Wholistic Fitness

Namaste Noble Fitness Warriors!

A DIRECT LINES MOST POPULAR REVISITED

This entry first appeared in Direct Lines over a year ago. Since then, it has become one of the most requested archives. I have replayed it here by popular request. Reading it, i am pleased to know that i will again be visiting my old mountain yoga haunts around Santa Fe within a couple of weeks.

We are Blessed to have artists grace our Earthwallk. I bow to all artists, but especially deep to Roseta Santiago whose work graces my soul with raw and gusty beauty, like a late autumn day in Santa Fe…

– ilg

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�Art, at it�s best, is the representation of your very own soul, a reminder of who and what you truly are and therefore can become.�

– Ken Wilber

A discrete shaft of sunset light has just spilled phosphorescent fire across a rooftop spire of The Museum of Fine Arts, just off Palace Street in the old plaza of Santa Fe,New Mexico. I wiggle my digital camera to and fro, attempting to freeze the clash of enflamed adobe against a shockingly cobalt sky. The best things in life are not �things�. They are moments. Moments like this one, where the twilight of the real becomes something intangible and evokes intimacy from our inner dimension. It�s moments like this one which i think everyone – from tree hugging dirt worshippers to pious preachers – seek. A new encounter. A broadened version of our habituated self. A Higher vision to our judgmental mind. After prancing about to get just the right photographic angle, the final flickers of sun have left the rooftop to the cold oncoming of night. A passerby nods at my effort saying, �Nice job!� I too, am pleased with my photograph and eager to upload it onto my computer.

I am playing tour guide today for my beautiful wife and mother in law. No better, no more charming place in the Universe to take loved ones than this, �City Different�. There are definite reasons why artists have flocked to this pinyon studded mesa beneath the Sangre de Christos for several centuries. This ancient town, the oldest incorporated capital city in the United States, lies within an energetic vortex of earth energy. Her vibration can be measured in scientific ways. More importantly, it can be felt by all that travel here.

Leaving the ladies at the Georgia O�Keefe museum (no offense to the great painter, but i�ve been there many times), i choose to saunter. Having lived here for years, i know full well not to let intellectuality step in too much when here. I find it best just to wander about her adobe galleries, miracle churches, Native American peddlers, and burro cart sized streets without agenda. �All who wander are not lost,� wrote Neruda. He knew well what Santa Fe offers…a close liaison with the Tao.

In my ambling, i reflect on my morning�s workout…a chilly bike ride through the old townships of Corrales and Algodonnes. The paved roads are new, the spirit remains old. The character of rural New Mexico arose as visibly as did my breath as I cranked along the Rio Grande bosque. Sandhill Cranes, dozens of them, flanked the narrow road as i pedaled �Alphie� my Trek road bike, past San Ysidro church. A little further along, an enormous peacock swaggers a kaleidoscope of iridescence so beautifully, i nearly ran into him. Only in New Mexico have i come not to question why the hell is a huge peacock strutting down the road.

At the Gallery of Southwest Contemporary Art, i�m shocked from my reverie. Several paintings by Roseta Santiago have literally floored me. I am stunned by the power of her paintings and dangle in an expanded moment afforded to me by their velocity of resolution. I stare at her painting titled, �Witness� as if slapped across the face by the Infinite. I drop even lower into a yoga squat as if attempting to ground my heady transport into Santiago�s realm. �Witness� showcases an enormous buffalo skull with eye sockets aglow with straw colored intensity looming forward against a field of raven black paint. Well delineated sutures criss-cross the skull giving focal rise to the top of the skull – Sahasrara chakra in yogic terms – where the white bone disperses into glow…nearly halo-like. Mesmerized, i stumble about the rest of the gallery. A striking woman glides past me with purposed gait. The vortex has fashioned another High encounter. For some reason, i simply know that she is the artist.

�Excuse me,� I question her, �but have you any information on Roseta Santiago?�

�I am her,� she smiles, affirming my psychic yoke. �Hold on, and i�ll get you some printed information.�

�I�ll just take a hug instead,� I reply and she obliges warmly. In our embrace, i whisper, �Hugs are better than printed information anyway.� She laughs as I go on, �I just wanted to thank you for being brave enough to be a artist.�

My comment inspires her to turn our hug into a most delightful twenty minutes of discussing matters of art and spirit until some potential customers are steered her way by the gallery owner. Roseta is doing an opening at this very gallery tomorrow night. In her parting words i find more inspiration, �What I really love about Santa Fe is the same thing that I love about painting; it�s something invisible. You can feel it, but you don�t see it.�

You can feel it, but you don�t see it.

That�s exactly what I treasure most about daily fitness workouts. It�s the invisible energy generated from exercise that ultimately seems to matter most.

Enjoy your Practice and may you find true art within your workout.

I bow to you,

coach ilg