Free & Fit Challenge 2018 – Spiritual Formation in NYC and London by Tim Cheux

Silence in the city. A theme few may experience when living in urban settings such as London or New York City. City dwellers seek solitude to get away from all the loud noise, bright lights and high pace lifestyle. Mindfulness, Yoga, Pilates, Meditation and various techniques are helping to provide opportunities for peace. Yet, still their remains a sense of lost time and a need to get back to the office immediately with short 30 or 45 minute classes challenging workers to believe they have lost time and should be working from their desk or meeting their next client. What if you could find peace whilst in the midst of your daily routine? Perhaps exercising and meditating whilst getting to your next location, or sitting at your desk and working through a light exercise routine or even on the way to the train in the morning practicing memory techniques to re-establish and reconnect you to your goals and aspirations. Spiritual formation is a concept practised historically within religious settings, such as lighting a candle for prayer, Georgian chanting or reciting liturgical words in communion. Yet, today new methods can be used to find peace in spiritual formation whilst in a still, active or everyday human state. The Free and Fit challenge has been written to develop spiritual formation in the midst of daily routine, city life and urban challenges. Using scripture to provide participants with wisdom from the Bible, no matter what your religious background or even if you have no rleigious background the use of scripture can challenge and inform our everyday lives with historical and life transforming wisdom. Rishi one of our regular attenders at Free & Fit in New York City reflects “It’s entirely our own thinking and responsibility to feel happy, love ourselves and be at peace because if you don’t have any of those things in your personal inventory how are you going to offer it to another?” Free and Fit in New York City is a small community of like minded people who meet, work through life’s issues and seek to develop independent practices of spiritual formation. The group meets weekly on a Tuesday for group exercise classes and in one to one sessions to build friendships and improve physical, mental, social and spiritual well being. Lead by myself Tim Cheux we seek to implement spiritual formation into our lives through the practice of sport and scripture. Free and Fit London meet once a month and one to one in community playing squash, tennis and hanging out together in social setting such as playing table tennis, going to the movies, having dinner and dancing! Led by our events co-ordinator Nav Merhgan Free and Fit London follows a similar program to Free and Fit. Nav explains the importance of spiritual formation and being a member of the group “in order to gain freedom from the challenges we face, we must incorporate the virtuous attributes of honesty, humility and love, pray to learn and to gain a wise heart.” One of the Free and Fit courses theme is entitled finding Freedom in Time. Ecclesiastes 3:1 states there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. Today we exist in a time where technology, work and communication demands our immediate attention. The human mind struggles to establish the difference between what is urgent and what is important when busy; spiritual formation helps us to weed out the distractions and focus on our core goals. Through community, fellowship sport and scripture we can find meaning, root ourselves in peace and practice overcoming the everyday challenges outlined in the Free and Fit course curriculum. The Free and Fit course has been created to build strong social skills, charge healthy physical bodies and to instil a well balanced and sound mind. Participants who complete the full course working through the 12 topics including an introduction to freedom, time, worry, lifestyle choices, distractions, reactions, friendship, loyalty, beauty, finance, education and the unknown will learn how to work effectively with their team members and individually to build strong values of power, love, joy, peace, patience, self discipline, boldness, courage, strength, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness and goodness. To join us in London you can email Nav at faithandfitnesslondon@gmail.com. To join us in New York York City email me at freeandfitnyc@gmail.com. Furthermore, if you are interested in creating your own Free & Fit group in your city please reach out to me directly and I will be happy to connect with you and tailor our program to fit your needs. About the Free & Fit Challenge The Free and Fit course has been created to build strong social skills, charge healthy physical bodies and to instil a well balanced and sound mind. Participants who complete the full course over 12 sessions will learn how to work effectively with their team members to build strong values of power, love, and self discipline. Free & Fit Mission To reduce loneliness through Sports, the Arts, Social Justice and Service. Free & Fit Vision The vision of free and fit course is to engage, motivate, improve and hence find freedom in a physical and spiritual state. As such the freedom that leads to a peaceful heart; leads to a healthy body. The course is built upon the core value of learning together to be disciplined and motivated in our faith as well as our fitness. Free & Fit Website: https://www.freenfit.org/ Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCf4gjFopw_eyr6-w7c3bxiQ Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/pg/freeandfitchallenge Twitter&Instagram: @freeandfitnyc Email: freeandfitnyc@gmail.com Freedom // Fitness // Fellowship Free & Fit Challenge © Copyright 2017 Free & Fit NYC/NJ © Copyright 2017 Free & Fit London © Copyright 2017