Wholistic Fitness

Sacred Sweat Upon Sacred Snows…

BodyHealth® sponsored multi-sport athlete, author, and high-mountain legend Coach Steve Ilg moments after winning the prestigious 42nd Annual Chama Chili Ski Classic’s KING OF THE MOUNTAIN competition last month at 10,000′ on Cumbres Pass.  ilg had finished 2nd place for five years since losing his KING OF THE MOUNTAIN title (which combines the fastest times in a 12k Classic ski race and a 6k snowshoe race).   This year, at age 53,  ilg regained the title over his 25 year-younger rival proving once again that his self-created style of personal training known as Wholistic Fitness® which includes Bodyhealth® products is still way beyond the curve when it comes to optimal health and performance.   Congrats, Steve!

Some know me as a Yoga Teacher.  However, the reality of my Earth Journey?   I am much more student to my heart rates and heart breaks.  If anything challenges me to either my spiritual and/or physical core, I usually find my feeble self immersed in it until the salient qualities of the particular circus-stance has saturated my wholistic sphere (mind/body/spirit).   Thereafter i attempt to turn my direct experience through the muck and grime of my own doubts, negative tendencies, and habituated patterns inside out for the benefit of my students and my family.  There is not a road map that releases any of us from our own suffering – voluntary, karmic, or otherwise.  Hec, most of the times I’m lucky enough to realize that I’m Third-Chakra deep into another epic spiritual workout until i’m almost out of it!  As Mirabal puts it,  “Scholars, priests, medicine people have all tried to find the sacred, secret stone to the path of healing the soul, a type of algorithm, a blessing from a thousand year old eagle feather, a code or a special way to find the vitality we need to step forward into the path of bullets again.”

Whatever the cause may have been, I truly feel that those of us lucky enough to be-c(om)e lifelong athletes is a darn good beacon streaming from our past lives as ancient warriors and into our future lives as spiritual warriors gunning toward Enlightenment.  From my experience,  I find that one of the worst enemies of all sport performance and healing (i consider them to be the same thing) is to look externally before inquiring within the vault of our own innate wisd(om).   There are extremely effective psychospiritual warning signs which emanate like the Buddha’s radiance before we ever step into a circumstance that we later regret.  It’s just we don’t Listen long enough or accurately enough to the sacred silences which animate our sweat.  If we really examine who we are as we Toe The Start Line and Cross The Finish Line?   We will inevitably see that a Higher, Unattached, Witnessing Self just watching, just listening, just ready to receive the Divinity that pours forth from our pores when we push our Higher Self against our Lower Self as in racing, performing, or being a Conscious Parent.

“It feels GOOD to be KING, once again!” said ilg (53) after recapturing his KING OF THE MOUNTAIN title after 5 years of finishing second!  “All i know is that Things Take Time, and Shift Happens!….have FAITH in yourself!”    note ilg’s reliance on the Bodyhealth products;  MAP Amino Acids, Intestinal Cleans, Complete, and Kaqun water!

We are human.  We are upright.   We are beautifully, uniquely our own Self.  We are meant to fail at any given turn for that is how we Rise Higher.  Take the time to understand our voluntary athletic suffering and we may be able to contemplate and amplify our Higher spiritual intentions to become better in the process and in turn understand our Wholeness; become our own medicine man.

However, sometimes we need translation because a thousand mile walk or journey isn’t enough. We need the help of others who have gone through the hell and have come back more whole. The one person from the village, the one elder, the uncle or grandma, those who have gone through just a few more stages of icy cold heart ache than you have.

Tomorrow I take leave for Crested Butte and my Priority A race of the season.   My spiritual quiver is aquiver with confidence from a stunning start to my winter racing season which has carried me into mid-season with no less than 5 Overall Wins at age 53 in 7 starts.  However,  this race coming up this weekend will carry a higher level and quantity of national-class racers than i’ve seen in quite a while.  I keep re-minding myself of my own advice which I wrote to you in my first book – THE OUTDOOR ATHLETE – way back in 1985;  “The way to win is to make it okay to lose.”  I know – in large part due to my reliance upon the BodyHealth Nutritional Products – that i have the physical, nutritional, and spiritual fitness to c(om)pete well this weekend.   In bringing that wholistic confidence of my training and recent victories to the Start Line?   I know that I am upright, that I may fail and fall, that one day my entire life support system will crash, and that in doing what it takes to Toe The Start Line?   I just may reach into the fractured parts of my ever-evolving Soul and bec(om)e more Whole.

In Sacred Sweat and Spirit among the high snows of the southwest…

coach steve ilg, RYT 500/CPT/USCF

founder/www.WholisticFitness.com