(RNS) — Physical fitness is often seen as a way of improving our health or appearance, or an effort to challenge oneself. But for Nada Mostafa, a 24-year-old Muslim fitness coach based in Toronto, it also serves a higher religious purpose.
“I help Muslim women understand that when it comes to their health, your body is a gift, what in Islam we call an ‘amanah’ – a blessing we have been entrusted with,” Mostafa said.
She has built a career in faith-based strength and endurance training. Many of her clients approached her after feeling frustrated with secular fitness environments or trainers who did not understand many religious Muslim women’s commitment to modesty or religious discipline.
Mostafa joins the likes of innovators such as Texas-based Sana Mahmood, co-founder of Jeem Fitness, an Islamic values-based wellness app and virtual training platform. It only employs female trainers, promotes modest attire and does not play music during virtual workouts.
Nada Mostafa, center, is a strength and endurance fitness coach in Toronto. (Photo courtesy of Nada Mostafa)
“Much of what we focus on is helping women feel that movement and spirituality are not competing priorities, but integrated parts of a regulated and intentional life,” Mahmood told RNS in an email.
The merging of faith and fitness has long engaged evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. However, the trend has become more visible and appears to be evolving as new ways of connecting fitness and religion have become accessible through social media. Around the world, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist coaches and influencers are creating their own faith-based platforms for fitness.
While most of the women Mostafa trains are in their 20s to 40s, she’s also coached older people, especially women with the goal of building stamina to complete the Hajj or Umrah, pilgrimages to Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia that require faithful to walk long distances, often amid heat or crowds. Additionally, Muslims who are physically able complete cycles of standing, bowing, sitting and prostrating for prayers five times daily. For those with physical disabilities or in the normal course of aging, it can present challenges, which Mostafa hopes to help with. “I emphasize the importance of functionality and how it relates to our ability to be able to pray,” Mostafa said.
Muslim women in the sports and fitness space, Mostafa said, face “criticism from two sides.” When those who dress modestly and cover their hair enter a gym, often “they’ll either get the Orientalist view that sees them as oppressed because they’re covering up and working out, but then we also get the other view from our own Muslim extremist view saying that Muslim women should be modest and they should not partake in fitness at all,” said Mostafa, whose Instagram page aims to reach Muslim women and clear up misconceptions about the faith and fitness.
Menachem Freeman, a New York City-based wellness coach, runs an Instagram page that incorporates Judaism into his training philosophy for holistic wellness. He grew up in a strictly Orthodox community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and attended yeshiva, a traditional educational institution focused on intensive Torah and Talmud study. With a keen knowledge of Jewish teachings and personal interest in the embodied mindfulness of Chassidut, today the 38-year-old works with a client base of primarily gay men.
He sees himself as a “traditional and spiritual” Jew, he said, and brings his passion for the intersection of fitness, sexuality and Jewish identity to his Instagram presence, seeing it as a tool to combat both homophobia and antisemitism. And he sees fitness, he said, in parallel with his viewpoint on religious observance.
Menachem Freeman is a New York City-based wellness coach. (Photo courtesy of Menachem Freeman)
“I grew up very religious, often with very black-and-white thinking,” he said. “But God is more, is bigger than that, and fitness is similar — growth isn’t ‘all-or-nothing.’ It’s about consistency, not perfection.”
Many of Freeman’s clients carry identity-based trauma, compounded with demanding expectations of physical attractiveness and athleticism in the gay community, he said. Many simply want to feel accepted, which leads them to fitness. “While this is a starting point, I try to help clients find more sustainable goals — to love themselves and find a balance that supports not simply aesthetic goals but also mental health goals, emotional health, work-life balance and spirituality,” Freeman said.
He has a calling to help people that draws from his religion.
“We have a piece of God in our body — we are a temple for the divine presence in this world,” Freeman said. “It’s important to keep this temple functioning and have the ability to live long so we can play our part to make the world a better place.”
Yaakov Fein, a 33-year-old Jerusalem-based fitness trainer, is known online as @frum.fitness (“frum” is Yiddish to describe observant Jews) and serves a client base of Jewish men. He aims to make fitness spaces that were traditionally not part of an observant lifestyle accessible to religious Jews.
“In the Orthodox world, I think fitness is seen as a vanity thing,” Fein told RNS. “I don’t think people quite realize that physical health has a major impact on your mental health, how you feel, your overall mood. And so I wanted to bring more awareness to that.”
The Muslim and Jewish fitness trainers and online influencers RNS interviewed referred to Scriptures and tradition as emphasizing the importance of caring for one’s body as a gift from God. But fitness coaches from dharma-based faiths gave a different perspective: Physical fitness and wellness are integral to their religion itself. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, martial arts, meditation and movement have been practiced as part of their traditions for centuries.
Karina Skye Kaur, a Brazilian America yoga instructor and Instagram influencer living in Florida, posts about fitness and music as key aspects of the Sikh religion to her almost 29,000 followers. The 45-year-old musician and mother of two also shares reels about her experiences as a convert raising her children Sikhi.
Karina Skye Kaur, right, instructs a youth martial arts class. (Photo courtesy of Karina Skye Kaur)
The traditional teachings of Sikhi challenge followers to balance spirituality and compassion, alongside a duty to fight for justice, practice self-defense and protect the vulnerable.
“Fitness is important to us as a family,” she said. “My husband is a firefighter, I practice yoga and martial arts, and with my kids, we go to jiujitsu class and capoeira class. For us as a Brazilian American family, Sikhism is tied together with Brazilian martial arts.”
Sikhi, Kaur said, emphasizes equality among all people, the oneness of God and the promotion of peace. At the same time, because the minority faith has faced persecution since its founding, Kaur said, self-defense is an important part of the Sikh tradition. Last week, Sikhs celebrated Hola Mohalla, which highlights martial arts, courage and resilience.
The rise of Sikh athletes on the world stage also reflects more than demographic change in countries such as Canada or the United Kingdom. The athletes embody how faith and fitness are deeply intertwined in Sikh life – one that draws from tradition and embraces the modern world. Core Sikh principles such as mehnat (hard work), sabar (patience) and seva (service) mirror the mental resilience that elite sports demand.
But in Sikhi, a religion without clergy or hierarchy, fitness is for everyone from any ability level, Kaur said. She told RNS that she sees fitness as a lifestyle that involves being prepared for the duty to protect one’s family.
This sentiment was echoed by other yoga and martial arts practitioners, such as Walter Gjergja, known by the honorific monk title Shi Xing Mi, a 53-year-old Shaolin kung fu master based in Germany. “The biggest challenge is to find the balance between over-skepticism and over-mysticism,” he said, adding that practitioners connect to a bigger tradition while also understanding that martial arts do not demand “dogmatic faith.”
Yash Moradiya leads a yoga class in Dubai. (Photo courtesy of Yash Moradiya)
Yash Moradiya, a 24-year-old Dubai-based yoga instructor and influencer, said that while yoga’s Hindu origins should be respected, its practitioners can be from any faith or culture. Known professionally as Yash Yoga, he began studying in a gurukul, a traditional yoga school, at age 7 and was teaching by the time he was 16.
Moradiya, who boasts over 850,000 followers on Instagram, has trained entrepreneurs, celebrities and members of the Dubai Emirate royal family, he said. He’s taught at massive outdoor fitness festivals in the United Arab Emirates and holds multiple endurance records, including maintaining a forearm scorpion pose for a whopping 29 minutes. But he resists framing yoga as an athletic spectacle alone.
“Yoga is a kind of manual for life,” he said. “Every product comes with instructions, but no one teaches us how to use this life in the best way. Yoga teaches you how to live – not just how to move your body, but how to use your breath, your mind, your energy — so you can become your best version.”
He said that while he personally encourages yoga, any form of fitness discipline is a great way to become one’s better self. “When we balance our energies and our lives, we become better humans,” he said. “And when better humans come together, the entire planet becomes more peaceful.”
