Anatomy
become literate in your body
The body is a terrible and a beautiful thing. When a relatively innocuous practice of yoga began to change everything about who I was, I got curious: why did movement so effect my mood, and why did my body seem to have such direct influence on my character? What was happening to me?
Standard yoga teacher training doesn't talk about the human body or anatomy in much detail (it can't, at 200 hours. It's not med school). Everything I've learned about the body I learned after training.
I've worked with leaders in the fields of yoga anatomy, trauma studies, functional movement, fascial lines, adapting yoga asana and reading bodies. Along the way I've figured out that I can't answer most questions we have about the body; we can only stand back in wonder.
And I've learned that this learning itself is enough, even without final answers: exploring the body changes the way we look at everything. Coming to know the body even provokes changes in the brain, opening us to empathy, courage, and an ability to tolerate unknowing.
This is a beauty. To realize that even though we will die, even without ultimate answers to soul or suffering or disease, we can come to be literate in our bones, our fibers, and comfortable in our own skin.