two excerpts from my current Series on Hopi Footracing from today's DL...
this Series includes never before photography and stories from America's most
ancient tribal homeland and ceremonial dances which include,
oh forget it...
you should really just quit pretending and join your Tribe of WF and
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here's a couple of excerpts...
precisely why most yoga teachers prefer to distance themselves from the notion that distance running is yoga! "Running ruins yoga," i've been told by yoga 'teachers' since the eighties. not in this Tribe, baby. in this Tribe? we uphold running as did the Ancient Masters; we consider running for what it truly is...an unequaled pilgrimage of sweat, self, and the long, silent distance. by the time i got back to Flagstaff at the end of my two consecutive days of racing against the Hopi's on their ancestral, sacred lands my battered feet looked the worse for their wear. within five days, i would take these feet and run them up the Sacred Peak, producing three layers of blisters. Yoga is intended to be self-confrontational. For until you confront your various 'selves', transformation - let alone transcendance - is impossible. that is why, in WF, everything that the human body is capable of is considered yoga practice. in WF, nothing is ever pushed away from yoga. it's all yoga. especially triple-layered blisters begotten from confronting ones limits during endurance footracing.
***
i felt Sacred.
i felt secure with death and impermanence as my menu for the night.
so, i fed my steak to Vishnu
and smiled, sealed up in my Bala Cave
awaiting the Dawn to prepare me for my final race against the Hopis
on their own ancient lands
never before raced by a white man's feet.
ilg was as happy as a king in his throne
in this desolate, elevated land
in which the Great Spirit seems to be
unhidden;
each tree a temple,
each bird a rinpoche,
each sideways look at a cloud turns ceremonial
in the simplest yet most profound of ways.
tomorrow;
i will race
upon blistered feet,
a broken back body,
yet
with a spirit renewed.
