Robyn Wunder shares a metaphor for our spiritual lives.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at physiotherapy lately – one of the outcomes of being a busy full time working mum of teenagers who still thinks she’s thirty! Recently my physio said something that caught my attention: “No amount of cardio or strength training will help you if your core isn’t engaged. Core work must come first.”

While referring to my body, she also offered me a helpful metaphor for my spiritual life.

Core strength, she explained, isn’t built through big dramatic movements but through small, subtle, almost invisible ones – tightening of deep muscles, subtle balancing, and repetition. It’s patient work. Foundational work. And without it, everything else becomes inefficient, wobbly, or even risky.

It struck me how similar this is to my spiritual life. When making the Exercises in daily life last year, I was often tempted to leap ahead—to discern big decisions, to “do more.” But the Exercises invite me first into the core: stillness, noticing, grounding myself in God’s gaze of love in the present moment. The Principle and Foundation is essentially spiritual core training: remembering who I am, what I’m made for, and where my balance comes from.

Like those tiny physio movements, the Ignatian practices that strengthen my inner life can look small or even insignificant – ten minutes of the Examen at the end of a chaotic day, reconnecting with the Three Modes of Humility meditation before a difficult meeting, a brief acknowledgment of God in all Things when faced with a frazzled teenager. These subtle repetitions build stability. They hold me upright when life accelerates. They keep me from overcompensating with spiritual “cardio” when what I really need is quiet alignment with God at my core.

I’m learning, slowly, that my core—physical and spiritual—won’t strengthen itself. It grows through the humble practice of consistent exercising, and the grace that meets me in the here and now.

Explore the Spiritual Exercises in Daily Life here. To enquire, contact Sandra on PHONE 1300 392 636, or EMAIL info@jisa.org.au.