Wholistic Fitness

“The long and the short of it is…WF has transformed my life.� The discipline…the daily practice…continues to expand me in every direction.”

– Angela Marie MacDougall

�

Brother,

�

I have been practicing WF for just under one year.� I worked with Grant Couture here in Vancouver for a brief time and this was magical and life altering.

�

I stopped the formal HP Training (Arjuna) with Grant as I was unable to squeeze the money from my budget.� I am fully blessed in my life and privileged to have been given the gift of motherhood as I raise a wonderful 17 year old young woman also known as my daughter.� Single mothering and being solidly working class has meant some real financial limitations.

�

I practice alone and it is in this solitude that I go deeper and deeper in my practice.� I access the WF website, I read Directlines, I read traditional writings, I have purchased and use the HP Yoga video and The Winter Athlete.� By using all this information, I have created my own personal programs integrating the principles and disciplines as you teach them and as they have been taught for centuries.� My programs grow from what I learn every day from my daily practice about what�comes intuitively about what is needed in my practice.� I do this because I want to be disciplined.� I want to be extremely well trained in every way … beginning with my mind.� I have spent years training my body in all the western ways you speak of.� The past year of WF was and continues to be exactly what I need.� I am absolutely and completely done with the other ways.

�

Last night I purchased Total Body Transformation.� The book is great.� I have read it from cover to cover already.�I will begin again with The Green Tara Program after I finish my current program.�

�

There are challenges to working alone.� At times I long for outside feedback.� Sometimes I have many questions I would like to ask someone else.� I get discouraged and/or have “feelings” that I experience as overwhelming from time to time…some times this is hormonally related.� This can be distressing as I lack perspective.�

�

What the practice has taught me is to stay…stay…stay. Whether it is in a pose where I am standing still and sweat is pouring off me, whether it is in an interval where my lungs are going to explode and my heart�is pounding like a drum, whether it is in sitting in zazen and by mind keeps going off to the grocery list, to that conversation with that person yesterday, whether it is this particular brand chocolate bar that keeps calling my name saying it will make me feel better…!!� Stay, stay, stay!

�

The long and the short of it is…WF has transformed my life.� The discipline…the daily practice…continues to expand me in every direction.

�

Though I am limited by very real financial restraints…my journey continues to be how to move beyond constraints and find opportunities to deepen my practice.� I am up at 4:30 am five days a week sitting in zazen before Surya Namaskar series A, B, and C.� As a former “gym rat” I am truly “burned out” by “the gym”.�� I called myself a body builder for most of my life (20 years) and developed large�defined muscles.� I was also actively in an “eating disorder” and was absolutely compulsive about my training�that was really an addiction growing out of lots of self hate and historical trauma.�� Cardio, meditation, nutrition and of course yoga are solidly integrated into my life.�

�

In my slow healing path away from�various addictions… strength training is the most difficult of the practices for me.� I continue to seek a gym that connects with me where I can practice WF.� Going to the gym continues to activate deep stuff for me.� In spite of this imbalance in my program …I am the strongest I have ever been because of the other practices.� Strongest in every way.� Some days it’s hard, some days it’s easy, some days it’s something else.� Every day my body, spirit and mind gives me something new to work with.� And every day I�am mindful to bring these teachings into my life of work, mothering, etc.

�

There are many times I wish I could hear from Kathy, to hear a woman’s perspective.� A woman centred approach to WF intrigues me and at times I yearn for this.� There are many times I wish I could afford to go to Tarzana to attend your classes or attend your trips to New Mexico.� I long for a sliding scale fee structured world.

�

With Total Body Transformation and The Green Tara program…I will begin again with a beginners�mind…because each day is a new beginning.�We, in the west must begin to respectfully integrate these timeless eastern disciplines while being mindful�and humbly acknowledging the origins of the teachings.� The alternatives are not really alternatives any more … if they ever were!�

�

Peace!��I bow to you Steve Ilg

�

Angela Marie MacDougall