Tag Archives: Yoga
A Beginner’s Love Letter To Yoga
If I were to write a love letter to yoga today, it would go like this:Dear Yoga,I know, I know, we were just on the mat together, but there’s something I’d like to say before we meet again tomorrow.We live… Continue reading
Yoga Trolls
“I can’t do it”, said my sister. “I’d love to, but I’m not good enough. I suck.”
Inner Teachers
One of you wrote a kind note to me recently in which you encouraged me to discover my “inner teacher” during my home practice. This might involve veering off the straight path I’d been on. What a beautiful idea!
Originally, my home practice was basically whatever I remembered from class, in much the same order we do our asanas in class. Not much imagination involved.
All hell has broken loose, since. This morning I thought, I’ve got to reign this in a bit or I’ll never be able to go back to class. Today’s practice looked like this:
I’m in flannel pajamas, which are far more comfortable than my yoga clothes. I sing show tunes during my Sun Salutations. My secret desire (not so secret now, I guess) is to star in Big! Musicals! I picture some Famous! Broadway! Producer! driving down my very quiet street in Northern Ontario and hearing my voice Soaring! out the front windows, singing, Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, from Annie Get Your Gun. It’s a tough fantasy to maintain given that I am terrified to sing in front of anyone but my dog. I maintain it nonetheless.
I put henna in my hair today for the first time. It’s mucky, it stinks, and the instructions say keep it on for hours, so I do my entire practice with a goopy head.
Toward the end of today’s practice, which includes some completely invented dance moves (in case that Producer needs a Dancer!, not just a Fabulous! Singer!), I find myself saying, “Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah”, with each forward bend and each spinal twist. How did my practice become so loud?
Savasana, at the end of all this, is a quiet relief.
Is this my inner teacher at work? I don’t know. I understand that there is no mention of show tunes in The Upanishads, but something in my practice feels freer and more creative these days. Lighter.
Do you have inner teachers? Are they serious? Funny? Creative? Are they dancers? Singers? (Do you want to do a musical together?)
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.
The Game
We’ve been playing a game all week. Maybe you’d like to play with us.
If you were stranded on a deserted island-it’s a beautiful island, great weather, great food somehow, great books, just no other people-and you could only do one yoga pose for the entire month, what would it be?
After much hand wringing and general hoopla, we’ve decided that Savasana is a freebie. You can do all the Savasana you want. And one other pose.
Another thing. In this game, you’ll be completely healthy at the end of the month. Flexible, strong, peaceful, and beautiful. So the pose you pick is just about the happiness it’ll give you, not about, “oh, god, if I don’t do the shoulder openers, I’ll look like Hulk Hogan by Friday” (no offense to Hulk).
Here’s what we’ve got so far:
My sister picks Upward Dog, because it looks so beautiful.
My lovely man says The Plow. He’s just gone back to it in class and it’s exciting to be able to do it for the first time in decades.
My friend Paul chooses Triangle Pose. I think he’s crazy, but free choice is a part of the game. (He did ask if we were allowed to come out of the pose at all, or whether we have to hold the pose for an entire month. The answer, with rolling eyes, is yes, you can come out of the pose.)
I will do Downward Dog. I love everything about it: the inversion, the use of my entire body, easily a month’s worth of interest.
And if we play again next month, I’ll pick handstand, because it makes me feel like a goddess.
And you? What pose? Why?
Hoho! I can hardly wait to hear.
Thanks to yoga for being so interesting, and so much fun, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. These games thrill her inordinately. Join her on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd, on Twitter at kristinwonders, or at kristinshepherd.ca
Teaching!
Uh oh. Who would have guessed that 10 months into my yoga life, I’d lead a class?
Well, a small class. Three of us and a dog named Emma. At a cottage. I may not know what I’m doing when it comes to yoga, but neither did they, and we all felt certain we’d come to no harm. So we gathered on a deck looking over Big Marten Lake on a gloriously blue Saturday morning.
We started with a few Sun Salutations, followed by variations on Sun Salutations. We flowed gently from posture to posture, plank to Chattarunga to upward dog to downward dog. I gave them every tip I could remember (shoulder blades down, inner thighs rotating backward, rooting through hands and feet) and made up several extra.
More than once, Jenni said, don’t you mean my left leg forward? And isn’t it the right foot pivoting this time? (I am far more dyslexic than I imagined.) We moved onto slower poses, a ridiculous rendition of yin yoga – ridiculous given that I have not once attended a yin class. I watch my lovely man do his poses at home and thought they’d be fun to try with my friends.
Class was a rousing success.
Until day two. During our Sun Salutations, neither Sue nor Jenni can move gently from plank to chattarunga. Not even the first time. Sue says, I don’t remember doing this yesterday. We did, I tell her. We did exactly the same thing.
“It didn’t hurt like this,” Jenni says.
“Hurt like what?” I ask.
“Like hell,” she says, “pointing to her chest and arms. It hurts like absolute hell.”
“It’ll get better,” I tell them, hoping it’s true.
And through every Sun Salutation (and we only do five), they collapse like big bags of potatoes from plank to Chattarunga. Smack. Slam. Thud. Thwack. Bang. Crash. The new sounds of yoga. We laughed so hard I thought I’d blow a bhanda.
Great lessons from chattathwack yoga:
1. Yeah for the shoulder and arm strength that comes with practice!!!!
2. I adore sharing yoga. My only goal in leading the class was for them to want to do it again the following day. They did. Sort of.
3. Yeah for real teachers, who know right from left, how to start slowly, and how to let us laugh.
Have you taught, those of you who aren’t teachers yet? I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks to yoga, for fun on vacation, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.
My Own Branches
I know there are branches of yoga. I know most of us are focused on the physical branch. Some multi-branched yogis don’t love our primary focus on the physical. I think it’s all right. Here’s why:
I began with Hatha yoga. But it doesn’t take long before I realize, without any teaching, that yoga has at least a second branch for me.
Let’s call my two branches outside yoga and inside yoga. The physical is outside. I love its strength and flexibility, its warmth, love the physical buzzy calm after my practice.
At some point on the trip, outside yoga introduced me to inside yoga, a kind of calm, accepting, eyeball-dissolving something, so often accompanied by huge sighs the end of class. And just as the physical branch teaches itself to me, class by class, the inside branch works its way through me, too, telling me a thing or two or twenty that I didn’t see at first.
Like the fact that I don’t feel inner peace after every class. In fact sometimes I’m as relaxed as all get out during class and then my head races during Savasana. Go figure.
And sometimes I find that lovely, floaty peace without doing a physical practice at all. Sometimes it shows up out of nowhere, while I’m driving or eating or scratching the dog’s belly. Today I saw an old man sitting on a guardrail, watching traffic go by while he picked something from the sole of his shoe, and my heart melted as though he were my grandfather.
Somehow, my yoga practice helps this inside thing happen, even when they don’t occur together.
So. There you go. I have two branches, now. Who knows what will show up next, and what kind of tree I’ll be in the end.
How about you? How many branches? What kind? What’s your current growth?
Thanks to yoga for such gorgeous growth, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.
Poses That Make You Crazy
Okay, what is it with triangle pose????
(Those of you who are experts need not read this one. Go back to practicing your one-armed handstands with your legs in full lotus. I adore you, I do. I worship your accomplishments. But today’s thoughts are not for you.)
Triangle pose. Pretty basic. Do the triangle thing and reach forward to grab your first toe.
For the entire 10 months of my gorgeous, intensive involvement in yoga, this is exactly what happens with my right leg. I reach down, gently grab the first toe of my right foot, and look up to the ceiling. I breathe slowly and evenly. I don’t care if Rob and Cristina (my teachers) count to 29 on this one. Happiness.
Not so with my left leg. On my left side, I reach down, all the while thinking, I am so flexible, I am flexibility itself, I am flexibility incarnate and reincarnate. And my hand reaches mid-calf. Not an inch lower.
Makes me crazy. I know, I know, patience, kindness, acceptance of what is. Even if what is is a daily reminder of my exaggerated imbalance. All I wish for is balance, I tell myself.
So guess what happened this week? For no reason I can think of, my triangle pose has changed!
But not the way you think it might. Not the way it happens in fairy tales and romantic comedy yoga videos. Now neither of my hands can reach my toe! I mean it. I just tried it again before sitting here to write.
Both sides to mid-calf. Not an inch lower.
My thoughts? Be careful what you wish for. I wanted balance. I got it.
Is there a pose that drives you crazy? (Okay, if it’s the one-armed handstand with full lotus, you can play, too.)
Thanks to the yoga poses that drive us crazy, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.
Holding my Mother
My mother and I were at the same family gathering on the weekend. Which is not a big deal if you come from someone else’s family, but my mom and I only see each other once a year or so. And that’s a huge improvement after two decades of down right difficult, then jaw-clenchingly tense, and now tentatively willing relationship. (There’s a mouthful.)
She looks beautiful. One bionic hip, and two hearing aids (which she’d forgotten at home), but a soft, gentle face and a kind of high, croaky, older woman’s voice. Once planted on the couch, she stayed put. I brought lunch to her while she watched her kids mingle and her grandkids fling themselves around the room with my dog.
She did yoga when I was a kid. That was my introduction to yoga, to meditation, to the whole idea of looking inward as a form of health care. It astounds me, writing this, when I consider how central this looking inward is to everything I believe now. It is the core of my work in health care, in theatre, in parenting, and in all relationships.
My mother doesn’t do yoga any more. She can’t get down to a floor and has no local chair yoga classes. More than that, she’s lost the oomph it would take to do yoga at home.
When we talk about it, she says, never, never stop doing yoga. It was the best thing ever, she says. People make their own choices. I know this.
And yet, if I had one wish today, it’d be that my mom could still do yoga. Or that somehow, I could do it for her, while holding her closer and closer to this croaky heart of mine, which, I hope, is growing more flexible over time.
Is there anyone you’d love to hold during your practice?
Thanks to yoga for looking inward, to my mom (love, love, love), and to you for the conversation. Continue reading
Lowering the Bar
This week my home practice happened at 5am one day, 3pm the next, and in spurts throughout the afternoon on another day. Not at all on two days.
Occasionally I feel disappointed in this, wondering whether I’d finally be able to grab the toes of my left foot in triangle pose if I just applied myself with greater consistency, greater diligence, greater drive.
These same feelings come up when I hear friends say things like, “I haven’t missed a day of yoga in 2.7 years. It only takes 27 years to form a good habit. Only 270 days of boot camp and you’ll be a new woman.” Etc., etc., etc.
Hearing these things, I slump into a kind of anti-achievement stupor. I have set the bar too high to make the leap and all I want now is a bag of chips and a lousy movie.
Same thing goes for every area of my life. Extraordinary colleagues who make Tony Robbins look like a slacker, volunteers who single-handedly bring clean water to very thin children in very small villages, friends who climb absurdly high mountains in Peru for fun and charity dollars. I know these people, and watching them from the comfortable chair in my living room, I sometimes do a little dance with discouragement.
Here’s my response to discouragement and disappointment when they’re doing a nasty tango with me:
1. Lower the bar. This may not be Tony Robbin’s advice, but it works for me. If an hour of practice feels like too high a climb, do thirty minutes. If thirty minutes feels daunting, do one downward dog. I mean it. One.
2. Adore myself for doing one downward dog, for giving myself one glass of water (the children in the village may come another day), for giving every little bit of love I can to myself and my fellow human beings. A well meaning hello with eye contact can save us all, some days.
3. Dream, dream, dream. Of the hamstrings I will have some day, the peace of mind, the work and workplace I’d love, the people I’d love to play with all day long. I do this because of an absolute conviction that dreaming serves to pull these things toward me.
4. Ask myself what one, small thing I’d love to do right now that would take beautiful care of me. Do that one small thing and forget everything else.
These work for me. My guess is that you have your own wonderful thoughts. I’d love to hear them.
Thanks to yoga for putting all of this in my face this week, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.
Burgled!
My office was burgled (what a lovely sounding word! It sounds like water pouring over rocks in a cool stream) on Friday, while I was in a back room speaking with someone.
For the first two hours afterward, I thought, oh, this is just like trying to find the toothpaste on my bathroom counter. That substantial amount of cash is here somewhere. I just can’t find it.
When the reality of it sank in, my gut writhed for a few minutes. Until–and this is the yoga part –until I realized this is what is.
It is exactly like my hamstrings. They are short. No whining about that helps. No gnashing of teeth, no “why did this happen to me”, no “I should have done this or that”. My hamstrings are short. The money is gone. Can’t do much about it.
Except. Except that I can look at the situation gently, and positively, and with a lot of love for myself. I can soothe my gut by contemplating the good things that might come from this. I can dwell on how lucky I am to be safe, happy, and engaged in work that will never land me in jail where the food is bad and my yoga props might be confiscated. A sense of humor comes back to me.
Which, strangely, helps me wish my burglar friend well. For him (it turns out I met him before, which is why I know he is a him), I wish peace, well being, a relaxed gut, and good life choices ahead. In fact, I’ll go all out and say I wish long hamstrings for him. Somehow I know my own flexibility on this point will help both of us.
Here’s what yoga is teaching me:
What is, is.
I do better when I let go.
Looking at everything with peace and love makes it all better.
It turns a burglary into water pouring over rocks in a cool stream. How cool is that? Has yoga done this to you, too?
Thanks to yoga for the alchemy in this, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd is a chiropractor, actor, speaker, and workshop wonderwoman in North Bay, Ontario. Join her at kristinshepherd.ca or on Facebook at Dr. Kristin Shepherd.