Being in our nature - needs and not really caring

I know, I can feel it too, there’s a shakiness in the air, but we shouldn’t be surprised, the eclipse gifted us new beginnings and here they are. You only have to look at nature to see how vulnerable new beginnings are, think about baby shoots or baby birds or baby saplings, let alone human babies, we’re all at that stage delicate in our newness and needing of support, from caregivers, from water, from sun, from oxygen, from life force.

I’m feeling into new beginnings too, a new way of relating and being and while I am aware of the triggers, the old patterns that have only just been let go of, I have discovered a trust that was not there previously, a trust that allows the edginess and the slight restless feeling that I might have labelled anxiety before now, but which I can re-label as excitement and anticipation, which changes things and I know now to not get caught up in the mind games, to acknowledge that the thoughts are there that used to send me into a spin, down a well trodden pathway, but I have chosen to move away from those pathways now and create new ones, so I breathe, catch myself and get out into nature.

Nature positively changes things for me. I am nature. You are nature. The problem arises when we separate ourselves from it. If I can be in it, in the thick of it, then I am brought back to my thickness too, to my solidity, to my part in the whole. And if I am quiet and watchful then I notice how nature is constantly communicating with me and how that helps me to rest more easily. How there are blackbirds everywhere currently, because my friend is a blackbird and away from me in space, but with me always, checking in, being present, and I can watch the buzzards bring their message of flying the thermals, resting into the energy, and the tinkering of the water flowing gently down the streams, and the beauty…

…oh my gosh, so breathtakingly beautiful, the beauty of the spring flowers adorning, literally adorning the hedgerows, if ever we doubted abundance then here it is, and the fact that the universe loves to give, that there is beauty there if we open our hearts to see it, beyond the darkness and the fear and the imaginings of what might be, of trying to make life known of the potential disasters upon us, be that political, environmental or otherwise, I just can’t buy into conspiracy. If we can just let go, for a moment and surrender to the experience, then when we are in nature, we realise that there is only presence and this presence is indeed the present, the gift, in the moment, where everything is truly OK.

I practised yoga yesterday with this view (see image) and while my focus was primarily inside myself, and my eyes were closed for the most, there were moments where I stared out at this delight and it struck me, of course nature was, in that moment, teaching me openness. Just look at those blackberry leaves, on the left, and how open they are. They trust. They ask for their needs to be met. They don’t shy away, considering themselves unworthy, or unloveable, no, they open themselves up, ready to receive the sun and the rain and all they need to grow and thrive in this world. They are what they are and they have no question or shame about it.

Working with people, I often have the conversation about needs not being met, of blaming others without recognising and appreciating that only we can truly meet our needs by being honest about what they are in the first place and being able to voice them. I have a wonderful friend who always hates her birthday because each year it is a disappointment and yet I can see so clearly that this is of her own making, on some level she doesn’t feel worthy of making the day her special day, and on other level she doesn’t ask for what she needs to make it a special day and instead expects others to know, and then ends up disheartened when they don’t meet her needs because they don’t know what they are because she hasn’t voiced them let alone owned them.

It’s the same sexually. Many women end up frustrated as their needs are not met and yet many don’t know what those needs are, and lack the confidence or the courage to give voice to them when they do know - to ask to be touched a certain way, or to allow greater intimacy, or to just be without having to reach an outcome - orgasm, for example. I’m fortunate to be immersed in Tantric and Taoist exploration and have a couple of wonderful female friends with whom we can talk very honestly, and with the Tantric collective, very honest sharing, because this conversation is so little heard, we don’t talk enough about our sexuality and our needs as women (or indeed men). We are still so limited by media and the pornographic industry.

I always like to share something that my Ayurvedic doctor told me about the root chakra, and how there were three pillars to it, the one of sex and procreation, as a survival of the species and another of food, to nourish and fuel us and the third, the sacred. At some point in time, maybe when patriarchy marched on in, or maybe it was later, I’m not sure, but at some point, society whipped the sacred out of both and we end up with sex having to look a certain way, think of pornographic imagery, let alone Hollywood film industry portrayal, which has made us collectively feel that that is the way. It isn’t. At least, if you want to explore and experience the sacred in sex, allow it to be a pleasurable and spiritual experience, increasing vitality and positive relationship to self, let alone a path to enlightenment and the alchemy and the sacred marriage, then turn off the TV and turn in instead.

Food too, has had the sacred removed from it. It’s an industry now, about money, always about money, so that people don’t necessarily eat ‘food’ as I might describe food, as something that has prana in it, that nourishes every cell in our body, that enhances our health and wellbeing on all levels of being. Many will take a protein shake or some ochre food stuff manufactured in a factory, devoid of the loving touch of human hands, of hearts and love, of the sun and the moon and the stars, which might infuse our vegetables and fruits growing outside or in greenhouses and we wonder why our digestion is messed up, why we feel bloated and get constipated or have heart burn and acid reflux.

Furthermore, we eat food transported half way around the world, flooded with pesticides and other questionable chemicals, grown in soil devoid of nutrients, handled by people who don’t care, and we wonder why we’re not thriving as a species, increasing numbers of people needing medical care. The sacred has been ripped from our lives. We don’t even necessarily take the time to sit down to eat, we munch at our desks, completely oblivious to what we are shoving in our mouths, not aware of chewing, let alone of whether we’re eating what our body truly needs, not giving ourselves the space the feel or to digest properly (our life experiences as much as our food stuff!)

Life is busy, the demands on us are great, there is little time to just be, unless we have cultivated it, consciously made it so, so maybe it’s not surprising that we don’t always know what our needs are. And when we do, maybe we struggle because we haven’t been taught how to give voice to what we do need, because it’s not always the same as others, and we might have to own our differences and be OK with that, with our non conforming, when we have been taught to conform and be the same - think of school and the uniform and all those rules and regulations, as if some book was gifted when the world was first created about how human beings should live and behave. There is NO book btw, just someone else deciding something at some point and insisting that everyone else live that way. Sigh.

But it is more than that. More often than not, our poor relationship with our Self (note capital “S” as in soul, as in our essence, as in all that is and all that will ever be, our true self) means that we are always looking outside ourself to be filled up, made whole, accepted, loved, make everything OK. Unfortunately this doesn’t work, not long term. To be dependent on another to make us feel whole, creates not only co-dependence but neediness which merely compound our insecurity and lack of worthiness and love for self.

Someone shared this lovely imagery, of holding your hands out together and cupping them as if to receive, because the cup is empty, and how this becomes a begging bowl when we hold it out to others asking them to make us whole, how old we can truly fill ourselves up and make ourselves whole.

Thus every time we notice that we are looking to others to give us love or respect or in some way to value us, we need to pay attention. Rather than blaming them for not giving us this, we need to come back to self and appreciate that it is more often than not us who is not loving, respecting and/or valuing ourselves. This is where the work is required, not on ‘fixing’ the external or changing someone else, but on changing ourselves instead. This doesn’t mean doing anything. It means the opposite. It means letting go of all the doing, of all the conditioning, of all the training, of all the studying that has caused us to relate to self in an unhealthy way - that has caused us to be anything other than who we are at core.

And of course there’s the not caring. This conversation has been coming up increasingly too since the eclipse. We care too much this is the problem. We have been trained to care too much because this keeps us dumbed down, disempowered, insecure, needing validation, and this makes us controllable and causes us to lose our connection with Self, which is emPOWERing, brings us home.

Notice how many times a day you care what others THINK about you. Notice how many THOUGHTS you have in a day. Notice how many times in a week your THOUGHTS change. Yes, you’ll begin to notice the transient nature of thoughts and indeed feelings and most certainly opinions. Honestly, who cares what others THINK about us. Thoughts come and go, come and go, and yet people spend their lives being limited and restricted by the thoughts of others, to the extent that people suffer simply because they don’t feel that they can be themselves.

There are people who will readily share their thoughts and opinions about you. Do you care? Probably. It’s hard not to be at times, when we feel judged and therefore vulnerable, when we are forced to question some aspect of our self or the way that we are living our life, even though we are/were entirely comfortable with it. But really we shouldn’t care, because those people are merely projecting on us their own conditioning and limitations and also there own insecurity, shame, guilt, or whatever it may be, some feeling in them that they are uncomfortable with, or some way that they have been trained to see the world which is different to the way we might might see the world.

When we are feeling vulnerable and unsure, especially now, as we begin again, new beginnings, a new venture, whatever it may be, especially if we are putting ourselves out into the public domain, then this vulnerability, this urghness in the solar plexus and throat, let alone the shakiness in our root, may well invite in (not consciously but from a higher perspective) some challenge, some opportunity for us to look at how much we care and be done with it.

There will be someone who will trigger us, who is triggered by us in the first place. People hate it when we step up and step into our power, they feel threatened by it, because it highlights their own inability to do that. So they criticise and judge and do what they can to try to make us feel uncomfortable - it’s an energetic power game. It’s sad really, because a some point we need to realise and recognise that we are in this together, it’s NOT a competition. I see it played out in the new age spiritual realm, in yoga too, the ego has such a hard time sometimes accepting that whatever is meant for us all not pass us by and that we EACH have a role to play on this planet in serving humanity/the planet in some way and the more doing this, the better I say.

Remember though, that NO ONE can make us feel a certain way. It is US who choose how we feel in response to another person and whatever it is they are bringing to us. No one can make us feel unworthy. No one can make us feel unloveable. Only we can choose to feel these things and if the path is well trodden within us, then we will easily fall back into that thinking. I hope that makes sense. It is our mind! It is always our mind! And believe it or not, you have a choice to change your mind.

So when the challenge comes and someone triggers you and you immediately go into response, buy into your unworthiness, your unloveableness, your insecurity, your imposter syndrome, whatever it may be, stop and breathe. Catch yourself. Go into the body. Feel it. Own it. Accept it. Don’t resist it or reject it - remember what we resist persists. Just breathe into it. Is it a truth? No. It’s someone else’s stuff that they are projecting to us - trying to pass on like a hot potato. Smile. Thank them for being the wonderful teacher that they are. And change the patterning. Own your love, your worthiness, you inner security. Delight in your whole.

And then, like the blackberry leaf we can STAY OPEN. So even when we are vulnerable. Even when we are unsure. Even when it is cloudy and there’s no chance of rain, even when someone is trampling all over us, we can stay OPEN. And we can TRUST that our needs will be met because we know what they are and we are open to receiving them - we know we are worthy, loveable and therefore feel secure in ourselves.

So therefore, even when we are putting ourselves in those new situations that make us feel shaky, we can stay open and not close down our hearts and our soul - we can maintain our faith and trust in the universe and in the process. And the more we do this, the more we will start to notice how often we close down and go into defensive patterning because of the fear of the pain of the rejection or criticism or just not getting our needs met, or not making our dream come true.

We will notice how we close down to spirit (close the crown), close down to our intuition (close the third eye), tighten in the throat (close the throat chakra), close down to heart (close the heart chakra), feel empty in the stomach and do what we can to fill this up in unhealthy and unhelpful ways (think wine, chocolate, junk food, drugs etc) (floppy solar plexus), turn in on ourselves, self deprecating, self depriving, self hatred, self negligence (close sacral chakra) and stop testing the support of the earth and NATURE - our own nature, we slip out of the body and up into the head, creating separation, just as we have been trained to separate ourselves from nature (close root chakra). It’s not surprising we lose connection to self.

So we have to learn to stay present, to life as it unfolds, to all that is happening. Remember it is never happening to us, but for us. We can meet our own needs. We are worthy. TRUST. OPEN. It’s not easy, but like everything, the more we practice and the more we cultivate this state of being then the easier it becomes until we’re being it without even noticing that it could be any other way.

There’s a lot to learn you see by just sitting in nature. The ancient yogis did exactly this and this gave rise to the yoga postures that we still practice today, there’s a reason that many are named after the species from which they derived. Nature provide all that we need to thrive. Knowing our own nature will empower us more than we can imagine, so that we step beyond our limitations and experience greater freedom. Maybe I’m biased, but for me, it is all about freedom - freedom to be in our nature and not caring if anyone else has a problem about that!

Happy wax, we have a penumbral lunar eclipse coming on Friday 5 May…a week away…but Beltane first on 1 May, which we will be celebrating on Tuesday 2 May at the Yoni yoga class in St Martin’s Community Centre 6-7pm, all women are welcome to drop-in for £12 but you will need to book via the website. Please don’t forget the new Wednesday morning yoga class in St Martin’s Parish Hall 9.30-10.30am, which is literally drop-in, no need to book.

And if you are wobbling and need to talk it through, then book in for a Reiki session. While healing, often these sessions end up being a spiritual coaching experience, I often find myself trying to help clients shift perspective and work through whatever is coming up for them, which I might intuitively pick up to help validate how they are feeling. Again, book in via the website.

Love Emma x