves and be submitting our lives over to the Lord in that time, because we can't take care of ourselves while we're sleeping. One of my favorite passages in Zephaniah three how the lord sings over us, um, even while we is that I might be mixing up passages there that one's not mentioning sleep, but he does sing over us and that's okay so it's a, it's a psalm.
Speaker 2:I'm speaking, yeah, yeah, um you help me lie down and sleep, something like yeah, he gives sleep to which I've wrestled with josh because I've again had a huge journey with sleep.
Speaker 2:But I think one of the things we're inviting you into friends is that we, the modern world, is not wiring us for good sleep. Yeah, uh, alcohol, you know, obviously everyone has different opinions or relationships with alcohol, but if we dehydrate ourselves with alcohol and have, you know, lack the self-control there, that actually is also not gonna just affect our hydration and our mental acuity, it affects our sleep. So all these things are things we can kind of tweak a little bit and, by the way, going to bed and waking up at the same time can be one of the most helpful things to get your body into a healthy routine of getting tired when it's time, to get your body into a healthy routine of getting tired when, when it's time to get tired and having energy right when it's time to wake up. When I've been able to keep that pretty consistent, I wake up more refreshed than, you know, groggy, a lot of the time, okay, and I'm learning so much, james, my wife does that she hops out of bed.
Speaker 1:I mean, just hops right out, yeah, you need to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because she's, yeah, sleeping in a couple days a week and can again hard, hard won wisdom not that I always live this out, but can actually make you more tired to wake up. Okay. Last discipline is exercise. I don't have a stat on how long you can live without exercise again, but exercise was assumed in Jesus's day. Yeah, exercise was assumed in Jesus's day.
Speaker 2:Why You're walking almost everywhere. You're being social with other people, you're often working in a field you might be traveling with your caravan of goods to sell. Exercise was built in and it was low impact exercise like walking or farming although you know farming is very difficult, but gardening would be maybe for many of our listeners, a more realistic equivalent and these things. According to different people I've spoken with, like my psychiatrist and others, exercising 30 minutes a day, especially with cardio or aerobic exercise, has the same impact on the body and brain as an antidepressant. So if you're dealing a lot with depression or mental health challenges, is it possible that God could be inviting you to healthy amounts of exercise? This is such a shift, josh You've talked about this even at the beginning of this podcast that we can so often do this for looks or for you know, kind of wanting to sculpt our body in a way that'll make us more loved or lovable. This is not what we're talking about here. We're challenging you instead to recognize that our bodies thrive with a healthy amount of exercise, and I remember this always inspired me when you'd speak to us as men. What could it look like to have our bodies in a certain kind of shape so that we could serve more physically, so that we could serve in ways where we've got more stamina, where we could run around with our kids or hold a child who's crying? Those kinds of things are actually really good uses of a healthy, strong body.
Speaker 2:One other thing I'll throw into this is exercise is what's called earned dopamine. This means that you are entering into suffering, depending on how much you do or don't enjoy exercise, but you're challenging your body, you're stressing your body for, let's just say, 30 minutes or an hour, and afterward you experienced dopamine. Now, so many of us have come to see dopamine as like an enemy, like, okay, I'm just looking for a dopamine hit on my screen, or with porn or masturbation. But actually God designed us to earn dopamine Like, in other words, when we do something hard that ends up being satisfying. That's how dopamine was meant to be released.
Speaker 2:Sexual intimacy between a husband and wife is so different than porn because you're actually earning sexual, perhaps climax through all the work of intimacy you're doing. This goes with food, like I said eating, you know vegetables, eating healthy. All these things are ways we say you're doing something hard and then on the other side, there's goodness as opposed to pornography. Or you know, candy or whatever. I mean not completely knocking candy, but like. What you're doing is you're saying give me the dopamine first and then you crash afterward. So it's kind of again like a little icon of like for the joy set before him Jesus took on the cross. When we are exercising, that could be a slight little icon of like. I'm challenging myself, I'm suffering in a small way and on the other side I'm going to feel way better and have energy and strength again to love as God loves.
Speaker 1:So good, james. So I'm thinking about the person who's dealing with unwanted sexual behaviors as a pattern, and I'm thinking about these five disciplines, physical disciplines you've just described to us. Some will listen to you might be like hey, are you saying I do these in the moment of temptation? Are you saying that these will help me reduce temptation or be able to resist temptation more? Some all of the above Like what would you say to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that at least two of these feel really helpful in the moment of temptation, at least in my own journey. One would be the breathing like regulate through breathing. You can do this in one to five minutes. Go to the bathroom if you're with people Like just you know, excuse yourself for a second, take some deep breaths, whatever it looks like, and then exercise If you're feeling your body is just like oh, I just want like sex or connection or something physical exercise can actually meet some of those things. So in the moment those can be awesome.
Speaker 2:But all five of these, especially the last four hydration, diet, sleep and exercise are so helpful for kind of preventative measures. So, leading up to like, if I'm living with the grain of how God's designed me, recognizing my need for these five categories of health, that's going to mean maybe less temptation. Or when there is temptation, I've got the energy to call a brother or sister and get that support. Or even again, bringing it back to those suffering from betrayal trauma, I've got more of the strength I need to then handle the weight of this trauma. Because if we're eating terribly and not drinking enough and not exercising, how much harder is it to navigate something that's already really hard, so I think these can be really helpful preventative measures.
Speaker 1:I love that. I mean, it's kind of the. In what ways can I cultivate a healthy lifestyle as opposed to a dependent lifestyle? Healthy lifestyle as opposed to a dependent lifestyle? Lifestyle I don't mean in the dependent lifestyle, like where I'm dependent on porn, when I'm dependent on the, the you know, my caffeine fix, whatever. Instead, I want to create. I want to make my body as optimally healthy, healthy as possible, so I can be healthy and walk healthy with whatever's coming my way.
Speaker 1:James, what do you say to the person and I know we got to wrap here in a minute but what do you say to the person who says, look, this is great, but I've just never done these kinds of things, like you know. Yeah, like you said, I never learned that Like right now I'm like I'm really out of shape. Like you said, I never learned that Like right now I'm like I'm really out of shape, I've got bad knees, I can't do that and, quite frankly, like the recovery work I'm doing is already like just so heavy lifting that like this just sounds like an extra burden, like what kind of counsel would you have to help?
Speaker 2:Great question. One of the ways I often encourage disciplines to be practiced, especially at first, is for the joy set before you. So if I commit to exercising five days a week and I hate every little bit of it, good luck. Good luck getting that habit down, right. But if I've what I've come to realize I'll share from my own experience. I don't love running. Some people love running, my sister loves running. I don't love running.
Speaker 2:I've come to actually like, maybe slightly like weightlifting. I mean, some days it's harder than others, but I don't like dread it. In other words, and I feel the benefits and I'll weightlift and then I'll do some aerobic exercise. At the end that's not running, it's, it's adjacent to running, like a stair stepper or a bike or whatever. Um, but but I enjoy it enough and the benefit feels so good, like noticeable, that I can again earn dopamine, like there's joy set before me by doing this. And so I'd say like, taste and see. You know, jesus says taste and see that the Lord is good.
Speaker 2:And friends, if you try out some of these things and it's like I'm just I can't seem to get this, it's okay, just like. Again, this is not a legalism, but notice, like, okay, I drank a little more water today and I actually felt a little bit more energy, like you know. My body just felt a little bit more alive like, or I slept really well and wow. So part of what we're inviting you to friends is reflect, like notice. What you've been doing is maybe, if you're struggling with sexual sin, you might actually be living a very unreflective life, as in you don't even know what's going on, things are just hard and you just give in. But what we're saying is, try some things out that actually might bring you a lot of good and joy and notice and you might actually want that healthy pleasure like we often talk at regen.
Speaker 2:I learned this from you, josh of like the beauty of a sunset can be so breathtaking. We've talked about this in other podcasts, like finding beauty, that it's a little harder. You got to time the sunset, you got to be in the right position, whatever, but the beauty payoff is more significant and I'd argue similar to that. Healthy foods literally healthy foods are way better than the metaphorical fast food of pornography. Literally healthy sleep. You're going to feel more refreshed than what masturbation could ever give you good, healthy amounts of exercise that you actually enjoy at least a little bit. You're going to feel a lot different than you're going to feel more satisfied, actually, than the hookup could ever really make you, because these are all God ordained, god designed things for us.
Speaker 1:So good. I wonder if listeners would say, okay, look at your calendar today and then look out four weeks and just say which one of these, or in what small way with each five of these, do you want to do something different in these next four weeks, just to try it and do it imperfectly, you know, like, yeah, I was going to do it every day and I forgot to do it one day. Okay, All right, so the next week, you know? Um, but just to try to build some more of these in, I like I'm listening, going like a water sleep I wanna introduce and just to pay attention to how does that change how my day goes. And it also strikes me how these are all interdependent, Like the more you do one, the more you're equipped to do the other. So, which I think just speaks to the complexity and beauty that we really are created beings designed to work with integrity, these different parts of our lives working integrously, versus the you know, I'm just going to take my brain and go offline for a little bit which is disintegration.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think you've introduced some really good stuff, James.
Speaker 2:I'll say this too that I know a former missionary and my church has a lot of connections with missionaries and she said that all the missionaries are encouraged and and these are missionaries often sent to front lines. My movement loves sending people to like the places. No one wants to go right, but a lot of them are encouraged to exercise. Why? Because the mission field is so stressful and if you are, you know you don't have the community that you're used to and you might be in your house a lot just praying, you know, because the evangelistic opportunities aren't opening up. So exercise is actually encouraged for our missionaries who are completely sold out for Jesus. This is not mutually exclusive. You don't need to either be sold out to Jesus or have relatively healthy disciplines in these areas. And here's why, here's part of why at least 1 Peter 2.24, he himself, jesus himself, bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have healed. Jesus brought his body to bear. He lived out hunger and thirst and abuse and sleepless nights, and he experienced all the exceptions to these things, and he probably also you know more than any of us knew how to do these, the most perfect right, like the right kind of meal, the right kind of sleep, but out of knowing the right way, he could make those exceptions of staying up all night to love people through prayer, of choosing to fast, and ultimately he bore his sins in his body. He came with his physical body and bore our sins in his body. And again, friends, how much might these things help us to live in righteousness? These are not our righteousness. If you sleep seven to nine hours every night, really well, it doesn't make you a good or righteous person. It's just how much might it aid in the pursuit of love? And you are loved even when you don't do these things perfectly. You are loved when you don't do these things perfectly, and if you've never done any of them, you're still loved. This is not about earning God's love, but let the love of God compel you to love your body. Let the love of God compel you to love your body, not not in the worldly way of like I need a manicure every day, you know whatever, but like, oh, how the love of God, to love your body in ways that God's designed it and therefore to be able to love the bodies of others as you love your own body, the bodies of others as you love your own body. I want to mention just two things real quick as we close. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's an honor to walk with you.
Speaker 2:But before we sign off, we do have our upcoming retreats. This fall we have our women's and our men's retreats Sacred by Design for Women and the Awakened Retreat for Men. Awakened Retreat two nights this year, october 3rd through 5th. Unforgettable weekend of experiencing being known and named through brotherhood, the Father's heart and embodied healing. So, whether you're just starting out on your recovery journey or you've been walking this path for years, this retreat's for you.
Speaker 2:Josh and I plan to be there, aaron and we'll have a couple other men staffing this, but it's very limited to only 29 men. Similarly, for the women, this is going to be an overnight sacred by design retreat, november 7th and 8th unique space for women to slow down, connect deeply with God, rediscover the beauty of who they are, beyond shame, beyond striving weekend full of grace, truth and restoration. So again, space is limited, extremely limited at both sacred by design, I think, 15 person limit, uh, wake and retreat 29. Um, but if you want to look into any of the details. Uh, check out the show notes below. So until next time, keep pressing into truth, keep walking in grace and keep becoming whole.
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