7 Wholistic Fitness® Rituals For Eliminating A Fall From The Physical (not fiscal) Cliff In 2013
Taking control of our body/mind/spiritual fitness often perches at the top of our New Year’s resolution list like Bald Eagle Sister poised upon the topmost naked limb of a towering, riparian Ponderosa scanning the low flow of a semi-frozen Animas River for an easy score.
Easy score? Oh sure…yes, this year will be different. I’m really gonna change. Sweat more, work less. Incorporate my personal fitness into my family life, work life, and wish life! I’m determined to get fit this year! I’m gonna sit like a rookie Zen Student at the feet of the hardest, most experienced Teachers that I can find. I’m gonna read spiritual books on my iPad, set goals and follow through on them with TAPAS (yoga; inner fire)!
Only to lose that inner fire a short three months later (if that). Our best intentions? The victim of old habits and negative tendencies. You see, Precious One Along The Path Toward Wholeness? Habits, patterns, and tendencies share the same root; unconsciousness. We drop the bar of the soap in the shower. No big deal, right? In Wholistic Fitness® training? Super big deal; where was your Mind when you dropped the soap? It probably wasn’t with the gratitude for having the water flow so managerially out of the showerhead, was it? Do you even Think And Feel (TAF) about the amazing amount of people, animals, and natural forces that had to and have to be chronically created, maintained, monitored, supervised, and paid for by an unknown army of your fellow beings and unwitting Animal Beings just so that you can have a shower? Brush your teeth? Flush a toilet?
If you want a New Year’s Resolution? Here, let feeble ilg help you from Direct Experience of over 5 decades of Wholistic Fitness®;
Dear 2013; My New Year’s Resolution is….(score the drum roll):
To Live With An Attitude Of Gratitude For One Year
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So how do you make Self Transformation stick like red klister onto your Soul cells for one year? I’ll tell ya.
See your mundane actions as churning motions toward the sublime! pic: Dewachen and her newly minted toe and fingernails. When i was a free-soloing (no rope) rock climber? I painted my finger and toe nails in a Zen session, so that if i would have made but one mistake over those years? Perhaps my last glance at my flagrantly colored finger and/or toe nails would help re-set my Mind Waves toward humor, love, and playfulness as my body smashed at 60 feet per second into the earth below me….Make your Mundane your Miracle Opportunity Puja…trust me on this one!
Replace habits with Ritual. You see, Noble One Awakening, ‘habits’ are by definition unconscious. Unless you are a Wholistic Fitness® student/yogi, you probably brushed your teeth this morning, with what, uh, let ilg guess…your DOMINATE HAND. Why? Because it was easy. It is your HABIT. Whatever HABITS you hold? Keeps your spiritual self asleep. For instance, let’s say feeble ilg is correct in assuming that you, like the predictable mass of (wo)men, brushed your teeth using your dominant hand this morning. Let feeble ilg venture a wee bit more into your uncultivated spiritual life, and hypothesize that you stood up, well, probably more like hunched over your little bathroom sink as if a slave to it….Why?
Why didn’t you yogi squat close to Mother Earth instead of standing/slumping/hurrying your brushing of your precious teeth? Oh? Too busy? Didn’t think it was important to use yogi-squatting, non-dominant hand brushing of your precious teeth as a personal, spiritual Practice? Figgered. You are too busy for my embrace of personal fitness/yoga. You think yogi-squatting while brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand has NOTHING, WHATSOEVER to do with ‘personal fitness training,’ right?
Great…so be your societally-inculcated box of mental veneers. Go on standing, brushing your teeth with your Dominant Hand while your mind races without restraint like wild ponies in spring toward the fictions of your perceived day ahead…go on…go on being Unconscious in the mundane activities of your life..go on…go on…ilg knows you will…because you are
too
afraid
of
slowing..
d….
o….
w…..
n…
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Start with the steps below and go slowly, adding the next action only when the previous step is complete. Rituals replace habits only when we exchange rushing through mundane actions like brushing teeth, showering, eating, driving….Habits replaced Rituals from doing too much too fast. Achieving control of your Wholeness can become a reality by cultivating these seven Wholistic Fitness® actions:
Part 2 coming ONLY to WF.com Members…
These teachings are the "Rasas" or "sap" of Wholistic Fitness. You’ll find insights to ponder, student chi to keep your own chi topped off, and plenty of proven training techniques to test on your own body, mind, and spirit! Also, you’ll find my very popular Race Reports, and news of our Sangha’s (community’s) latest transpersonal fitness adventures!
Just what a wandering student of the path needs.
Ai Imawa
Fit Kit
painting your finger or toe-nails with a sharp, zen-mind….
how AWESOME is that with its’ INTENT!!
One of the things I love about Steve Ilg, his family and Wholistic Fitness is the extension of right-mindness calling us to choose to be just a little bit more aware, just a wee bit more whole, a smidge clearer and more pure, with each situation.
Precious Tribal Brothers Fit Kit, Warrior Leaf, and KK!
y’all are the churning round and round propulsion axles of a narrow gauge steam train still, after 200 years, making the daily chug up to the High Country…y’all Get ilg…which is NOT an easy ‘get’…more slippery than many a summit i’ve summitted…so THANK YOU on this night of nights for your unconditional embrace and support of a feeble Messenger of an Ancient Warrior Path so Powerful, that perhaps, even yourselves would be struggling to articulate the chronic, turbulent, daily downpour of Dharma which bewilderingly chose to c(om)e through such a poor Conduit as ilg! thank you, thank you, thank you…Bless You, Bless You, Bless You!!!
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