Walking the Path

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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This morning during home practice
my thoughts walked a familiar path:

1. Rats. That left second toe still
hurts a bit. I’ll bet it’s from walking across the lake in my
big boots. It’s a bit red, too, and swollen. Like I need a toe
that’s as fat as the rest of me. Funny, that third knuckle on my
hand, the one that’s been bugging me for three months, is also on the left. Two small joints. That could be arthritis, some kind of deadly left-sided arthritis. Gran was
arthritic. Remember what she looked like by the end? That’s not good.

A few Sun Salutations later:

2. Holy Toledo, my shoulders are
tight. Feels good to stretch. Drop the front ribs, lift the back
ribs. At least think them in that direction.

3. God, it’s good to breathe.
What was I doing before? Using half a lung? Now I’m
BREATHING! This is good. Lungs are amazing things.

4. Tight hips. Rigid hips.
Stubborn, frustrated, frightened hips. Poor things. Breathe into
them.  Let them go. Better. Good for you, hips, good for you.

5. Thanks, thanks, thanks for
this.

6. Love this body, love this body.

Every morning, I walk this path. Why
don’t I just live in steps 5 and 6? I have no idea. Perhaps I’m
a slow learner. Perhaps I need to be reincarnated a few more times. Perhaps I’m just a drama queen.

What’s more important is that I know how to find my way from 1 to 6.

Thanks to yoga for marking a path I want to take every single day.  Thanks to all of us for walking that path together, and 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

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Patience is a Tough Gig

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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We’ve been spending a lot of time at
our cabin on Smith Island, Lake Nipissing, middle of nowhere, northern
Ontario. No running water, no electricity, quieter than the Dalai
Lama’s head.

As it gets dark in the evening (4pm in
the dead of winter, a bit later now), we light candles. Lots of
them. And one by one, without the instant gratification of light
switches, power lines or hydro poles, we create enough light to
find our way to the woodpile, to kettles and teacups, toothbrushes and bed. It takes forever to boil water on our little woodstove,
which is all right because there’s nothing else to do. This non-pace took a bit of getting used to. Now we sit,
mostly, saying very little, amazed by how beautiful everything is in
the light of the tiny flames.

My progress with yoga is slower than
I’d like. That might say more about my impatience than it says
about yoga. I thought by now I’d be making yoga DVDs of my
own. I thought I’d be a walking, Om-ing advertisement for yoga. I thought
I’d be out-Seane-Corning Seane Corn. It’s not happening.

On the days I’m discouraged by this,
I think of the candles. With each morning practice, I light
something so small even I can’t tell the difference. Over time it adds up, I know it does, though it may never amount to power lines and
transformers, or to handstands in the middle of the floor, full
lotus, and easy hamstrings. I am what I am.

But every morning I practice, every
time I light the tiniest candle, I contribute to something beautiful
for myself. I am, slowly, SLOWLY, becoming someone I’m happier to
spend quiet evenings with.

Has this happened to you?

Thanks to yoga for helping me find patience.  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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

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Focus Pocus

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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This week, two notes arrived from yoga
land, one about asana practice and one about meditation, both saying
this: I know you love your practice, but what do yoga and meditation actually do for you?

Here’s my answer of the week.

I’ve just catapulted myself into a
very busy season of theatre by agreeing to both direct and act in a
beautifully written show that will run in May. What this amounts to is three
months of fun, intensity, horrendous multitasking, and a satanic
level of detail management.

You’ve done this, haven’t you? If
not in theatre, then with kids’
hockey/basketball/volleyball/football seasons, renovating your house,
changing jobs, moving your parents to seniors’ homes, etc.
Busy seasons.

Before yoga, my head exploded during
these periods. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to mental fireworks, new ideas competing with to-do lists, my
mind a thousand miles from my body, from my Self.

My practice has changed that. I still
wake up in the middle of the night thinking (I need 11 actors, a
cellist, a cat, and a live snake), my breath shallow and speedier
than I’d like. 

But the second I register this, something new
kicks in. I stop everything (forget the snake, I can’t find a
snake at 2:30 am) and take one deep breath. It feels good. I take
another, and begin to reel myself in. Five minutes and 30 breaths later, I am back
inside myself. I can feel myself land inside my body. Boom. Thoughts
drift by, but I’m watching them now, instead of being hijacked by
them.

This is a definite and concrete effect
of yoga. The training of focus. A quiet head. And it’s magical
after years of being whipped around by my own thoughts.

Thanks to yoga for changing my mind.
Thanks to you for asking questions, and 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Posted in deepbreath, multitasking, quietmind, Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on Focus Pocus

Two Eyes

Posted on February 23, 2011 by kristinshepherd

We popped my lovely man’s eye in this morning. Jesus Murphy.

To be accurate, he had his bionic eye (orbital implant) sewn in some weeks ago. That part (we call the whole thing Seymour, now) is a small, maroon, slightly unnerving bowling ball.
The part we popped in just now was the very large, vaguely triangular contact lens that makes his eye look like an eye. It has the iris, pupil, and the white sclera on it. The artwork.

Jeez, I was a bit nervous. The idea was to pluck out the conformer (a clear contact lens) with a suction cup and then, hoping I had the right side up, put the eyeball-cap-thing in. We couldn’t remember whether he was supposed to look up or down for each step. Someone taught us a week ago in Toronto, but it’s gone this morning.

We washed our hands and everything else we could think of, as though we were going to do brain surgery on each other. Pat sat in a chair and asked if I was ready. I was not.  I lied in order to give him confidence. He asked whether he should look up or down. I picked one (don’t remember which), and approached him with the eyeball-cap-thing.

Shouldn’t we take the conformer thing out first, he asked?

Of course, I said. I was just … practicing.

From there, with some fumbling (I dropped the eyeball-cap-thing on my second try), and much twitching and fluttering of his eyelids, poor guy, we made the switch.

For the last five minutes, he’s had two blue eyes. You can’t imagine how weird it is to have two eyes until you’ve been through a trip like this. It’s all I can do not to cry when I see anyone’s eyes, these days, thinking of how amazing it is that so many of our parts work so well, and how fortunate it is that we’re given doubles of so many parts: eyes, ears, hands, knees, kidneys, ovaries. We’re warehouses, for god’s sake.

Aside from an elevated heart rate, and enormous love for my (one-eyed? two-eyed?) man, all I feel is this THANKS, THANKS, THANKS booming in my head. Thanks for eyes, one or two, thanks for our resilience, thanks for being here at all. Thanks for love.

Thank you for the conversation,

kristin

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Funk Yoga

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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My sister called this morning, on the
tail end of a four-day premenstrual funk. During said funk, she
forgoes dinner for chocolate bars and Skittles, which she calls bags
of pretty-colored death. She wears sweat pants, a hoodie, and fat
socks to bed, and bed is where she prefers to be when the rest of the world is doing its best to irritate her. During the funk she hates her body, her thoughts, her
feelings, her work, and her relationships, which doesn’t leave
much. Except for yoga.

She still goes to Mysore five days a
week. Her practice is not lighthearted bliss (“I wish they’d
keep their &%$#ing hands off me,” she says about her teachers’
corrections), but she goes.

It’s one thing to love yoga when
you’re up, when you’re hopeful, confident, self-assured, and
giddy with life’s possibilities. It’s another thing to love yoga when
you’re greasy-haired, crampy, and on the down side of a sugar
bender.

What a gift to love something healthy
when you’re feeling anything but.

When I began my practice, particularly
my home practice, yoga was for confident days only. I think I have
crossed the same fence that my sister describes. I adore yoga on the
effortlessly happy days, and yoga has become solace on my blechhhh
days.

I’d love to hear which side of that
fence you’re on.

Thanks to yoga for being profoundly
comforting when it matters, and 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Posted in homepractice, mysore, pms, Yoga | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Funk Yoga

Amazement

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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I mentioned a while ago that my lovely
man had a tumor in his eye. We have, as a result, roller-coastered
through diagnosis and treatment, spending time on many of the 18
floors of Princess Margaret, the largest cancer hospital in Toronto.
We’ve learned a few things.

Last week, we were on the fourth floor,
in a waiting room where many of the faces had been surgically
reconstructed. There were slightly wonky cheeks, chins, and
foreheads everywhere we looked. Leaving that area, we walked through
the breast cancer waiting room filled with bald and balding heads.
Just before we got on the elevator, we passed a sign for a chemo day
care. I doubled over, seeing that one.

What occurs to me is that we have far
less control than we’d like over life, death, and much of what
happens to our bodies in between.

Before this happened, I would have
found this discouraging. Not so, now. Now, I feel a lot clearer
than I used to.

My choice is just to love my body or
not. To treat it with love or not. To appreciate every move it makes
and to be grateful for what it is instead of dwelling on what it
isn’t.

This morning, in Downward Dog, I’m
amazed by the dorsiflexion in my ankles. Amazed by the strength of my
shoulders, amazed by the beautiful stubbornness of my tight
hamstrings, amazed that I have hamstrings at all.

My lovely man is now my lovely one-eyed
man. His tumor eye has been replaced by a bionic eye. I would have
been discouraged by this before. Now, I’m amazed by how fortunate
we are.

I have a wish to pass along. I wish
that you go through today’s practice amazed by your body in all
its lovely complexity. We’re lucky to be here at all.

Thanks to yoga for being the perfect teacher of amazement. 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Posted in amazement, downwarddog, humanstrength, resiliance, Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on Amazement

Oprah’s Card

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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I read that Jennifer Aniston recently gave Oprah a yoga mat with a picture of her dogs on it. I suggest
we create a card to go along with the mat.

We’ll make it a big card, so that
each of us can say what we want.

Here’s my contribution:

Oprah, honey, you do your bit as a
human being, running schools for girls in Africa, doing that call-in
series with Eckhart Tolle, running your empire day to day, filling the
TV and your magazine with (mostly) good messages for us.

You give yourself and your body a bit
of flack, but if I were in your sizable shoes, I’d be chewing my
own arms off (not to mention Stedman’s arms and the arms of all
movie stars) with the stress of it.

Speaking of stress, this mat is
special. With this mat, yoga gives itself to you, and millions and
millions of us can tell you that yoga will change your life.

It may be tough at first. The Tibetans
say that at the beginning, nothing comes. (You’ll be tight and
tense and frustrated.) In the middle, nothing lasts. (If you stop for
four days, you’ll be tight and tense and frustrated.) In the end,
nothing leaves. (You will fall in love with the practice and with
yourself.)

Glad to have you as part of our
community. We’re a good bunch.

Yours truly,

kristin

P.S. Don’t push yourself too hard.
Yoga should be a joy.

P.P.S. If you’d like to pay it
forward, I’d love a mat with a picture of my dog Rosie on it.  See above.

Your turn: What would you like to write on a card to Oprah?

Thanks to yoga for offering itself to
Oprah. Good choice. And 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Posted in eckharttolle, oprah, tibet, Yoga, yogamat | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Oprah’s Card

Bring on the Germs

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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When my lovely man began yoga classes,
he borrowed a mat from the rack of mats at the front of the studio.
It worked well enough for him, so he borrowed the same mat for the
next 9 or 10 classes, at which point he heard one of our teachers
tell a new student that the rack at the front was for privately owned
mats. Horrified and feeling like a thief, he rolled up his (no, not
his) mat and returned it, hoping its owner was not somewhere in the
room, glaring unpeacefully at him.

I’m visiting family this week, and
we’re talking about mats. I used my brother-in-law’s mat this
morning for my practice. It was on the basement floor already rolled out for me.

Later, over coffee, my sister-in-law Colleen mentions that she borrows a mat for her classes. Clay responds with a look that makes it clear that he is repulsed by this sharing of germs. Which makes me think
I should not have used his mat. (Perhaps he’d left it on the floor
after his own practice last night.) I keep my mouth shut.

I love sweat, my own and yours. I love
the sharing of germs and bacteria, and will never cover a toilet seat
with toilet paper before I sit on it. (And forget hovering over a
toilet seat. That just feels like a bad helicopter imitation to me.) I have a
profound sense of trust in my own immune system and a perhaps
arrogant belief that my germs can only improve your health if we
should be so lucky to meet face to sweaty face, bum to toilet to bum,
or hands and feet to mat.

We live in a germophobic world. We
spray mats, floors, and doorknobs. We spray ourselves, inside and out.

It looks like fear to me. Fear of
ourselves, of each other, and of anything not gleaming with antiseptic fervor.

I could be completely whacked, of
course, out of my mind with some bacterial plague I don’t know about.

What do you say?

Thanks to yoga for bringing us so
close, whether or not it makes us comfortable, and thanks to you for
the sweaty 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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes

Posted in bacteria, germs, sharing, Yoga, yogamat | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Bring on the Germs

Oh, Yeah?

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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My yoga teacher trained in Mysore. Well so did mine. Mine lived in Mysore for 17 years.

My teacher was born in Mysore. Well mine is on her third lifetime in Mysore. I go there for classes all winter.

Do you know these conversations?

My yoga teacher has a background in dance.

Mine, too. She danced with Nureyev.

Mine taught Baryshnikov everything he knew.

My yoga teacher was on the cover of Yoga Journal.

My yoga teacher started Yoga Journal.

My yoga teacher invented yoga.

You know how it goes. It sounds–well, it is–a kind of competitive my-experience-is-so-good-you-can’t-even-imagine-it thing. You release a balloon of praise. I deflate yours and release a bigger one. You deflate mine and release a dirigible. I love it.

Why? Because underneath, we’re all saying, I adore my experience of yoga, it’s so good it’s indescribable, and the only way I can begin to give it to you is by telling you my teacher is the best. Isn’t that sweet and generous in the best little-kid way?

Next time someone says to me, Oh, god, my teacher became an Olympic rower after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature In Hieroglyphic Poetry while running a four star restaurant in Machu Picchu, I’m going to say: You have the Best Yoga Teacher in the Universe. You do. And we should all be in your class, having the incredible time you’re having. Thanks for giving me all of that.

Thanks to our teachers. We love you so much that we go to extraordinary lengths to deify you and everything you’re giving us. And thanks to all of us for loving yoga so much.

Thanks to you for the conversation. You’re the best. The absolute best. You’re amazing. You’re Blazingly, Supergenetically, Extraterrestrially Amazing,

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, and on Twitter, and on iTunes.


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Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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The strangest thing is happening, and
until this morning it was happening to me but without my awareness.

At the end of practice, recently, a
bit addled by meditation and some Downward Dog ecstasy, I move,
without any plan, without any thought at all, into one of the Poses I
Don’t Like. Poses I Have Never Liked.

This morning it was Frog Pose (Bhekasana). It’s not
as though I have become flexible in Frog. Instead, my body finds its
way to some enthralling new place at my end range of flexibility,
some place I have never imagined before. This morning, in Frog, I thought “Ooooh, yeah, that’s good.” As soon as that completely
foreign thought arrived, I stopped everything and came out of the pose,
wondering for the first time about the yoga equivalent of alien
abduction. Then I remembered feeling the same thing during Fire Log
Pose (Agnistambhasana) yesterday. Come to think of it, Camel (Ustrasana) invaded the other day. And
Seated Wide Angle Forward Bend (Upavistha Konasana).

I have no explanation for this.
Perhaps my body is leading the way as my head relaxes. Perhaps I’m
so full of mental stories about not liking these poses that they have
resorted to ambushing their way into my practice.

Perhaps yoga is doing me, rather than
the other way around.

Has this happened to you? Is there a
pose that wants into your practice?

Thanks to the ongoing mystery of yoga.
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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.

Posted in advancedposes, camel, firelogpose, frogpose, relaxation, seatedwideangleforwardbend, Yoga | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Who’s Zoomin’ Who?