Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is the queen of Kundalini. Kundalini is a rigorous yoga involving meditation, chanting, and breath exercises which harmonize the body's energy centers, or chakras, and tune the nervous and glandular systems. The style of yoga is that she has created is very much geared towards hard climbing. First off, Gurmukh is maybe the physically strongest most beautiful women i have ever met. She is also almost 70.

Kundalini yoga involves physical practices that transcend what seems physically impossible, by breaking down the physical experience mentally. For instance, she will have me hold out my arms straight and turn them counter clockwise...for 20 minutes. After 5 i am pumped, and ready to quit, thoughts of failure, fear and anger envelope my mind. After 10 minutes i know i am certainly at my physical max, and i finally hit the wall mentally. Gurmukh is there to guide me though the wall, she tells me to embrace the negative thoughts and instead of saying "I am pumped", which is a finite and definite statement, to think "i am having thoughts of being pumped." Which is the actual of the two. (For instance when we say "I am angry", you are saying "I am anger." If you say instead, "I am having thoughts of anger", you separate yourself from the anger and are in control of it suddenly) The pain builds and builds until I break through the wall at 15 minutes, the next 5 i cannot remember, at around 20 mintues she stops me.

I believe from this excercise and its relevance to climbing, it is possible for a body that could not normally handle 30 continuous feet of v7 moves, to do 5 continuous pitches of it, though i am not sure that the actual pysical enlightment could happen without extense training directly from someone such as Gurmukh.

Retreating

3 times a year i travel around the country with Yoga Journal Magazine to their conference retreats. I have worked an exchange for my travel, lodging, food, and classes for working with their sponsors, presenters, and registrants. So here i am again, this time closer to home, just outside Estes Park. For 8 days I'll be relishing my sobriety, taking yoga classes from the best instructors in the world, eating vegan, and attending late night panel discussions on the previous. It is nice to have no distractions and be among such a positive and spirtiual community again.
I cannot say that my yoga practice in anything but beginning, so i often enjoy the mind and body lectures as much as the actual physical practice itself.

Truthfully i can't remember the last time i went just 1 week without lifting my spirits with alcohol and other things. I have no regrets about my lifestyles at home, but i do regret my lack of discipline in this matter. That said, i feel it is my true weakness and yoga helps teach me control through an absolute freedom and clarity that i have untapped within me everyday.

I always thought by hiking in and bouldering as much as possible that i was living a healthy lifestyle. i suppose to an average mid-westerner, i am. I am not. So I am enjoying the process again of learning where, at least for me, true balance is through re-connecting with the practice of yoga. I hope also to return this Sunday feeling inspired and rejuvenated towards bouldering.

Each morning so far there has been the sounds of bugling elks and fresh blankets of snow on the peaks of RMNP. From my little world i can see that the climbing season there is closing fast. Enjoy it while you can. Namaste.

150th post.

seriously, how lame is that? My "vault" months look like yearly home run stats for a second baseman. Also, if you ever watch JJ climb from above him, it can be very scary.

Mike Banuelos

...on perhaps the finest unknown v2 in the Flatirons. Terrain Boulders.

The Visual #30

Kevin Jorgeson. A move through "Midnight Freighting." Eldorado Canyon.

More Verm...

John Sherman, at a young 32, still cranking across Colorado.

Verm.

Whataguy. I got to hang with John Sherman for the last couple days before he heads to Boone for the fall. Totally classic! Of course we drank a lot, we drove a lot (not too much at the same time), and bouldered from Independance Pass down to RMNP. But mostly we bullshitted. A lot.
last photo: Thimble.

Boulder P.Rob-lems.

Heh, that is pretty cool your name fits into your lifestyle. I almost didn't catch that. Anyway, it was pretty cool for me watching one of the world's strongest climbers try Boulder's hardest boulder problem "Suspension of Disbelief" V14/8B+. The problem is powerful, extremely technical, long, scary, and ridiculously condition dependent. I hiked out with Paul many days last winter as he obsessively projected the problem. He was agonizingly close to redpointing it before he headed to Japan. While he was gone, the cold weather gave way to a humid Spring back in Eldorado Canyon. Paul would have to wait another year..

and but now fall is in the air. I can smell it.

"Mind Matters."

After 3 days work in miserable conditions, Kevin Jorgeson repeated what is, for now, known as "Mind Matters" on Guanella Pass above Georgetown, Colorado. Rumored to have first been done a few years back by Johnny G. and Tim Kemple, "Mind Matters" has a stopper 5 move crux sequence... Off a bad double undercling 3 moves in, one must make a huge move to a very poor right hand crimp/pinch and lock it off into an undercling far above. From here, there can be no falling on your way to the top as the landing is far below and very rocky.

His ascent was filmed for possible inclusion in "Rocky Mountain Highball."

The Visual #38

An unbeknownst Chip Phillips about to be crushed into oblivion at the hands of an unknown Eldo Area Rambler... then, in the final photo, somehow dodging the crushing blow!

Some called it "luck."

Some called it "enlightenment."

5 from The Rocklands.

...all courtesy if an old 2 mega-pixel point and shoot...

1.Fred 2.Daniel 3.Lisa 4.Andy 5.Foster