Wholistic Fitness

Namaste Noble Warriors!

a report from our HP Yoga Summer Retreat at Red Mountain Spa, Utah (www.redmountainspa.com):

“Summer is beginning to give up her fight. And every thought is a possibility. Voices are heard but nothing is seen. Why do you spend this time with me? Maybe an equal mystery.”

– lyrics from Indigo Girls

yesterday;

woke up early to do solo pranayama and asana Practice before Kathy and i taught a High Performance Yoga Strong Flow class for the spa guests. it was a packed house which included WF Student Cly Claymore who road tripped here from LA for our week long retreat. i sense someone gunning for their Master Student Inka! several students said that their first ever HP Yoga experience was, “The best yoga class I have EVER taken!” Yeah, baby!

after a great vegan lunch with some of the class attendees, a private, and a siesta, Kathy and i went to the gym for a strength workout. we lasted about five minutes on the various weight machines before creating our own yogi/gymnastics using the machines, balls, and apparatus as tools for fun bodyweight functional fitness stuff.

yoga will do that to a person.

after that i, yes i steve ilg, actually swam (as in w-a-t-e-r) for four, count ’em FOUR laps in the big outdoor pool! that is a personal record! now, don’t think that i actually did like a real freestyle stroke, no sirree. i do what could be distantly related to what real swimmers call a ‘breaststroke.’ but my version is more like a half dog paddle and half floundering about. us mountain yogis are not known for dolpin like poise in water. in fact, the only way i can perform in the water element is if it is frozen. so, i am quite taken with my pushing of my edge. phewwww.

fresh from my victory in the pool i met Kathy for another gorgeous vegetarian mealtime in the mist-surrounded patio of the Canyon Breeze restaurant. everything was all quite very fetchin until 6:45 pm…that is when all hell broke loose.

the trouble started when i agreed to have Kathy sign us up for “pottery class”…oh good Lord Buddha above, take it from me dear and faithful Fitness Warriors…do not ever, ever go near those damned pottery people! they are crazy with a capital K! throwing clay on a wheel is NOT anything like those sleek, sexy, seductive scenes in the movies (i.e, Ghost.) i’ve never worked so hard in my life. the only thing i can recall being harder on my arms and shoulders and back was mountain biking from Ouray to Telluride over 14,000′ Imogene Pass – before suspension mountain bikes were invented! jack hammering concrete is also similar to pottery making. eventually, at the end of what felt like eternity tripled, i had fashioned some sort of a bowl type affair that makes Anasazi ancient pottery look like fine china.

anyway, thanks to my elite level of Wholistic Fitness mastery, i managed to survive the pottery ordeal to live another Red Mountain Adventure Spa day…

from among a tassel of red rock cliffs and lingering raven notes on desert air,

i bow to you,

coach ilg

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