In 2003 (when data was last collected), almost 14 million Americans sought the help of a doctor to deal with a shoulder problem. The types of injury, and the treatment for these problems varies, so it is important for the yoga teacher to have a good working knowledge of shoulder anatomy and the common injuries that occur. With such a high prevalence of shoulder injury, it is only a matter of time before a teacher will be required to call upon that knowledge to help a student experiencing one of these injuries. While referring students to a doctor for a complete diagnosis is the first step, there are ways to work with the various conditions as well as preventative measures that can be utilized during a yoga class.
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This year, I’ve decided to not make any resolutions. This may actually be the first year I’ve chosen not to make any. I did a little poking around at my resolutions of years past and have realized (not for the first time) that I don’t follow up on most of them. I’ve also had a lot of conversations with friends where we all laugh about how few of the resolutions we make in January become reality.

For some people, resolutions can be a valuable tool to help motivate, but it can also be a source of guilt and the yardsticks we set out don’t actually measure our success in growing and dealing with changing circumstances. Intent can be a great thing and I think it’s important to check in with intent on an ongoing basis, but I think keeping an open mind to what the right path for you is at that moment is very important.

Intent can become dogma when we think that somehow setting it down in stone is the only way to move forward. It can be a brute force approach to change. Life changes and those things which were the right things for you in January may not be right for you in June. So this year, I resolve (heh) to keep my eyes and heart open to my changing circumstances and make decisions based on a hopefully growing awareness of myself and the world around me.

One of the things that I love about both yoga and acrobatics is that they call on ever new forms of strength and flexibility. In order to progress, you need to work in new ways that involve very specific muscles and muscle combinations that you probably have not used much before (at least not in that specific way). You build on what you have done previously, but there is always new work to be done. (This applies to the mental aspects of exercise as well, but I’m sticking with the physical for now)

The latest challenge for me is press handstands. I’ve done so many handstands over the last year or so and have developed a fair amount of strength and stability there, but am no closer to a press handstand than I was a year ago. I love that. There is always something new. I get excited to explore a new thing and it helps to keep my exercise from getting stale. For me, I’ve found that this is really key to keeping me committed to a workout program. My motivation usually stems from that moment when something first clicks, when something physically challenging all at once becomes accessible. Other people have different ways of being motivated and I think it’s important to know what those are. Without knowing where that motivation comes from in you, exercise is just something that we feel a sense of obligation to do. Where is the fun in that?

Update – So, miraculously, all of a sudden, today I can do a press handstand! This morning I’m writing about it being my latest challenge and today, it just clicked into place. I can only think that somehow, placing conscious attention on it was all that was needed. I wonder what else I should be bringing conscious attention to

I find the intersection of traditional meditation techniques and modern science to be fascinating. People have experienced the benefits of meditation for millennium and know that it works, but we have very little knowledge of how it works from a scientific method (although I might argue that various meditation masters were actually being quite scientific in their explorations, we just have different tools that we use now). It’s exciting to me that we can combine western science and ancient spiritual philosophy in this way.

Along those lines, my wife Ariel recently forwarded me this site, which is the website for a book called Mind Hacks (which I have not read, just to get that out of the way). The website has some great links on the page to both the interview mentioned and to a 2003 Time magazine issue exploring meditation, which is actually quite a good introduction I think. Also check out some of their other blog posts which are quite interesting.

One of our homework assignments last month in yoga teacher training was to come up with a list of ethics and personal boundries, then write a paragraph about the process. The most interesting thing for me as I was doing this was seeing how situational they all are. When I really thought about a lot of things which I would normally think of as my ethics, I realize that it all depends on the circumstances.

Non-violence is really one of the only ones I could come up with that I felt I would probably hold as an ideal no matter what (even if I can conceive of situations where I probably wouldn’t practice it – out of fear, etc. – , I would still feel like non-violence would be the better choice ultimately). For everything else, it seems to me like the situation needs to be analyzed on it’s own merits.

Which also got me thinking about dogma in general. It seems so easy to have a list of things which define how you are going to behave in the world, as it means you don’t really have to think about each situation (or at least, it has often meant that for me). It can mean that awareness of the unique circumstances of each moment is lost. And it can also mean (or again, has meant that for me in the past) that we attach to these things as somehow defining who we are.

So, how do we walk the path of integrity despite this? I think by bringing conscious attention to each decision and making sure that our motives come from a altruistic and loving place. Easier said than done, but it’s a work in progress.