from one broken back mountain yogi to another…Danelle? it’s been a while since chasing each other on snowshoes, however, your inspiration remains as fresh to me as a September snow in Leadville…
sure, of course, i love running, snowshoeing, skiing, mountain biking, hiking, and nowadays taking my daughter along the sinewy sweetness of the massive network and drop-to-your-knees beauty of the Four Corners trails! doh!
but, what only a few of you know?
i love creating and maintaining trails even more!
why?
i love the seduction; trails beckon us further, higher…toward purer terrain. Trails are metaphors for our own yogic, fitness, and life journeys.
i want to do my part in protecting the vinyasa of trails for my daughter’s generations and many more…
Dear Coach Ilg –
i first got turned onto your work from TOTAL BODY TRANSFORMATION…as an artist? I have got to say that your body of work c(om)pletely (as you would probably write it!) revamped my entire way of thinking of ‘art.’ So many who called ourselves ‘artists’ have little – if any – conception of what ‘art’ means when it comes to to transforming the current palette of our body/mind/spirit into a Higher Fitness/Consciousness as you have so beautifully demonstrated throughout your life; you have changed everything from your sports, your paralysis, your writing, your everything and now, perhaps as the most exquisite and most recent brush to your life journey; your fatherhood.
my big vice is NEWS! yes, that’s right…news. i feed upon headlines, articles, breaking reports…i know this must sound horrid to you..yet, as you have Taught me, “We all have our addictions, it’s just a matter of vibration.”
so, if you’d be soooo kind to answer me this ONE QUESTION (i’ve enclosed a Temple Tithe for your time and consideration):
where do you get your “Outer World” news?
stealing another line from you:
Head Bowed,
Stacy
NYC
COACH RESPONDS:
Moving is like a heart-shaped cactus; prickly but precious!! Dewa last month in Sedona on Bell Rock with quite a find; a heart-shaped Cactus Being!
i trust this catches you in Conscious Breath and Posture…
engaging the yogic principles of Vairāgya (non-attachment/disppassion) and Aparigraha (non-greediness)…
i am moving downriver and downsizing…
and, honestly (Satya) i’m moving to attempt to keep my family in my hometown on a feeble yoga teacher’s income…how did my native town become so expensive in which to live is mind-boggling!
Big Medicine Day for feeble ilg..i re-visited after a couple of decades my old ‘office’ of Eldorado Canyon where during a decade i was engulfed in a tidal wave of sacred creation; where once i put up dozens of First Ascents which to this day, legions of rock climbers still monument my original ascents…oh, baby, have things changed since my near daily pilgrimages to this unspeakably precious crayola-colored canyon hallmarked by a clear, wild creek rushing over still tumbling (though be it in slow-motion) boulders.
Dighándíshwo’go bee shidziil…
(Running makes me strong)
***
running felt more natural to me than walking.
why walk,
when you can run like a Wolf?
until i broke my spine.
nowadays?
i still run.
i still race, kinda.
it ain’t the same.
not carefree feet flirting like Dewa’s upon and across Mother Earth’s skin.
not any more.
I am now 52 years-old – or so my 7 year-old daughter re-Minds me – and even at my young age i have – through this particular body/mind/spirit vehicle – seen so many, many things during this unique, short lifetime.
So many of my friends have died, passing into the Bardo without so much a thought as to what they were going to do when they could not inhale again.
So many people of my own age have died or lay now at home or in hospitals plugged up to tubes and the coming-and-going of unknown nurses and doctors who glance more up at the clock to see when they can go home to their addictions of comfort rather than looking deeply into those whose lives are unraveling beneath their watch.
So many Elders, including my own father, have died.
– Full Snow Moon – February
Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, native tribes of the north and east most often called February’s full Moon the Full Snow Moon. Some tribes also referred to this Moon as
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