In last year’s New Year’s work­shop I set a sankalpa, or yogic inten­tion, to pur­sue well-being in 2014. What a jour­ney it’s been!

Sankalpa is a foun­da­tional con­cept in yoga. It invites you to con­nect  your heart­felt desires to your deep­est rea­son for being, your cho­sen path in life. (Your dharma.)

Unlike typ­i­cal New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, which fail under the “set and for­get” model, a sankalpa is more action­able by design. It’s a jour­ney rather than a mile­stone.

The sankalpa you choose sets “spe­cific inten­tions [that] can help you align your moment-to-moment choices with your heart­felt desire.” Day by day, “your spe­cific sankalpa will describe what you need to do, and where you need to direct your energy, to make progress on your larger life’s goals.” (For more, see “How to Cre­ate a Sankalpa.”)

The Journey Is the Reward

The prac­tice of well-being invites a com­mit­ment to action, find­ing the right bal­ance from moment to moment between being and becom­ing. Being well; becom­ing well — seek­ing and nour­ish­ing the qual­i­ties of well-being in myself, my loved ones and the world around me.

As a sankalpa it helps me make bet­ter choices about:

• Health, hap­pi­ness and pros­per­ity
• Engage­ment, rela­tion­ship
• Joy, sat­is­fac­tion, ease, glad­ness
• A life worth liv­ing

These are the qual­i­ties that have been asso­ci­ated with well-being for many years.

While prepar­ing for last year’s work­shop, I dis­cov­ered that the mean­ing of well-being has evolved over many years, influ­enced by changes in cul­tural val­ues and norms. Lately it has become closely linked with health and fit­ness, per­haps too nar­rowly focused there. The gym cul­ture impact…

That said, a long­ing for life­long health and fit­ness was one of the things that prompted my choice of well-being as my sankalpa.

I chose this sankalpa know­ing that being more mind­ful of well-being, for any of its asso­ci­ated mean­ings, would ben­e­fit me, my fam­ily and engage­ment with the larger com­mu­nity.

And so it began.

The Path Is Not Always Straight

2014 kicked off with a bang. I invested in an unlim­ited yoga pass for six months, and made time to take four or five classes a week, plus daily prac­tice at home on the off days. I bought a Fit­Bit for my hus­band and me;  went for 5‑mile walks with friends, shared the occa­sional tan­dem bike ride with my hus­band, and rel­ished the ben­e­fits of get­ting stronger and more flex­i­ble.

I was able to avoid colds and flus last win­ter. I lost some weight, as a happy side effect of this jour­ney. Got a cute hair­cut. Made more time for friends. Landed a new client, in a new indus­try.

By April I was strong and ready for a week­long intense yoga retreat in Mex­ico, the high­light of the year. I shared the expe­ri­ence with a dear friend from Cal­i­for­nia.

But shortly after­wards my phys­i­cal con­di­tion went down­hill. Too much travel? An over­loaded brief­case? Heavy lug­gage for long trips? Reluc­tance to ask strangers for help when putting bags in over­head bins on planes? (Metaphors for bur­dens per­haps…)

Who knows why, but chronic neck issues flared up in early May. My left shoul­der became frozen. I could no longer do daily vinyasa prac­tices. War­rior 2 was no longer pos­si­ble, and chat­u­ranga was out of the ques­tion.

A Different Kind of Practice

Since May my yoga prac­tice has been largely replaced by exer­cises directed by a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist. And gen­tle asana prac­tices at home where it’s eas­ier to lis­ten care­fully to what my shoul­der is telling me, or when to avoid poses beyond my cur­rent reach.

In May I went back east for a fam­ily gath­er­ing to remember/celebrate my mother, who died a year ago of com­pli­ca­tions from COPD. My sis­ter announced she was on the verge of surgery for stage 1 can­cer (thank­fully, all is well now.) A friend under­went can­cer treat­ment this fall.

In August my brother-in-law died sud­denly after a brief but intense bout with thy­roid can­cer, leav­ing his wife ill equipped for the prac­ti­cal chal­lenges of home main­te­nance, finances or the lonely real­i­ties of her new life. She’s going to have to sell her home in the coun­try and move closer to a city, to be with friends. Since August my hus­band and I have needed to spend a lot of time and psy­chic energy help­ing her cope, to pre­pare for her painful tran­si­tions. This too has come at the expense of time for tra­di­tional yoga prac­tice.

Beyond the Physical Aspects of Well-being

But as I re-exam­ine the deeper mean­ing of well-being, I’m reminded that engage­ment and ease, a life worth liv­ing, are impor­tant com­po­nents of its ben­e­fits. My sis­ter-in-law’s tragedy and health chal­lenges among friends and fam­ily have redi­rected my atten­tion to oth­ers’ well-being. A more pur­pose­ful, other-directed engage­ment.

Although my quest for well-being may have started by being some­what overly focused on phys­i­cal dimen­sions, it has been redi­rected, nec­es­sar­ily, into other are­nas since May. With the ben­e­fit of 20–20 hind­sight, I now real­ize the frozen shoul­der and pain of this past spring were really a wake-up call.

As painful as this jour­ney has become, I’ve come to real­ize that this, too, is a yoga prac­tice, even if far from what I had intended for the jour­ney. It has demanded much more mind­ful­ness, espe­cially off the mat.

As for the phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions imposed by a frozen shoul­der, neck steno­sis and a stiff tho­racic spine, I’m now — finally — on a path to get­ting bet­ter. Thou­sands of dol­lars later, with no reim­burse­ment from health insur­ance, as a result of high deductibles on the fam­i­ly’s insur­ance plan.

A cor­ti­sone injec­tion two months ago restored much of my range of motion, so my ther­a­pist is now shift­ing our atten­tion to exer­cises designed to improve mobil­ity in the upper back and neck. Likely trig­gers for the frozen shoul­der flare up this spring.

In doing so my ther­apy team is forc­ing me to con­front one of the most fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges of all: relearn­ing the proper pos­tures for sit­ting and stand­ing. I’ve got­ten stuck in bad mis­align­ment habits that have con­tributed to spinal dys­func­tion.

Relearn­ing to sit or stand prop­erly requires moment-by-moment atten­tion, a con­scious dis­ci­pline of realign­ing my neck or lower back when­ever they revert to bad habits. It’s hard: often what feels most nat­ural or com­fort­able is not, in fact, safe or healthy. What feels most nat­ural to me results in an overly arched lower back, or a head that pro­trudes too far for­ward. My inter­nal bio-feed­back for proper align­ment is not yet work­ing.

I’ve learned that the man­date to “stack your bones” prop­erly is not some­thing that changes overnight. Cor­rect­ing mis­align­ment moment by moment is an irri­tat­ing dis­ci­pline.

It’s been a tough year, but it’s now clear that well-being was an inspired sankalpa for 2014.

Hav­ing only just begun the jour­ney, I see the wis­dom in recom­mit­ting to this sankalpa for 2015. After all,

What makes you a yogi is liv­ing in the moment on and off your mat, with kind­ness and love for your­self and every­one around you — no mat­ter what. That’s yoga and that takes con­stant prac­tice.

– Alexan­dria Crow, quoted in Yoga Jour­nal, Jan­u­ary 2015