This way or that way

Yesterday I was cycling my electric bike from Vazon to Pleinmont, with Elijah on the back. It was windy and I was having to cycle into it, which started to becoming annoying, because it was hard work and because the wind aggravates me, as it does for so many.

It crossed my mind that rather than be annoyed and irritated by it (as it was not going to change the situation reacting like this), I might just go with the flow of it. Yet I wondered how I might go with the flow of wind that is blowing against me, I could hardly turn around, although I did wonder if this was a sign that I was going the wrong way, off to a school outing.

I turned inland when I could, to escape the wind, and it was here, on the brow of a hill that I passed a crossroads and saw a sign someone had made that said, “This way”, “That way”, “Other Way”, “Wrong way”. This made me laugh. Which way was I going? I was going this way, but it could be that way, or it could be the other way, it could also be the wrong way. How do we know?

So much of our lives is spent trying to navigate the ‘right’ way. I have spent hours running questioning which way I am going. Sometimes it might feel like life is going the right way, and sometimes it feels that it is going the wrong way. regardless, it is going on anyway.

We walked out to the fairy ring out at Pleinmont and Elijah spotted a fishing boat and we wondered which way it was going. All I really saw were the orange buoys, which made me think about the times I tried to explain to both my boys the nature of buoys, “they are called buoys, but they are not boys as in, you are a boy, it’s a different buoy”. It was confusing, and still is, even though they know that a buoy is a buoy, they do still ask me why, why is a buoy and a boy so similar in sound. I can’t answer that, just like I can’t answer the reason that “sea” and “see’ sound the same, but are spelt differently.

We lost sight of the boat and never did know which way it was going as we were distracted by the tiny fairy door that someone has placed on a stone near the fairy ring itself. Is that a way too? I like to think so, into a world that is yet unknown. The wind was whipping around this extremity, it’s always windy here, as if the wind itself is leading the way to the fairy ring, because once you get around the corner it calms a little, and you can make a wish without being blown away.

I don’t know that there is a right way anymore than there is a wrong way. My life has been about navigating between the two, because my mind like’s to distinguish the good from the bad, as if I might be judged by some higher power, as if life is a game of snakes and ladders, and who wants to land on a snake, let’s be honest. I’ve become less certain about this, about anything, is there really any certainty?

There have been times in my life when my soul has suffered because of the decisions I have made. When I have not been paying attention, because I didn’t know that I had a choice, so what was the point in being attentive if I was going to have to do what I was going to have to do because it was expected of me, or because I didn’t even question it. Or did I?

Perhaps it is age that brings with it a different perspective, or perhaps it’s a shifting relationship to the soul, as one realises that the way was compromising something, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it, until it screamed at you in the dead of night, it is always the dead of night, when we have lost the soul that we might recognise it. There is something about this witching hour, as if it might be a portal to all those lost bits of ourselves. I heard an owl, I was pretty certain I could hear an owl, that other worldly sound, maybe the moon as up, I can’t be sure, I didn’t know that back then. But I did know that something didn’t feel quite right.

If only I had know then what I know now. Perhaps then there might not have been so much suffering. At the end of yoga classes, I regularly repeat, “may all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering”. Recently it has crossed my mind and sometimes I even say it, “may all beings be free from their suffering and the causes of their suffering”. Because we create our own suffering. Our mind creates our suffering. This way, that way, which way. The mind loves to debate, question, wonder, ponder, make sense.

Am I going the right way? I can’t be sure. It’s a way, that’s all I know. The moon is rising later. I know that too. Later and later each evening. Until it rises in the morning. Is that the right way? It’s just it’s way. That’s the way it is. I see the sea. The sea I see. It’s just the way it is. It’s liberating, lets us off the hook, to know that it is not about being right or wrong, this way or that, who cares, as long as we can make a decision and be OK with that. It’s the inability to make a decision, to continuously question which way might be best to the extent that we never make a decision, it’s this that harms us the most.

The wind blew me the way I needed to go, to see what I needed to see, to think differently. I didn’t notice much on that journey, my head was down mainly, desperate to get to the destination in time - don’t even get me started on how much of our lives are defined by the ticking of a clock - but it did open my mind, free it a little. The flow will take us where we need to go, even if we feel that we might be going against it, we will get there, somehow, it is up to us how much we suffer in the process.

Eating disorder as a journey to the soul

I turned 45 today. I’d been preparing for a while, because it felt like it might be a momentous occasion, a real mid-life moment, something that needed to be acknowledged in some way. I had initially thought we might go to Glastonbury on pilgrimage and swim in the white spring, then I decided I’d go and watch the sunrise at Stonehenge on the solstice and celebrate on my own, early.

 But then Covid arrived and we have come to Sark instead, which has started to feel a little bit like a second home, a spiritual home at that. There is something about the energy here, the combination of the ancient rocks and the wild sea, the space, the peace, the fact that it hasn’t been ruined by modern civilisation or mass tourism that I find uplifting, grounding and profoundly healing.

It allows deep knowing to surface, space between thoughts, a re-prioritising of life and a consideration and rejig of what might be important. It also offers wonderful walking and scrambling, and swimming and cycling, all my favourite things and with my favourite people too. It is a place that touches deep into the heart’s core and transforms things. You cannot help but be changed by time spent here.

I needed this time if truth be told, to step away from the maelstrom of Guernsey, the pressure of the schooling debacle, and the routine, to say nothing of the building repairs being carried out on the cottage, this after the flood right before the beginning of lockdown; how I have missed my bath! Here I get to lay in a bath. I cannot tell you the joy. It is like nothing else. If bathing was a subject, then I’d be giving it my effort for a grade A. 

Life always feels better after a bath. Like sea swimming. I have never once regretted a swim. I’ve never once regretted a trip to Sark either. Although there was a drunken work event back in my twenties, when I ended up staying the night at the last minute, and drinking even more wine than was needed and paying for that the next day, not least with an invoice for the hotel room, but with a sore head. Those days are long gone thankfully. 

However, this has definitely been a year of reflection. When I turned 44, I was aware there were still aspects of my past that needed resolving and I thought that if I don’t do something about this soon, then when will I? My mum had highlighted this to me when she had read the first draft of a manuscript I had written and commented that I wasn’t really in a position to write about how one recovers from an eating disorder, for example, when I clearly hadn’t, not totally. She had a point. But the question is, do you ever truly recover? 

It’s a question that made me curious, and it began a process that has found me exploring how this might still show up in my life.  I developed an eating disorder when I was 17 yet I had never taken professional help to understand the nature of it. It was something I skirted around, the elephant in the room, it went unspoken, and yet I could write about it, which is strange isn’t it, that we can sometimes write publicly about the things we can’t talk about intimately.

Yet it is tied up in intimacy, as is so much of the life that we live in our heads, because intimacy is tricky, as anyone will know, who has tried to explore this. The  process took me into intimacy and into harm, and it shook me around, as I tried to make sense of when and why it had all began, and I started to see themes and patterns in my life even now, so that while, these days, I might eat ‘normally’ (whatever this means), an eating disorder is so much more than food. It’s about our thoughts and our relationship with self and about our mind and our heart, our body, our soul and how we relate to the world.

I did find it depressing when a lady told me, a beautiful lady incidentally, who has some experience of working with people with eating disorders, that it is just something you come to live with. I don’t know about that, it doesn’t settle easily with me. I pull weeds out of my veggie patch so that the veggie plants can thrive. Isn’t it the same with us too, can’t we pull out the weeds from their roots and make our internal earth richer, our inner landscape clearer. The sea goes in and the sea goes out. The moon rises and it sets. Are we so very different? 

 Sure the clouds come and obscure the moon, and the winds whip into a bay, disturbing the calmness of the sea, but their very nature stays the same. Is it not the same with us too? I believe it is and I wondered then, whether it may be a matter of making peace with our own nature, living in harmony with ourselves, with our true self. This I have explored too. You can lose your mind in the process. Some people might think you mad, but I think it makes you feel very alive.

What is life if we do not lose our minds? There’s nothing worse than a fixed mind, believing this or that as if it was a truth, when really a truth is only a perception captured in time, your perception, and this can chop and change, like the sea, like the moon, if you catch it from a dodgy angle, or when you’ve drunk too much wine (which I haven’t done for a long time now, I’m so pleased about that), or you think you see something and yet it’s not really what you thought it was when your eyes focus properly.

So where was I going with this, as we’re going out to see a fat pig, on the farm here on Sark, owned by friends, and the boys love pigs, which always amuses me as they love to eat sausages. They understand the connection too, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. I’m more bothered and I’m not even eating the dead pig, ingesting it’s energy – if you buy into that sort of thing, which I do btw, because we are all energy…

Picking up the thread, OK so I think I thought that my mission might be, by the time I am 45 to have explored and understood more around the subject of harm, because this really is the crux of an eating disorder. I mean let’s face it, you can’t harm yourself much more than depriving yourself of the very thing that might nourish you, namely food, or stuffing your face to the extent that you tax your digestive system and counter any potential for nourishment.

It’s a really cruel and nasty state of mind to find yourself in. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s very difficult to be satisfied by life when you don’t allow yourself to be satisfied by food, when the very thing that night nourish you is turned into a weapon by your mind. It’s very difficult to suddenly switch the mind away from that, especially if it has become an ingrained pattern over a long time, and it often is with an eating disorder because it is very difficult to treat – even the ‘experts’ don’t really know how to treat it, at best they might help you manage it.

But I didn’t just want to manage it. I tried that for years and it was a daily consideration, because every day you have to eat. Not that it’s even about the eating, it’s about everything else, and I suppose this is the point that I have been trying to make. It is about allowing yourself to be satisfied by life, of feeling that you deserve to be nourished and loved and cared for by yourself as much as by anyone else, by life then! It is about all these wonderful things, but ultimately it is about love and it is about intimacy, and it is about being deeply honest and truly forgiving and compassionate. 

I have learned a lot this year and I’m proud of myself actually, I congratulate myself, because it has not been easy. There have been dark nights of the soul, as you know, and not because I’m losing my mind, going mad, oh cripes is there something wrong with her sort of thing, but because I don’t want to be continuously limited by my past, and by the patterns I have developed to help me feel safe, that are actually no longer – and never were if truth be told, but you’ll have to wait for the book to read more about that – useful or helpful, that are anything but that.

Accepting and loving the self is not something that happens over-night, you’ll know that if you are reading this. You’ll know because we all have moments of questioning our worth, when we catch sight of ourselves in a mirror and wish we hadn’t and then quickly find something to distract us from ourselves so that we don’t need to go any deeper, get busy, busier, drink more wine, do more yoga, always doing, rushing, being somewhere other than exactly here right now looking at ourselves honestly in that mirror.

Those of you with eating disorders will know this more than most. It is not easy to recover, to find your feet again, to mend your heart (for it is the greatest wounding to the heart, to harm yourself in this manner), to be able to look at your reflection and love what you see, to be compassionate to yourself, respect, love, cherish your body (so conditioned are you to push it, starve it, abuse it, try to change it, control it), to nourish, care for and be at peace, to put yourself and your needs first, to listen and be heard.

But it is possible, bit by bit. I know this because I have had to face my demons. I had a choice. Last year, the year before and every year before that too. My birthdays came and highlighted to me my ongoing issues and neuroses. Birthdays do this. It is as if a portal opens for us so that we may see more clearly. What used to happen though, was I’d ignore it, because it was too painful to acknowledge that another year had passed and I was still carrying this burden. I’d drink wine. At birthdays you drink wine. It was the perfect excuse to pop my head in the sand and just hope that things might change by the next year.

The trouble is that we don’t change unless we do the changing. Unless something shifts. Unless we look honestly at ourselves and do what is needed, lose our mind usually, because it is only in losing our mind that we can find a new way to be, in the unknown that is not fixed by what has happened previously. The mind is a terribly powerful thing. Ask anyone who has experienced an eating disorder. They will tell you. The mind is truly fascinating, ingenious and beautiful and yet at times extremely disconcerting. Thank god for the heart! The heart keeps me sane. So does faith. 

Two years ago all my birthday cards seemed to be about yoga and drinking wine. The yoga was fab but the drinking wine made me uncomfortable, and I was aware that I wanted this to change. It’s a silly thing to notice, but do notice the birthday cards that you are sent, they speak volumes about where you are at in your life. I was stuck and I needed to go a bit deeper, to stop skirting on the edges, not really getting into the centre. Yet I didn’t know then what to do or where to turn, because on the surface life was great, I was writing books, teaching yoga, living the dream. 

Last year, my birthday was uneventful to the extent that I don’t remember it, I had to look at photos to remind myself, and yet I knew that I liked turning 44, that there was something about the number, and 4 my lucky number, so double luck and I suppose there was a sense that I had to get on with it now. You get moments like that, where you’ve been coasting along, you know there’s stuff there in the background, but you can ignore it, you’ve gotten used to ignoring it. But then all of a sudden you just think no. There’s a line in the sand. 

You can keep on keeping on, pretending that everything is OK, or you can dive right in. In moments like that, when I suddenly become aware of something that needs healing, there is no choice. I don’t want to live a half lived life, denying my potential, too fearful to make the changes that might need to be made, too scared to feel what needs to be felt. I’ve spent too many birthdays in tears, a combination of overwhelm and just because they’ve never felt quite right, a reminder that I still hadn’t quite found that place inside me where I might feel satisfied, deserving, and OK with everything. The inner critic was always just a little bit too loud. 

Mary Oliver writes, “Attention is the beginning of devotion”, and she is right. This year I have been attentive. Really attentive. The Scaravelli-inspired yoga has helped this, it is all about being attentive, and about devotion. It is through attention that we come to notice all that we had previously ignored, because there is nowhere else to turn, not when we have taken the step inwards, towards the heart. We are all heart, we know this.

Some will argue that we are the breath, because the breath gives life, yet without the heart, there is no breath. IVF allowed me to see this. At six weeks gestation, both my boys were visible on the screen as beating hearts. Beating hearts! They were alive and yet there was no breath. Not directly. This would follow when the heart was ready for expression in the outer world. Did they choose? I still don’t know about that. There is always mystery, this is what feeds our soul. 

I didn’t know how it might be today either. I found myself in tears on my mat yesterday, they seemed to come from nowhere but I wonder if it might have been apprehension, ahead of the big day. I bumped into someone I know from back home, not well, but we had this intimate conversation about home schooling in a very short period of time, on our bikes, along a grass track, our respective partner’s chatting, our children remarkably quiet, and she confessed to crying that day too, in the Avenue. Albeit she is five months pregnant so has an excuse!

But today was the most wonderful day. I felt I deserved it and I felt satisfied by it. I allowed myself to receive all that was offered. I did not get overwhelmed or upset and I didn’t drink wine or in any way numb out. I awoke with Eben’s head pressed to mine and when I reminded him it was by birthday (given he is three, I didn’t expect him to remember!), he excitedly told me of the gifts that were waiting, “the most beautiful Buddha, beautiful crystals and gardening gloves”. I couldn’t help but laugh. He opened my presents anyway and yes, there they were, all chosen by him.

I got to meditate, to drink tea, open my cards, take it easy, before we scrambled across rocks and swam naked in the Venus Pool, a first! We visited the Sark dolmen and Eben learned how to use my pendulum. We cycled and walked, and we swam some more at La Grande Greve, also a first. We ate fresh Sark eggs, homemade chips, and local salad with roasted pumpkin seeds, we drank tea and ate Caragh’s amazing dark praline chocolate, and we got wet in the rain. 

I wrote until my heart was content and I didn’t feel guilty one bit. We visited our friends and their huge pig and I sat in a tractor. I went to a yoga class, I can’t tell you the joy, and I lay in a bath and read my book. I did all these wonderful things that nourished and satisfied me and it felt great. The inner critic was quiet. I cannot tell you the relief.

That part of me that doesn’t self-congratulate easily, that holds back for fear of being judged for being egotistical or big headed, well that part of me is coming out of the shadows, because it is needed, it is so very much needed. I congratulate myself, because it has not been easy, but I know now that it is OK to feel satisfied and deserving. 

It is OK to express our needs and allow ourselves to receive what is needed. It is OK to damage our hearts as long as you find ways to heal it. Then it is OK to let go of the need to keep fixing, because we can get lost here too, playing out the old themes about not being good enough or worthy enough and forgetting that we’ve moved on and all we’re doing is keeping ourselves stuck in the past. Heal and move on. I know that now too. 

It is OK to feel proud of ourselves, to accept ourselves, to love ourselves. And I do, honestly I do. I couldn’t have told you that before. I would have cared too much about what you might have thought and not enough about me, packaging my poor little heart away in a box, whispering, “maybe next year you can come out and shine”. But now is the time. I hear you beautiful heart. And I rejoice in me and my life and my soul. And I hope you rejoice in all that is yours too. 

Stuff happens to us in our lives. We harm ourselves in many ways. I harmed myself with an eating disorder for many years and it would be foolish to pretend that that life is ever the same after an eating disorder comes in, but in many respects it can be reframed as a blessing, as something positive, as it might take you on a journey to the deepest parts of yourself, that you might never have otherwise known. It’s like depression, but more on that another time.

Losing our mind is only the very beginning, and it’s worth beginning, because a mind lost is a heart gained, and really, it can only ever be about love. It is a pilgrimage all of its own, to our soul, to the deepest part of ourselves that can spend a lifetime being unknown, yet with devotion to the self, we can find a depth that we didn’t know possible. This is a continuous exploration, one that I truly believe, is worth making; an act of devotion.

xxx

P.S. My cards this year were about the moon and flowers, goddesses and living your dreams…

Uncertainty in practice!

Two hours after publishing my previous blog post about living with uncertainty, I almost laughed at myself as there I was, on the Sark Belle, a river boat, the less sea worthy of all the Sark boats, heading to Sark from Guernsey in rough seas. All the other sailings that day had been cancelled but I did not know this, just as I did not know that the sea had been described as ‘lumpy’.

It was a surprise to me actually, that before we had even left Guernsey harbour the boat was already lolling. I usually like this boat, I always favour it over the other boats as it brings with it happy memories of calm summer crossings to Sark, and especially to the Sark folk festival, one of the highlights of the year in years gone by.

Yet here I was today, oblivious to what lay ahead, as the boat lolled from side to side hit by southerly waves, as we entered beyond what was actually the safety of the harbour, even though that didn’t feel exactly calm. Before too long I had both boys sitting on me, “a leg each mummy”, was the agreement as usual, not particularly comfortable, bony bums sitting on both thighs, but it’s what we do, to spare the arguments.

Not long after then I was gripping both of them into me as the boat appeared to lurch up and down and side to side, the bottom of the boat crashing back down each time a wave had passed. I sunk my head between them and gripped in closer, wondering how I had missed the weather forecast, as I glimpsed the a younger lady ahead and to my left side burst into tears and her boyfriend wrap his arms around her.

It got worse. The boat was really at the mercy of the waves and we were at the mercy of them too. My whole body was locked in stress and I noticed that my right foot was attempting to find a solid place to rest itself, to push into something, to find some certainty in my world that was now desperately uncertain.

I noticed what I was doing and I almost laughed out loud as I considered how funny the universe can be allowing us to put into practice that which we teach. How comfortable was I living on the edge, in an uncertain world as I perceived it in that moment? I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very comfortable at all. I was totally out of my depth, desperate for some certainty that all would be well in the end.

The boys hugged closer into me and into each other and I considered my fear. What was my fear in that moment? It wasn’t difficult to work it out, I had already run through in my mind where I might find an exit from the boat, if it rolled onto its side and overturned, and yet I had also considered that the whole experience would be so shocking and disorientating that I wouldn’t have any control over an outcome of survival however much I planned for it.

It struck me that my greatest fear then was not losing my life, although this was a consideration, but my sons’ lives. I wanted to protect them and keep them safe. It struck me then that this has been the source of much of the underlying tension I have felt these last few years. It is not so much the tension between all the different aspects of self, or the tension of the pace of the outside world with all its perceived expectations, but the tension that arises with trying to keep children safe, of the lack of trust in the inherent safeness of life on planet earth. 

In that moment, I did not feel safe. I was out of my comfort zone and was very aware of this. I know that yoga is all about living with uncertainty and I moved my awareness to my breath hoping that this would calm me and it did. I remembered Reiki and put my family and the whole boat in a Reiki bubble. I also prayed to the angels and asked the boys to ask the magic fairies to look after us, their equivalent. This all helped.

Yet, I was very aware that I needed to let go, and allow myself to be moved by the boat, by its rhythm as it navigated it’s path through the rough seas, and trust in that and in the captain. I was aware of other people on the boat, a group of guys ahead of me (beyond the lady who vomited) talking avidly, seemingly unaware of the risks that the rest of us had perceived, our concerns about seasickness and the boat rolling over. This made me think how much of our lives are lived in our heads, through our mind’s perception of reality, and how small the gap between truth and imagination.

To me that was one of the toughest boat journeys I have ever taken, that is my truth and my reality, yet to those guys (hardened sailors as it turns out) it was no big deal, and all the risks I perceived, were stuff of my imagination, not real, there was no truth in them, their mood remained unaffected, high spirited, just another boat journey. I was high spirited when the seas calmed as we got closer to Sark, and as I recognised how much my fears were imagined, and how much they are linked to my boys and not being able to – always – ease their suffering or keep them safe. 

Yet really we were safe. The universe has our back. It is our mind that doesn’t always recognise this. Life lived with uncertainty is not easy, but I see how it can make us much more conscious of the moment, come what may. And really the lesson, as always, is about perception and shifting to a more positive mindset. This too is something I am exploring at the moment, so more on this another time. We made it, and with more lessons learned before having set foot on beautiful Sark!

Dancing on the edge of certainty

I chanced upon this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Angels’; it was appropriate timing as I question edges and margins and lack of certainty, all the places that my practice currently takes me. Here it is:

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of 
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of 
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything. 
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not 
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not 
entirely anyway, other people’s 
heads. 

I’ll just leave you with this. 
I don’t care how many angels can 
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance. 

Life is a dance, and never more so than when you invite the angels into it. They are such a part of my life, that I forget that for other people this might seem rather strange. I love sharing angel cards with people especially for the first time and seeing their eyes open wide with the surprise at the angel card that has presented itself to them - always with an appropriate message, something that means something to them, and often fits in witty the context of a treatment or healing session.

Life is uncertain, and never have we been more aware of this than recently, with Covid. Yet still we try and find something concrete, something to hold on to, something to make us feel safe, be that our jobs or a relationship or possessions, even if we have outgrown them. We will hold on to the certainty of a yoga practice too, the familiarity of a sequence that we have practiced many times previously, and a style that we can almost do in our sleep, because it is so familiar to us and to our bodies.

Yet I have become increasingly aware, through the paradox and contradiction of the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga, that certainty in our practice can lead us down the superficial path of least resistance, the path well trodden, and not necessarily in our lives, but in our minds. It is easy to zone out of the body during a fast-paced asana practice, trying to keep up with the flow, trying to move the body and breathe, and put our bodies into the positions asked of it, always trying to further our practice, make our bodies bendier come what may.

I’ve noticed that we can stuck in movement patterns, feeding into the superficial muscles, allowing them to take over, and in the process denying the wisdom of the deeper muscles. So too in our life, we can lead very superficial lives, only allowing ourselves to delve so far into what may offer greater depth, but often this lacks certainty, it’s on an edge, a margin, a path not yet travelled, not yet lived, there’s resistance, and this send us straight back to where we were previously, to somewhere safe.

It takes courage to explore the backwater, to go deeper, to delve into the shadows, to let go of that which inhibits our growth, on the surface, to explore the edge of the inner landscape, to consider a life lived on the margins, neither here nor there, beyond definition, for it is a life lived with a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, not quite sure how it might unfold, not striving to be anywhere in particular, allowing the body to breathe rather than imposing the breath on it, and not trying to control an outcome, come what may, deeper truth and wisdom, compassion, forgiveness and the self, greater connection to the heart.

Our fears will keep showing up, reminding us of the reason we were searching for certainty in the first place, to conform, to feel secure, because everyone does that, and sometimes it’s difficult to live a life that goes against the flow, that tries to find a different path, a new way. Yet once touched, we know that we have to keep going, that we cannot stop, that we cannot go back, that we can no longer compromise that part of ourselves that craves a different life, that wants to go deeper than that life lived superficially, however much we may try and convince ourselves that that is OK and adopt anyone of our usual numbing strategies, so that we might forget that life could be lived differently.

I’m enjoying finding different ways of moving my body that is less harmful than the patterns I have adopted over the years, the patterns that I kept reinforcing on my mat, that allowed my body to maintain its armour, and it’s yang tendencies - albeit the tendencies are not so much of the body, but of the mind, which has dictated my practice for me. Now I get to sculpt the body, to do things differently, to chip away the armour and change the cellular memory, let go of the past which is still held in the body, informing my present.

The weight of responsibility will often weigh down the shoulders and impact on our ability to breath, tightening our upper spine, clipping our wings. We will struggle to truly find the comfort and ease of breath and body encouraged by the Yoga Sutras, forcing the breath, forcing the body. So too the hips, holding all those years of repressed emotions, the anger and hatred, sitting on them, impacting on the mobility and freedom of our spine, or our mind, we keep doing what e have always done and yet hope for a better outcome.

It is not enough to continue along the path of least resistance, the linear path, the safe one, certain, holding on to what we have always known and putting our heads deeper into the sand, even in ur yoga practice, even on our mat, even following prompts and instructions we can avoid being truly in the body, noticing it, but not noticing it, not knowing it, not knowing ourself, how can we know ourself if we are not truly present to the muscles, the bones, the ligaments, the flesh, our very nature, our nature.

So much of our physical tension of the result of mental tension, of lack of inner harmony and wholeness, fragmented, the good voice and the bad voice, the us before a yoga practice and the us at the end. How can we bring greater harmony to our whole being? I believe that this is the paradox. We might feel that life needs to be certain before we can find greater harmony and peace, and yet really, it is in the uncertainty, that this will reveal itself to us. A glimmer, a smidgen, a robin, a feather, a sign that this is the dimension where life might be lived, with the angels, a possibility, a potential.

Once we begin the journey to greater depth, once we step away from the superficial, once we notice more of the mind, with its comfortable and yet restricting and sometimes unhealthy patterns, then we can begin to notice more of the breath, and the certainty of this, and yet know that this is the breath between life and death, that the spine is the joint between life and death, that the exploration of the ancient sites is the space between life and death, that all of life is a dance between life and death and it is full of uncertainty that provides the joy that we seek, the possibility for inner harmony and peace. It is on the edges and the margins that life, the depth of life will reveal itself to us.

Bursting bubbles

Crikey, this energy is something else! I’ve never really felt so clearly that the veil is thin and the portal opening. I’ve heard people talk about it, but never really got it, but I’m feeling it!

I’ve heard people say this is quite an intense alignment of the new moon solar eclipse and the summer solstice, to say nothing of the planetary shifts, of which I know little. I just know that something is happening out there that is impacting on what is happening in me, which means it’s happening in each of us collectively, so perhaps there will be a shift. It feels big.

I certainly feel that life has changed this year beyond recognition of what it was, and that 2019 was indeed the year that prepared us for the changes that have been ushered in. I don’t know how long it will continue, but it has been so lovely to live to my own agenda this week, with the boys, flowing with our own timings, meeting friends, being on the beach, just having a rather lovely time of it, no timetable as such, beyond when I teach and give Reiki.

But it’s not the outer changes so much, they merely reflect the inner changes that have taken place, and a long time in coming in many respects. I have known for a while that there is another way, but it has taken time and work to let go of the conditioning that prevented the flow and the re-alignment to take place. There have been leaps of faith too, and a stronger sense of living with uncertainty and the unknown, which is OK, truly.

I have been watching others talk about how we might find a new way, how we might save the environment and create better societies. I think it’s noble. But I also think it is very simple. That really, it is us who need to change, to deepen connection to self, so that all the other crap drops away. It’s all very well talking about how we might engage the community to deduce the changes that they would like to see, and how we might change business so that it better serves the economy and society, but until we re-define success, and shift the paradigm from one of material gain to one of wellbeing, then nothing will change.

Under the current system, business will always be about the bottom line and people will always want to be recognised for their successes, based on their ability to earn and maximise wealth. This is how so many see success. This is what underlies the choices and decisions that so many make. This is the generation of billionaires and fame for the sake of fame’s sake with social media highlighting this - a generation of people who want to be seen for the sake of being seen, and so many with something to sell (it’s the era of “I run my own business, but I need social media to do it’).

All of this just further buys into the illusion and takes us further away from our truth. If we want to save the planet, if we truly want to look after the environment, then we don’t need to wait for a questionnaire, or a discussion, or for government to decide what the new world might look like, we just need to start living more of our own truth, and the more we are in our truth, in our nature, our self, then the more we will in harmony with nature. You simply cannot separate the two.

There is a very noticeable connection between how we live in relationship to our self and how we live in relationship to the earth. I really do believe that the more we can live in harmony with self, the more we automatically live in harmony with the planet, just as the ancients did. Yet these days we live in a way that is harmful to self, and as a consequence the planet is harmed too.

There are very few people who do not harm themselves, either through the inner critic or through the choices they make in how they live their lives. The only thing that will truly save us is consciousness, and the only way we will become more conscious, is by doing work on ourselves. There is just no way to avoid it, despite the best efforts of many to side-track it, jump over it, somehow find a technique that they hope will make them conscious without them having to go through it.

It is my understanding that you have to go through it, have the break downs to make the break throughs, to delve deep into the shadows. Sure, life provides the opportunities, illness, accidents, traumas large and small, sometimes the perceived smallest traumas are indeed the biggest portals, the most direct route to the soul. And this is where it is at, where it has only ever been at. The heart and soul. We do need to get to the heart, and we need to allow the soul expression, this is how we grow and this is how we will change the world that we live in, by living in the self - having a clear sense of self.

We are each here for a reason, and I don’t altogether know that that is as grandiose as taking on a title or a label, “I am in this world to be a yoga teacher”, for example. I feel it’s more about being in this world to allow all that we are; consciousness. We are here to become conscious and live conscious lives, which, by their very nature, are in harmony with the planet that we live on, which is also conscious, far more conscious than us human beings - see how tolerant, patient, compassionate and forgiving it is to us; that is consciousness!

I feel the energy, these eclipses, are encouraging us to wake up. Not necessarily to wake up to the what we are doing to the planet, but to wake up to what we are doing to ourselves. To question the way that we have chosen to live, to open ourselves up to the possibility that we might choose a new way, that we might step outside the norm, as we step closer into the soul, and that because more of us will be doing this - becoming conscious and kinder to self - then the more we will shift the way we are living collectively.

This is a time for being deep honest with ourselves. For seeing beyond the limitations we have created for ourselves, based on our conditionings (societal, parental, educational etc) and to truly feel into what we might do if we could live the life of our dreams, a life that is harmonious. There will always be a compromise of course, but perhaps we will come to realise that we don’t have to compromise our self, that we do matter, and that in acknowledging this, in becoming more deserving, the light of the universe will flood through us and throughout the planet.

This is how the paradigm will shift, how we will come to reframe success beyond material gain and media (social and otherwise) fame, and how we will come to recognise that wealth is not something that can be measured by money in a bank account or by the size of house, or number of possessions, but how it is about our inner sense of worth and how we can be in relation to self and to others, about love and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness. How we live in harmony with all life. Let’s see; I have a feeling that the bubble must burst first.

Pondering on new beginnings

I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been to be back teaching in the same space as students and be able to touch them! I missed this so much during lockdown, it is one thing being on my mat leading a session, but it’s quite another to properly teach, where you can actually touch and guide and try and help them. I am grateful to Zoom though, because at least it served a purpose and allowed me to continue teaching, but it just wasn’t the same.

I a delighted that we are soon moving to Phase 5 here in Guernsey. I realise that I was ranting quite a lot, in my inability to go with the flow of things, simply because I couldn’t understand the reason it was taking the States of Guernsey so long to make a decision about moving forward when there been no reported Covid cases for a significant amount of time. The Isle of Man moved to their Island bubble after only 22 days, and we will be waiting until about 48 days I think, to follow them into an island bubble.

Partly this has been my impatience, and because I don’t like limiting who can attend class, or not being able to run my Reiki courses properly, but also, it’s because I’m perhaps not as risk adverse or quite so fearful of covid as others. It just made no sense to me, much like so many other decisions that are made in this world, which are so patriarchal in their approach, ordered and rule-based, no room for the intuitive or for the common sense!

The more I have started to notice this, the more I realise how our lives are still so controlled by patriarchy, and the energy that this brings with it. I suppose this might be my resistance, especially as I find myself increasingly drawn towards the goddess and an alternative way of living, that allows more of the intuitive and the heart, that is less ‘certain’, less ‘black and white’, because if there is one lesson covid has brought with it (and there are many), there can be no certainty, and there is no black and white, as much as we might try and ensure it. Black Lives Matter further demonstrates this.

Yet the world continues to separate and divide, caught up in increasing rules and regulations, which are almost laughable, because no one knows. There was a time when scientists were saying there was little evidence that face masks worked, and now face masks will likely become the norm for public travel. This preventing us breathing properly, makes no sense to me, but that’s because I spend a significant part of my life attempting to breathe properly, to maximise the health benefits.

Anyhow I resolved last weekend, to let go of the ranting, because it does no good, just causes me harm, and does nothing to change the situation. Thankfully the situation has changed, or will soon change, and there will be no need for booking for class, and I won’t have to spray my hands with lavender, between touching each person, but maybe the crystals will stay, I quite like the fact there are more crystals in the room, and potentially revealing for students too, to see what they might be drawn towards on any particular day!

I’m contemplating greed at the moment too. Aparigraha, one of the five yamas, or ethical principles of yoga, also interpreted as ‘non-grasping. I feel it’s in the ‘field’ at the moment, caught up in the changes we might like to see in the world, in a different way of living that is not dictated by wealth alone, as is often the motivation for many of the choices that people make. As if wealth alone will save us.

Wealth fascinates me, I used to work within the wealth industry and it is interesting to witness how it impacts behaviour, how it orders and categorises people, how it allows power to play out in so many different ways, how it allows people to feel superior to others and treat them in a certain way. It is such an illusion yet so many buy into it, a marketer’s dream, as if life alone is all about the creation of wealth, the grasping onto this, and the drama that accompanies this. You don’t take it with you!

I’ve been fascinated by the multi-billionaires, what they do with their money, how they might use it to help others, and yet the power sometimes goes to their heads, and they buy into government to give them greater power to do what they please, as if they are above the rules handed out to the rest of the population, because somehow their lives and their opinions, and their intentions matter more than the lives and opinions and intentions of others who might not have as much money. Look at Bill Gs and all the conspiracy theories about him. Let alone Mark Z. It’s interesting reading about Elon M too.

This is an opportunity to bring in a new world order, to shuffle around what is deemed to be most important. I imagine wealth will continue to motivate most, and this when so many people in the world are not under the poverty line because covid and the world’s reaction to it, means that so many can no longer earn an income and so many are not able to now access support from charities, in the cases where their governments are not in a position to support them either - there is no social support in Nepal for example, you’re on your own!

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s an old story. Maybe we need to re-define what it means to be rich and poor. I’m curious to see how this unfolds. For now though, I’m grateful for the riches bestowed upon me in life here in Guernsey, the richness of this land and of the people who form part of my community, and my family, and all the beauty and abundance of life here on this beautiful Island, let alone the bounty of the harvest, their is much richness in that too. Thank you.

Abundance!

I met some friends on the beach with our children today and two of us were talking about the seeds that we had been given to plant, by our mutual friend, Fi. It seems that mine have been rather more abundant than my friend’s seeds, and she quite rightly pointed out that abundance comes in many forms, and this did make me think, because life can be abundant in so many different ways.

I have been lucky or perhaps it’s the result of my being a touch over-enthusiastic, because I have been blessed with about 500 pots of medicinal plants (sorry Tara, not to rub it in!!) (There are lots still to re-pot!). Typically the ones I am most excited about, the pot marigolds (so I can make calendula cream) have not been as abundant as say hyssop, or mother’s wort, or even gypsy wort now I come to think about it. Goodness knows what I’ll do with them.

Mind you, Fi did say to me that it’s not so much what you do with them that will bring the joy, but the process of actually growing them. This is so true and one of the fundamental teachings from the Bhagavad Gita, about not being attached to the fruits of our labours. There is a verse that can be translated as follows: “You have the right to work, but for work’s sake only. You have no rights to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your notice in working. Never give way to laziness either”.

If ever there was an opportunity to put this into practice then it has been growing the medicinal plants! I had no expectation or attachment to outcome, I was growing them simply because Fi had given me the idea and something in me said, “yes, 'let’s do this”. In fact it was Ewan who planted some of the seeds, I just gave them Reiki and have tended to them ever since. I’ve planted more along the way, although I wonder now the reason I did this, because I already had so many, and I am considering that in the context of my wider pondering on greed, which has come up in recent weeks as I witness the effect of greed playing out in the wider world and I have been considering it in my world too.

The thing is with the plants, I have just grown them for the sake of growing them and because it felt like my heart wanted me to do it and it has been hugely enjoyable. I have no plans of what to do with them, beyond the pot marigolds. This too has been wonderful, to not have placed pressure on myself to do anything with them really, albeit I have bought a couple more books on herbal remedies and what I might make, if I have the time and inclination, let alone the financial resource to buy all the bits and bobs that are often required in this whole ‘making things’ process!

The message from the Bhagavad Gita, is to renounce attachment to the fruits so that you can remain even tempered in success and failure, and that it is this evenness of temper, which is yoga. It is said that work done with anxiety about the results of the work, is far inferior to work done without anxiety, because this brings with it self-surrender. We surrender all attachment to outcome and just do it for the love of it and because - on the whole - it is our dharma, our reason to be in this world. There is an understanding that those who work selfishly, for the fruits alone, for the results of their actions, will end up miserable!

It is difficult though, because of course generally, we do need to earn money to live. This pandemic has certainly challenged so many of us with this. I heard myself saying today, “double the amount of work, for half the amount of income”, because this is what the pandemic has brought with it, and I know I am not alone, because others are saying it too. The additional administration these last few months to adapt to the changing circumstances has been huge and the income has been much less than it would be ordinarily because of restrictions caused by social distancing.

Yet I know that for me work is not just about income. I teach yoga and share Reiki because I love it. It makes me feel alive. I was positively depressed during lockdown when I wasn’t able to touch people and share it face to face, E was finding life with my dull mood hard work! So I am just so happy to be able to teach again, regardless of the fact that it helps me earn money. And while I know not to be attached to the fruits of the labour, I am grateful for all the abundance that fills my life, the plants, the vegetable patch, the friends, the bird that visit each days, the time with my children, the peacefulness of dusk, and the abundant sleep now my younger son doesn’t wake us as much.

Life is full of abundance. I suppose we just have to notice it, and step out of the conditioning, which always sees abundance in terms of monetary gain. We have to remember to enjoy the process, to do the work for the sake of the work that needs to be done, not because of an outcome. It’s much easier said than done. Even in yoga there is the grasping for an outcome. I noticed it tonight for the first time, when I asked students to establish an intention, something they might like to receive from the practice and I realised that this was setting them up to expect an outcome, to see their practice as something leading them somewhere, rather than just practising for the love of practising.

I notice it playing out during the practice too, this attachment to a pose needing to look a certain way, so that there might be pushing and pulling and a loss of the magic that might arise if only we could just be OK by allowing the body to unravel when it is ready, not because we are forcing it in some way. As if we might achieve more, whatever that might be, peace and harmony perhaps, a better body. I don’t know, we all have our different reasons for practice, our different attachments, our different ideas of how it might be.

But really, it is my experience, that just turning up on our mat is enough. Just being there with our body and with our breath and honouring both and surrendering to the process and to the practice. There will be greater abundance, simply because there will be a change, that will help you - if nothing else - to recognise it, because perhaps it’s always been there but you have just never recognised it, because so often we focus on what we don’t have, and miss all that is already filling our lives, the love, the silence, the noise, the craziness, the solitude. It is all abundant, it’s just our perspective that sometimes needs shifting.

We begin to notice more of the joy that comes with the work. In letting go to the fruits, we begin to see all that we had previously dismissed and overlooked in our quest to always be somewhere other than where we are. It’s actually liberating to live like this, albeit it demands another step outside the box, living in a society that is generally focused on outcome, always working towards a future date to improve from a past date already taken place. Life is so abundant, let’s give thanks for that!

Soul and Shadow on the moon

Phew that was an intense full moon, I did chuckle when I realised that this happened to coincide with me receiving and starting a new book called ‘Soul and Shadow’ for this was indeed the moon of soul and shadow! The world itself was having to face its shadow around discrimination and inequality. Will then world change now the shadow has been brought to the light? I hope so, but I have become a little weary of late, there seems to be greater division that ever!

My soul friend, Christine, mentioned to me yesterday that there is a theme around “I can’t breathe” and it did dawn on me that this is so true on so many levels. Not least George Floyd, but Covid and Gaia herself. This week too I have become aware of women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, the heart chakra, of air and nourishment. This really is a time of the heart versus the head and interesting that the throat sits in-between and people are voicing their options.

Here on Guernsey I have been told that social media is filled with toxicity around those who are arriving into Guernsey and not self-isolating, and people vocal about sharing their opinions. Is this from the heart though? To be truly effective, a voice from the heart, rather than the solar plexus of fear, ego and bullying is much more effective. The world needs the purer heart voice to be truly heard.

It’s been a funny old time. Busy, bringing with it remnants of the old, and yet different too, the busyness has a softer energy, busy doing things that we enjoy, rather than busy doing things for the sake of doing things or because others have been demanding from us. I don’t feel therefore that it is busyness for the sake of busyness, not avoidance, or distraction, more so a renewed sense of purpose and keenness to share.

I soul searched too, around classes and what to do about these and have decided to change things a little, take yoga inside, because I have always preferred teaching inside, there is less distraction, nature does distract by its’s very nature, because it is so beautiful! Plus the sun and the wind was aggravating my pitta and vata and the uncertainty over the weather was slightly tricky to manage! So I have elected for smaller class sizes where I can work more intimately with students, it does mean some will miss out, and I’ll be honest, it is my main source of income, so I won’t be earning so much, but I feel that this is the way, for now at least!

If there is one thing we can learn from covid, is that everything changes, life is in a constant state of flux. All we can do is keep flowing with the heart, keep checking in and seeing where we might adjust. Yoga helps us with this, the scaravelli-inspired approach, that is now influencing my teaching, is all about sitting with the not knowing and with uncertainty, and honouring our own nature, our flesh and bones. This is our nature! And it has become increasingly important to me that we don’t deny that in the pushing and pulling and the forcing that comes with so many of the other approaches to yoga that I have been trained in and have studied and shared with others.

I can’t now return to vinyasa or to dynamic yoga, it feels so soulless, and yet I am grateful because it got me from where I was to where I am now, and I feel like I have come home, to a deeper place in myself, that is less focused on achievement and being someone, but on just being with what was there all along, yet I was so busy in my practice, always moving from one pose to the next, always considering the alignment being right or wrong (there is no such thing incidentally, we’re just conditioned to believe in that, to make our life certain, life by its very nature is uncertain!), that I did not allow for the fluidity of the practice, of life, with the flow and with the sacred that talks through the breath, that comes, not because the breath is imposed on the body, but because the breath enters in, like a gift, a re-membering.

Mainly now I yawn through my practice. Louise says that this is because the breath is finding itself again after years of forced breathing. Who would have known! It is so interesting, that there is always so much still to learn. So breath has been prevalent in my life too of late, because it was strange to find the breath coming initially, and this not looking like the old paradigm, of Ujaii breath come what may, which I realise now might actually have been hardening things. Certainly my solar plexus has softened and now I am drawn more into the heart.

I am used to the yawning now, it comes, it comes, and I cannot control it, it is years of stuff that was held deep in the diaphragm that was now allowed expression. I’m pretty sure this may have been the reason for a hernia at my navel. Well that and all the many planks and chatturangas, that I avoid now, because they were absolutely not benefitting my body or my mind, let alone my soul.

So there has been shadows coming to the light and the soul has been finding greater expression. There has been the breath and there has been the heart and I am curious to see where this eclipse season takes us these next few weeks.

With love