Tag: kristin shepherd

On kids and their instinctsJune 14th, 2012

My dog and i were out for a walk the other morning on trails behind our house. To set a relevant context, I’ll tell you that dogs run free on those trails and that my dog, though poorly trained and maybe overly enthusiastic, is  small, weighing in at 18 pounds.

We don’t usually meet anyone out there in the morning, much to Rosie’s dismay. She loves to jump up on people’s legs, and she loves to terrorize other dogs.

On this morning, i saw a woman,  maybe 50 metres up ahead on the trail, doing something funny with her arms. We got a bit closer and saw there were kids behind her, and she was holding her arms out front towards us, and crossed, like she was fending off a vampire. She was crouching a bit, too, as though preparing for some martial art i don’t know about.

Is everything all right, i asked, as we got closer.

I’ve got little kids behind me, she said.

I see, i said.

The whole school is coming, she said. Hundreds of kids.

It took a minute to understand that she was afraid of Rosie being free around the kids. Which seemed ridiculous to me, and evidence our protect-us-from-all-harm-and-all-fun era.

I put Rose on the lead.

Here’s the bit that freaks me out.

We passed 200 kids, and perhaps 20 teachers, or teacher’s aids, or educational assistants (whatever they’re called now). Every time a group of ten or so passed us, the kids went wild, wanting to pat Rosie.  Of course they wanted to.  Open hearts like each other.

And the teachers, for the most part, did not want that. You could hear it in their voices. Danger!

But they didn’t say that. Instead, they said this: Leave the dog alone. The dog wants its privacy!

Another one: Don’t touch the dog! The dog is not a part of this walk!

Another one: Stay away from the dog! It doesn’t want your hands all over it!

Etc.

All the while, Rosie was straining at the lead, doing her best to be touched by them, putting on her cutest face and her cutest tail wag.

One kid, held back by her teacher, shouted, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO KISS YOUR DOG! I could have kissed her for saying what she felt.

And i thought, oh, man, there is a lot of dishonesty going on here. I get the safety thing, and the liability thing, but pay attention to what that dishonesty is doing.

Don’t tell children that the dog wants privacy! That teaches kids that their excellent instincts are false and off the mark. Surely the purpose of any education is to teach us the opposite.

This went on for roughly 199 kids.

Trailing behind the entire group were a teacher and a boy with cerebral palsy. The boy adored Rosie. He got so vocal about it that i took her over to meet him. His teacher looked on cautiously and quietly. The boy stroked Rosie, and I wish you’d seen the change that came over his entire body. Although i didn’t understand every word that came out of his mouth,  it cracked my heart in half, it was so beautiful.

It’s not that i don’t feel for the teachers and their  responsibility. But i feel more for those kids.

Many thanks to that one teacher who let that one kid follow his instincts. You are a gem. And many thanks to all of those kids for showing me what it looks like to shout, I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO KISS YOUR DOG!

I hope we all find our way back to our instincts, one way or another. It feels as though everything important depends on it.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin

 


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‘Tis The SeasonDecember 1st, 2011

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

What the hell does that mean?

What a season. Sure, we sing Christmas tunes. And things sparkle. For the religious, there’s the whole Jesus thing, which is probably satisfying.

But. Over twenty years in a health care practice, I saw this as a season of huge stress.

The Joy bar, if you can imagine one, is raised. You’re supposed to feel jolly, bursting with good will, eager to be with your loved ones (even the drunken aunts and the bigoted, pedophiliac, shoplifting, arsonist, B&E in-laws), and, most of all, willing to shop for all of the above. There’s nothing like an elevated expectation of joy to make you feel less joyous, to make you feel like a Scrooge-y underachiever in the realm of happiness.

Families get together, which is wonderful and not. Combined families do the absurd and hugely complicated Cirque du Soleil thing in order to be at all twelve turkey dinners around the country, stuffed to the resentful, guilty wishbone by the end of it all.

People spend themselves into debt that amounts to carrying a fat, loaded sleigh for the rest of the winter.

I drive by the mall, stare at four bizillion cars in the parking lot, and head to the library instead. I’ve done this twice in the last week. I’ll be well read, if not “ready” at all, by Christmas.

So what does it mean to be “ready” for Christmas?

Here’s my checklist:

1. Am I listening to my own values? (Do I even know what my values are?)

2. Am I doing what makes me happiest or am I just doing my best not to offend my mother, my father, my lover, my husband (same thing in some cases, but not for everybody this Christmas – talk about Cirque du Soleil stress), my kids, my in-laws, the guy who delivers the mail, every starving kid in Africa who will die because i just wasted $20 on a hat that no one will wear, the clerk who has asked me 600 times to donate an extra dollar to a cause I have no interest in?

3. Am I allowing my kids and lovely man to make their own decisions about what makes them happy (or am I pressuring the hell out of them to do what I want)?

4. Am I finding time every day to remember who I am? To breathe and be sane? To remember that Love is the Point?

Ahhhhh, that’s it.

The moment I remember that Love is the Point, I’m ready.

Are you ready? What’s the point for you? And is it easy for you to remember your own point this season? I’d love to hear.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin


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Light Passing ThroughOctober 6th, 2011

“You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

This is Steve Jobs, of course.

During meditation, if we’re fortunate, we experience a kind of life-altering nakedness that permanently affects our perspective about what we are and what we are not.

What it feels like to me is the dissolving of my body. By the end of morning practice, my understanding is that I’m a body of energy that happens to be passing through this less significant physical body.

It’s a feeling that stays through the day. On a good day, I see everyone around me as the same kind of energy, and we feel like family.

One of the best consequences of this shift in perspective is that it makes me brave. When I know myself to be light passing through this day, I lose my fear of failure (light can’t fail), of humiliation, and of rejection. I lose my small-minded need for security.

I follow my heart more easily.

I don’t know whether Steve Jobs meditated. This is important, because meditation itself is not the point, any more than my physical practice of yoga is the point.

Freedom is the point. Waking up and discovering who we are is the point. Recognizing that we’re part of all that is, is the point. Living bravely from that perspective is the point.

It just happens that meditation and practice on the mat are excellent signposts saying, ‘Hey! You beautiful smacking whack of radiant light, you! Look this way! Here you are!”

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks to Steve Jobs for the reminder that we are light passing through.

Thanks to you, always, for the conversation,

kristin


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Meditation For Real Life: LoveOctober 4th, 2011

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“If we have no peace, it is because
we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

This quote is from Mother Teresa, apparently. I’m
wary when I read things attributed to her. I often wonder
whether it’s really Bob at the liquor store, who, in an inspired but insecure moment, came up with something really beautiful that he wanted to
share. Bob doesn’t trust himself, at the deepest level, to
be unique or worthy, to have quote-spreading clout, so he puts
MT’s name on the idea, hoping others will now enjoy it.

Bob might love meditating.

Why? Because with every sitting (or
standing or lolling, whatever your method is), we sink through layers
and layers of our “not enough”s: I’m not smart enough,
adventurous enough, wealthy enough, young or old enough, creative
enough, altruistic enough, quote-worthy enough, and on and on.

It’s not as though we look these
things in the face as we meditate, it’s more that they soften and
eventually slough off with practice. Over time we learn who we are not, and let that go.

At the same time, we sink gradually
into what we are: compassion, love, peace, hugeness, trust in what
is, connectedness with everything.

These sound like woo-woo lightweight
absurdities. They aren’t. They are the palpable realities that show
up when I sit still long enough to get beneath the chatter-brain.

And when I get down there, one of the
things that becomes evident is that capital-L-Love is what I’m made
of, what every cell is packed to bursting with, and when I open my
eyes, everyone and everything I see is made of the same stuff.
The world, including the parts of it I was not thrilled with before, becomes almost unbearably beautiful. At that point I
understand myself to be enormously worthy and “belonging to each
other” in the most intimate way imaginable.

In this context of Love (or whatever you call it when you get inside), two seemingly opposite things show up. The need to be unique or special disappears. The simplicity of who I am is enough. At the same time, Love moving through me, or me meeting the world with Love, matters more than ever.

That’s what I want to
tell Bob at the liquor store, or the grocery clerk who won’t meet
my eyes, or my friend who feels awkward about teaching yoga for the
first time. We’re gems, all of us.

Is this your experience with meditation?

Thanks to Mother Theresa or to Bob,
both of whom are worthy and indispensable. Thanks to yoga for being all about union of body, mind, and spirit.

Thanks, always, 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.


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Meditation And Real Life – One Minute of PeaceSeptember 29th, 2011

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It’s been a wonderful, crazy month: auditions, filming, workshops, a cabin in the middle of nowhere, speaking for beautiful groups of people, and heaps of yoga. It’s easy for meditation to get lost in the kafuffle.

My guess is that you live a similarly kafuffle-y life.

Luckily meditation is portable and can be done anywhere you can breathe. Meaning anywhere and everywhere until you’re dead. Perhaps you can do it then, too, for all I know, but I’ll speak from my own experience.

This morning I practiced in bed. Yesterday, on my living room floor. On the weekend I meditated in the middle of the night while visiting my dad, whose snoring shook my molars. I can do it anywhere.

I don’t have time, we say.

I can’t motivate myself, we say.

I can’t shut my mind up, we say.

Because I’m certain the planet becomes a healthier, more loving, peaceful place with every moment of personal peace, I’d like to suggest something to those of you who don’t yet adore meditation enough to spend huge whacks of time sitting cross legged:

You can start with one breath. The closed eye thing just makes it a little easier to detach from the attention-grabbing world around you. There’s no rule that says you have to close your eyes or sit cross legged or chant om. These are all options, like leather seats or the electric bum warmers that we have in our cars in Northern Ontario, but which may not suit you at all.

Pause for one minute, and focus on your breath, on the way it feels in your body, in your nose. When the thought that it’s fall and you’ll need those bum warmers soon enters your head, gently take your focus back to your breath. Do the same thing with the next 14 thoughts that enter your mind. No resistance at all. Thoughts are simply doing what thoughts do, but my decision for this minute is to return each time to my breath.

A one-minute meditation practice. By the end of that minute, you may not have found lasting peace, but you have turned yourself in its direction. The rest is practice, and every single one of us who owns a mat is familiar with practice.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you’re new at this or you’re someone who has adored meditation for a lifetime.

Thanks to yoga for offering us so many ways to be present.

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.


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Meditation And Real Life – Training ThoughtSeptember 27th, 2011

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A friend called this morning, unable to
tear her thoughts away from an all-consuming problem in her life. She
wanted help.

Here’s a reason to meditate.

Unable to tear her thoughts away? That’s a bit like me going to yoga class and being unable to tear myself out of Downward Dog.

This sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t.
I love Downward Dog. I find it easier than almost anything that comes
before or after during a class. It is a familiar place for me. I know
it isn’t best practice for me to stay in Downward Dog for the
entire day, but I’d do it for an entire class if I had my druthers.

Similarly, my friend knows that staying
with lousy thoughts is an easy, seductive rut but isn’t good for
her. She comes back to the painful story over and over like an
obsessive-compulsive wound-picker who would love nothing better than
to be free of herself.

Somehow, we expect to be able to
control our bodies – time to brush my teeth (good hands!), time to
open the door (good wrist action!), time to move out of Downward Dog
(eyes ahead and jump forward) – but not our thoughts. “I can’t
help thinking about this,” we say.

But we can. In fact, the moment I
notice myself thinking an unwanted thought, I can make a choice to
move my thoughts somewhere else, somewhere more loving, more joyous.
If my thoughts return to lousy, shmucky, destructive places, I make
the choice again. I make that choice 570 times a day if I need to.

This is a practice, just like our yoga
on the mat is a practice. Some days I’ll be a genius with it, some
days I won’t. Such is humanhood. But the practice works.

Meditation is this practice. It is the
practice of letting go of my sticky attachment to thoughts.

Something to contemplate next time I am drawn to fear or worry, next time I judge myself, or you, or my life.

And just another reason to adore
meditation.

Thanks to yoga and to meditation’s
central place in yoga. I’m so grateful for both.

I’m also grateful to you for being
here. Thank 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.


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Meditation And Real Life – Training ThoughtSeptember 27th, 2011

YJROMwoman.jpg

A friend called this morning, unable to
tear her thoughts away from an all-consuming problem in her life. She
wanted help.

Here’s a reason to meditate.

Unable to tear her thoughts away? That’s a bit like me going to yoga class and being unable to tear myself out of Downward Dog.

This sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t.
I love Downward Dog. I find it easier than almost anything that comes
before or after during a class. It is a familiar place for me. I know
it isn’t best practice for me to stay in Downward Dog for the
entire day, but I’d do it for an entire class if I had my druthers.

Similarly, my friend knows that staying
with lousy thoughts is an easy, seductive rut but isn’t good for
her. She comes back to the painful story over and over like an
obsessive-compulsive wound-picker who would love nothing better than
to be free of herself.

Somehow, we expect to be able to
control our bodies – time to brush my teeth (good hands!), time to
open the door (good wrist action!), time to move out of Downward Dog
(eyes ahead and jump forward) – but not our thoughts. “I can’t
help thinking about this,” we say.

But we can. In fact, the moment I
notice myself thinking an unwanted thought, I can make a choice to
move my thoughts somewhere else, somewhere more loving, more joyous.
If my thoughts return to lousy, shmucky, destructive places, I make
the choice again. I make that choice 570 times a day if I need to.

This is a practice, just like our yoga
on the mat is a practice. Some days I’ll be a genius with it, some
days I won’t. Such is humanhood. But the practice works.

Meditation is this practice. It is the
practice of letting go of my sticky attachment to thoughts.

Something to contemplate next time I am drawn to fear or worry, next time I judge myself, or you, or my life.

And just another reason to adore
meditation.

Thanks to yoga and to meditation’s
central place in yoga. I’m so grateful for both.

I’m also grateful to you for being
here. Thank 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.


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Why Meditate, Take 1September 20th, 2011

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Many of you do it already. Because I’m an enormous fan of meditation, I’m going to compile a list of whys over the next week or so. Please add your own, knowing that everyone who begins meditating contributes to a more conscious, loving planet.

  1. You can do it anywhere you can breathe. Over the last month I have meditated in my car (in three cities), in bathrooms (in three cities), at our university, in a hospital, in a mall, in a hotel room, in my bed, in someone else’s bed (it’s not like it sounds), with my lovely man, by myself, while sitting, standing, and lying down, eyes open, and eyes closed. What else is so portable?

  2. The physical practice of yoga is more likely to become deeper than physical when we add meditation. And yoga, in my humble but opinionated opinion, is not merely a sport.

  3. I don’t know who I am until I meditate. Or I don’t remember who I am. This sounds like hyperbole. It isn’t. Too often, my focus is on what I’m doing today, rather than who is doing it. Why does this matter? Because who I am is far more stable, centered, and peaceful than my to-do list, which can look like an attention-deficit-stream-of-unconsciousness nightmare. I’d rather be grounded in the peaceful me.

  4. I’m homesick when I don’t meditate. I’ve said this one before, but it’s so worth repeating. What we’re doing by meditating is remembering home. The truth is we are home, we are loving, peaceful, whole people. But we have these attention-grabbing rodent brains doing their best to make us forget that.

That’s it for today. More next time. I’d love to hear the reasons you meditate, or the reasons you find yourself unable to start. Both will create great conversation.

Thanks to yoga for being so much more than moving on a mat.

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.


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For Those In Need of YogaSeptember 15th, 2011

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I had dinner with some politicians on
Friday. It was more fun than it sounds.

I am so unpolitical that when a man
came over to our table to shake my hand and say he’d heard me speak
before, I smiled blankly and said, ‘hehehehhe” or something
equally charming and profound. I asked, afterward, who he was. Turns
out he’s our mayor.

I was giving a keynote talk to
celebrate a wonderful organization that offers literacy training to
anyone who wants it. All kinds of politicians attended, some of whom
are engaged in an election campaign right now.

One of them had his Blackberry going
all through dinner. I asked him whether he ever takes a day off.  “I
can’t afford to at this point,” he said. I asked about a typical
campaigning day and he reviewed the day he’d just had: something
like 12 events, many of them involving cutting cakes, wearing party hats, and making
wee speeches.

I asked how he maintains his physical energy during these campaigns. He mentioned
several things. He rarely eat the cake at the events. He keeps all kinds of clothes in their car, changing five or six times
each day to suit the events and in order to feel fresh.

And three times a week he visits his
personal trainer at a gym. He’s convinced this increases his
overall energy.

I wanted to weep for him. First,
because I’d go mad, having to shake thousands of hands, remember
hundreds of names, and incur the wrath of the unhappy while smiling for the cake-makers. I’d be in a heap in the back seat of my car,
doing a month-long Savasana.

That was the other thing that made me
want to weep.

I’m all for gyms, and trainers, and
elliptical machines. But hearing very busy people talk about their
very busy lives makes me wish I were an even better ambassador for
yoga.

Because these people need Savasana,
don’t they? And a daily practice that looks inward, that teaches
them they’re beautiful, a regular hour or two that plunks them in a
quiet room full of peaceful, generous, smiling yogis.

I asked whether he’d tried yoga. No
time at this point, he said.

I believe I have affected friends and
family (about my enthusiasm, my sister always says, thank god it
isn’t heroin you’re into, or we’d all be doing it), but I’m
no good with strangers.

It made me wonder whether any of you
have developed a kind of sound bite, some wonderful description of
yoga that you use to invite people like this to yoga class. I’d
love to hear it.

And they could use it.

Many thanks to our politicians for
caring enough to put in these enormous cake days. Thanks to the party-hat guy pictured above at the Kensington Market. Thanks to yoga for
being so wonderful that we’d love to pass it along.

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.


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Yoga LaughsSeptember 13th, 2011

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Things that make me laugh:

  1. The way we all think our form of
    yoga is the best yoga ever. I am the worst culprit that ever lived.
    Kundalini rules!

  2. The way I’m afraid to go back to
    an old class, try a new class, go to a friend’s class, have a new
    teacher show up in my class. For god’s sake, I’m anxious when I
    try a new DVD.

  3. The way a small part of me
    fantasizes that the right mat or the right yoga pants might improve
    my Handstand/Headstand/Crow/Forward Lunge/Camel. No luck so far.

  4. The inside voice that says, “I
    can’t do it, I can’t do it.” That voice has no imagination.
    She’s a one-liner. At least I’m laughing at her now.

  5. The way a yoga practice takes
    60-90 minutes, but yoga thinking, wondering, and dreaming consumes
    about 50 percent of my head space some days.

  6. The way I can’t wait to practice
    and then can’t wait for each pose to end sometimes. Make up your
    mind, honey.

  7. The way I feel. Honestly, I feel
    fantastic these days, so fantastic that it makes me laugh.

    I’d love to hear your yoga laughs.

Thanks to yoga for the humor. Thanks to my brother Adam, a yogi with a flexible face. 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.


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