Yoga's come a long way, baby.

When my mother took yoga classes 40 years ago, she was weird. She was dabbling in something cultish, Eastern (as if that didn't say it all), nutty-seedy vegetarian and bound to zip down a slippery, chanting slope to moral corruption. Yoga ranked right up there in weirdness with her backyard compost pile. Now we call a compost pile. Then, my mother was the woman who dumped leftovers on the back lawn.

She also meditated. I was with her at a Transcendental Meditation workshop when I was six or seven. All I remember is lying on a gymnasium floor with too many strangers, trying not to laugh while being told to relax.

Here's the thing. The physical practice of yoga is no longer weird. Half of Hollywood does it, which is enough to make the rest of us feel mainstream while standing on our heads. Yoga clothes are now accepted enough to wear to work, to lunch, to sleep. (I remember moving to a small town in Northern Ontario in 1989 and wearing running tights into a corner store. Before I arrived home, rumor had spread that the new chiropractor in town was out shopping in long underwear.) Men now do yoga, which would have freaked even my mother out 40 years ago. Kids do yoga in schools. Not in huge numbers, yet, but it's happening.

Yoga is in. It's fun. It's here. Big time.

I hope, hope, hope, that the meditation part of yoga is making its way to great numbers of us along a similar course.

Meditation, though not as weird as it was (what the heck, you just sit there, doing nothing?) has only recently begun an accelerated spread into schools, prisons, hospitals,and evening classes in gymnasiums. David Lynch is the only Hollywood name that comes to mind.

I'm surprised that people still arrive at my Facebook site, where we talk a lot about meditation, asking, "How to do I begin?" I forget that meditation isn't as automatic a practice for most of us as our asana practice.

If you haven't already included it as a part of your practice, you're in for a good time. Meditation is gorgeous beyond description.

David Nichtern is fun. He's a teacher of Buddhist mindfulness meditation. Here is his take on how you can begin to include meditation in your life.

I hope it becomes a part of your trip if you're ready for it. I hope it carries you down a slippery slope to your true nature.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks to the yoga tree for having more than one branch. 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.