That annoying thing called imposter syndrome

I have many talented clients who are keen to offer Reiki or other holistic and trauma-based therapies, teach yoga and/or write books, but let the imposter syndrome get in the way.

This is a syndrome which essentially tells you that you are not good enough to offer whatever it is that you are wanting to offer, that you don’t know enough, aren’t clever enough, expert enough, knowledgeable enough, that you don’t have the right qualifications, that you won’t be able to do a good job, that compares you to others and concludes that there’s too much competition anyway and that you will never be able to make a go of it etc.

But really when it boils down to it, it shows that you just care too much what others think of you and that you don’t recognise your own magnificence.

It also shows that you don’t trust spirit and/or have faith in whatever it was that gifted the idea in the first place.

And that you are Ok about selling out on your heart.

It might also indicate that you have forgotten that we co-create in this life and it is about so much more than you.

We let our ego get involved.

This is the self-depreciating ego which tells us that we are not loveable, or good enough, or enough of this and that, or too much, or whatever other negative self-depreciating inner narrative we repeat over and over again and make manifest in our lives simply because we are always seeking validation of this negativity and embedding it deeper into our psyche and belief system.

If we look for trouble, we will see only trouble.

If we look for love, we will see only love.

If we look for validation of our uselessness, we will see it everywhere.

It is all about perspective.

And we have a choice.

We can keep limiting ourselves with all this negative crap, or we can choose to shift our mentality to something far more positive and expansive and live our best life.

It’s not our fault. We have been conditioned since birth to question ourselves, to doubt ourselves and to be down on ourselves.

We are constantly criticised for not being intelligent enough, or quick enough on the sports field, or arty enough, or musical, or thoughtful enough, or kind enough or polite enough, or not wearing the right clothes, or saying the right thing, or walking down the corridor correctly, or sitting still, or any of the other many, many ways that we are told how to be and judged for behaving differently.

No wonder so many are so tired.

This trying to be what others want us to be and this caring what others think and the hyper vigilance this requires, is really rather exhausting. It creates so much insecurity, anxiety and depression. It causes us to lose our centre, close our hearts and, at times, think we are negatively losing our mind.

Consumerism thrives on this insecurity. It thrives on our externalising of our worth. Of caring too much what others think. People make millions selling products that we are told will help us feel better about ourselves. Even in yoga, it has become all about the building or the mat or the clothes we wear, and this when yoga is absolutely an internal practice.

But that aside, it is crazy isn’t it, to base our self-esteem and sense of self on other people’s fleeting thoughts. Watch your own mind and ask yourself, “what thought will I think next?”, and watch the constant stream of thoughts that appear from the ether in all their randomness. Thoughts come and go. The trouble is we give them far too much energy and believe that they are a concrete representation of reality. They aren’t. So why on earth we care what other people are thinking about us or the opinions they hold one us (which are just thoughts) is quite beyond me.

If we don’t care about our own thoughts - and we really shouldn’t, especially those self depreciating ones, then why on earth should we care about other people’s thoughts? And this to the detriment of our experience and quality of life.

Because when we care too much, it stops us fulfilling our potential, it limits us and it keeps us stuck. And slowly a part of us begins to die, to give up, to feel hopeless, to accept our miserable lot. We close down to excitement and joy, we let our head drop, we drink more wine, eat more junk food, watch more TV, spend more time meaninglessly scrolling through social media, we might manifest illness and we tell ourselves all sorts of stories to justify why we won’t bother trying to move our life forwards and step into our power, share our gifts with the world, just yet.

Sometimes we are scared of failing. Or scared of our potential success.

Somewhere though, we have forgotten that there is a bigger picture.

You see spirit works through us. It wants to co-create with us. It needs us to be the channel and vehicle to bring more heart and soul onto this planet. The trouble is we block this flow by getting in our own way.

We make it all about us, rather than the people who may benefit.

We forget our place in the cosmos.

Maybe I am lucky. I didn’t intend to teach yoga or Reiki or offer Ayurveda. I only signed up for my yoga teacher training course because I wanted to immerse myself in yoga. Together with Reiki it had quite literally saved my life and I wanted to learn all I could about it. I also wanted everyone else on the planet to practice yoga because I knew how much it might help to ease our individual and collective suffering.

It was the same with Reiki. My Reiki Master had to really encourage me along to the first attunement session as I didn’t feel good enough. I was quite sure that the Reiki wouldn't work for me and when I was the only one in the room who didn’t feel a thing during the attunement itself and certainly didn’t see colours or have a sense of energy beings, i concluded that I definitely wasn’t good enough.

But alas a seed was sown and I found myself attending the Level Two training. It was the pendulum dowsing that got me really. I just couldn't believe that it actually worked for me. It was life changing. I slowly started to connect with, and trust, my intuition. It helped that I had by then started receiving spiritual life coaching using Reiki and the Reiki had been working its magic in my life, this to the extent that I wanted everyone else on this planet to benefit.

It was the same with Ayurveda. It felt like magic. I couldn’t quite believe how changing my diet in such an ancient way and taking some medicinal herbs could create such a profound difference in my energy levels and my relationship with myself. The pre-menstrual symptoms which had plagued me for years dissipated. The cysts on my ovaries healed. My disordered eating eased. The overwhelm and accompanying depressive moments abated. I was sleeping better. My digestive system was consistent. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I wanted everyone to try Ayurveda.

And so I ended up teaching yoga and Reiki and becoming an Ayurvedic lifestyle and nutrition consultant simply because I wanted others to experience the benefits for themselves.

I felt as if I had been given these incredibly sacred gifts and the only way I can truly thank the powers that be, is to share these gifts with others. My teachings and sharing then come from a place of deep gratitude.

Not only that, but I realise spirit is just moving through me. I don’t own any of it. Even Beinspired is not mine. It came in at just the right time and it has shaped itself.

The moments when I take myself too seriously, make it all about me, or try in some way to control things, especially Beinspired, is the time it all goes to pot. That I have learned the hard way.

And yes of course, I too have suffered imposter syndrome. Every time I offer something new, I can feel a creeping of anxiety and start questioning my ability and hear myself saying something like, “who do you think you are offering spiritual life coaching, do you really feel you have the qualifications/training/knowledge to help coach others spiritually, and can you honestly charge people for what you are offering?”

I hear those thoughts.

But then I also know that the idea to offer spiritual life coaching was not about me, it was about the people who may benefit from my sharing my passion for yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, and all the many spiritual practices I have explored these last 20 off years. That is not supposed to sound arrogant, as if I am better than anyone else, I am not. But with all that I offer, it just suddenly comes in as a possibility, I haven’t gone searching for it.

The yoga teacher training course was the first of its kind and arrived on my penultimate day in Byron Bay when I was wondering what to do next with my life, but knowing that I wanted to continue immersing myself in yoga (you can read more about this in Namaste and From Darkness Comes Light). The Reiki came in by encouragement from my Reiki Master. The Ayurvedic training was encouraged by my Ayurvedic doctor. A part of me was cynical - they just want my money. But I know now, as I do this to others, that it is never about the money, it's an intuitive nudge, because you know that other person will benefit - if I have been badgering you to come to class, or do a Reiki attunement or consult with me for Ayurveda, this is the reason, something is telling me that you will benefit!

In many respects I have felt that I have had little choice. My yoga teacher told me to go back to Guernsey and start teaching yoga. My Reiki Master encouraged me to establish Beinspired and start offering Reiki. My Ayurvedic doctor was super keen for me to offer Ayurveda and did all she could to help me. These people are conscious, they have benefitted themselves from these spiritual practices and they also see the bigger picture - that we are co-creating with the divine, we are playing our role in positively shifting the vibration on this planet. We have incarnated at this time in history for this very reason.

So each time I come up against imposter syndrome, I acknowledge it and sit with it. Where is it coming from? What is the fear? And how is my heart feeling?

And as long as it still feels aligned, my heart sings, my intuition is nodding, then I’ll go for it anyway.

I’ll put on my big girl leggings and I’ll face my inner demon.

I’ll trust in whatever it was that gifted me the idea or the nudge in the first place.

I have learned a ton of lessons along the way.

At my first yoga class no one turned up. I went home and cried on my Dad’s shoulder. But I didn’t give up because something was telling me that I just needed to be patient, that Rome was not built in a day, that we all have to start somewhere, that it takes time for people to find their way to you.

And they do.

I have learned to trust in that.

That the right people will find you. That the universe will connect you.

Sure, it helps to advertise, to make people aware you exist. But people will come when the time is right - and for both of you, because it’s a two way process - I learn something from every single client and students who has entered my life.

I have also learned that you can advertise as much as you like, but if you have some resistance within you because you are letting imposter syndrome get in the way then people will not find you because on some level you are blocking them, you are also manifesting the validation you need that you are not good enough so let’s back out now while you can. I have sene this happen lots of times, people make it all about them again.

We have to be careful with our thoughts as they do create our reality. So shift your thoughts. And pray. Pray for assistance. For the most perfect situation for all parties.

I have also learned that we are not in control.

And that we should never base our self worth on external validation such as the number of students in our class or our busy schedule.

Just like we should never look to someone else to make us feel whole.

Or look to love to save us.

Or someone else to make us feel safe.

Or assume we need a community or tribe to feel as if we belong.

Our primary relationship in this lifetime is with ourselves. That much I have learned.

We come in on our own and we will leave on our own. This is the journey of OUR soul.

I know this with absolute certainty.

We can hear the powers that be if we are still enough, quiet enough, gentle enough.

We just need to learn to trust in what we hear, and cultivate greater faith in ourselves and in spirit in the process.

We need to cultivate self-belief. We have to learn to love and accept ourselves. This takes hard work. No one else can do it for us. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, you cannot buy this. Sure others can help you, but only you can really make the inner changes.

We need to switch off and switch in. People love eating energy. Protect your energy. Don’t give it away or let others steal it.

Faith is our protection.

Discernment is our weapon.

I have also learned that we should never have an attachment to outcome. If we do, we will never write that book, or run that course, or offer that treatment.

We do what we do for the love of it, for the sheer joy of the creative process.

We leave others to receive our offering in their own way. We are not responsible for this.

We have to let go of our idea of success or healing or whatever it may be.

We cannot control outcome.

We cannot make someone better if they don’t want to be better.

And we need to remember that we don’t all think and feel the same. So just because we might feel a certain way after say a yoga class or a Reiki treatment, doesn't mean that others will feel similarly. Some may like it, some may not.

And the other lesson I have learned is not to personalise everything. Someone doesn’t come back to yoga. Big deal. That’s their choice. Maybe that one session was all they needed to move them forwards in their life, maybe they can’t get a baby sitter, maybe they have to work late, maybe yoga is just not for them. We don’t need to make up stories that revolve around us, “oh I don’t think they like my style of teaching, oh I am such a rubbish yoga teacher blah blah blah.

Who cares!

Do what you do, offer what you offer, for the sheer love of it.

Stop caring what others think.

And put your energy to loving yourself more instead. Of being your greatest friend.

I have spent thousands of pounds on various trainings, workshops, courses and treatments over the years, but one of my best friend’s gave me the greatest advice for free. He told me to stop caring what others think. No one had ever told me that. Not one single person. or if they did, I didn’t hear them. I started putting this into practice and I couldn’t believe how deep the conditioning around caring what others think. Every time I was triggered, when I traced it back to source, I realised it was always about caring what others thought. I cannot tell you how liberating it has been to work with this and stop caring. It automatically tightens boundaries and helps you value yourself - and - it increases interestingly your compassion not least for self, but for others, because you see how much they suffer by caring too much what others think.

To the extent they don’t live their best life.

And this, to me, is a real tragedy.

So too the fact that they are denying others the benefit of their gifts by not sharing them - it’s like a form of stealing.

If you are reading this, then the chances are that you too have something to share. That you have a passion for yoga or writing or holistic therapies or whatever it may be and that your life has been touched positively to the extent that you would like others to benefit from what you have to share, be that your healing hands, your story or just your ability to listen.

So my advice is to share it. Notice the self-depreciating and limiting thoughts and do it anyway. Dig deep. Find the courage. Trust in whatever it was that gave you the idea. Cultivate faith. Pray for assistance along the way. Please don’t deny others the benefit of whatever gift you are here to share.

If it helps then I am happy to work with you to move you forwards, but remember that I cannot do it for you. You have to do it for yourself.

To help others.

To liberate yourself. Fly free.

To raise the vibration on this planet.

And boy do we need it!

Love Emma x

Yoga practice and our patriarchal conditioning

My last blog was exploring patriarchy and the effect on our conditioning and began to touch on how this might have influenced our approach to yoga, and whether this has been healthy, especially for us women. 

What I mean by that, is whether the style of yoga we practice, whether a trend or not, is harmonising any energetic imbalances, especial from a divine masculine/feminine perspective and helping to set up free from our conditioning and perceived limitations which literally limit us and keep us stuck in more of the same.

My favourite quote of all time as many of you know is by Henry Ford,

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” 

I have become increasingly curious whether repeating the same approach to practice over and over again helps or hinders and whether repeating someone else’s approach to practice – yin or yang - allows us our freedom. 

As I explore this further, I have found it helpful to remind myself of the origins of our modern day approach to yoga and I share a little of this now. Please note that I am not a historian and am relying on information shared with me by my teachers and by what I have read previously. 

It all started with Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (18 November 1888 – 28 February 1989), who was an Indian yoga teacher, Ayurvedic healer and scholar, often called the ‘Father of Modern Yoga’. He is seen as one of the most important gurus of modern yoga for his wide influence on the development of postural yoga. Like Yogendra and Kuvalayananda, he contributed to the revival of hatha yoga because of their emphasis on the physical. 

Krishnamacharya’s students include many of yoga’s most renowned and influential teachers, notably Indra Devi (1899-2002), K Pattabhi Jois (1915-2009), BKS Iyengar (1918-2014), and his own son, TKV Desikachar. As is the traditional way, Krishnamacharya taught each student depending on their individual needs, which is the reason that they each went on to teach quite differently and yet had a massive influence on the yoga that we know today, probably infusing the style of yoga that you yourself practice. 

For example:

Indra Devi – was a pioneering teacher of yoga as exercise, having been the first woman to study under Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace, alongside BKS Iyengar and K Pattabhi Jois. She went to India in her twenties (born Eugenie Peterson in Latvia) and became a film star. 

She was invited later to a wedding in Mysore where Krishnamacharya lived and worked, and she asked him if she could study with him but he refused, stating that he did not teach women or foreigners. Indra was disappointed but determined and she approached her friend, the Maharaja, Krishnamacharya’s employer, and he directed Krishnamacharya to instruct her. Krishnamacharya hesitantly took Indra as a student. Apparently, he was strict and difficult with her in the hope that she might quit.

Krishnamacharya ordered Indra to follow a strict vegetarian diet and a difficult daily schedule. To his surprise she showed dedication studying asana and pranayama for eight months alongside Iyengar and Jois.

Krishnamacharya gained increasing respect for her and his son, Desikachar, said later that Indra changed his father’s viewpoint, with Krishnamacharya later saying that “women are the future in yoga and for yoga in the West”.

While Indra started teaching in China, she moved to the US and set up a yoga studio in West Hollywood in 1947, where she taught celebrities including Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, and Gloria Swanson. Here she earned herself the nickname, “first lady of yoga”. Her biographer, Michelle Goldberg, wrote that Devi “planted the seeds for the yoga boom of the 1990s”. 

Michelle also commented that for most of her life, Devi’s only goal was to bring yoga to the West, which certainly has been the case and she played a significant role in helping to make it a predominantly female pursuit, even if the yoga that has become popular is much more vigorous than the style Devi taught – and note that the style she taught, is not the style taught to her by Krishnamacharya, she developed her own style to teach to Westerners.  

K Pattabhi Jois

Krishnamacharya started teaching Jois, an Indian, when he was only 12 years old. At that time he needed a practice that promoted his growth and vitality through his teenage years. Apparently Krishnamacharya researched an ancient text he called the Yoga Korunta in 1924 and he shared this with Jois. He claimed to have learned the text from his own teacher named Rama Mohan Brahmachari on a supposed seven year stay in the Himalayas. The practices included asana (postures), vinyayas (connecting movements), pranayama (breathing exercises), bandhas (core muscular and energetic locks) and drishti (visual focal points). Jois systemised this approach and went on to share it as Ashtanga yoga.

This is the style of yoga that first drew me in. I was very much in my masculine energy, playing competitive sports and working my way up the career ladder, competing with the men for managerial positions, wearing suits to boot and seeking perfection in everything I did. It’s perhaps not surprising that I wasn’t happy, never quite living up to my idea of perfection, suffering from eating disorder, depression, PMS and a strong dislike for myself. 

I was out of balance and yoga was a gift which entered my life at just the right time. While Ashtanga yoga is not inherently competitive, it did allow me to apply my competitive nature to it, because it follows a set sequence and one cannot progress to the next level until all the postures in the first level have been mastered. I was competing with myself as much as I was competing with everyone else in the room. 

I had been taught by my patriarchal conditioning to achieve, to prove myself, to progress in some way into a future where I would be successful, perfect, and finally experience happiness. Obviously this is an illusion but I bought into it and invested in it because I knew no different, and yoga was now offering me another path to this end goal of success, perfection and happiness, just I’d do it on my mat now. Ha.

Not only that but the athletic nature of the practise, with its emphasis on strength and flexibility, came easily to my body, it was used to me working out and pushing it. I loved that I could practice many of the strengthening postures comfortably while others struggled, and that my flexibility could be enhanced by really pushing it – I could quickly see the ‘results’ and it didn’t take me long to establish a dedicated daily practice to further ‘progress’. In reality I was really caught up in my masculine energy and had the shoulders to prove it!

This is not to say that things weren’t changing, they were. Yoga by its very nature changes things. Only that this approach to practice allowed me to bypass a lot of my body issues, making me even more obsessed about the external, feeding my obsession with it, and encouraging more of the same in my mind, increased rigidity and emphasis on a linear ‘progress’ approach, and left me frequently disappointed when I still found that I didn’t really like myself very much, despite my trying to perfect my practice. 

A year into my yoga practice, I ventured to Byron Bay, the yoga capital of Australia at that time to immerse myself in yoga. Here I discovered what was called dynamic yoga, a combination of Ashtanga and Iyengar, which I had not practiced previously.

Iyengar yoga arose from BKS Iyengar, another Indian student of Krishnamacharya, who also happened to be his brother-in-law. Iyengar had been very sick as an infant and throughout his childhood he struggled with malaria, TB, typhoid, fever and general malnutrition. Krishnamacharya asked Iyengar to join him in Mysore and improve his health through the practice of yoga postures. During a two year period, while Krishnamacharya only taught Iyengar for about 10-15 days, these teachings had a positive influence on Iyengar and when he was 18 Krishnamacharya sent Iyengar to Pune to spread the teachings of yoga. 

Iyengar’s approach to yoga postures is focused on strict alignment principles, this because he was coming at it from a health perspective and was very specific about how a student should place their body to improve their health. This of course, a different approach to Jois, who had arrived to yoga, not through ill health, but with a need for a practice that promoted his vitality during his teenage years. Both of them, Jois and Iyengar, shared the same teacher, but the practices given to them were very different and what they did with those teachings was also very different.

The way they were taught was also different. I won’t go into this now because it’s a whole massive subject all of itself around heart and compassion and the manner in which yoga influences us on that level. From what I gather Krishnamacharya was tough on his students, easily criticising them and especially Iyengar. It is said that Iyengar never really recovered from the criticism he received, and it was not unusual for him to bark at his students and be hard on them too, sometimes slapping them to wake up a part that may have been unconscious. 

Iyengar attracted his students by offering them just what they sought – usually physical stamina and flexibility.  He conducted demonstrations and later, when a scooter accident dislocated his spine, began exploring the use of props to help disabled people practice yoga. Propping in yoga has continued to this day, albeit this is not something that is used in the Ashtanga tradition. Here Jois was renowned for giving intense adjustments taking students beyond their physical and psychological comfort zone that at times caused injury in his students, and now we are aware that he was sexually abusing them too. See, a whole other subject about ethics and morality, for another time perhaps. 

Here in Australia the dynamic yoga classes sought to combine the two approaches, namely the precision of bodily alignment and the focus that this demands, (the perfection one might say) and the movement of the body linked with the breath through set patterns. Both systems promoted strength, stamina, flexibility and balance. 

I was quickly hooked not least because I felt infinitely better for the practice, but simply because of my obsession with perfecting and advancing my yoga practice and here was an approach that not only fed my need for physical workout but also fed my need for perfection, because the strict alignment principles now gave me something to work with – a right way or a wrong way, black or white. This regardless of my body and its needs, or whether putting my body in such a strict shape was healthy for it or not. That didn’t matter, my body needed to fit the pose, not the other way around. 

I was soon practising up to six hours a day with two male teachers mainly, feeding an eating disorder by living on fruit alone (I wanted to have the perfect yoga body, which I believed to be very light and lean) and it is perhaps not surprising that my periods stopped. I was jubilant, no menstruation getting in the way of my practice, but really what it showed was that I was not healthy, feeding my masculine energy, which was out of balance in the first place.

It took me a long time to let go of this approach to yoga which I taught for many years and was well received by my students because they too were often caught in the patriarchal conditioning of exercise, perfection and achievement.

Even when I found my teacher who tried to untrain me and open me up to a more feminine approach to practice, I would still find myself practising in my old masculine way, after our lessons together, because in my mind I had to push and jump around my mat if I hoped to see change. What I failed to realise, was that the greatest change, at least on the inside, would come when I let go of my yoga practice having to be a certain way – the way taught to me mainly by men previously. 

There was one other influential student taught by Krishnamacharya, namely his son, TKV Desikachar, born in Mysore in 1938. Desikachar had a formal education which cumulated in a degree in engineering. However, shortly after beginning his career in this field, he decided to become a yoga teacher after a realisation of the great skills and knowledge that his father was offering.

He asked his father to be his teacher and guide and stayed at his side and learned from him until his death at 100. Desikachar founded the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai in his father’s honour.

Early in Desikachar’s yoga teaching and studies, his father asked him to teach the famous philosopher, Krishnamurti. This led to him accompanying Krishnamurti on a lecture tour of Europe and began his involvement with Western students, many of whom then committed themselves to 2 to 3 years of practice with him in India. As they in turn returned home, they set out to spread the teachings to a wider western audience with the main message that yoga practice needs to be tailored to suit the individual, more like bespoke tailoring that “off the peg”.

This was very much the approach of his father, Krishnamcharya, who considered every student as "absolutely unique" and incorporated his knowledge of Ayurveda working with his students on a number of levels including adjusting their diet, creating herbal medicines and setting up a series of yoga postures that would be most beneficial. Krishnamacharya particularly stressed the importance of combining breath work (pranayama) with the postures (asanas) of yoga and meditation (dhyana)) to help them heal and reach their goal. 

Furthermore, he believed that the most important aspect of teaching yoga was that the student be "taught according to his or her individual capacity at any given time". Thus, for Krishnamacharya, the path of yoga meant different things for different people, and each person ought to be taught in a manner that he or she understood clearly.

I am now very fortunate to have two wonderful female teachers in my life who very much adopt this approach. I met both ladies by chance – thank you synchronistic nature of the universe - when I was stuck in my dynamic vinyasa practice when my boys were little. That approach to practice had taken me so far, and I am grateful for those teachings, but as I have mentioned, it got to a point where it was merely feeding more of what now needed to be healed and shifted and I absolutely needed to begin to let go of my patriarchal conditioning and find a more feminine approach to practice instead to set me and my students free.

The first to come in was Helen, who is a TSYP teacher, this the Society of Yoga Practitioners who follow the teachings of T Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar. She has taught me Vedic chanting, philosophy, especially the teachings of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and asana and pranayama. Her approach has always been about what I most need and while it has been difficult at times, calming and slowing things down, I can now really appreciate the benefits of practicing in a way that is so very different to the dynamic vinyasa approach.

I was also led to Louise who is a Scaravelli-inspired teacher. Vanda Scaravelli, an Italian yogini was taught by both Iyengar and Desikachar as well as being good friends with Krishnamurti. She never wanted a lineage named after her, albeit she does have a following of students who will align with her as Scaravelli-inspired teachers. She developed an interest in the breath, gravity and the spine and her work has influenced the teachings which I receive, on a one to one basis mainly, to give me what I most need. Practicing like this has been life changing, no longer does my body have to fit the pose, the pose finds expression through my body. 

And maybe that is where I was getting to with all this. Because my teaching has inevitably changed in recent years as I have connected with parts of myself that were previously not allowed expression, the parts that I rejected because they didn’t fit my patriarchal conditioning, but which were desperate for my attention. It is in this way that my body has healed and my relationship with my menstrual cycle and what it means to be a woman and my sexuality and creativity have improved exponentially as I have reclaimed more of my feminine energy. 

Not only that but some of my fundamental core beliefs about the world and my place in it have changed as I have progressively let go of some of my conditioning and rigidity of mind, seeing through a little bit more of the illusion in the process. The joy of the Scaravelli-inspired approach to practice is one of energy and working with the body not against it. The joy of the TSYP approach to yoga is one of truly connecting with the breath and allowing more calmness because of it. Both approaches have helped me to let go of the notion of things having to be a certain way on my mat – black or white – which has been increasingly reflected in my life.

There is always more practice to be done, more to learn, and more to let go of in the process, more undoing, resting, being and trusting, but one thing that stands out as I approach 20 years of almost daily practice, is the need to honour our needs and what we most need in any moment, not because it is a trend, or someone has told us so, but because we are being increasingly honest with ourselves and the way we are living our life and what might then need to change. 

As a society it seems to me that we need less power and fast and push and rush and external, and more slow and gentle and inward and letting go and being and accepting and receiving. It’s about wholeness essentially and taking from the practice what enhances this rather than takes away from it. It’s an ongoing journey, an imperfect one at that, but this is the thing, life is perfect simply because of its imperfections and our honesty and authenticity. 

This exploration has been helpful because I can more clearly see why we have gotten to where we have gotten to these days as yoga begins to lose some of its popularity, this because people were sold more of the same – perfection, yoga body and endless calmness, happiness and joy. We have to be realistic. Life is messy and chaotic. We cannot expect a continuous state of being. Even enlightenment comes in flashes. 

Hopefully this sets us free from the patriarchal conditioning of perfection and achievement even on our mat and allows us to be more accepting of each moment as it arises and passes. We are part of a whole. My previous blog post explored this. Always a death leads to a new beginning. To try to maintain a linear approach is merely feeding more of what is out of balance in this world. Honouring our own nature is essential, so too our natural constitution. 

Practising in a way that creates greater harmony, encourages more of our whole is perhaps where the emphasis should be nowadays. This requires discernment and the courage to be true, to sift through our conditioning which runs deep. We have grown up in a patriarchal world and it has affected not only our world view but our relationship with our self and – at times – our choice in our approach to yoga practice. We need to be conscious of the effect our practice has on us. 

Tips for getting intimate with your menstrual cycle

Here are some of my tips for getting intimate with your menstrual cycle and your flow:

• Notice the moon cycle. Get outside and see where she is in the night sky and how your own cycle relates to her cycle – do you ovulate on the full moon when she too is at her juiciest? Do you bleed when she is new, so that you share a dark night together, the night before your period and her before she turns new? The more you notice the moon, the more your cycle will align with hers. But please do note that not every lady’s cycle is 29.5 days, so you might not always be in tune with her to the extent that you bless/ovulate on a new/full moon.

• Journaling is a really helpful way to connect with your cycle, writing down how you feel each day and noticing the differences throughout the month and the commonalities from month to month too.

• Notice changes in secretion and discharge throughout your cycle, especially if you are trying to conceive, so that you will have a better understanding of the time of ovulation and the discharge that this brings with it (like egg white!).

• Notice how you are drawn to different activities throughout the month, sometimes needing to rest, sometimes needing to be active, sometimes needing to be creative, other times needing to be quiet and retreat away from the world. Honour these, it is important that you recognise your cyclical nature as a woman and do not deny this in the quest to fit into a linear and masculine world.

• Notice how you crave different foodstuffs at different timed of the month, and honour this, you might well crave sweeter foods prior to your bleed, chocolate especially, go with it, it might be just what you need!

• Start to notice how you are likely to feel tender and vulnerable just after your bleed, becoming more positive and outgoing towards ovulation, before your energy begins to wane and you feel to retreat as you near your bleed and how the dark days prior to your bleed while often desperately uncomfortable can be extremely insightful and allow you to access deeper parts of yourself than you may have realised previously, such as visions and inner knowing. If you are truly honest with yourself at this time, you will notice what needs to change in your life.

• Pay attention to the messages your body is giving you throughout the cycle, notice any pain and tension that arises as this is your body trying to highlight that something is out of balance, that you are holding onto some inner tension, emotional or otherwise, suppressing some aspect of you that is desperate for expression.

• If you suffer with PMS as I did, then absolutely pay attention, especially in the dark days just prior to your bleed. Notice thoughts and dreams that arise during this latter stage of your cycle when your symptoms are at their worst. Notice any old feelings of shame and resentment, of anger and irritation. Do your best to release old emotions through various healing modalities such as SHEN or Reiki at this time, and slow and mindful yoga can help too.

• When you are bleed perhaps wear something red, so that you come to recognise and ritualise this time of your monthly cycle and be proud of it rather than shamed by it. Each bleed brings with it the opportunity for a deep release, for letting go and endings, before you begin your next cycle and allow more of the new into your life. This is the reason it can be helpful to undertake healing work and any kind of journeying towards the end of your cycle, or on the dark moon of the moon cycle – ideal if the two align!

• It’s a step too far for most but when you are bleeding, take yourself outside into a hidden place within your garden, where no one else can see you, even better if you can do it at night under the glow of the moon if she is in the night’s sky, and bleed directly onto the earth. I know for some it sounds absolutely gross, but there is a deep grounding, intimate and empowering that comes from this act of bleeding back to the earth, she who nourishes you and connects you to all life. Don’t tell anyone, just make it a ceremonial act between you, mother earth and the moon.

• Avoid tampons and anything which prevents your flow, or collects blood and holds it stagnant inside you. Allow the flow. Use recyclable pads if you can

• Cultivate a feeling of thankfulness towards your cycle, of allowing more of your deep wisdom, intuition and inner knowing. We women are cyclical in nature and should celebrate that, we are not linear, nor should we attempt to live our lives in a linear and masculine fashion. Embrace the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the tears and the laughter, embrace it all, and enjoy being more of who you truly are beyond the limitations of our culture, which attempts to shame menstruation and the emotional and cyclical nature of life lived as a woman.

• Let your emotions come and go, don’t try to supress them because whatever is repressed will find a way to express itself and this will show up in your menstrual cycle one way or another through pain or other irregularities. Cry, let the tears flow and cleanse and calm you and clear you out for the new. Don’t be ashamed of your emotional vulnerability, don’t be ashamed of menstruation and talking about it, don’t be ashamed of being a woman.

• Visit a site of ancient worship to the goddess, the mother. Here in Guernsey we are very blessed to have two notable ancient goddesses available to us, one outside St Martin’s church and another outside Castel church. Churches were frequently built on sites of ancient ceremony and worship, often to the goddess who was revered before patriarchy arrived into our world. Go visit a goddess, touch her, talk to her, invoke her energy into your life. You might invest in a goddess you can keep in your spiritual space (if you have one), you can buy them online from the Goddess Temple in Glastonbury (https://goddesstemplegifts.co.uk).

• Listen to my free videos and audios on mental health and wellbeing, available from my website at www.beinspiredby.co.uk.

• There are lots of books you can read, I recommend Code Red by Lisa Lister, Yoni Shakti by Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, Women’s Bodies: Women’s Wisdom by Dr Christiane Northrup and Wild Power by Alexandra Pope. If you are trying to conceive then I highly recommend my own book Dancing with the Moon.

Interview with Emma for Resonance Magazine about IVF

Interview for Resonance Magazine with Reiki Master, Emma Després, author of Dancing with the Moon, about her spiritual journey through IVF.

What prompted you to write your book, Dancing with the Moon?

I was pregnant at the time, and I was aware that I was seeing an increasing number of ladies for Reiki and also at yoga classes who were experiencing fertility problems.  I would often share my story in the hope that it might help them, but decided that instead of repeating myself I would blog about it instead. These blog postings seem to take on their own energy, and it crossed my mind that I might turn it into a book.  However, at that point I didn’t have an ending.  Then my second son was born, and the manner in which he arrived into the world gave me the perfect ending.  I realised immediately after his birth that I had a book – I just needed to finish writing it!

What is the book about?

The book is essentially about my spiritual journey through IVF and on into pregnancy, birth and motherhood.  Each stage presented its own challenges, from failed IVF, complications during pregnancy, births that didn’t go as intended and the shock of motherhood!  It talks about how much Reiki and yoga both helped support me enormously.

In what way did Reiki support you?

I’ve been a Reiki Master since 2006, so Reiki is very much a part of my daily life and I’m eternally grateful for the day Reiki came into my life.  During the IVF, it was a true blessing to be able to channel Reiki to myself during all the treatment, not least to heal from all the injections but also to help to grow good quality, Reiki infused eggs in preparation for egg collection, and then to channel Reiki to recover from egg collection and prepare my womb to receive the embryos, and then to channel Reiki to the embryos minutes after they had been implanted into my womb.

Because of working with energy through Reiki and yoga, it was an absolute blessing to be able to feel the energy of the embryos growing inside me.  This was a source of immense comfort to me during the rather challenging twelve-day wait to see whether the IVF has worked. It continued to be a huge comfort through miscarriage scares and other challenges presented during my two pregnancies – especially the “do not worry” principle.

The ability to channel Reiki to myself was also a huge comfort when both pregnancies ended in Caesarean sections due to complications.  The Reiki really helped my body to heal from the surgery much quicker than if I hadn’t been able to give myself Reiki. 

I still accredit Reiki to helping my youngest son after being born six weeks early and needing oxygen in Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit.  As soon as I was able to touch him, I placed my hands on his chest and channelled Reiki, and I am absolutely convinced that it was doing this as often as I could those first few days that meant he was strong enough to breathe without oxygen much earlier than any of the medical staff expected.  

Furthermore, Reiki helped me to come to terms with a failed round of IVF, and to recognise that there is a bigger picture to all life and everything has a timing. Plus, it helped me to be a much more empathic Reiki practitioner, I wish every lady going through IVF could channel Reiki to themselves, and feel the energy of the growing embryo.  I also wish every baby in NICU could receive Reiki – plus their parents, as it can be a potentially stressful experience.

Has Reiki inspired your writing?

Yes, enormously! I’m truly passionate about Reiki and writing. Reiki has shaped my life in so many ways and I mention it many times in my book, because it has been such an integral part of my journey. I don’t believe I would have written the book if it wasn’t for Reiki helping me to step further into authenticity and empower me to believe in myself and fulfil my dreams. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Reiki has helped me to heal me and connect more fully with my creativity. 

Dancing with the Moon is available to buy in paper back and ebook at www.amazon.co.uk.

Matangi - The Creative Process

This week’s yoni yoga focused on Matangi, one of the ten Mahāvidyas, who has been associated with creativity and the creative process. I like Matangi. I like all the Goddesses really, they’re each relevant at certain moments in our lives, but there’s something about Matangi which talks to me, especially at this time.

As Uma Dinsmore-Tuli writes, “Matangi is the outcaste or ‘untouchable’ poet who stands at the edges of conventional society. She is a visionary, wild and free from social constraints of any kind. She is associated here with manifesting the śakti, (powerful energy) in creative expression. Her special siddhi is the capacity for abundant creativity and the expression of unique vision. 

To access this siddhi requires a consciously surrendered participation: for to create and manifest anything, be it a book or a dinner, a yoga festival or a vegetable garden, requires that we surrender entirely to the cyclical processes of creativity. Creativity may involve ecstatic outpourings that are joyous and free, but it always also involves spending time in uncertain places which are frightening and unknown, times when all there is to do is wait (for the seeds to germinate, for the bread to rise, for the editor to get back with the comments on the manuscript). All these aspects of creativity are part of the process. Matangi’s great power is to be equally at home in all of these phases.”

All of life, at all times, is unknown and uncertain, but never has this been highlighted to us more so than now during an outbreak of coronavirus and the resulting lockdown where life as we knew it has stopped, at least for now. We are reminded that all of life is uncertain and unknown and this is difficult for people because it brings up inherent fears, all sorts of fears, around personal safety and stability in an ever changing world. We crave solid ground, something concrete, something that we can anchor ourselves too; in short, something known.

 The creative process thrives on uncertainty and it thrives on those places that can’t always be known. It takes us into those uncertain and unknown places too, where we don’t know if we can do it, create it, write it, paint it, grow it, bake it, plan it, make it. And yet there are times when we know we have to create for our very survival, write, paint, grow, bake, get on with it, express that part of ourselves demanding our attention whether we’re ‘good at it’ or not. 

As a child I loved creative writing, and as a teenager I enjoyed writing poetry. I attempted writing a book but never got to the ending. At university I stuck with poetry, usually late at night when I was all alone, in that quiet and still time when others are asleep and the air is stiller somehow, smoking cigarettes or joints, making drinking wine, listening to Native America Indian music or Deep Forest or Pink Floyd, something that took me to a deeper part of myself, that was craving expression, my soul perhaps.

After university I joined ‘the real world’, as I was told, and any hope I had of making a career out of writing was short lived, there was a finance job instead, with professional exams and therefore endless studying that didn’t allow time for creative writing or much poetry.  There was still poetry though. Generally drunken, despairing poetry, the soul dropping farther and farther away so that I barely recognised myself anymore, I’d even cut my hair short, corporate haircut. 

Depression slipped in, it’s no surprise, I’ve always had a feeling the depression was the darkness of a life devoid of soul and creativity, suppressed, not allowed expression, dead to the world, treading water, heart sunken, joyless, even the poetry dropped away for a bit, tortured soul, breathe. PMS settled in, I wrote about this in the Tārā post, hormones all over the place, the creative voice deep within yearning for expression; the soul expresses itself creatively, is manifest in this world. 

Yoga arrived finally and Reiki soon too, brought about by marathon running and the depression that overwhelmed me, and I’m grateful to whatever it was that called that in - we have to ask ourselves what is it that connects us to our destiny? It’s like the breathe, what calls that in? I’m grateful to whatever it is, angels, spirit, the sacred...we are all of us connected, energy. Even before then though, as I stated living more of my dream for travel, I started to write again, travel emails home and then an article for the local paper, poetry appeared again, but it was the yoga and Reiki that helped me to get over my insecurity slowly, slowly.

A year into my yoga practice I realised that all I wanted to do was travel the world, practice yoga and write about it, and that’s basically what I did for ten years, until Elijah appeared but even then we still kept travelling so I could practice and write about it. By then I had published articles in a couple of yoga magazines and other publications, but I still hadn’t managed to write a book, the ultimate dream, which lay heavily on me, felt like a weight, would I ever manage it one day?

I’d written the first draft of Namaste by then but I’d not taken kindly to the first edit, when the book was really in its infancy and I was in my infancy as an author and I set the book aside, concluded it wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t good enough, without truly appreciating that there is a process to creating and that’s it’s not an altogether easy or straightforward one, which will take you into that void where you just want to give up but you can’t give up, not really, not when you have already invested so much in it. But now I had a child to look after and a job in finance that took a lot of energy. 

It was around then that Uma appeared in my life. I can’t remember the exact details now, which surprises me because I tend to remember those moments where something happens, someone comes in, and life changes. Regardless, I’m grateful to the ‘something’ that connected us, she was the answer to my prayers, bringing with her this beautiful womb yoga practice and yoga nidra. Both practices awoke something in me, made me listen to that deeper voice within that wouldn’t let me give up, that kept whispering in my ear that I needed to get back to writing, regardless of my other commitments, that I needed to prioritise it.

Elijah’s arrival, in my womb, the seat of our creation awoke something too, and even though we had conceived by IVF, there was still a deep creative process, the birth, crickey if ever there is a creative process let alone the pregnancy itself, taking me on a journey that I could never had expected, that was fraught with the unexpected what with the unknown and the uncertainty of full grade placenta previa and a clinical birth in a hospital, where I was gifted the opportunity to truly surrender, but I couldn’t, I kept holding on and on and on, until he was already born and still I held on. 

I was too angry to write, anger suppresses my creativity, dampens my world, as if it puts out the fire that would otherwise burn brightly, causing the words to arrive and arrive, the paradox because fire feeds anger and anger feeds the fire, but not the fire of creative glow, not for me, I need water, watery water, tears are best, so that the words flow from that deeper glorious place, like the waves, no moment the same, timeless, time disappears, the rocks remain the same but the tide moves again, in and out, the moon glows overhead, day and night.

Dropping deeper into that space, creating new life, another pregnancy and by then a whole heap more yoga nidra and womb yoga and another book started to take shape, and then Eben’s arrival into the world. This too a pregnancy journey and a birth that brought with it the unexpected with waters breaking early on a full moon and another clinical birth ahead demanding a deep surrendering, the moon still glowing overhead, dancing in the garden in her light, contracting, and yet knowing it was now time. 

La Gran’mère du Chimquière was visited and she spoke a language that my soul needed to hear. I still can’t be sure what drew me to her, but whatever it is I have learned to trust it, it led me to yoga, to Uma, to answered prayers, the world works in mysterious ways. The deep surrender followed, the letting go, giving in, being with it, a zillion thanks always to Heather Reed for her compassion and kindness, and for being still such a part of my life, there’s a magic that brings people together at just the right time, and this is the creative process. There is a timing. Uma writes about this:

“A crucial aspect of Matangi’s power is correct timing. To maximise the force of her power, the delivery of her observations and/or creative offerings needs to be perfectly timed and placed…It is this aspect of timing that links Matangi so directly to the preceding Mahāvidyā, Kamalātmikā. Because the creativity she manifests, just like the sexual energy liberated by Kamalātmikā, both utterly depend for their power on correct timing. 

Just as there is no point in pressing a woman for sexual intercourse if she is too tired, or too premenstrual or otherwise at the wrong end of her particular cycle, so too there is no point in pushing for productivity in the reflective or evaluative phase of the creative cycle. Both siddhis – the capacity of sexual pleasure to lead us to experiences of cosmic loving connection, and the capacity of creativity to manifest with abundance – have their own particular cycles. Neither the natural flows of sexuality or creativity can be mapped by continuous linear progression. To receive the full power of either siddhi we need to respect the ebbs and flows of the cycles of their power”.

This recognition of the ebb and flow and the cycles of our creative potential is very true and there is absolutely a timing to it. The more I have embraced menstruation consciousness as a spiritual practice, the more I have recognised and embraced my cycle and the creative cycle which is intricately linked, so too then with the moon cycle and the cycle of nature and the ebb and flow of the light. 

Scarvelli-inspired yoga with its emphasis on settling into the unknown and the uncertain has deepened the connection to the inherent creativity, so it has entered a whole other dimension. It’s not that it frees the voice necessarily, although it does do that, but that it frees more of the sacred and the soul and reveals more of that which was previously hidden and stuck and sets it free, beyond any limitation which we might have put in its way, our core beliefs that prevent us living life fully and lead to us trapping ourselves in a conditioned sense of right/wrong and good/bad. It is this that speaks to me when I read about Matangi. As Uma writes:

“In specific relation to the creativity of women, Matangi represents the power of women’s creative voices to overturn or unsettle patriarchal patterns of accepted female behaviours and opinions. She pushes the boundaries and extends the limits of our horizons, so that when we manifest the power of our creative energies we can express what has previously been prohibited or reviled, and we can reveal what was hidden and forgotten…

…Matangi knows the consequences of her revelation: she understands the power of saying what others fear to admit. She is fully aware of the position in which such observations place her and of her role as an object of fear and censure. So Matangi’s voice is brave, and terrifying to those who are constrained by fear to live their lives according to propriety and expectations. She rattles people, pokes holes in their comfortable boxes of convention, and embarrasses the cowed and silent by singing out loud and clear.”

It’s this aspect of Matangi that really draws me to her, stepping out of the box and having the courage and the strength to say it in a way that tries to awaken people and shake them from the binds that keep them enslaved and asleep, that prevents them from questioning and blindly following a path expected of them. We need more women to embrace Matangi and speak their truth, however uncomfortable that might be for everyone else, for patriarchy especially, so subtly entrenched in our society that we don’t even notice it, even us women, a victim to it.

Uma’s sharing is fascinating, for she helps me to see another side, awakens me to the extent that I too am limited by cultural expectations, as she shares: “Sadly, many limits and constraints have been placed by our culture upon women’s creativity. Traditionally almost every dimension of our capacity to create has been curtailed and controlled, with the possible exception of our capacity to birth and mind babies and to make homes and meals for our families and for the families of those who are richer and more powerful than us. Successive waves of feminist activism have brought welcome changes to this state of affairs, and certainly today having babies and cooking are no longer the only spheres of creativity in which women can be expressive. But this is a very recent shift.

Even in the traditionally acceptable spheres of women’s creativity, the domestic realms of childbirth and homemaking, and even now, when you get right up to the top level of power-holding, our culture tends to hand even these womanly expressions of creativity back over to the men and to value their contributions more highly than those of women. For although women may birth babies and midwives may help them, it is the (usually, male) obstetricians who get paid ten times the rate of the midwives, and make the policies in the birthing units and labour wards. 

And though it is mostly women who are making homes and meals at the everyday, mundane level of getting food on the table every teatime and ensuring that the domestic environment is at least relatively non-toxic and that there is somewhere to sit down that is not covered in dirty laundry and Lego, most of the top paid TV celebrity chefs, restauranteurs and folks with their phots on the food packets tend to be men, and most of the wealthiest interior designers and retailers of home-making products, for example the CEOs of global homemaking powers like Ikea and Habitat, tend to be men. All this gives a clear message to women that although we  may be creative in the domestic sphere, out there, what really matters, and where the big money is to be made, it’s a man world, just like everything else, and so to compete with the guys you needs to play the game their way or back out”.

And in the creative field it does sometimes feel as if there is a game to play, at least if you hope to earn any money from it. A few years ago I contacted Hay House publishing about publishing a book, having self-published thus far and I was told that it didn’t matter so much about the quality of the book, but on the number of social media followers I had, and at that time I had none as I had come off all social media so I got a big fat no! There’s a game to be played if you’re up for it, but there’s also another way, our own way, in our own time and with our own voice finding its way. 

There is no doubt that the true creative process will take us into the unknown and the uncertain. The deep creative power that this process may reveal, as we explore more of those deep and luscious places within, will extend the boundaries of existing knowledge and present new perspectives to us that take us into those unknown and uncertain places within us! This can be both scary and messy and yet incredibly liberating, as we discover more of us than we had previously realised, stripping away our conditioning and setting ourselves free. 

This process is not easy, as it breaks down our self-imposed boundaries, our conventional belief system and all we thought was real, the norm then, even if it is not serving us, but its known and certain and gives a sense of stability, until it is broken, so we cultivate courage and we learn to settle into the messiness instead, where life is infinitely more colourful, brighter lived, on an edge of madness and sheer brilliance, to know the soul, like Lalla, and dance, like the moon, in Uma’s words, “a visionary wild and free from social constraints of any kind”, like Matangi, prepared to stand up for what she believes, free, free, free.

 Coronavirus and lockdown especially, with the emphasis on the unknown and the uncertain has ushered in this void of creative potential for those who have stepped away from the fear, the visionaries, those dancing, tapping the edge, exploring more of the space within. This is a time for Matangi, for people to speak up, be wild and free, and I am grateful to her for setting me free, for helping me to give voice to that which others won’t say, and for living life beyond the ordinary, for waking us up if we allow ourselves to be touched by the creative.

If you’re struggling creatively, you’ve written the book but you’re scared to edit it, you’ve drawn the picture but you’re anxious to share it, you have the business idea but you’re scared to turn it into reality, you’re trying to conceive but there’s something stopping you, you’ve turned your hand to baking but you worry others will reject your cakes, you’re keen to get growing but you don’t think you know enough, you’re keen to chant and sign but you don’t think you’re voice is good enough. If there’s some core belief getting in your way, some unhelpful core belief that makes you feel insecure, scared, anxious or somehow worried about your worthiness and how you will be received/judged by others, then you need to look at that.

It’s easy to put your head in the sand and just accept things as they are, but we are all of us inherently creative, it is part of being human and often the only thing getting in our way is us and our own insecurities. So step into them, notice all your excuses, look honestly at them, these obstacles, reframe them and get going, small steps so you won’t get overwhelmed. If you want to write, write, don’t worry about your audience or how you might write a best seller, just get writing, for the sheer love of it. It’s the same with all of it, do it because you love doing it, it doesn’t matter what anyone else things.

The soul seeks expression and will be so happy if you just get on with it. Start noticing your cycles too, because there will be a part of your cycle, whether you are menstruating or not there is still a cycle,  where you will feel more in your creative space than at other times. So embrace those times and try not to force yourself to be creative when the time just doesn’t feel right. Go for a walk instead, lie on your mat and enjoy a yoga nidra. The time will come and then you just got to embrace it.