Beginner’s Meditation 1+1

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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Last time, we talked about starting to
meditate, about placing your bum on the couch for the first time.

If that worked for you, and you didn’t
run screaming to your TV or your fridge, your computer or your iPhone apps (in which
case you just met your ego in a head on-collision), let’s take
another step.

There is a growing body of evidence to support the fact that meditation affects blood pressure, inflammation, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, anxiety, asthma, heart disease, memory, irritable bowel syndrome, and ADD, among others. Twenty years in chiropractic taught me that the HUGE majority of health-care complaints are stress-related. If health care made sense, meditation would be covered the way yoga classes would be covered.

If you have personal experience with anxiety or heart disease, the evidence may be enough to motivate you. The rest of us need a reason just as personal.  

Here’s one of mine: Something deeper than alleviation of complaints happens with meditation, with becoming present with what is in front of our faces. Ekhart Tolle, author of A New Earth and The Power of Now, describes the look on our faces when we’re unable to be present and still. He says the look is that of someone who would rather not be here. There is a deadness to that look, he says, a kind of veil of distraction over the eyes.

I know that look. I see it in the mirror when meditation isn’t a part of my practice and life is demanding. I hear that look when I’m on the phone with my lovely man while scanning my email. I have done entire yoga classes with my monkey brain running commentary (Oh, god, I’ll never make it to the end! Oh, man, what happened to my hamstrings? I think we’re running late, I’ll be all sweaty when I get back to the office, etc., etc., etc.).

By contrast, we all know the look of someone who is fully with us and fully alive. It’s radiant. 

Our monkey brains may be agile, clever, and useful, when they’re not running the show, but they will never be radiant.

If any of this captures your attention, practice. Practice by sitting your bum down for another 10 seconds today. If you haven’t found a method you like better, listen to your breath for those 10 seconds. Then congratulate yourself. You’re doing it.  

If you have any initial impressions, victories, or difficulties, send them this way.  If you’re experienced, send your enthusiasm. Next time we’ll do a Top 10 Reasons to Meditate.

Thanks to yoga for all its paths.  Thanks to quiet minds, 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 ekharttolle, monkeymind, practice, Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on Beginner’s Meditation 1+1

Beginner’s Meditation 1

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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Meditation, like asana and pranayama, is a branch of yoga.

Writing about meditation makes me
nervous. I have an irrational and enormous love of what amounts to
sitting still, doing not very much, and feel it is impossible to do it
justice in words. It’s like trying to describe the way you love your dog or your child to a new friend, hoping to give her the same
experience you’ve had. It’s impossible, isn’t it? 

Several of you have written to say that you can’t stand Savasana (Corpse Pose). It made me laugh to read it, but it was that tense I-completely-understand-what-you-mean laughter.  It’s difficult to slow down, to be silent, and to convince the crack-addled monkey brain to take a nap. It’s difficult to let go of what I know, even if what I know is the root of my insomnia, my itchy scalp, my irritability, and the fact that I sometimes eat three bowls of soup in order to taste one spoonful.

Today, despite wanting to fill you with the deep desire for stillness, I’ll say this: Don’t
meditate until you want to. (In truth, I feel the same about
asana. People email, occasionally, saying they hate yoga but
would really like to work up the oomph to have a regular practice.
My response is, don’t do it. Stay away. Go on with needlepoint,
caber tossing, or Vietnamese cooking. Pursue the things that are already delicious to you. If caber tossing brings you peace and a sense of oneness, caber tossing is your yoga. Yoga should not be a battle.)
Meditation may be endlessly interesting, challenging, and blissful, but
if your heart isn’t leading you there, go with your heart.

Another thing: Meditation is about
meeting yourself. Your Self, which, in my vernacular, means meeting
Truth, Love, Here and Now, Meaning, Purpose, Vulnerability, Openness, Honesty,
Fullness and Emptiness, Joy, and Peace, to name a few of
the biggies. If you decide to do it, then I suggest (and I have
absolutely no expertise, so feel free to toss my opinions overboard)
that you do yourself a favor by lowering your expectations and getting rid of your attachments to
outcome before you start. No one is handing out prizes at the end based on whether or not you stayed in full lotus, kept your eyes shut, and remained pure of heart.

An excellent way to begin gently is to
consider yourself victorious if you sit quietly for 10 seconds.
Five seconds. Just lower your bum to the couch for a moment as you’re
walking from your bedroom to the kitchen, and say, good, I did it. I
started.

Tomorrow you may do it again. If it
feels good, follow it.

There are 1,000 meditation methods. Surf the web, check the library, ask your yoga teacher. Over the next couple of posts, I’ll concern myself with “why to” rather than “how to.”

It would be impossible to describe how
much I hope this works for you. In my limited experience, being present is miraculous. 

To those of you who are meditators already,
feel free to share your enthusiasm. Your words may attract newbies.

Thanks to yoga for bringing us home,
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 asana, pranayama, Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on Beginner’s Meditation 1

Bellowing

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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If it weren’t for bellows breathing,
I could go the entire day without actually waking up.

We’ve been talking about pranayama, the breathwork limb of yoga. I can’t move on to
anything else without paying tribute to Bellows Breath, or Bhastrika pranayama, which is designed to WAKE US UP.

My morning practice begins with a
couple of minutes of alternate-nostril breathing, just to remind me
that my brain has two hemispheres, something that comes as a surprise
more often than not.

Then, seated but still half asleep, I
begin bellowing. (Is that a word? It is now.) The bellows breath cycle is rapid,
from-the-diaphragm, in-and-out breathing. I focus on the exhalation and the contraction of my belly, and allow the inhalation and the
big-basketball belly to take care of themselves.

When I was introduced to this
breathing, 15 seconds was enough, doing one inhale-exhale cycle or so
per second. Beyond that, all hell would break loose. I’d lose the
coordination between my breath and my belly as though one of them
had just derailed and had completely lost sight of the other.

These days I do three or four rounds
of a minute or so each, at something like two inhale-exhale cycles
per second. (This morning, I read that Andrew Weil, M.D., one of
breathwork’s greatest fans, says you can aim for three cycles
per second. That sounds absurdly fast to me. I can hardly wait to
try it tomorrow.)

Because of the hugely invigorating
nature of bellows breathing, it comes with all the usual warnings to
sit, not stand, and to avoid doing it while mountain biking or during
scary movies, etc.

But, oh, some kind of gate opens when bellowing. Inside three
minutes, you are awake. And feel so alive. It’s not a bad way to start the
day.

Thanks for all your interest in
pranayama. Thanks to yoga for encouraging us to breathe, 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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New Thwack, Same Love

Posted on January 17, 2011 by kristinshepherd

So my lovely man has this malignant tumour in his eye, and after waiting long enough that we could have grown a very slow vegetable garden, we’re leaving for Toronto this morning so that he can have his eye removed.

People say, oh, how do you do it, is he devastated, i can’t imagine how that feels, etc., etc.

Truth is it feels like regular life, but with the colour turned up a bit.  By that, i mean that this is a larger obstacle than usual (than boredom, than money, than career choices, than finding my way around in Bangkok), but it’s still an obstacle. An unexpected thwack in the head.  And what matters, what comes in handy,  is the skills we’ve already developed to deal with thwacks in the head.

On good days (and most of them are good), we focus on what matters.  Do we know what makes us happiest and what matters most to us? Do we know how to listen to our hearts rather than our heads? Can we really listen to each other in this relationship? Can we act from love rather than from fear?

All the questions are the same.  Which makes me want to suggest that we’re wise to know ourselves as well as we can and to practice being here, now.  This practice is the way through boredom or Bangkok.  It’s the way through every single day of regular life. The same practice is the way when it’s cancer, life, and death.

Life is big.  Sometimes bigger than i’d like.  Not for a second does that change the fact that Love wins, and that my greatest task, no matter how big life gets, is to remember that.

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Squared Breathing

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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Have you tried squared breathing?
Inhale, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, exhale, two, three,
four, hold two, three four.

Simple, but it’ll change your life.

In the foreword to The Yoga of Breath by Richard Rosen, Rodney Yee writes that pranayama, or breath work, is the one
component of his yoga practice that he has not missed for 15 years. He says it is more precious to him than asanas or meditation.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic,
squared breathing teaches me everything I need to know about myself
each day.

Here’s how it goes:

  1. The Inhale. For some reason, I
    gulp and grasp air during the inhale, filling myself in the first
    two counts, pushing and yanking the entire universe for the last two
    counts. This improves slightly with each cycle. Perhaps not
    coincidentally, I eat the same way, talk the same way, and treat
    money and some relationships the same way. It’s possible there is
    something to learn here.

  2. The Hold. I love this part.
    Except for gagging a bit when tense, I’m most content when I’m
    full of air. Same with food, talk, money, and relationships.

  3. The Exhale. The first two counts
    of the exhalation are heaven, a release of enormous pressure.
    During the last two counts, panic begins with the realization that
    everything is leaving me, and I’ll die if this letting go
    continues. I’m once again unhappy to note an uncanny similarity
    with food, talk, money, and relationships.

  4. The Hold. This one is agony.
    It feels as though I’m six years old again and
    Larry Aitkenhead (sorry, Larry) is holding my head under the water
    in the pool. I’ll die if this goes on. I feel the same way every
    night before dinner is ready (how much longer? No, I’m not hungry,
    I just want to eat), at every social occasion (hi, how are you?
    What’s new? Can I go yet?), whenever my loved ones are unhappy
    with me, and whenever I feel short of money (which, in my
    experience, has absolutely nothing to do with how much money I
    actually have).

  5. Inhale, and begin again.

This is not as awful as it sounds.
Within 60 seconds, squared breathing hands me my life’s work on a
platter. Within five minutes, my practice softens my resistance to
every one of these issues, even to Larry Aitkenhead, who probably has
issues of his own and doesn’t need my continued judgment. By the
time I finish my pranayama for the morning, there is room for joy in
this body and mind.

I hope you’ll try this breathing, or
share your experience with it.

Thanks to breath for being there all
day long (so far) and for teaching so much. 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 exhalation, inhalation, pranayama, richardrosen, rodneyyee, squaredbreathing, Yoga | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Squared Breathing

In Praise of Breathing

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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Pranayama. I’m besotted with it.

The use of breath is one of the eight limbs of yoga. It’s all I
can think about these days, which makes for disastrous conversations
in grocery stores. (“Have you practiced exhaling lately? You
haven’t?” Blank stares. “Would you like to try it?” Blank
stares. “Okay, then. Have a great day, anyway. If that’s
possible, without really exhaling.”)

Today, I’m head over heels with exhalations. Some pranayama article, somewhere, suggested I focus solely
on a slow, full exhalation, and then let the inhalations take care of
themselves. It’s as simple as that.

Here’s what’s beautiful:

  1. Who ever exhales completely? No
    one, is the answer. In our regular life, we exhale half  way,
    leaving our lungs half-filled with stagnant, jammy air that would
    rather be outside mingling with the the fresh air.

  2. You haven’t felt your beautiful
    abs until you’ve practiced exhaling. My god, they’re happy to
    be asked to play when you decide to exhale fully. Imagine
    developing a gorgeous belly, just by deciding to breathe well.

  3. After a purposeful exhalation, there follows a delicious, huge, effortless inhalation. You feel like an Olympic athlete
    taking a lungful on Mount Everest.

  4. This breathing changes your mind,
    literally. Your head clears. It sparkles. It turns inside out. If
    you’re looking for an intoxicating welcome to meditation,
    this is it.

This may sound like hyperbole. It
isn’t. Try it at your desk/mat/locker/grocery-store and get back
to me. And if you’ve been doing it for years, let us know what it’s
like over time. I can’t imagine how it might change a person.

Thanks for exhalation. Thanks to yoga
for providing so many paths to beauty. 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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Expanding the Definition of Yoga

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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Like most North Americans, I first met
yoga as a physical practice, a sport. Unlike most sports in my life,
yoga combines strength and flexibility, which is like some kind of
magic trick after years of activities (trail running,
cycling, gym-ratting) that were joyous and invigorating, but which shortened every single muscle in my body with every outing. So yay for yoga as sport.

Over the holidays, I read Deepak
Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga, in which he kindly fills out my own definition of yoga to include breathing, meditation, and a few other things which are still over my head.

Thank you, Deepak! Why? Because in the midst of my honeymoon with both breathing and meditation, a honeymoon involving a good hour and a half each morning, I find myself so blissful (Peace! Love! All is One!) that it’s all I can do to haul myself into Downward Dog afterwards, let alone a full series.

After a year of loving my physical practice, I find myself in the middle of a kind of existential yoga crisis, in which my physical practice is the least attractive part of my early morning. I can hardly believe it even as I write it.

What a pleasure, then, to find out that I am still doing yoga–deliciously–by breathing and meditating! To learn this is so thrilling that I happily finished my meditating with a dozen Sun Salutations this morning.

Perhaps something inside decided I needed some rounding out, and that my practice might benefit from a little bliss.

Whatever it is, I’m grateful, and relieved.

Has this happened to you before? Is yoga a straight physical practice for you or do you explore its other branches? Did exploring the others mess you up, ever?

Thanks to yoga for being filled with surprises, 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 asana, deepekchopra, downwarddog, mediation, pranayama, sunsalutations, Yoga | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Expanding the Definition of Yoga

Beginner’s Breathing

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Kristin Shepherd

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It could be that I’m getting old and
that my sense of fun has changed so much that I can no longer play
with others in the way I used to. It could also be that yoga is
having its way with me.

January first comes this year without
buffets and booze, without screaming, “10! 9! 8! …” (always a
horror story for me, that one, witnessing drunken, overenthusiastic
and sloppy tongues, party hats askew, friends confessing into
martinis that life’s gone downhill since grade seven).

This year, it’s all about breathing.
No joke. I’m breathing my way into the new year.

I’ll bet we’ve all done Ujjayi
breathing, the Darth Vader thing that slows the breath down during
practice. At some point, that breath leapt into my civilian life as
a de-stressing maneuver. I use it at the dentist, the car repair
place, and when I visit a new yoga studio.

These days, I am intoxicated (I mean
that) by alternate-nostril breathing, bellows breathing, and squared
breathing (all Google-able).

Yoga is about union, and breathing is
truly, madly, and deeply reputed to bring together body and mind,
sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (relax and repair)
nervous systems, conscious and unconscious, even life and death.

Read about it, if that’s your thing.
But if experience is your thing, try it. There is something about
yoga breathing that takes you flying, I swear. Once you try it,
you’ll feel as though your lungs have been sitting around on your
bedside table, doing not very much for most of your life.

Have you done this already? Is it a
part of your regular practice? If not, are you drawn by it, or does
it sound lunatic to you?

Thanks, thanks to yoga for all its
diversity, and for being the best way ever to bring in a new year.
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 alternatenostrilbreathing, bellowsbreath, pranayama, ujjayibreath, Yoga, yogicbreath | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Beginner’s Breathing

Acting Lessons

Posted on January 4, 2011 by kristinshepherd

My son, the actor, says this: when someone gives you something (a word, a sentence, a feeling, a breath), receive it fully. Don’t let it just ping off your surface  and give a pingy superficial response.

Instead, let the word, or breath, or feeling sink all the way back to your spine. Let it transform you. Then respond from the transformed place.

(If you like this, try it while meditating. It’s like feeling two waves, the first being the usual breath into your lungs, the second being a deeper echo of the first, allowing your breath to reach your spine, to reach deeply into your face, your chest, your pelvis. Then let your exhalation come from the same depth.)

Something funny happens with this deeper receiving and giving. It’s as though we access a truer, more direct version of ourselves rather than acting like pinball machines all day long. (I have had enough pinball conversations for one lifetime.)

You can spot someone who’s doing it, by the way. The eye contact is different.

If this draws you at all, give it a whirl. I’d love to hear how it goes.

Thanks for the conversation,

kristin

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No Resolutions Here

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Kristin Shepherd

12_30_beginnersmind.jpgA pox on New Year’s resolutions. Yay for you if they work, but they have not worked for me, ever. Instead, they raise an unrealistic bar set by any guilt and shame still hanging around from the old year. I am motivated by my failures until about January 7th, at which point I give up trying to be someone else and settled, slightly deflated, into myself. Thanks, and no thanks. 

What does work for me is the thought of exploring new ideas and practices for the year ahead, usually inspired by last year’s successes. This year, I want a lot. I’ll skip right to the yoga desires.

As in love as I am with my asana practice, I’m hungry for more yoga: deeper meditation, breath work, perhaps chanting, and some kind of conscious relationship with myself all day long. I want yoga to show up in everything I do. (Which is to say that I’d like me to show up in everything I do. I’m hoping that all of this is not about yoga with a capital Y, but about the development of us, of our bodies, minds, and hearts through yoga.) My library bag this week is filled with yoga books for holiday reading. Deepak Chopra on yoga, yoga for dummies, and a full book on yin yoga.

I swear that my physical practice has created this desire. It’s as though yoga has found an entry point and now wants its way with me completely. Why not take all of me, I say.

What do you want in yoga for 2011? I’d love to hear.

Thanks for the enduring interest of yoga. And thank you for the conversation. Happy New Year,

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 asanapractice, chanting, deepekchopra, inspiration, intentions, kirtan, resolutions, yinyoga, Yoga | Tagged | Comments Off on No Resolutions Here