Student Q&A; Integrating Yoga with Cardio and ST

Steve,

I really appreciate the effort you put into your book, "Total Body Transformation". It is well-balanced, informative, and very insightful. However, I have a couple quick questions I was hoping you could answer:

1) I am a practicing zen buddhist who tries to practice simplicity and renunciation as much as possible. Because I don't spend alot, it is almost impossible for me to fork out the money required for a gym membership in the city. I also move around and travel alot, which makes functional, portable exercises very important to me. Is it possible to do strength training using bodyweight exercises or inexpensive substitutes that anyone can afford? I am a reformed long-distance runner who is trying to incorporate yoga and martial arts into my routine to balance myself out and its hard to stretch the dollar between a dojo/studio/gym.

2) As a long-distance runner, as long as I am diligent with yoga and cross-training, can I run 5-6 days during the week? What kind of mileage is too much?

Thanks for your time and keep up the good work!

Peace,

Patrick


P.S I read "Run to 100" and Roy Wallack mentioned that you had a new yoga book coming out. Any information on that?



COACH REPLIES:

Namaste Kalyana Mitra!
first, thank you for your Metta. and, remember, TBT is just the tip of the WF iceberg. i wrote it for mainstream awareness, which, well...let's just say, that if you were an Online Student of WF, you'd see just how basic TBT is when it comes to a Wholistic Fitness lifestyle.

my answer to your first question is easy.
click right here and order a HP PROP WORKOUT DVD.

DVD Section of the WF Tribal Pro Shop

having said that, taking at least 3 months out of your Practice Year to crank the Iron Temple Chi in a real gym is invaluable for any spiritual fitness warrior. it's only 3-months out of your year to follow the Green Tara into Cosmic Yang into Frugal Realm, yet the deep mental,physical, and spiritual fiber gained from those three months makes it a yearly pilgrimage NOT to be missed. ilg has it from very High Sources that even Shakyamuni would have endorsed such an approach to personal tapas.

here, i want you to read something from one of my Master Students of WF from just today...listen, just LISTEN to the Dharma in this WF-trained Warrior and then you tell me that you don't need a gym:

"In other news, I started going through the Green Tara Program again this week. It feels good to be back in the gym. My ego keeps noticing how “lame” this gym is compared to the fancy one {i used to train at}. Then, of course, I mindfully enter the movement at hand and no-thing matters except what I’m experiencing. The weights are just the catalyst, and it could be a rock in a field instead of a dumbbell in a gym for all I care in that moment. While in the past my understanding of your coaching phrase, “my workout is everywhere” was that any activity can become a WF practice (a narrowing/focusing of experience due to mindfulness), my insight today is that when you really start to internalize this way of experiencing the world it has the opposite affect too: your workouts in the gym take on an EXPANSIVENESS that connects them to the rest of your life/world. BOOM. Transpersonal fitness, baby! Gym? What gym? Old rusty dumbbell? What dumbbell? When I “get it” like this, there’s a non-dual merging into the moment that, well, transcends all that stuff."

you don't hear this type of talk coming from any other personal fitness path...around here, however, it's common.


as for question two; the answer is, 'it depends.'
i mean, are you a competitive runner?
if so, when you enter a race, do you really want to gain the top step of the podium?
what is your diet like? have you mastered the deep cellular nutrition required to be a Wholistic Fitness yogi, capable of podiums in physiologic diversity?
what's your Connective Tissue health and stability like?
injury history?
sure, you can run 7 days a week and still do asana, zazen, and strength train, yet to what degree? i've pushed the wholistic performance envelope longer and further than probably anyone on the planet, yet, i'd need much more information to help you.
as the Buddha said, "The art of life is balance."
so, depending upon your INTENT behind your practices, it really depends upon subjective variables.

cyclic training is key, i can tell you that much. your Training Year must mimic the natural rhythms of nature; winter, spring, summer, and autumn all dance and delight our senses with various intensities and volumes.

so too, should your Practices.

this question would require an Online or Phone consultation, both of which are available in the WF Tribal Pro Shop.

May this complimentary answer somehow be of assistance to your Sacred Sweat...

in gassho,

coach ilg

ps; Roy and i are collaborating on "Age Reversing Yoga For Athletes" as we speak...er, as i write this. whatever.

CONSCIOUS PARENTING; OF HOPI AUSPICIOUS SIGNS AND...TEACHING TWO: STRIKE THREE

click on pics to enlarge



above: Dewa with her Hopi Sister, Navan, last Sunday at the Hopi Festival...


For those of you following my daughter's Dharma Journey, the "Om So Ti's" continue to rack up in the most exquisite array of snychronistic, auspicious Signs...however, the Key is; Consciousness...feeble ilg wonders at just how many more miracles pass before me without me realizing them due to my afflicted, clouded mind...what follows is a true story which took place last Sunday at the Hopi Festival here in Flag. then, later, an exchange of dharma pulled from that most precious, amazing Tribal Treasure House of Love known as, the WF SanghaLounge, please, if you haven't been in there recently, GET IN THERE and spread the WF Love.

May this DL be of Benefit to your sadhana...

your loving coach

***
before taking Ananda and Dewa to the Hopi Festival last Sunday, i made sure i conducted an appropriate Preparation Ritual For Receiving Native Grace within my own Sweatlodge (the body). I did a 30k mountain bike ride and along the way received the Gift of three Deer Beings, two Wapiti Beings standing absolutely motionless in the forested altar of A-1 mountain, one of my backyard mountains, and, an equally motionless Great Blue Heron standing so magnificently poised in the shallow waters of a forlorn stock pond near a prairie where i often nordic ski in the winter.

i took such beautiful and powerful Animal Medicine as a positive sign of my purification ride.

now, when ilg goes to such events as a Hopi Festival, i consider them quite a Blessing. long ilg has held a Connection with the non-forked tongue and gentle, enduring warrior spirit of the southwestern Tribal Beings. ilg just empties and

READ THE ENTIRE TRUE TEACHING STORIES at DL SUBSCRIPTION FORMAT!

Brother Bachar Begins The Toughest Free Solo Of His Life; His Death

well, the emails from my rock climbing brother and sisterhood are streaming in...
i understand my my old friend from my era of American rock climbing has hit the deck during a free solo near Bishop, CA and is now free soloing - as we all must - his Bardo Entry and Navigation....on behalf of myself and my Sangha, ilg offers my deepest condolences to the family and friends of this amazing pioneering spirit and force of free soloing, John Bachar...


MY TRIBUTE TO FALLEN BROTHER BACHAR on TODAY's DIRECT LINES...




Om Mani Padme Hung,
ilg
John's ol' bro from back in the day

A Fourth To Re-Member...

excerpted from this Weekend's Teaching at DIRECT LINES Subscription Format...



your AZ State Nordic Champion making the most from July's Monsoon Hailstorms!!!

okay, if you live at an elevation where on the average only 87 days do NOT freeze at night? Trust me, 4th of July is HUGE...every mountain town that i have lived in, throws most of the cities cash coffers into this weekend...the 4th is great. it Honors the Mongrel Medicine that made the Soon-To-Become-Turtle-Island-White Man dis subservience to the Crown, and it means that we high altitude folk can relax into an absolute Nirvana of amazing cool, wildflower, and monsoon showered summer for two luscious months...

See all the great Holiday pics and Dharma Teaching on DL Subscription Format...

HIDDEN DISCOUNT; WF Devotee Claudia gets her WF Priorities right before a Buddhist retreat

Coach!! Can you cook me a WF Blessed Mala for 100k+ prostrations?
above; long-time WF Devotee Claudia

***

Hello Noble Coach!!!

Much has happened since we spoke last - I would like to come see you this fall to visit ananda and baby and check out flagstaff but before then I will be entering a tibetan buddhist vajrayana training where be begin by entering the lineage with 108,000 full body extension prostrations. I saw that you have malas especially prepared and blessed for 3 days - is there any way if I order today that you could send them so that I could have them in hand for my depart?

Thank you for sending the emails - I plan to get back on DL and on SUNRIDER herbs this fall - I would love to train with you for a day too! Life has totally changed since we spoke and you were right - but you always are and thank for being there for me.

Much love and thank you for your help - i would love to have you with me on retreat!

With much love and gratitude
Claudia
Garuda Warrior



ps:
Can you relate briefly what you did to prepare the WF Blessed Mala so I can share what a great teacher and coach you are? I think people would love to know you exist


AFTER A FEW DAYS OF EMPOWERMENT RITUALS BY COACH...COACH RESPONDS:


Most Precious Claudia,

you should receive your Blessed Malas today.

here are some Guidelines to follow when using your Blessed Malas:

{Two PDF's were enclosed}

it will take a while to wear in your Beads to the point where the space between the beads
allows for faster Mala work. this is a pilgrimage of sorts.

my Empowerment Rituals involve a lifetime of sweat and spirit and stillness. most of all,
my Empowerment of your Blessed Malas pivot upon my Love of your Atman.
wear them constantly; around the neck or on thy left wrist (see Guidelines).
consider them your baby, for they have been treated Here in the WF Temple as such.

it does not matter if the students at your Buddhist retreat know about ilg.
our Tribe is a very small, precious, and ancient Lineage of Mountain Yogis.
we are easy to find however,
just apply constant high intensity sweat and stillness within every physiologic and mental capacity you are able to over the course of your life, and it is doubtless that they will reMember their WF Tribe (which, in the East, is known as NavanYoga).

that is all...study well, my Precious Student, for now you have the Blessed Beads to
empower your Practices...



head bowed and Dharma Blessings upon thy Practice and May you realize your Practice everywhere,

coach ilg
founder/Wholistic Fitness®


YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR WF BLESSED MALAS!??!!?

order within the next 24 hours and receive FREE SHIPPING!!
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Ahimsa Revisited- Part Two...of Herons and Hunter/Gatherers...

EXCERPTS FROM PART TWO appearing on DIRECT LINES Teaching Blog Subscription Format...

"It is truly impossible for an embodied being to abandon actions completely, but he who relinquishes the fruit of action is called a renunciant.

The triune fruit of action - good, harmful, and mixed - springs up in nonrenunciants after their demise, but in renunciants never."

- Verses 11 &12, Chapter XVII Bhagavad Gita

... We all come from a Hunter/Gatherer Tribe; it's vital to reVisit that ancient skillset. We may be surprised at how much 'gunk' comes up emotionally from deeeeeep within our lower chakral fields when we pursue hunting or fishing as a spiritual assignment. The spiritual advantages of inflicting pain and death upon the Animal Realm are not to be politely shielded from your supposedly more 'harmonious' endeavors along the Way toward Enlightenment. Really, why do you TAF that India's most Beloved and Powerful Scripture - The Bhagavad Gita - takes place in the middle of an intense civil war?! C'mon; if ilg has taught you ANYTHING about the spiritual journey it's that, "it ain't spiritual if it's comfortable to your ego."


DON'T MISS THIS POWERFUL AND APPROPRIATE TEACHING FOR MODERN AMERICAN YOGIS...

Ahimsa Revisited...Part One

Reverend Ilg understands the complexities of philosophy vs. everyday actions all too well...the following is a two-part Teaching on such Divine Battle. photo by Ananda during a wedding ceremony performed by coach this past weekend in Flag.

***
Most Noble Seekers of Wholeness,
at this stage in our spiritual journeys - though each of us reading this forum are vibrating at various levels of intensities and lessons along the colored and painful evolution of our Soul Energy (atman) - the resounding impact of Ahimsa (non-harming) should pretty much be as sharp and as clearly destructive to our positive karma as is a Venus Williams's running forehand at Wimbledon.

having stated that, however, until Enlightenment, we gotta stay real. and staying real means admitting that we often say 'yes' through our daily actions to things that philosophically we may be dead set against. Ahimsa, one of the fundamental guidelines of a yogi's life, is one of those traps along our Way Higher. we can't even brush our teeth in the morning without indirectly causing great harm to the plant, mineral, and animal realms...each tube of toothpaste has inflicted unimaginable pain and torture to 'test animals' as are the colored dyes in the packaging and materials of the toothpaste container, the toothbrush, the metals and toxic burnoff from the factories and distribution systems involved in the makers of toothbrushes, bathroom sinks, plumbing, the house around the bathroom...i mean, that is why the Tibetan Buddhists pray to the "10,000 sentient beings" for forgiveness as they go about their daily life - they know and feel full well the karmic and samskaric brunt of our mundane behaviors.

when it comes to our food? ooooof. the contradictions and hypocrisies which leap out with gut and heart wrenching blatancy are at times too much to bear. it did not seem long ago that i spent ten years as close to a vegan lifestyle as possible which is essentially a neurotic busyness of philosophy vs. action that overpowered a more intimate and sacred understanding of a gunically-geared perspective and balance.

READ THE ENTIRE TEACHING RIGHT NOW at DL SUBSCRIPTION FORMAT: the Highest 10 dang bucks you can spend per month for your Practice of Wholeness-Inspired Practice...includes 2,000+ Archived Teachings and a set of keys into the worldwide WF SanghaLounge!

May this reading inspire Ahara-Jaya (mastery of food/disciplined eating) within your Practice and may there be peace within the cells of all vibrating Beings...

and...in case you have yet to notice;
all things vibrate...


head bowed, spine elegant, heart open...

your loving coach