This week I asked every yogi
I met what their favorite part of practice is right now, today, in
this moment.
Here are some answers:
1. The sounds my feet make as they let go
at the beginning of practice.
2. I practiced this morning, so I'm done for the day.
3. The practice itself. (This, from my
lovely man who would not be more specific. My answer is my answer,
he said.)
4. The fact that yoga feels like home when
everything else is in packing boxes. (That's me. We're moving in
two days.)
5. A sense of peace that comes with it.
6. Alone time.
7. Time with other people who love yoga.
8. The clothes. (!)
9. Savasansa. (From someone who
guaranteed me this answer will never change.)
10. Kirtan with Krishna Das. (All right, this is me again.)
In a couple of words, what are your
favorite things about your practice right now? (I wonder how often
they change?)
Thanks for playing. I hope we're
amazed by the variety of answers.
Thanks to yoga for being exactly what I
want every week. Thanks to you for the same thing, 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.
We're still walking on water in this
ridiculous part of the world. There's nothing religious in that.
The sad truth of it is that there is still 33 inches of ice between us and water in its liquid
state.
But it's spring. We all feel it.
Rosie the dog is possessed by an almost constant urge to writhe
demonically on her back in shrinking patches of remaining snow. Five or six
times each day she bats at the bell we hang from the front door just
so that she can go out for a roll.
Sap is running. Days above the
freezing mark and nights below are what thrill maple trees.
They're gushing this week.
Crocuses are waking up, I'm sure of
it, finding their bearings and muscling their way toward the light.
And like some Monsanto floral-human
hybrid I am filled to bursting with the same crocus-y urges.
I'm writing this at 4:30 am, after a full asana practice and meditation, and it's all I can do not to wake my
lovely man just to be happy together. (He often says that 4am makes me a touch happier than it makes him.)
Crocus energy completely changes my
practice. That combination of reaching toward the sky while sending
roots into the earth taps into everything happening underground right
now. There is an ecstasy about it.
And I swear that after my Sun Salutations there is warm liquid running down my upper back. God, I
love that feeling. This morning it feels like sap. Light, sweet,
sustaining happiness.
O man, bring it on. Spring is here.
Does it change your practice? Do you
swoon? Are you one of the Crocus People?
Thanks to Spring for bringing us back
to life when we had no idea we were hibernating in the first place.
Thanks to yoga for being very old but very new, 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.
Some asanas are like friends, and I have two kinds. The first
is the easy kind, the kind I love to be with no matter how low I am or
high I am; no matter how angry, sad, or confused I am.
These friends are blankets, fat socks, warm milk, mac-and-cheese, and
romantic comedies on DVD. Makes me sigh, just imagining all that.
Downward Dog is this kind of friend. When I'm too sad to be optimistic, too tired to sleep, or too angry to trust my voice, that's where I head. Why? Because in the pose, there are no other human faces to look at and no expressions to fake. I set my gaze on the ground and feel the ground loving me back. Unquestioning, unwavering support.
The other kind of friend is more
challenging. It asks, What is good about this awful
situation? Where can I find love in this situation? Where can I
find growth? Where can I lose some ego, where can I stop defending
myself? Where can I serve, even though I feel useless? This kind of friend is an irritating bugger that never loses sight of the best of me, and loves me enough to pull and push toward the best.
I could yank my hair out even as I'm
typing this: Triangle is this kind of friend.
I loathed Triangle for the first
year of practice. Resented it all day, every day. Then, for no identifiable reason, a grudging respect developed. Not an enjoyment, but a
reluctant appreciation for its possible potential. Now? It's not like I
salivate on the way to Triangle, but when we meet during practice, there is a definite pleasure in the stretch, the
strength, the pull, and the challenge. Triangle knows what I'm
capable of, and she wants the best for me. I suspect she's been
rooting for me from the beginning.
Which asanas are your mac-and-cheese friends? Which are the irritating buggers? I'd love
to hear.
Thanks to both kinds of friends, and
for the friends who manage to be both. Thanks to yoga for being full of
surprises.
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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.
Last week, a great friend of my lovely man
died/passed/took-off-the-tight-shoe, and we gathered at a funeral home to send him
off.
I was in that horrid lineup, the
reception line or whatever it's called, trying not to cry, being
one of those unfortunate saps who cry at all funerals and weddings
whether or not I know the star of the show. It's the intensity of
grief (or joy for that matter) floating around the room. It unhinges
me.
A woman from Los Angeles, completely
unknown to me (some member of the star's family), reached a hand
forward to take mine. I started crying. We introduced ourselves. I
wiped my nose.
"Are you the one who does yoga?"
she asked.
"What?"
"Yoga. I hear you do yoga. Is that
right?"
"Yes, I do yoga."
"I love yoga," she said. "We
both do," she added, pointing to her husband. "I'll find you later,"
she said. "We'll talk." I moved down the line, wondering
whether I'd imagined the whole thing.
Less than 30 minutes later, I
introduced myself to the guy who runs the funeral home.
"You're the one who does yoga,
aren't you?" he said.
"I'm one of them. There are lots
of us," I said, starting to wonder what the hell was going on here.
"I did yoga in 1978, way up by James
Bay. There was no gym on the reserve. I found some Richard
Hittleman tapes. Twenty eight days of yoga. It really worked. Before that, I
thought yoga was a kind of ice cream."
Yoga at funerals.
Something is changing. We all know
that yoga's star is on the rise, that yoga is spreading like a kind
of gorgeous plague at an unprecedented rate.
It seems that around that
surge is an even larger wave of conversation about yoga, a
conversation taking place in grocery stores, in movie lines, at
weddings and funerals. Yoga has become an ice breaker, a
grief-breaker, a happy bonding glue.
I'll bet you've had some bizarre
yoga conversations of your own. Between fishing huts? In helicopters? Submarines? On safari? In
armored vehicles? How far does it go? I'd love
to hear.
Thanks to the lovely and charming Ferg,
who is now breathing more easily. Thanks to yoga for showing up
everywhere, 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.
A friend invited me to her yoga class
this week. "It's a 10-minute walk from my house," she said.
"How can that be, when you live in
the middle of nowhere?"
"You'll see," she said.
We set out at sunset under V's of
squawking geese, walked down a narrow road, turned a corner in the
middle of nowhere, and arrived at a long driveway leading to a house
in the middle of what is either a farmer's field or an extremely
large yard. Outside the house was a yellow VW bug plastered with
yoga lingo.
Kelly Townson, in what must have been a
delirious if-I-build-it-they-will-come fervor, has created a basement yoga studio
in a location which may not have an area code for all
I know.
And she's a huge success.
Her classes are busy. They were from
day one. One friend told four friends. It spread. Now they tell
each other to be quiet about it. It's getting crowded in there.
The class is fabulous: soft, low
light; Buddhas; Krishna Das in the background (I swoon); beautiful smells
(incense? eucalyptus?); and great yoga.
It is not my point to recommend this as
a business strategy. My guess is that this bizarre success story
doesn't happen every time, and I'll bet many of you work
extremely hard to keep your doors open for us.
My point is to observe a minor miracle,
and to wonder how many of these beautiful classes are out there,
known only to the small groups of friends and neighbors who are lucky
enough to gather in this way. I'll bet we could spend a lifetime
finding yoga gems like this one.
Is your studio one of these? Have you
been to one like this? I'd love to hear.
Thanks to Kelly for the
fantastic class. Thanks to yoga for such beautiful diversity, and
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,
and on Twitter,
and on iTunes.
In the middle of a photo shoot
yesterday involving a snake slithering across my
fake-tattooed-but-otherwise-naked back, it occurred to me that some
huge shift in fear has occurred during the last year.
Yoga is responsible. That sounds
ridiculous, but it's true.
Ten years ago I would have said yes to
this photo shoot but I would have pushed through fear, leapt at fear,
taken a defiant run at fear, in order to do it. The thrills associated with this approach were tremendous, but I lived in a kind of
adrenaline whiplash state much of the time. (Am I terrified? Yes!
Let's go!)
It was often followed by emotional and physical crash landings involving headaches, large bags of chips, and day-long naps.
What the practice of yoga and meditation have created in me is a
stronger and surprisingly effortless focus on what is in front of me, and a weaker attachment to the scary stories I used to invent about what might happen.
My hamstrings are tight
today, but this doesn't mean they're destined to be tight forever. I held a handstand for
eight breaths today. I'll be fine if this isn't the case next week.
I love pigeon this morning. That's good. I don't love camel
today. That's fine. It's possible I'm discovering
presence. The here and now.
All of which has a huge effect on fear, fear
having everything to do with fabricated stories about what might happen next.
When I found out I was going
to be the snake model, I didn't give it a thought. I have no
explanation for this except that scary stories don't take up the mental space they used to.
When Benny the ball python was plunked on my
back and began slip-sliding his way here and there, I didn't think at all. I did feel him, all four feet of him. Truth is he felt wonderful:
soft, smooth, comforting. Comforting!
Come to think of it, huge chunks of fear having to do with money, career, health, and love have also largely disappeared this year. I didn't notice it happening, and I don't know where they went, but they're gone.
Can you identify with this at all? Has yoga affected fear in you?
Thanks to Benny the snake, and Allie, Benny's owner. Thanks to Liz Lott of Snapdragon Photography for the fabulous experience. Thanks to yoga for this unexpected development, 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.
"everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes"
I grew up on ee cummings, the American poet. Neither of my parents is a fan, as far as I know, but we had collections of poetry along with Shakespeare and all kinds of wonderful literature on the bookshelves when I was a kid. That's where ee and I met and fell in love.
ee cummings messed with punctuation, syntax, grammar, and the use of capital letters.Something in me was enormously attracted to that. It's the same thing that attracted me to yoga.
I don't love being told what to do. I like discovering my own path in my own way. cummings broke all kinds of rules with language and found his own path.
I adore the fact that in yoga I am encouraged to explore so many different streams -- Ashtanga, Anusara, Bhakti, Bikram (and those are just the A's and B's!) -- and create my own practice any way I want.
I adore the feeling of humble i-am-not-separate-from-you-ness that comes from using a lower case i. (It is hell to do this using a computer, which insists on capitalizing me.)
I adore the humbleness that comes from stepping on my mat every morning, the humbleness I feel in Downward Dog, the humbleness I feel when putting hands to heart.
Even more, I adore the humbleness of seeking truth rather than capital-K-Knowing, capital-O-Owning truth. I feel certain yoga is more about seeking and experiencing than about dictatorial ownership of truth, love, freedom, or wholeness.
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it's sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young
That's ee. Makes me think he was a yogi and that we're all poets on the mat. Do you feel that way?
Thanks to the i-am-not-separate-from-you-ness of yoga. 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, and on Twitter, and on iTunes.
Mornings are not what they were. My
lovely man has begun his own morning practice of yoga and meditation. I
should be happy for him. I'm not. The world was mine at 4 a.m.
(God, how early do you have to get up to have the house to
yourself???)
Today morning looked like this: I get up, quietly make my drip coffee and sit on the living room floor, cross-legged. I take approximately 3.5
breaths.
Then Pat comes out of our room and down
the hall. He waves to me. Sometimes I smile. Today I don't.
In the kitchen he prepares his cappuccino by grinding his
premium beans in a premium grinder that sounds exactly like a
Shop-Vac. My eyebrows smack into each other, I am so not-peaceful. The steaming milk sounds like that kid in
The Excorcist (I want to cover my ears even while typing this). Pat
comments on his coffee while making it. "Ahhhh. Come on, come on.
That's better, that's good." When he spills beans on the
floor, he swears.
I am apoplectic by the time he heads
downstairs to the basement. My meditation becomes post-traumatic
stress therapy. I'm just getting back to the busy-but-not-angry
head I started with when he re-emerges from the basement all
dewy-eyed and blissful.
All of which brings me to this: I live in a world filled with people, sounds, smells, and
cappuccino machines. Some day, somehow, my task is to learn to be
peaceful while living in that world, beyond the hermetically-sealed morning bubble in which I have practiced for just over a year. Apparently it's
time to teach myself peace on the outside.
Have you found this easy? Difficult?
Natural? Impossible? I'd love to hear.
Thanks for choosing peace, Pat. I hope
it doesn't drive me mad. Thanks to yoga, I think, although I'm a
bit cranky about it today. 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.
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.
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.
Kristin Shepherd
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