Tag: Beginner’s yoga

Learning What My Body WantsAugust 16th, 2011

I paddled flat water kayak and war canoe competitively when I was young. It involved training two or three times each day during the summer, and strength training all winter. What I remember about our summer workouts was one minute of flinging, twisting, jerking upper-body movement that we called stretching, followed by a 10-minute run, after which we’d jump in our boats and work hard while a coach yelled at us to work hard. We raced every weekend. I still dream about the bang of the gun at the starting line.

It was fun, and formative, but at that age I was just doing what I was told. I paddled because I was told to paddle.

My definition of fun has changed.

Over time, I’ve fallen in love with a more gentle and thorough kind of stretching. I’ve lost interest in being yelled at. I’ve lost my fear of losing and have completely redefined what winning and losing mean.

I pay more attention to how my body feels and to what it loves in order to feel fabulous.

Back then my body was something that never measured up. I didn’t feel fast enough, strong enough, lean enough, or competitive enough to please my coaches. The idea of pleasing myself had not yet occurred to me.

Now, I see my body as a generous, resilient, healthy, and beautiful vehicle for my considerable spirit. What makes it feel fabulous is being listened to, honored, forgiven, and enjoyed every single day.

And although I am not perfectly at peace with this body, I am so much closer than I was when I was 15 or 20 that I can hardly wait to see what 60 and 70 feel like.

Here’s what I’m grateful for today: I’m grateful for being involved in a sport that taught me a bit about who I am and a lot about who I am not. I’m grateful for it sending me searching for a better fit.

And I’m grateful for yoga for being a perfect fit.

It makes me wonder how many of you combine a life of yoga and competitive sport. Do you love both? Has yoga enriched your competitive life? Or has yoga replaced competitive sport for you? I’d love to hear.

Thanks for these marvelous bodies of ours. Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

To Ann and All The Teachers in TrainingAugust 9th, 2011

Over the last few months I’ve had the
pleasure of corresponding with Ann, a Yoga Journal reader who is
smack in the middle of yoga teacher training. As you’d expect,
she’s experiencing ups, downs, and growth in about 47 different
directions. Somehow we began writing back and forth just before her training began. It’s been an
honor listening to Ann’s story.

So, Ann, and any of the rest of you who
are becoming our teachers, this conversation is for you:

This weekend I sat on a deck with
friends, acquaintances, and strangers overlooking a huge, blue
Northern Ontario lake. We chatted and laughed our way through five or
six topics before we landed on yoga. One woman at the table has been
teaching bellydancing for 30 years. She belongs to a weekly yoga
class. Another woman takes two classes every week along with Pilates.
The friend next to me goes to her studio once a week, twice if she’s
lucky. We were amazed to have all of this yoga in common.

We talked about different kinds of yoga and different studios. Then someone mentioned teachers. We all mentioned loving our teachers. The second woman–she’s too shy to
let me use her name–ended a pause in this part of the conversation by saying
that her yoga teacher is more than wonderful, that, in fact, her teacher has changed her life. That’s a strong
statement. I asked how her teacher had changed her life, and she
thought for a bit.

“I think she taught me to make myself a priority,” she said.

“I’ve spent years taking care of my kids, my house, meals, laundry, my work, and my husband. I’ve spent decades taking care of myself last.”

Bottom rung on her own
ladder. This lesson is huge.

She was ready, but her yoga teacher’s
constant enthusiasm, openness, and positive values were what she
needed to start climbing.

There wasn’t a woman around that
table who didn’t understand this lesson
completely.

So. To Ann and to all of you who are
becoming teachers, this is what you are to us. Teachers, guides,
inspirations, good human beings. You change our lives.

Thanks to you for doing what you love
and for passing it along to us.

Thanks to yoga for making room for all
of us and for encouraging us to value ourselves.

Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, Yoga, yoga teacher training

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Modern Yoga WisdomAugust 4th, 2011

If I were writing my own version of the
Yoga Sutra (a 2,000-year old guide for the practice of
yoga), I would include this bit of wisdom:

In your practice, some asanas will
elicit such panicky resistance from your body and/or spirit that
they’ll make you want to throw up. Do not despair, young yogi,
because this urge to throw up is teaching you many things.

First, it’ll teach you about your own
wonderful instincts. Sometimes the urge to throw up means, “This
one is not for you. It is not yet time to stand on your head while in full lotus.”
You’ll learn what this particular nausea feels like. This nausea
feels like a big red X.

The more common nausea feels like a big
red Uh Oh. It may be difficult at first to differentiate these, but
you will learn. The Uh Oh nausea means, “Whoa, Nellie, you have a
lot to learn from this pose. Come a wee bit closer. Perhaps this one has to do with the fact
that you hate confrontation, or you feel powerless in your life, or
you have unfortunately led your entire life with your pea brain
rather than your enormous heart.”

These urges to throw up and run away
screaming should be in the Sutra.

I used to feel the Uh Oh with Butterfly
Pose. It’s easing, now. I still feel it with all forward lunges.
With back bends, I’m not close enough to feel it, but I’ll bet
it’s coming.

When I hit one of these pukey edges, I
use a homemade mantra, which is, “I am completely safe.” (Not
that I have any underlying issues of my own, you understand.)

Have you met these urges to throw up?
If not, achhhh, you’re just more evolved than I am. Lucky for you.
You should write your own Yoga Sutra. We could use your wisdom.

If you have felt the big red X or the
Uh Oh, I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks to yoga for shining a light on
my resistance. Thanks to the spiky flower photographer. Thanks to you, always, for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, Yoga, yoga humor, yoga sutras

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What Is Your Yoga?August 2nd, 2011

“It’s not the asanas that will
change your life. It’s the courage you bring to your practice that
will change your life.”

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

I froze mid-leg swing when I heard that
while watching her DVD last night.

It’s intriguing for several reasons:

There are so many kinds of yoga and such enormous variation in practices that it’s hard to
imagine we’re related at all on a physical level. And yet I call
myself a yogi and I consider myself part of your family whether
you’re doing Ashtanga, Bikram, Anusara, or Laughter Yoga.
Something must connect us underneath and beyond the asanas. Maybe
courage is a part of that.
I’ve been reading the Yoga
Sutra. It seems to me that Patanjali wouldn’t recognize what we
call yoga, so removed is it from his description of yoga 2,000 years
ago. He was a meditation guy first and foremost, if I’m reading
correctly. We’ve skewed pretty heavily in the direction of instructors with head mikes, Luluwhatever design, and the whole buff thing since then. I don’t see
a problem with this, but it makes me wonder what each of us would
write in our own practice manual for yoga. Would courage be a part
of it?
Despite being enamored of my
physical practice, my interest is sustained by the non-physical side
of yoga. I love the exploration of my relationship to both my heart and to the cosmos, as woo-woo as that might sound. That’s why I’m not still playing squash.

Is it about courage? I suppose a part
of it is.

To me, it feels as though I entered
this huge house called yoga and, exploring it room by room, I find
that every wall is covered with mirrors. So that everywhere I look, I
see myself, my ego and personality and all their resistance, and in
brief flashes, my huge-as-the-solar-system Self, the spirit I have always been, the one
who is revealed over time by my practice. Courage is a part of that.
So are persistence, curiosity, a desire for truth, forgiveness, love,
humility, and freedom.

What’s it about for you?

Thanks to yoga for being as deep as
we’d like to dig. I suspect each of us is also deeper than we could possibly dig, and I’m grateful for that.

Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, Yoga

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Yoga and Health CareJuly 28th, 2011

Deepak Chopra recently wrote an article in The Huffington Post raving calmly, the way he does, about the benefits of yoga, about the 16 million Americans now practicing yoga, about its effects on sleep, depression and anxiety, migraines, low back pain, blood pressure, and stress.

For the last 10 of my 20 years as a chiropractor, I suspected strongly that if my patients began meditating and doing yoga, their problems would diminish if not disappear. I still believe that, and can’t imagine a more constructive prescription coming from any health care practitioner. As much as I loved and respected my profession, there’s a reason I write about yoga and meditation now rather than practicing in a clinic.

We’re a culture of people who look for outside answers and outside interventions (swallow this, inject this, micromanage the nutrients of this, do 15 repetitions of this, watch your numbers, Dr. So-and-so says this), and who have grown to trust less in our own capacity to generate our own healing and well-being than in what the latest, heavily marketed press release tells us about our bodies.

Here’s what I love about yoga and meditation today: I love their simplicity. I love the way they encourage me to know my own energy thoroughly and intimately. I love the way I practice listening to my body with every class, every sitting. I love the quiet. Quiet is the place where great questions and great answers reside. Lastly, I love the way I discover my own truths. I’m convinced that making our own discoveries is a prerequisite for finding our way to good health. How healthy can we be if we never learn to listen to and trust ourselves?

Thanks to Deepak, not for prescribing, but for eloquently pointing the way to the mat. Thanks to the mat for pointing the way to ourselves. Thanks to yoga and to meditation for being here for all of us. And thanks to you, always, for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, Deepak Chopra, kristin shepherd, meditation, Yoga

Posted in chiropractic, deepakchopra, Yoga | No Comments »

Yoga Al Fresco 2July 26th, 2011

Following twice daily practices outside this weekend and last (blame the Kundalini fever), I have a few more observations on the differences between indoor and outdoor practice.

1. Some asanas are transformed by moving outside. Shoulderstand done indoors is a horror movie for me. Jaws music, nervous gut, gritted teeth, the whole thing. I’m OK with the fling upward, but sustaining it is hell. Outside, however, it’s gorgeous! The blue sky with drifting, fluffy sheep-clouds is such a mesmerizing background that I forget about the fact that I have no core strength yet. I will try all my dreaded poses this weekend, just for fun.

2. The smells are far better. Less carpet, less stinky armpit-and-crotch, and more clover, more pine needles, more bloomy plants I don’t know the names of.

3. The sounds are intoxicating. Where we are, it’s wind through pine needles and poplar (aspen) leaves, water rolling up on huge rocks, and the buzzing of bees, dragonflies, and humming birds. I’ll bet you have your own marvelous soundtrack.

4. Savasana is the best thing ever. It feels as though you’re floating in water. And if you’re lucky enough to have a tiny breeze? Well, you may never come back inside.

I hope you have a chance to try your yoga outside, even if it means Tree Pose on the sidewalk during your lunch hour. If you look up, your hands will look fantastic against the sky.

Thanks to yoga for offering such thrills.Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, Yoga, yoga humor, yoga outside

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A Change of SceneryJuly 21st, 2011

During summer, my practice moves
outside two or three days every week. My lovely man and I spend long
weekends at our cabin on an island in Northern Ontario.

This means that my practice is either
free-form or follows a DVD (until my laptop runs out of steam).

Al fresco yoga is different, even if
the asanas themselves are identical.

Here’s what I notice:

Centering myself before I begin is
completely different. Rather than shutting the world out and going
inward, I breathe myself into my environment. I feel like one of the
trees or the clouds. Great feeling.
Life goes on around me. Rosie dog
presses her bum into my head whenever I am close enough to her
height. She also works diligently to occupy any and all free space
on my mat. My lovely man forgets I’m doing yoga and offers
breakfast, weather reports, and book summaries through the kitchen
window. These things would drive me mad at home. During cabin
practice, they’re as lovely as chirping birds and the sound of waves.
Breath becomes more important as a
kind of anchor when there are fewer fixed points to stare at. The
cloud ceiling moves, the trees wave, water slurps on the shore. Steadiness comes from my inhalations and exhalations.
I’m clearer about the purpose of
yoga being pleasure. It’s easy indoors for me to drift toward
pushing my yoga. Do more, go further, push harder. Blech. Outside,
everything is clearer. Happier. Lighter. Good for this little soul.

Are you an outdoor
yog(in)i? What have you noticed during your outdoor practice?

Thanks to yoga for
being so portable. Thanks to you for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, Yoga, yoga humor, yoga outside

Posted in alfresco, Yoga, yogamat, yogaoutside | No Comments »

My Edge is My OwnJuly 19th, 2011

Among my friends are two former yoga
teachers, both of whom quit teaching (and practicing) because of
chronic pain that began with yoga and improved with the end of yoga.

I’m flummoxed by this. Did they not
find the right kind of yoga for their lives? Did they feel so
conflicted about the business of teaching yoga that their bodies
rebelled? Could they not find this “edge” we keep hearing about?

Intelligent edge, intense edge, edge of discomfort, going beyond your edge, working with your edge. In yoga, this Goldilocks edge is huge: finding
the balancing point between too much and too little practice,
overdoing and underdoing each pose, all the while expanding our
definition of who we are on the mat.

I appreciate this edge in my own
practice. Some days (some weeks, some seasons), feeling solid and
trusting, I’m drawn to exploring the deepest, secret spots in a
stretch, the hip and shoulder spots that have had “Keep Out”
signs on them for most of my life. And when I’m ready to peek into those places, it happens incrementally and at my own pace. I enter those rooms one brave step at a time. No matter who is teaching me or how big the class is,
that kind of stretching is a private matter.

On those same confident days, I
approach strength challenges by saying, “Bring it on, honey,
because I can fling the universe over my shoulder and carry her up a flight of stairs.” Name the challenge and I’ll double it.

Other days, weeks, and seasons, all I
want is restoration, peace, and Arrowroot cookies. No push, please.

This edge is completely personal and in
constant flux. I can’t imagine anyone but me knowing where it might
be today.

To complicate things, the edge is far
more comprehensive than I’m suggesting so far. On some days I want
to be instructed. On some days I do not, thanks. Some days I resist
everything that’s good for me. Some days I allow good things to
pour into my life. Some days I’m pushing everything (got to, have
to, should) and some days I hum a cooperative tune with all that is. There are edges everywhere you look, many of my own invisible to me,
all of mine invisible to anyone but me.

I don’t know, then, how to explain
the teachers who love to sit on my back during a forward bend in
order to “take me to my edge.”

(Nor can I explain how it is that
sometimes I love that push, even though I came to class wanting an
hour-long savasana.)

I don’t know how to explain the huge
numbers of yoga students and teachers who injure themselves.

My own approach? My edge is my
business, my responsibility, and my pleasure to explore. I appreciate
my teachers, but no one knows my path better than me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on
your edge(s). I have a lot to learn.

Thanks to yoga for being endlessly
interesting. Thanks to you, always, for the conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, edge, kristin shepherd, Yoga

Posted in edge, forwardbends, savasana, Yoga, yogateacher | No Comments »

In Praise of Losing Your HeadJuly 8th, 2011

In designing-your-ideal-life circles, coaches love to ask this: What do you love that makes you lose complete track of time?

Maybe you lose track of time brushing your teeth. I don’t know. But having wasted great chunks of my life being compulsively early and time-obsessed, the answers to that question are HUGE indicators of where I ought to be running as fast as courage will take me.

So what does it? And I mean really lose track of time, like holy time warp, Batman, is that sunset out there? I haven’t brushed my teeth, for God’s sake. That’s what I mean.

There were years when I had no answer, which would be pathetic except that those years generated the certainty that being among the living dead would not do for me.

Here are my answers now:

1. Rehearsing for a great play as an actor. It’s the discovery process. All rehearsals should be 27 hours long. Without a break. I can never understand why anyone wants to stop.

2. Rehearsing for a great play as a director. Same thing.

3. Speaking with and entertaining groups of people re: making ourselves well by making ourselves happy. I think it’s the communal discovery thing again.

4. This one is recent and is the reason I’ve been thinking about this: Kundalini yoga. I’m mad for it. I read yoga DVD reviews like Southern Baptists read bibles, over and over and over till the sane people around me cover their ears and roll their eyes back a decade. I do two classes a day and would do more if I could still hold my arms up. I fantasize about upping that to three or four and calling my entire life a Kundalini transformation camp. The dog will only sit through one class a day with me. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.

Those are it for me. I’d love to hear yours. And not just for fun, although I’m all for fun.

I suspect there’s something healthy in losing our heads, our allegiance to the almost constant got-to-have-to-tick-tock-love-to-but-can’t-even-contemplate-it-tick-tock filter through which make our choices every day.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Thanks, always, for the conversation,

kristin

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, kundalini yoga, mind-body health, mind-body health care, yoga humour

Posted in blog | 13 Comments »

The Third ShantiJune 28th, 2011

We’ve been chatting about the ending
of some practices, during which we chant shanti, shanti, shanti. The
first shanti is to beam internal healing or some kind of wonderful
intention for ourselves. The second shanti is to send some
peaceful, healing energy to someone else.

The third shanti opens up such a whack
of troubles for me that I’m reluctant to begin this conversation.

The third shanti is meant to send peace
or healing intent to the world, if I’ve got it right.

That’s sweet. Here are my struggles
with it:

The reality is that if I mention
God, gay marriage, abortion, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, should we
be killing people for peace in Iraq or Afghanistan, or should we
have killed Osama bin Laden, just for starters, there’ll be no
peace even among this peaceful yoga crowd. I wonder if we are egos
who want peace as-long-as. As in, peace as long as I get what I want, peace
as long as I feel safe. Peace as long as the world doesn’t change
too much for me. Peace as long as you don’t rock my decisions
about what’s right and wrong. Which leads me to …
I wonder if the trip to genuine
peace for many of us would involve a whole lot of shaking up that
might not feel peaceful at all. Is that what we want?
Sometimes I don’t even like the
word “peace.” “Keep the peace” sounds like restraint of
intent and expression. Perhaps this comes from growing up with five
siblings and two strict parents. Perhaps it comes from feeling that
a good life depends upon speaking your heart and mind without
reservation, without worrying about making waves.
On the other hand, the deep,
profound contentment and joy I find during the meditation part of my
practice is also “peace.” I love this version of the word.

As one mucked up human being, I am
incapable of figuring this out, of discerning the difference between
what is true and what is my own resistance in all of this. And for
Pete’s sake, there isn’t time to figure all of this out when
we’re chanting shanti, shanti, shanti at the end of a class.

What it means, in practice, is that on
that third shanti I stay away from peace. Instead I do my best to
open my heart and offer love as I know it to the planet. “Love” is a
word I trust. It doesn’t carry the ambivalence and unanswered
questions that peace does for me.

You’re wiser than I am. I know it.
I look forward to hearing what “peace to the planet” means to
you.

Thanks to yoga for encouraging us to
find our way toward all the good words. Thanks to you for the
conversation,

kristin

Dr.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, and speaker (About All
Things Wonderful) in North Bay, Ontario. Join her on the web,
on Facebook,
on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Tags: Beginner's yoga, kristin shepherd, shanti, Yoga

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