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.

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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?

Great Ball of Fire

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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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.

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Meditation Top 10

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

winter08 051.JPGWhy meditate? Here are my top 10 reasons:

  1. Because it makes me happier
    overall. There’s nothing sophisticated about this, but if I had
    to pick one, this’d be it.

  2. Because it has transformed my
    asana practice. Without meditation, I strive to be in a state of
    love in practice. With meditation, I am in a state of love.

  3. Because I’m a more patient
    partner, mother, and friend on every single day that I meditate.
    Patience is a challenging gig some days.

  4. Because I’m homesick when I
    don’t meditate.

  5. Because there are moments of
    high-flying, intoxicating bliss during meditation (as long as I
    don’t go in expecting that).

  6. Because the world can be insane.
    So can I. It feels good to build a raft of sanity every morning.

  7. Because it’s humbling to meet my
    stubbornly busy head every morning while hoping to find a quiet
    head. This wouldn’t matter except that I sense it’s good for me
    to be humbled by something every day.

  8. Because my busy mind is stupefyingly
    exhausting.

  9. Because each day I like
    myself as I am is better than the days I spend trying to make up for
    what I’m not.

  10. Because I want everything yoga has
    to offer, inside and out.

I’ll bet you have your own compelling
reasons to meditate or to want to meditate. I’d love to hear them.

Thanks to yoga for what’s 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 in Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on Meditation Top 10

Eyes Are The Window to the Blah, Blah, Blah

Posted on January 25, 2011 by kristinshepherd

My Lovely Man’s just had his right eye removed, which makes him my Lovely One-Eyed Man (my LOEM). The eye was replaced with a wee bowling ball, wrapped in human sclera and protected by a plastic cap that will be replaced in two weeks by a big contact lens  painted to look like a regular eye.

I brought him home looking like Micky Rourke after a bad night. This was okay because all i could see was a puffy mush of purple eyelids and some leaky blood. I was all sweetness and light and compassion.

Two days later his swelling reduced and he opened those eyelids.  For the first time we saw the bowling ball, which is a solid, dark maroon colour as far as I can tell.

The sight of it took my legs out from under me. Figuratively, i mean. I didn’t actually drop, but Jesus Murphy, i worked hard to stop myself from crying with the shock of it.

We have this thing about eyes: Windows to the soul, truth detectors, the thing that differentiates us from evil robots, bad-guy terminators, and dead things, soulless things.

I had more than i realized invested in these associations, and for a short time it broke my heart to see something other than Pat’s eye where Pat’s eye used to be.

It scared me to look at him. (I am completely ashamed of this.)

Then, by the Grace of Something, i remembered the waiting room full of people in hospital gowns preparing to have body bits removed. I remembered all the patients i love who have fewer breasts, lungs, kidneys, fingers, and toes than the rest of us.

More than that, it dawns on me that i hack myself to pieces whenever and wherever i amputate love — for his new face, for many of my own body parts all my life, for this moment when i’d rather be somewhere else, for the world in general on a bad day.  We’re all missing bits, when you think about it.

And i realize it’s absurd to assume Pat’s missing anything has anything to do with his soul or spirit.

Bring on the wee bowling ball. I will love this face.

Thanks for the lesson in love.  Thank you for the conversation,

kristin.

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