Wholistic Fitness

coach in Meditation, the 4th of the 5 Noble Fitness Disciplines of Wholistic Fitness™/photo courtesy Wholistic Fitness Archives.

It’s the casual questions I get after teaching another Samadhically infused HP Yoga™ class in the Sacred Cave,

That I have to field the always difficult to answer questions about Meditation…I take this as a compliment; any yoga class that ends with students moved enough to ask about Meditation is to me, a sign of Teaching Success in the Highest of Ways.  If you’re gonna get a yoga class high, then you better make sure the high ain’t coming from dirty, stale bong water!  Keep it clean, keep it Wholy Sweat!

I’m gonna tell you something very special that my Tibetan Meditation Teachers at Naropa taught me…

According to the Ancient Enlightened Ones,  once you summon the Warrior Energy required to quit the compulsion toward (listen!)  all the fat loss, the sports,  the TV-watching, the iPod listening,  the money-addicted actions like jobs, the entertainment, the sex, the kids, the houses, the cars, etc….once you summon the Warrior Energy to balance your outwardly turned actions toward gaining the inward action toward Enlightenment, then the Energy and Motivation to Sit Still each day, for a little while, becomes easy.  Eating accurately and purely and wholistically REALLY helps this easiness toward Sitting Still.

Now, once we’ve harnessed this Energy to Sit Still each day for a little way, it is written that at the beginning, thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, as Sogyal Rinpoche says,  “…like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea, and finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.”

Hearing those DharmaWords from my Teacher surely must move you back to the last time your mind took backseat to your ego…this cannot have been done without the ingredient of Intensity.

For me, gaining this Occasionally Rippled Mind required me to drag myself out of bed with virtually no sleep thanks to an IDEO (Search for it in the Archives) period for my two girls. I was exhausted in the way that only Conscious Parents of 3 year-youngs can be after 5 days of household IDEO’ing…

Made it to the Start Line this morning just as Grandfather arc’d above Radier Ridge, mecca of some of this Island’s  best mountain biking.   Today however, I was toeing the Start Line of the Club Ride (which in Durango, is a race; trust me).  We were to go up a brand new road passing a brand new reservoir then up a dirt road (on our road bikes) to the elevated townsite of Mayday, Colorado.  Google it…you’ll dig it.  Just a few grand of climbing, that’s all.

Ilg found today, the Occasionally Rippled Mind as I tried desperately NOT to lose the last wheel of the last guy in the Lead Break which was going bozo bonkers like always whenever the road turns up around here, which is, well often.

coach in Meditation…on the bike…as captured by Wayne Williams.

At 5.5 miles of this 6-mile climb (yup, read it and weep:  a 6-mile road bike climb with 4 miles of it on dirt!),  I lost the wheel in front of me probably because my heart rate had been pegged at 200+ for 30 minutes…gee…COULD that be a reason?

Yet, inwardly,  my mind was so calm…so few things to think about…ain’t that just It about endurance sports…

Breath…

Wheel in front of me…

Scrape Through Bottom Dead Pedal Position…

Soft Elbows…

Flat Spine…

Mantra…

Mula Bandha…

Breath…

How many thoughts is that?

7?

How Long Has It Been, Noble Warrior of Wholeness,

That only 7 thoughts have predominated your Consciousness

For thirty minutes?

And you wonder why this Tibetain Mountain Yogi Trained Monk Reverend

Disguises himself in the garb of a multi-sport athlete?

One day, Trust Me, the Outer World will understand that in today’s world,  it is the Athletes…the Fitness Warriors…who

Are the Messengers and Saviors of the Next Era Of Enlightened Beings…

Head bowed,

Your feeble yogi ilg