The full moon lunar eclipse this Friday: the mother

It’s the Sagittarius full moon lunar eclipse on Friday and I am certainly feeling the heat. Phew. Not only am I literally burning hot from having spent a little bit too much time in the sun today, but the fire within me has been ignited a little bit more with news of what a return to pre-school will likely entail for my three year old, Eben.

We have already made the decision to home school Elijah, our six year old, for the rest of this term and then take a view on this in September, but I had intended to settle Eben back into pre-school, as he is a very different child to Elijah, much more sociable and in need of constant entertainment, he is a vortex of energy, this having kicked his way out of me six weeks early on the supermoon back in October 2016! He hasn’t stopped kicking and running and moving and generally challenging me, and yet delighting me with his zest and passion for living and life, ever since.

The eldest is super sensitive and has never truly been conformable with school, there was constant tears and I have been picking up for lunch for the last two years because he hates the noise of the playground and gets anxious with all the other children. Returning to school now, after a three month absence, with all the changes and the social distancing and the constant hand washing, just wouldn’t be healthy for him, it takes him a good while to adjust to new situations and he’s gotten used to being at home, and to be honest his learning has improved with the one to one attention.

Pre-school though, I thought I’d be OK with that, until we received the communication today about the changes to procedures. After being assured back in September that parents were able to stay and help settle their children, now we have to drop and leave as quickly as we can. I know only too well how traumatic this can be to a child if they are not ready for it, I’ve blogged about it before, but we foolishly did this with Elijah back in the day, as everyone told us this was the way, only to return three hours later to find a shaking and sobbing two and three quarter year old.

We did it again, twice, because we kept being told you had to do it, until we realised this wasn’t right. He started getting anxious at night, his behaviour changed, he clung to me, he cried as we drove to pre-school, he virtually begged me. It wasn’t until the last full moon last month that i finally forgave myself for that, almost four years on. It was almost unforgivable as a mother to just leave your crying child with a total stranger, and dash off, when that child has never been left with anyone other than family and does not know a single person in the rooms and can’t stand noise! He was traumatised.

So I won’t be repeating that mistake with Eben. Not that he will get the opportunity as he has a persistent cough, has done for about three weeks now. Apparently there is a persistent cough on Guernsey, I think people have been fretting they have Covid and contacting the health care professionals accordingly, so it’s become more well known that it’s not Covid, that there is another virus with similar symptoms circulating. So until Eben no longer coughs, and no longer has a snotty nose, which might also be some time as he is three years old and many children have snotty noses, it’s the Kapha, part of the period of their life that they are in, then he won’t be returning to pre-school.

If he does go, they’ll be taking the children’ temperature on arrival, which is not part of the public health advice and does seem to go a little far for me, but is part of their risk management strategy. I do wonder what kind of world we are wanting our children to grow up in and I’ll be honest, the way things are going currently, this is absolutely not the way I would like the world to become, with us being totally paranoid about germs, to the extent that children will become anxious at the slightest hint of them, and also won’t be exposed to them impacting on their immune systems when they are exposed to them and what of OCD around cleanliness and cleaning the hands.

Today we also found out that the States are trying to get children off the bus and on the road, with walking or cycling the norm. I don’t have a problem with that per se, but isn’t that going to result in more cars on the road? Those who take the bus often living farther away from school, and so it might not be practical to cycle or walk. Certainly from where we live to school it would take me twenty minutes to walk, and as Eben comes with us and as he won’t walk, I’d have to carry him. That’s there and back. And he would be too small to cycle, and even Elijah is too small to cycle to school. I just don’t think people are thinking these things through properly. We’ll just end up with even more cars on the roads.

I also find it hilarious (in a sad way) that months ago we were making progress in getting rid of single use plastic, and now we can’t get enough of it. I was told that at one of the private schools, children have been told they must bring their lunch box into school in a plastic bag. And then there’s all that single use plastic gloves, and with everything being cleaned within an inch of its life, we’ll be going through a number of those as a society.

Of course i care desperately about Mother Earth and how she is tended, but I also care deeply about the children, the next generation. I can’t help thinking that in the quest to protect the vulnerable, children are the ones to suffer. Their desks are spread apart, no group work, or small team work, none of the play activity that was in place, at pre-school, plastic toys are back in, out goes the sand and the water, and presumably free play goes too as everything has to be controlled and managed and risk assessed. Argh.

Don’t get me wrong, of course I don’t want people to die, but I also don’t want children growing up anxious, depressed and having to grow up before their time. They are children and children play. Children have snotty noses. Children touch as they try to make sense of the world, they explore, they hug, they leap and they jump. Children need to be allowed to be children, not controlled within an inch of their lives for a virus that they may or may not get. There is always a bigger picture and every action will have a consequence, and I hope those making the decisions are really comfortable with the choices they are making and what this means for our children’s wellbeing long term, let alone this planet we live on.

I was blown away, just couldn’t get my head around events on Saturday. Not least the appalling and public murder of George Floyd and the rioting that ensued, not so much that I was surprised about this, because the voice needed to be heard, black lives do matter, and it is time, it has been time for an awfully long time now, and I am embarrassed to be part of a humanity which continues to discriminate and separate and silence, and to live amongst those who have such a blatant disregard for the lives of others. Then we have a space shuttle going up in the air!

E and I actually stood outside and watched the space station pass over Guernsey and then about six minutes later the shuttle passed too, it was really faint and I couldn’t see it properly, but E managed to follow it’s path, this with the moon out too. This the dream of Elon Musk, a tech billionaire, who wants to see life established on Mars so that the human species can continue, because he expects us to become extinct here on Mother Earth. He might be right, but I can’t help thing, wouldn’t the money not be better spent on improving the way we live on Mother Earth, so that we might continue as a specie and so that we don’t destroy Gaia in the process?

It just seems so arrogant to me. We’ll exploit this planet through greed, with the focus on money and accumulation of wealth at the expense of everything else, we’ll develop tech, which is meant to solve all our problems, yet from my experience during lock down this just added to my stress levels, and the stress levels of others, yes I might have been able to teach yoga through Zoom, but many of my regular students couldn’t join me because their internet kept dropping out or they had spent so long on the computer already that day with work and online learning that they’d had quite enough!

He’s involved in all sorts of others stuff too, including gentle artificial intelligence whatever that is, and he does some good stuff, helping make fresh water available to communities in the US, supporting companies developing renewable energy. But you know, do we really need to go to Mars? Aren’t we doing a bad enough job looking after this planet? if we all just lived a little more simply. I don’t know about this whole space thing. Why do we have to keep messing with things? We’ll never know, it doesn’t matter how much money is thrown at it, how many scientists are involved, it’s the great is mystery. That is the sacred.

I’ve been watching this series of lectures on the Goddess recently and it has been mind blowing actually, to see how much she was revered all those years ago and the artefacts that have been found and the cave paintings and all this amazing imagery of the big breasts, the big tummy, the big thighs and the public triangle. Often she had no face and no feet, they weren’t viewed as important, not in the grand scheme of things. For she was the provider of life, without her, the woman, the goddess, there will be no life.

Then patriarchy arrived and all of a sudden her image changes, she is sexualised. To see it in artefacts and imagery, really did impact on me. How the manner in which she was visually presented changed. Her breasts became smaller and pert and often now clothed, her pubic triangle, big thighs and big tummy also disappeared, she was masculine physically, with tight stomach muscles in one image, like a six pack, and she was made to be physically attractive to the other sex and demoted too, as less than a man, no longer revered for her ability to give life, but now as the sexual conquest, owned.

Now she rises again, and yet she still has to find her way, because even women reject what she means. Still there is the pressure for the masculine in the physicality, women who have big breast, big tummies and big thighs are always trying to lose them, to change themselves, to become less of what they are, to reject the goddess and her power of life. In Ayurveda this is the classical Kapha, the mother, the nurturer. It saddens me that women naturally designed this way, should give themselves such a blinking hard time for it. You can’t beat a big breasted hug, my mum’s best friend has the biggest boobs I know and I love her the more for it, because it’s comforting somehow, to be hugged by someone that has such power within them, the goddess embodied.

Not to say that those of us scant breasted women should give themselves a hard time either. I’ve still managed to breastfeed both my boys and I’m still breastfeeding Eben at three and three quarters, and I don’t know where the milk comes from, but it comes! I suppose I just mean that we need to embrace all we have , and our children and the lives that we are creating for them, that we allow to be created for them.

I went to visit the Gran’Mere, the goddess at St Martin’s church today. She still wears the necklaces I hung on her at Beltain, I am surprised that no one has removed them, but perhaps people wouldn’t feel touching her. She too has been changed, an attempt has been made to masculine her, give her a male face. She has been damaged and yet someone was kind enough to try to mend her. I thought as I stood there touching her, that at least her breasts have stood the test of time, that they didn’t take those from her, that something stopped them doing that, that even that was a step too far perhaps, and they sliced her in two instead and tried to hide her somewhere in the church when patriarchy arrived and took over, fearful of the mother and her power.

Yet her power has never gone, not really. It cannot be taken from her. Men cannot carry or birth children. It is women that are afforded the opportunity for the transformation that this brings, for the surrendering that comes from the journey to motherhood and of motherhood itself, because there is a power and there is a connection and there is, without doubt, the sacred. I don’t mean that men don’t necessarily feel it, only that women get to touch it, to grow something within them that is part of the great mystery too.

Recently I have heard of a number of ladies who have miscarried or who are preparing for yet more IVF when they are able to access the clinics again and I am reminded how cruel this world can be, on this journey of fertility and conception, and yet how much light we can find if we surrender even to those most cruelest of moments of shattered dreams and yet more heart ache. This prepares us somehow, some of us, who have had to take that journey, for what lies ahead the faced with the choices we need to make with the children we may have brought into this world, who have chosen us because of the choices we might make for them, because we desperately wanted them and were conscious about inviting them in (others were conscious too, you don’t have to have had IVF or to have miscarried to be conscious about pregnancy and motherhood).

The choices are sometimes challenging, because often you have to go against the flow, your truth tells you so. Your anger and frustration reminds you so. It takes courage to follow a different path that has not been walked before, to trust that the unknown will hold you in its gentle bosom, and reveal a little more of its mystery to you, as you surrender to your own truth, come what may, and recognise that you do not have to be beholden to what others have decided is the way, who may not feel the same about life as you do, not really, to deep inside, not yet. It can be hard. But I find that worshipping the goddess gives strength, and the moon, well she, the beautiful moon, is supporting the process. It’s a fiery one; give voice to your truth, and allow a new path to reveal itself to you.

I hope you get to enjoy her energy and can sit with your emotions as they come up. This is the first of the eclipses in the eclipse season and I am told that this relates to what was happening in your life between 2010 and 2013. Funnily enough this was when we were finally settling with the idea of having children, and went one our journey through IVF to finally birth Elijah into this world. So I suppose it is interesting how much this is on my mind and I am reminded by others sharing their pains on their own journey to motherhood with me recently. The moon never lies, she always brings in that to which we need to give our attention. So I’ll go sit with that and see you on the other side!

Love Emma x

The mystery

It’s funny how you can spend so much time trying to make a decision, trying to cover all bases. Yet as I keep being reminded of late, we cannot know, and it is in the unknown that we might feel more alive, more vibrant, because in the unknown we have opened ourselves up to the great mystery. If we always know, then we leave little space for grace, for the magic, for the mystery.

Yet we all know, from lockdown, how difficult it is to live with uncertainty, to not know. Our whole education system and our society is based on knowing. We want to know, to understand, to be able to control, or feel as if we have some control over things. The scientists are especially spun out by Covid-19, because they don’t know its potential, and they are not yet able to control it, or make sense of it. The very foundation of our society as we know it, of knowing it, has been rocked.

I keep hearing of people who have injured themselves, or who have suffered physically in some way of late, and I wonder whether it is due to this deep shaking of our roots, as we are asked to uproot ourselves from the world we knew, to a new world, that has yet been spun. We’re in the liminal zone, between one way of being and another. It’s a beautiful space, because it is not known, a space of transformation, where true change begins and ends, of shifting space and being neither here nor there.

Coming off Facebook is certainly me stepping into the unknown, and yet it is also so known, because there was once a life lived without Facebook, I didn’t miss it then, because I didn’t have anything to miss and yet I don’t miss it now either. The decision took so long to take as I weighed up the options, but at the end of the day, the decision was already made, I already knew. I just needed to take the leap.

Deciding to keep Elijah at home for the rest of this term and ‘school’ him ourselves in our way, is also a step into the unknown, one I have contemplated for many years but have never had the courage, nor the support, nor the opportunity to put into practice. It was a decision that I played with over and over again and then all of a sudden it just became clear. This is not a school system that I want to put him in, for him to learn a new way, when it has taken him so long to settle into the old way, and here he is thriving at home and learning with all the one-to-one attention.

Once decisions are made, it is a like a weight is lifted from your shoulders that you didn’t even know what there, that your heart has been set free and you didn’t even realise that you had imprisoned it in any way. All that going backwards and forwards and back again, is at once resolved and you wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place. A new normal sets in. Life changes. But it happens in a way that feels aligned, and with ease, not as dramatic as you thought it might be.

I am reminded as always of patience. Of being OK with being in the unknown, and of not needing to rush to resolution or to fix, or to somehow create some form of security, whether that is real security or not. It’s tricky, but I feel more alive that I have felt these last few months, as if there is this whole new world that awaits, that I don’t yet know, so that it is unscripted and can be whatever we make it if we choose.

The first of my pot marigold flowers is now in bloom. I can’t tell you the joy of seeing a flower that I planted from seed, reveal it’s beauty to the world. It’s a healing plant too, although I’ll have to cut off the flowers and dry them, before soaking in oil, to make calendula oil that I can then use to make calendula cream. This is also a step into the unknown, of making my own healing portions for myself and the family, and see what might happen!

There’s no lockdown easing party for E and I. We’ve realised that too, over lockdown, that we live quiet lives, socially at least! Even my parents get to go party tonight, having maintained a weekly catch up with their group of friends on Zoom each Friday too. E has managed to escape Zoom this whole lockdown. I’m pleased to take a break from it too, and am looking forward to teaching in person again.

I’m still looking forward to the day though, when I can touch again, and share Reiki and I am sure that time will come. For now though, it is time to enjoy the unknown and the new of this world as it unfolds, allowing for the great mystery to weave its magic through our lives, come what may, thy will be done, and we have the opportunity to feel increasingly alive in the process.

Love Emma x

Life lived off Facebook and Social Media

Taking a break from social media this month has been liberating and I haven’t missed it one bit. I never really got into twitter, and Katie deleted the Beinspired Instagram account for me a few weeks ago now as I was never really into that either. Facebook was the only platform I was using regularly, although it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me to do so.

I was late joining Facebook, I had some resistance even back then, I recall my fellow travellers in Nepal back in 2007 dashing off to Internet Cafes at every available opportunity to upload photos to share with friends back home, to brag really, about our trip into the Himalayas. They would spend a fortune and be gone for ages, as the internet was always so slow, and I never really understood the appeal, I was happier going to yoga classes!

I eventually joined up, I don’t remember when, to establish a Beinspired group as much as anything else. It wasn’t so much about being a marketing tool back then, it was just literally to share information and updates on classes with students who were already attending class. In fact the group was private so you had to ask to join it. Then when Steph started helping me out, being much more of a whizz on all things IT and social media, we started using Facebook as a way to share the Beinspired offerings, the videos and audios, the blogs and later the books.

I admit I did get caught up in it and the whole idea of becoming ‘something’. We did what we could to increase the number of people who ‘followed’ and ‘liked’ the page and we shared some content on that basis alone, not necessarily because it was something that needed sharing, or was interesting, but because to ‘work’ Facebook, you need to keep posting. It started to feel desperately uncomfortable for me and I took a break from Facebook during 2019, deleting my own personal account in the process.

But then I was told by Hay House, who describe themselves as a “mind-body-spirit and transformational enterprise”, that if I hoped to ever have a book published by them (or any publishing house for that matter), then it wasn’t so much about the content I was publishing, but about the number of followers I might have on the various social media sites, and the number of people on my distribution list. This was a sad day, when I realised that even a spiritually-orientated organisation was beholden to social media alone and was actively encouraging people onto it.

So I ranted and then I went back onto Facebook and ‘befriended’ everyone I knew, because it seemed that that was the only way. As for Beinspired, I begrudgingly continued with regular posting and the sharing and boosting of events, because everyone told me that that is the way you share and let people know about what is going on, especially here on Guernsey where we have such a small community. But still it didn’t feel right.

Lockdown came and I found myself on Facebook for hours each day, not only using it as a way of sharing yoga through free Facebook Live yoga classes, doing what I felt I could to ease the shock of lockdown both for myself and others, but also engaging with others as we all tried to make sense of what was happening to the lives we had known. Within a few weeks I was feeling drained and I had grown increasingly weary of the increasing time spent on Facebook, and all the fear and anxiety, and information/sharing overload that I was receiving from this platform.

However I still kept buying into it, and literally too, by paying to ‘boost’ classes, which is crazy when I think about it, because the classes were free, so what was that all about; well I know what it was about, I was trying to help people by making them aware yoga was there, and free and available to them. But actually, I was also caught up in the whole idea that of Facebook being a potential marketing too, and this someone who claims she is not running a business! Oh the irony and our own lack of clarity!

The funny thing is, is that during this time, I sought advice about social media from a social media expert, and how I might make it work for me, still buying into this idea that when I publish more books, I need to be more present on social media to spread the word. The lady with whom I chatted was lovely, and full of ideas, but it just made me feel sad to think that I would need to spend so much of my time on social media to make it work for me, and even then, there was no guarantee.

It was then I caught myself and realised that Facebook especially was making me feel trapped and powerless, as if this might be the only way. I questioned what it was I was trying to achieve and what it was all about really. I have always felt uncomfortable buying into the whole ‘running a small business thing’ and yet I realised that whether I was comfortable with it or not, I sort of was buying into it, because if I ever mentioned to anyone that I might leave Facebook, people would always say, “but you can’t, because you are running all business”, so on it I would stay through fear of somehow losing out if I did delete my account.

Thus at the end of April I started questioning what it was then that I was losing out on and thought I’d give it a break, during May, so it might become clearer. The first week or so was interesting, because I did go through a period of grieving, of letting go, and of having to look very honestly at myself and see what it was I felt I was letting go of. In there was the loss of identity, of being ‘followed’ and also of validation, of having my offerings ‘liked’.

I noticed too this fear about people not knowing what I was offering and therefore not attending retreats and events and classes. I recognised how much my sense of worth was still tied up in this! That was a difficult one to stomach, quite literally too, and my solar plexus made itself very known to me both mentally, emotionally and physically, with a little dark night of the soul that followed this, as I questioned my worth and love for self…all this for questioning my use of Facebook, arghhh!

It’s been a bit of healing journey actually, asking me to dig deep. I’ve undertaken some research about Facebook too, the controversies, the law suits, the issues around privacy, political manipulation, ethnic cleansing, the falsehoods, psychological impact and conspiracy theorists, let alone Mark Z’s power to manipulate the world, and it does concern me that on some level, every time I go into Facebook I am feeding into this, all the darkness and underworld that is supported by Facebook and that I am - on some level - impacted by this.

I could argue that the more light we bring to Facebook, those of us trying to bring more light into the world, could counter all the darkness and negativity, but I am not so sure. I feel it energetically; every time I go on there, it feels as if I am entering another world, one where I can easily lose hours of my life if I am not careful, one where I can literally zone out, one where I am sometimes affected emotionally and psychologically. It’s just yet another way to waste time, and especially as it brings with it two more ways of people messaging me as if email, text and WhatsApp was not enough!

I don’t know that it is really as bad as I feel it is, or that I need to be taking it quite so seriously - E is growing weary of discussing the subject, he’s never liked Facebook, has always been wary of Mark Z (and I have always defended Mark Z until I started reading more…) and will be keen when I get off the platform once and for all - but I still feel as if I need to justify the reason that I feel the way I do!

Yet it is difficult, because ultimately it comes down to a feeling. There’s just something telling me that it is not the sacred way, and the path for me come what may. This is what lockdown has taught me and I shall be forever grateful for this. I always felt that 2020 was about embracing more of the sacred, that 2019 was orientating us in that direction, and I certainly began this year keen to explore more of the sacred so perhaps this is the reason that I feel this way and that others feel this way too, as I am aware that others who are more spiritually-orientated are leaving Facebook…and yet a lot stay!

There’s another reason, and I touched on it earlier, I like my life less complicated, less rushed, less pressured; simpler. Facebook brings with it yet another thing to do, yet another thing trying to speed up my life, yet another way for me to have to answer communications from other people. Don’t get me wrong, I like communicating, but I don’t feel that I need so many forms of it, emailing, maintaining the website and sending emails is quite enough for me. If people are meant to find me they will find me, just as if I want to find you I will find you; that’s how spirit works when the connection is needed for some greater good, not just for superficial purposes.

Furthermore, I don’t want you coming on Facebook just for me. Not that you would, as you are probably on thief anyway. But I know some students aren’t and I was trying to encourage them onto it at the beginning of lockdown, simply because my life seemed to be lived on Facebook and I was keen that they were able to access the free yoga content through the live yoga classes, but I shouldn’t have done this really. I don’t want everyone living heads down on phones, on social media (anti-social media), distracted from children and knowing that I’m part of that distraction.

Just as I don’t want to be distracted from my children by getting caught up in ‘conversations’ that have ensnared me in some way and which I feel I need to comment on or involve myself in, again wasting my energy. I don’t need to know. At least if I do need to know then I will find out somehow. I love that I have far more time with my children lived off my phone and that I don’t get so frustrated when they interrupt me when I think I’m doing something more worthy like posting about a class or something. Nonsense! They have always, and will always be more important than that!

So, for now anyway, I have made a conscious decision that I am going to continue a life lived off social media and see how that unfolds. Maybe I’ll change my mind, I’m frequently doing that as I try to navigate the path with heart and deepen my connection to the Goddess, but let’s see how she flows with this, and how source supports this and where it takes Beinspired next.

I’m excited really, about stepping into the unknown, of not really knowing, and embracing the fear that comes with this. As my yoga teacher, Louise, said, “We tend to think of decisions as answers and we need to “get it right”, don’t we?   It will take you all somewhere ... “.

Keep checking the website, and if you haven’t signed up, then sign up for the mailing list as we send a note out weekly to provide updates. Email me if you like at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk and I will pop you on the list!

Love Emma x

Life going back to 'normal' and the choices...

In the last few days a number of people have told me how they are worried, concerned and/or scared about life going back to ‘normal’.

I find this interesting, because ultimately we get to choose how we live our lives. I mean, of course, if we are in lockdown then our options will be limited to what we are told by government, but when lockdown eases, our choices return. So we gain choice again and I’m not sure what there is to fear about that.

I do get what people mean though. They are worried, concerned and/or scared of life returning to how it was before lockdown, because lockdown has provided people with the opportunity to live a different way, at a slower, calmer and gentler pace.

People have re-discovered what life was previously missing, more time with family for example, more time to engage in creative endeavours, to paint, to read, to garden, more opportunity to exercise and enjoy nature in the process, walking, cycling, swimming in the sea. I talk to many people who have finally had the time to do all the things they have wanted to do for years, but never quite got around to it.

It’s the same for me, and I have blogged about that already. But the thing is, I cannot imagine that life will go back to how it as previously, because that was then and this is now, and we have the choice to decided how it might play out. We don’t have to start rushing again or spending time in offices that drain nd exhaust us, with negative people and energies. We don’t have to over schedule ourselves so that we are constantly busy. We don’t have to do any of this.

We have the choice to say no, and to live in a way that is aligned with our true selves and want we need from life now. This is not a dress rehearsal. Thus if something no longer feels aligned then we should feel that we can do something about it, that in letting it go, something more aligned will enter in instead.

This whole subject reminds me of the crown chakra, so I will publish that blog post next, as I was editing it this morning and then a couple of people emailed about their concerns, and I couldn’t help noticing a link. The crown is all about faith and connection to the divine and seeing through the delusions of the ego so that you can see the bigger picture, and live in harmony with your own true nature and the nature of all beings, the oneness then, really knowing/embodying this.

So remember that. You do get to choose. No one is holding a gun to your head (well as far as I know!), and if you are up against an obstacle, then look at that, because something inside you clearly needs some attention and resolution, there is a part of you that is still fragmented and needs bringing back into the whole, some compassion for self, some love, and I suspect…something around the mother too.

The mother and the goddess just keeps coming up. Mothering ourselves, mothering others, how we’ve been mothered, and how we relate to our families, to our children, to nature and to the world. Lockdown has given us the opportunity to experience what life might feel like with shifted priorities. It’s brought the mother back into the home. We women are allowed to enjoy that, we don’t have to see it as negative or demeaning, or as if the feminine quest has been in vain.

I’ve never been happier than I am in the home, with my children, with what makes my life worth living. This has become increasingly obvious to me and it was confusing initially, because all the messages told me that to be an empowered woman I needed to be busy, busy, busy, always juggling, children, work, children, work, and earning money, as if this alone, materials once again, proves my worth as a twenty first century woman.

I know now that I was buying into this illusion as much as so many who claim to be empowered are also doing. There is nothing empowered in my opinion about being so busy that you haven’t got time for your children, or for sitting and watching the birds in the garden, or eating your lunch without also multi-taking (although I do still find myself doing this!).

We’ve been sold a lie and I’m pretty sure this is the reason so many of us women just have this feeling, something about the goddess, something about being a woman, questioning, like we’re slowly waking from a deep sleep, cannot quite remember, but there’s something that makes us hesitate…and question the first/next step into something new and as yet unknown, but a different direction from the one we have come from…but then we question, “what if we get it wrong”…as if decisions need a definitive outcome…and yet decisions will always take you somewhere…

It’s your path, you choose which direction it takes…

Sending love, and happy choices ahead! xxxx

Light at the end of the tunnel!

I can’t tell you how excited I am! Dancing around the room kind of excited, like my heart might burst with excitement, grinning from ear to ear excitement, jubilant, light, joyful excitement. It’s a champagne evening if ever there was one - well aside from the fact I’m still trialling sobriety, but it’s worthy of champagne, if you do partake!

The details aren’t yet clear but prayers have been answered, and my rants have been heard (and all those of all the others ranting too) and I should be able to teach yoga again in person very soon, in my parents’ garden, if not at Sausmarez Park and even in the community centres, if the weather is bad. I can’t tell you the relief. I have missed it so much. I am extremely grateful for Zoom, but it is just not the same. I long to get my hands on people, in a non-manipulative, non-weird, and non-inappropriate way! Share the love then!

I’m also super excited that Sark is opening up again, which means we should be good to go for the Sark retreat in October. I LOVE Sark and I LOVE teaching yoga on Sark, there is just something extremely magical about this beautiful Island and I am grateful we can get back there again in October. I’m expecting that we’ll be OK to retreat in Herm later that month too. I do have dates for Glastonbury 2021 too, although whether the UK will be in a position for that is not clear just yet (11-13 June if you are interested and yes, there are spaces!).

I have been extremely grateful for this pause and period of uncertainty because such times are breeding grounds for creativity and transformation; what we once knew drops away so that the new can potentially enter in and fill the space instead. It reminds me of my favourite quote, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got”. In fairness I was contented with my life pre-lockdown and I wasn’t sure it needed to change much, but now I know that it needed to change, and I am grateful that lockdown did that for me!

I now realise that I was very good at wasting time and sweating the small stuff, stressing about silly things that really aren’t important in the grand scheme. I suppose really there has been a real shift in priorities. It has absolutely not been easy. There have been dark nights of the soul as many of you will realise who have read this blog regularly, but I have felt supported throughout it all, and had a deep knowing that it is all part of a very necessary process, that has brought the Goddess calling and more of the sacred has been felt and entered in.

I have felt a connection to the divine that is for sure and I am grateful for the extra yoga lessons and Vedic chanting sessions that have supported the process. I’m sure you can relate to this too. I am no different. We are all a micro of a macro so we will all be going through it. How we deal with it might be different though. However there’s been a plethora of yoga and other healing modalities offering support; there must be so much online yoga content that people might practice a different session each day for the whole of rest of their lives! Plus living on this Island has made lockdown easier for most, as the beaches are always just down the road.

The chance to grow vegetables and medicinal plants has been a true gift. And the pause has also brought in the ‘Plant A Tree Project’ which was there somewhere in the ether, it has been on my mind, right at the back, for over a year now, but I couldn’t figure out what it might look like, but there is much greater clarity now and I am excited about sharing that when E and I are ready. Manuscripts have been finished in draft. But the greatest positive shift has been the children.

It was challenging initially, adjusting to the lack of space from them, because I thrive on my own space, but we got into a new groove, helped by the fact E and I can work around each other, and we get lots of family time together and can support each other when we do need space. Elijah is much happier than I ever remember him being and while Eben is a crazy wild child who triggers and challenges me daily, he has also thrived by this time together. The boys have become best friends. It has been a joy to witness. i feel like I have finally stepped up as more of the mother that I wanted to be and yet didn’t know how to be because my life was always ‘too busy’.

This has been helped enormously by getting off social media and putting my phone to the side. I am not distracted like I was before. I’m not sure about social-media. It’s anti-social media if you ask me. It makes people anti-social, heads in phones, buying into something that’s not real. It’s a performance for many, an opportunity to market what they want to be, superficial, lacking in substance, nothing underneath, bodies, faces, likes, followers, groups, judgments, anti-this, pro-that, not a lot of harmony at best. It makes you feel much more important that you actually are. Life carries on without you, a hard reality to stomach initially, the solar plexus takes a true bashing!

People say Facebook helps them stay connected. I don’t know about that. I have better connections off Facebook: I’ve been writing letters again, to my friends off Island, I can touch that, it’s more real and personal, and most of them in fairness aren’t on social media, which I suppose is the reason they’re my friends, like attracts like I guess! I was concerned initially how difficult I found it to actually write, because I type these days generally. The irony was not lost on me as I was trying to teach Elijah to write and he was more interested in using his iPad, because he doesn’t need to write on there!

I suppose ultimately, the children have become the priority, not whether someone has messaged me or liked something, or is simply messaging me for the sake of messaging me. I’ve actually deleted the Instagram account. It’s liberating. I noticed initially how I was seeing things I might take a photo of and then I remembered that I was no longer posting on social media and I almost laughed, as I asked myself the reason I was taking the photo in the first place - to show off, to share, to prove that my life was somehow interesting, that I was living life to the full? There’s a lot of ego in there, and while yes, I know we need some ego, there’s a lot of fuss around needing to be someone and to have others know. Yet actually my life has become more personal and special, my family time, just for us, and for my extended family.

Not using my phone has been trickier, because of the camera and because my family, with my brother in Australia, communicate by WhatsApp. And because Class Dojo is set up on my phone, and I have needed to access that for the home schooling, and then of course there’s the fact I tend to read something on my phone when I’m breastfeeding Eben at bed time in the dark. But it has been liberating turning it off as much as I can, proving that I’m not ‘needed’ as I might have thought and that it is OK not to respond to emails immediately, and that my boys needing me is actually more real and more important.

I have finally stooped shopping at Waitrose, which I have wanted to do for ages. I just don’t like what these big supermarkets have done to the environment, with mass production and intensive farming, with all the chemicals that are used to grow vegetables and fruits, let alone what happens to animals. Mind you I’m still shopping at M&S so I can’t preach just yet! I’ve been favouring hedge veg though, it has a sweeter and fresher taste, it actually has a taste! And Hansa, I have been supporting Hansa because it’s local and independent.

See, Covid and lockdown has brought with it the opportunity for increased awareness and shifts and possibilities. I definitely know that playing with the boys and having fun is possible, that teaching yoga feeds my soul, and that spending time with the students who comes to class makes me feel very happy. I love the Beinspired community and I am so grateful for all the support and that we have this lovely life here on Guernsey and that we can be together again soon, and that mental health and wellbeing on the Island can be supported through holistic means once more.

I’m curious to see what life will will look like post-covid. What we will have learned. How much we have awoken as a society and individually. The decisions we might make. How we might live. Whether we will try to make this world a more harmonious place to live…by being more in harmony with our true self and with others and with nature and truly knowing (not just saying or thinking), absolutely knowing from the very depth of our being that we are one, and that love is consciousness. That’s all it has ever been about and yet we keep trying to figure it out, going around in circles, looking, looking, looking, at the illusion, and not seeing the truth. Maybe we’ve started to see through that veil.

Sending love xx

Back into the heart

Today I feel as if I have come back to life and popped into the heart again.

I have emailed three deputies (two of whom responded almost immediately, thank you ladies) and the general States of Guernsey address because enough is enough. We have two active cases of Covid on the Island, and I cannot help thinking that we need to move forward now - the line between protecting the vulnerable and creating greater vulnerability (mentally and economically especially) has been passed…action is required.

Also, quite frankly, I want to be able to teach yoga again and touch people and give them Reiki. This last two days I have bumped into a lady with cancer and been contacted by a friend going through a hard time, been told about a student who needs some healing, and a handful of other students who are suffering, and I cannot do a thing about it. Yes, sure, they can attend Zoom classes, and I can send them distance Reiki, but it is not the same. The weather is beautiful and we should be out there praising yoga in nature. That will be far better for all of us, then this social distancing and bubble malarkey.

On a positive note, I have a new date for the Glastonbury retreat in 2021, which I will share with those due to attend before sharing publicly, but if you are feeling the call then keep an eye out. I start the series of lectures on the Goddess with a High Priestess in Glastonbury tomorrow and I cannot wait. She is calling!

On another positive note, the medicinal herbs are growing well (aside from the liquorice, which is being tricky!), some of our trees less well, but on the whole doing OK, and I have been having a fab time with the boys playing in teh garden. So every cloud does indeed bring a silver lining. But I am ready to get teaching properly again…pretty please dear angels, if you could help with that, I’d be most grateful!

Love to you all.

Noise

We’ve a full moon approaching on Thursday, a Scorpio one too, and the third super moon of this year, so we can expect it to be a little potent, with a sting in her tail!

I’m no expert on these things, and I appreciate that we will all have our truth on this but I feel that we are being asked to look at the noise in our lives and how this prevents us from hearing our own wisdom, and how we might trust in this more than we already do.

Taking a break from social media has been extremely liberating, albeit I am only four days into it. But I have recognised how much noise there is on Facebook especially, and how distracting this can be, allowing us to lose minutes, if not hours of our lives.

But it’s more than that, because for me, I feel as if I have gained more of the magical, more of the mystery, more of that which is kept secret. It is that which cannot be fully known, because to know and to define will limit, and this is limitless. This is the stuff of ancient wisdom which is whispered and spoken, which is heard only when we take the time to listen.

 Life has been so busy for many years. I recognise now in the slower pace of my life, how much my old life was busy for the sake of busy and how much time, and energy, and magic, was lost in the noise of it. There was a fear of what might happen if there was no busyness, as if this would suggest a purposeless life, and this I feared the most. 

Yet now, with less busyness and less noise, of course there is space for the new to come in, the magic that was sat there waiting, but could not move forward because the busyness left no room for it. Magic cannot enter if there is no space for it. It’s a natural lore.

So the death has come to us all. This too is in the field. I have talked about it before. We are all going through our own death and grieving for this, for ways of old, even if they were no longer serving us (as most of them weren’t), we still have to go through a process of letting go, and that’s not easy, or pleasant. 

But there is delight in the uncomfortable of the unknown. Yoga encourages us to sit in the unknown. We’ve been practising for a good old while now. This is time to put the practice into practice and I’m grateful to the practice for holding me as it does, because the letting go process has been a part of this from day one. We already know that nothing in life is certain.

Yet there is so much noise out there trying to bring some certainty to it. Those trying to understand Covid-19 scientifically, those talking about vaccinations as if this alone will ensure a safe future, those in the spiritual fields talking about awakenings and light overcoming the darkness and the separation of fear and everyone trying to make sense of that which is absolutely unknown. No one knows.

Yet we do know, on some deep level we do know. We have wisdom, and we have a truth, and both are magical and unique to each of us, and yet a part of the whole. We are sacred, each of us, and this sacredness connects us deep into the pulse of the universe which is sacred too, and knows only love.

I cannot tell you the reason this is happening for you, or to humanity generally, and it is not my place to tell you because you must feel into it for yourself. This is one of the many gifts of lockdown to me, that it has provided a pause, a gap, an opportunity to notice the noise and to distance myself from it.

This has brought in another gift, in the space that has been created to allow a new path to reveal itself, one that I could never have previously imagined in the noise and the busyness. Yet the greatest gift perhaps, in addition to the re-prioritising of my family and my boys beyond all else, is the gift of the sacred and trusting in that, and thereby letting go of all the old stories that are outdated and limit us.

I have shared this poem a number of times on retreats and it has always brought tears to my eyes, but it is only now that I read it and know it to be true: 

 “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love – for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” 
― Max Ehrmann, Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

I hope this full moon illuminates that which needs to be known, and you are able to create the space and the peace that you might need to hear that which is spoken to you alone. I also hope that you might have the strength of spirit to let go of that which now needs to go. Hold that part of you that fears gently, as if you would a new born baby, breath and trust.

With love xx

Happy Beltain!

Beltain is the cross-quarter festival of fertility and fire. It celebrates the potency of the earth at this time of year, where nature abounds with life force – she is at her most potent. 

This is the time to be in touch with our own potent life force too, and its power on the physical, spiritual and mystical levels – we are as much a part of nature as the trees, flowers and plants and the more we can live harmoniously, the better for this planet.

Beltain represents the peak of the Spring and the beginning of Summer.  The Beltain energy is one of reverence for all of life, celebrating and honouring the fertility that grows from the union of opposites. It is about the sacredness and power of love and sexual untion and the deepest of connections of the heart and soul.

I love Beltain. I love the energy. I love the potential. I love the potency. I love the fertility, that there is this energy of creation and here, now, today, we can tap into it with ease, and begin to grow seeds.

I thought I’d try and watch the sunrise, but it was cloudy when I looked out the window, so I went to the Gran’Mère at St Martin’s church, and adorned her garlands of grass and shells, and gave thanks for all she represents, and prayed for assistance in creative endeavours ahead.

As I made my way home, this just a little after 6am, I noticed the sun light beginning to peak above the clouds, so I stopped and watched the sunrise from the lane near our house. There is nothing quite as potent as a sunrise to set you up for the day ahead, and there was definitely a spring in my step returning home. 

It was a funny day though, I taught a class which was just what I needed as I was able to enjoy the Goddess energy with a group of lovely ladies (you can access it on the Beinspired YouTube channel). This was followed with a session with my friend Jo de Diepold Braham, to help shift some stagnant energy that has come up with all the hip practice this week

Even though I know, because I practice distance Reiki, that energy can travel regardless of time and space, it still blows my mind that energy sessions can be held remotely. That Jo can literally tap into my energy field from another country, and feel into it, and I can feel her holding the space for it. It proves that there really is more to us than we see.

Then a class I was meant to teach remotely couldn’t be held, because the internet dropped out, quite unexpectedly. I didn’t react, I have come to recognise that for whatever reason, and often I will never know what it is, it’s just not meant to be. If there is one thing we learn from Covid-19 is to become increasingly comfortable with the not-knowing and the acceptance.

Then a funny thing happened. I’ve not been wearing any deodorant or essential oils lately, because I’ve been swimming in the sea most mornings and then haven’t bothered showering until the evening because I haven’t been seeing anyone. However I did shower this morning after sea swimming as I was teaching, and because it was Beltain I thought I’d use deodorant and a goddess oil mix.

Fast forward a few hours and I was out for a short ‘head space’ run  and I felt decidedly sick as I smelt the essential oils on my skin. It made me think how sensitive we can become to smell when we live increasingly without. There wasn’t anything wrong with the oils by the way, just they’re no longer resonating with me, goddess, or no goddess!

Traditionally the fire is central to Beltain evening and so we thought we’d celebrate that way too. E and I jumped the fire, which is meant to purify and cleanse (and bring fertility, but we’ll see that more as invoking the creative!) and pledge ourselves to each other! I also used it as an opportunity for more letting go with a burning bowl ceremony of my own.

We visited the water that flows at the lane down the road just as the sun set too – not quite the same as the ancients, who were said to sit all night by sacred wells and healing springs as the water was meant to be most potent at this time. The half-moon shone above us and I don’t know that it was potent, but the experience was calming albeit with the children!

We tied ribbons to the tree in our front garden yesterday. Traditionally ribbons and threads of clothing were tied to hawthorn trees, especially those growing by sacred wells, but this was the best we could do. We cycled down to La Varde dolmen yesterday too, to give thanks to the goddess and fertility energy of this ancient site; it has a special energy. 

There were other things we could have done that we haven’t, like walk the labyrinth and dance a maypole, but these were beyond the realm of my efforts today, and anyhow, we need to save something for next year! I’m certainly feeling energised this evening as I write this, happy beltain and love to you all.