Wholistic Fitness

Most of us take (unconscious) comfort in the complexity of our (perceived) dramas. As time rolls past, our habituated patterns of relishing our attachment to our complicated world deepens. If our Teacher asks us to meditate, to draw our senses within, we feel that such a simplistic task of simply sitting still is far too ineffective for OUR difficulty, OUR complexity. It’s like we cherish the thought that OUR pain, OUR suffering, OUR herculean load upon our shoulders is far too savvy for anyone to understand. We may even arrive at the point where we feel any fitness trainer or yoga teacher or any healing method is simply impotent to the multi-layered complexity of OUR distress. As my Santa Fe friend Dr. Wayne Muller puts it,

“We take comfort in our complexity, seeing ourselves as especially broken, exceptionally wounded, unfathomably troubled. We use our high levels of internal complexity to grant ourselves permission to take a great deal of time with our own healing – for how can we be expected to change or get well when our problems are so complicated and difficult to understand?”

i teach a direct path of transformation. In the beginning of our Studies together, i may spend what may seem to you as an inordinate amount of time trying to get you to feel the presence of, and perhaps even try to appreciate, the rising and falling of your breath…be it through EMR, HP Yoga, Zazen, etc. I have to do this because most of you that come to me, even the most fit of warriors, are often habituated to seeking out drama. Often this intrigue of the infinite complexity of things manifests as a compulsive dis-ordering of fitness vs. making money vs. relationships vs. spiritual aspirations, etc. We seek clever and fancy and changing fitness programs instead of mastering what i Taught you through Suzuki; “The spirit of repetition.”

If, for example, you think i’m just gonna crank out more and more HP Yoga and PROP Workout DVDs because i know you enjoy the Sacred Sweat…you’re dead wrong.

i mean, i would LOVE to make more kickass Yoga DVD’s and nearly every Tuesday and Thursday night i came back home after teaching to my local HP Yoga Warriors, and tell Ananda the same thing, “Man, you shoulda been in the Cave tonight! What a GREAT flow! That class shoulda been made into a DVD!”

Yet, my own Teachers are firm in my protection of the Dharma.

Not until i see the sales of my MULA BANDHA CD go up, or of PRANIC JUNKIE, or more of you knocking the Temple Door for Online Consultations or Study will my Teachers allow me to make more Asana DVD’s.

A yogic prophesy is accelerating very rapidly right now and our humble WF Temple is shuddering near extinction because of it;
As we take more and more pride in our iPods, Blackberry’s, and complexities within our lives and minds, we extract comfort from our cavalier ability to look past substance and focus on our high drama perception of reality which elevates levels of drama and reduces our vision to the gifts and blessings that arise when we approach the world more simply and trust Teachers of simplicity.

Once a young Anglo man wanted to share the wonders of civilization with his adopted Navajo father, who had never seen a paved road or a skyscraper. One day he showed his father a picture of the Empire State Building. As he went on and on about the building’s architectural intricacies and other exceptional qualities, his father interrupted him to ask,“How many sheep will it hold?”

Raised with the drama of TV, computers, and those God-forsaken iPods (the “i” stands for Ignorance) we, as a species, are rapidly losing Conscious Parenting Skills along with our ability to see with simplicity.

We become bored quickly with those who don’t feed into our drama tapes to fuel our mill of entertainment. Our hearts are losing interest in what is as plain and simple as a frosted aspen limb in winter.

Yet, ilg will tell Thee now:
That which is simple
is Nirvana…the touch of a child’s head upon our own, the alpenglow of mountain peak, the taste of a midsummer’s rain upon your cheeks, and that “Oh how delicious Strawberry” which i Taught you about in DL just recently.

Today,
may your WF Practice…be it something as simple as my Instruction to brush your teeth in yogi squat with your nonDominant hand…re-accustom your Tribal Eye to seeing the world not as a symphony of signs and symbols of egoic layering but as the dynamic, mystical palette of delicate, ordinary, simple moments.

“God hides in the details,”
not the Drama.

that is all.

head bowed,
your mountain yogi

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2nd photo by steve ilg, front drive of the WF Temple H(om)e, 12*08