By: Fatin Rahman, Francis College of Engineering Well-Being Leader

I’ve been taking fitness classes in Boston twice a week after my co-op, and they’ve changed the way I end my days. After hours of sitting, thinking, solving, and stressing, I walk into a 45-minute sculpt or cycle class, and everything else fades.

When I’m focused on engaging my core, pushing through intervals, or holding a pulse just a few seconds longer, work stress disappears. It’s replaced by something sharper. There’s something powerful about discovering how far your body can go when your mind wants to quit.

Your mind retires before your body does. But when you find that will, that quiet decision to become stronger than you were yesterday, the challenge becomes addictive. Not in a destructive way, but in a deeply affirming one.

Lifting weights I couldn’t have imagined touching a year ago makes me proud in a way that’s hard to explain. Sprinting on the treadmill, blasting Lady Gaga in my headphones, feeling my heart race, it all reminds me that I am capable of more than I think.

And it’s not just about intensity. It’s about slowing down too, stretching, and breathing. Letting the tension unwind from tight shoulders and sore hips. Feeling your body open up instead of brace. Sometimes it feels like therapy, the physical kind that releases what you didn’t know you were holding.

Moving my body has done wonders for my mental health. Long walks along the Merrimack Riverwalk. The feeling of strong feet hitting the pavement. The simple awareness that my body carries me through every season of my life.

In cycle class, at the very end, the lights go down. The choreography stops. For five minutes, you ride however you want. No cues. No structure. Just you and the music.

Those five minutes are when I feel closest to myself all day.

When I’m pulsing in sculpt class and my muscles are shaking, when I think I’m done but the instructor says, “So strong,” and I believe her — that’s where something shifts.

Going as hard as I can. Trusting that I am here for a reason, giving myself purpose, one rep, one breath at a time.