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 by Kristin Shepherd at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

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 by Kristin Shepherd at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

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 by Kristin Shepherd at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

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 by Kristin Shepherd at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

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 by Kristin Shepherd at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by Kristin Shepherd at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

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 by Kristin Shepherd at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

It was -41 degrees Celsius here yesterday, which is about the same in Fahrenheit, and might as well be absolute zero, the point at which all thermal motion in the universe ceases. It was cold.

This is unusual, even for us in Northern Ontario. At this temperature, the dog's paws freeze by the time we reach the end of the driveway. She wears boots just to make it around the block. Occasionally we look back and she's lying upside down, holding her paws in the air. We take more time getting dressed to take her out than we spend outside. Heavy boots, snow pants, six (or so) shirts and sweaters, jacket, marshmallow-puffy mitts, neck warmer or bank robber's balaclava, and hat. Still, our eyelashes freeze together.

OHHHHHHH, I love yoga during this weather! My first sun salutation reminds me that warmth is possible, that blood can move, that muscles are pliable. During my second, I hold Plank for a few breaths, hold Chaturanga for a few breaths, hold Upward Dog for a few breaths. By my third sun salutation, one shirt layer comes off. Five minutes into it, sweat begins to roll.

Before yoga, I didn't warm up between November and March. Now every day is a southern holiday.

You don't all live in cold climates--and you don't want to, I assure you. But there are few things as delicious as the universe moving from absolute zero to fruity-drinks-by-the-ocean hot in the time it takes to brew a cup of coffee.

If you have your own warming favorites, I'd love to hear them. If you have no need of added warmth, thanks for the brief visit to Northern Ontario with me.

Thanks to yoga for providing warmth from inside. 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 by Kristin Shepherd at 6:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)