Tag Archives: kristin shepherd
Eyes Are The Window to the Blah, Blah, Blah
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 … Continue reading
Bellowing
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… Continue reading
New Thwack, Same Love
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. … Continue reading
Squared Breathing
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… Continue reading
In Praise of Breathing
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… Continue reading
Expanding the Definition of Yoga
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,… Continue reading
Beginner’s Breathing
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… Continue reading
Acting Lessons
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, … Continue reading
Putting the Yoga Back in Christmas
Christmas is a crazy-making time of year. For every lucky person who loves it (the turkey! the kids! the shopping! the religious whatever!) there is one who doesn’t (the elevated pressure to be jolly! the family! the cooking! the shopping!… Continue reading
Trust Sandwich
My son is in his first year at The National Theatre School, which he sometimes calls The National Becoming A Human School. One of the roughly 14,500 things he loves about school (only a few of which we covered during … Continue reading