The eclipses and rage

This is some eclipse season, helping to shine a light into the shadows. I’m in the middle of a twenty-one day Reiki cleansing too, which probably doesn’t help, let alone all the work with my teacher and the energy work that I have been doing, to say nothing of the connection with the ancients and the ancient sites and their transformative energy. Yet I know that I am not alone and others have been going through it too, so I take comfort in this – I am not as insane as I might have thought! 

The rage when it came was all consuming. I could feel it coming. Over the years I have gotten better at feeling this and knowing that I need to find a way to release it, usually from  deep within the liver, which lends itself perfectly to holding  unexpressed and repressed anger, frustration and resentment - the solar plexus. It’s a horrible energy, which is probably the reason that we don’t always allow it expression, because it can be so damaging, at least if expressed unconsciously, which is often the case.

But it needs to move and be released somehow, it needs expression, to move, stuck energy does us no favours, it sits there in the shadows, our past still impacting on our present in patterns that might no longer serve us. It is helpful to let go of the past, so that we are not weighed down by it in the present, yet it can be so tricky sometimes because we don’t always know at the beginning what we are letting go of, the pattern only revealing itself when we are in process, so there is trust and faith involved.

 I could feel my skin bubbling with the holding on to all this hot rage and frustration, and I tried to access this, and allow it a path of expression on my yoga mat. I became aware of the need to forgive myself for something I had been giving myself a hard time about, and to forgive others who I felt had harmed me in my past (even though it wasn’t their intention to harm).

It is sometimes difficult to forgive if we believe that we have been harmed by another, because on some level we might want to hold onto the notion of ‘you harmed me’, so we can continue to play out our victimhood and buy into the blame dynamic. Yet at some point we have to take responsibility for our wellbeing, and we have to find the courage and strength to let our past and our unhealthy patterns go, so that we can free ourselves, and release the toxicity and negativity that may impact on us (not them), that clogs our livers and digestive systems. 

To do this, our higher self will call in a situation that will allow us to see more clearly the patterns that have been laid, because it will bring up in us the emotions that have been repressed, so that we might be able to shift things, shine a light into the shadows, allowing us to become more conscious in the process, less impacted by our past. Eclipses and solstices help to support this process, they will always shine a light for us, so I should have expected it, yet it still surprised me, the ferocity and intensity of the energy around the eclipse.

 The eclipse took place on the Sunday and on the Monday I felt the energy building. The pattern was becoming clearer, it was playing out around Elijah’s home schooling, and the same old feelings of helplessness and not being heard, old uncomfortable feelings around my worth and my power and powerlessness came up, feelings of annihilation and desperation, of harm and of sheer frustration. It was all there for me to see and feel how much the repression of all this was creating toxicity. 

 The healing process fascinates me, how we still, years on, find ourselves holding onto strands of all the stuff that we think we have looked at and resolved, as our lives move on in brighter and more empowered directions. Yet there is still sometimes a resonance and we don’t even know how this continues to play out, until the moon and the eclipses might help to make it clearer somehow.

I probably sound completely mad unless you too have been through this yourself because there is a moment when you  feel as if you might be losing your mind, as if you might now have reached a place of insanity because you see the world so differently to others, and this of course feeds into the dis-harmony and the lack of inner ease, because you consider that maybe you have gotten it wrong, that perhaps your inner truth, heart, guidance system is somehow flawed because others struggle to understand you.

I picked a fight, I did this consciously too, because I knew it would help me to release the pent up energy that needed expression. It worked and I found myself screaming with the rage of it to the sky and to the universe, as if now I really had reached a degree of madness, and yet it felt so good, to allow the rage, that aspect of self that is often denied. The tears came, big fat tears of anger, and then of sadness and then of nothing in particular, exhaustion perhaps, spent. 

 It’s like a storm, or a fireball that comes from nowhere and takes hold, wreaking havoc for a short time, churning everything up, moving stuff, and then blows itself out, and everything returns calm, if a little bruised, settling. It’s inner child stuff usually, the adult self needs to hold the child self that feels as if it has been harmed, needs to reclaim it and hold it safe. I always have this need to find my teddy bear when this comes up, this is the give away!

The whole process can be so healing and yet sometimes so difficult to navigate without falling into further patterns of victimhood and blame. If you can navigate it, as consciously as possible, allowing it then, it can be an extremely liberating process, leaving you with a renewed sense of self and compassion too. How it then unfolds is difficult to tell, but the attachment has lessened, because your present is not so informed by your past, limited, so there is greater potential.

You might notice this coming up for you these next few weeks as we approach another eclipse and a full moon. Be assured that there is nothing wrong, you are just being cleared out so that the new can enter in. So welcome it, whatever it brings, be with it, try to be conscious of it and avoid the usual coping and suppression mechanisms, be gentle and witness as best you can the process as it unfolds within and outside of you too. 

These are potent times, and I find it very exciting the potential of the new world we might create if we can go to those deepest and darkest places. Life will undoubtably becomes brighter the more we can embrace the vulnerable parts that we often keep hidden. Let’s see…the eclipses are here to help us create a brighter world and we can each be part of that, individually affecting the collective. 

The Mother with the Moon

As we approach the summer solstice and the new moon solar eclipse on Sunday, I feel that the ‘mother’ in all her guises, both literally and as Gaia, is very much in the field at the moment. 

However, it might just be me, because I have been immersing myself more in the goddess recently, listening to a series of lectures by Kathy Jones, who is a Priestess of Avalon and a Priestess of Goddess and the Founder of the Goddess Temple, Hall & House in Glastonbury, and I am reading her book too, Soul and Shadow, so am fully in that zone. So perhaps it is a case of law of attraction, given the information coming in. 

Yet, and as I always say, I am merely a micro of the macro so it is likely that you are feeling it too and I suspect it will become clearer and stronger the closer we get Sunday. For me the body has been getting my attention, a sensation in the breast and a change in consistency of monthly blood (sorry, probably too much information but this is how the body talks to us, how the wisdom comes through, as a result of changes in our own nature, the very bones and muscles and skin of our body in this very lifetime on Planet Earth).

It’s in this way, through the body, that we are made aware of stuck energy that is often the result of old repressed emotions that have not been allowed expression, this is e-motions (energy in motion) that need releasing, of wounds that still need healing, for the energy to be able to flow again and for us to feel increased wellbeing and greater presence (less weighed down by the energy stuck (and sticking us) in the past). 

I dropped into the body sensations, and tried to listen. I’ve channelled quite a lot of Reiki recently and this has undoubtably helped in me understanding a little more of what my body is trying to tell me, although there’s still always more to know (one of the many wonderful things about working with Reiki is that you receive as you give!)

I realise how much I have been giving myself a hard time for my perceived mothering failures, about the decisions I have made in the past about how I might live in relationship with my children, about going back to work when Elijah was only 3 months old, and how this has pained me for six years now, to think that I felt I had little choice and the guilt at leaving my son albeit with my own beautiful mum, which of course made it easier. 

I know that I made that decision as consciously as I could at that time, and that if I knew then what I know now, I might have found a different way and made a different decision instead, which would have enabled me to spend more time with my son when he was still so young. Yet I recognise that we can only ever make decisions based on what we know in that moment, depending on our level of consciousness and our perception about where we are and what we feel we need/want from life. 

 It is all too easy to reflect back now and consider how we might have done things differently if only we had known then what we know now, and to give ourselves a very hard time in the process, focusing on our perceived failings rather than the bits we might have got right, that feel more comfortable to us. I know also that this ‘hard time giving’ serves no one, not us, and especially not our children. There is nothing to be gained by being negative towards ourselves, yet as mothers we do this. 

Sometimes the weight of what it means to mother can be overwhelming, simply because we are desperate not to mess it up, not to cause pain to our children or to damage them in any way. Yet we are only human and life is messy and uncertain, and we are all of our own nature, which means with the best will in the world we can never do it for our children and we may never truly understand the way that they see the world, as much as we may try, which means that we may not always be the person that they need us to be, regardless of how much of ourselves we give to them.

I know all this, and yet I have been so conscious of trying to be all that is needed and to understand their needs and their wants and accommodate these as best I can without losing myself in the process, which is the trickiest bit, because sometimes we do lose ourselves, despite our best efforts! The trouble is that mothering cannot be delineated. There is no line to say that this is where I begin and this is where I end, that this is what I will give and this is what I will keep for myself, as this too is always in flux and it cannot be pinned down or made concrete from one day to the next. 

Today I am this way and tomorrow I might be another way, and I know now that that is OK. Somehow we will find a way. And the way weaves this way and that, and the wind drops and the sun sets and all is calm, and then the storm comes to turn this all on its head and there is no sunset that day and the wind does not stop blowing so that we cannot hear so clearly, and we are flustered and full of rage, and then the rain comes and it cools us down, and we start again, the heart open closing open closing, wanting always to be open but there are moments when it cannot be that way. 

So too it is with mothering and being mothered. How much do we open to the vulnerability of being loved and of loving with all our heart? It sounds so easy but sometimes it is not. There are moments when we lose the awareness that allows us to be so present, even for a split second and we might say something that is not aligned to heart, because we are protecting our own heart, because there is some wounding, some resonance of some hurt that we didn’t like very much.

Sometimes we can be mothered so much that we don’t even know who we are, because we are smothered by the weight of another trying to protect us, to the extent that we cannot hear our own heart and we cannot therefore find our own path with heart . And others not mothered enough, so that their heart lays heavy with the sadness of the rejection and the abandonment so that they reject and abandon a part of themselves and the possibility of love because they do not consider themselves worthy enough, or because it is too hard. 

And speak to me also, of how you might mother yourself?  I reflect on this too. The breast talks of nourishment and the womb talks of sacred space, of ancient wisdom. Both talk to us of our unique spiritual path, our path with heart, our way. This is in contrast to the way that seeks to include everyone in the same ‘mundane’ expression of life according to the rules and order and constrictions of society.  

The womb is our power, we know this, the dark space, the void, the deep mystery. Babies grow inside this, inside ourselves. This blows my mind even now, even having grown two real live human beings inside me, even having felt it for myself and seen the heart beat alone of both babies when they were six weeks in utero (we are alllllllll heart and there was validation as I wrote about in Dancing with The Moon). The breasts that nourish new life, that allow new life to grow, that bring baby to heart, so that there is a heart-resonance on a very deep level from the moment the baby enters the world and suckles. 

Even now, at three and a half years I am frustrated by those who tell me that he is too old for milk. It is not just milk! This is one of the most natural things that my body does. It brings my son directly to my heart and it nourishes him beyond the calories and vitamins of breast milk. It is the most beautiful thing in the world to me and I am grateful to my Ayurvedic doctor for recognising this, and normalising this and knowing that in Sri Lanka, her mother breast fed all the children until they were ready to let it go, maybe six, maybe seven, whenever they chose. 

These are the messages that I am receiving. And I know now as I write this and share with you that there is deeper meaning. That this is about following our own unique spiritual path and it is about breaking free from all that constrains us and prevents us from doing this - from our conditioning and the conditioning of those from whom we seek validation, and from society. We each have our own unique nature. An oak tree is an oak tree, it cannot be a beech tree however much someone might wish it to be, it is not its nature. 

There is this wonderful song by José González, called In Our Nature, which goes:

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.

Put down your sword.
Send home your dogs.
Open up your doors.
Let down your guard.

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.

Put down your gun.
Ignore the alarm.
Open up your heart.
Let down your guard.

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature

This has always spoken to me, of the need to allow our true nature by letting down our guard. It is only in letting down our guard and allowing our vulnerability that we can truly know our heart. Our heart speaks of our truth and our truth speaks of our nature and our nature speaks of our soul.

Mother Earth she knows only the song of the soul, she sings of love and truth and justice for all, she weaves the magic of earth, water, fire, air and ether, and it is this, manifest, that nourishes us all, the big mystery, the dark void, the essence of all we are is the essence of all she is too, yet she knows only heart, she knows only vulnerability, because this is her nature and she trusts in that, and it this that is the ultimate lesson. She trusts in her true nature, she trusts her soul. And this, my friends, is where we find ourselves now, at the crossroads of the new paradigm.  

Can we trust our soul to nourish and sustain us? Can we find the courage to allow the deepest vulnerability, the greatest intimacy? Can we let go of all that distances us from our own nature?

The moon will tell us a tale, and the eclipse will tell us a tale too. And the sun and the rain, they tell us a tale too, of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. We walk the rainbow bridge and she holds our hand as a mother holds a child, and we know that we will be safe, because we are held by the…great…mother…earth.

Love x

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

Power and the deep feminine

That was most definitely a potent full moon and I am only now clearer about what it was ushering in. There was most definitely a play on power, and you might have felt that in your own lives too.

I definitely felt a sense of powerlessness with the way that life is currently unfolding and it is only now I recognise the reason for the kidney and liver pain that has accompanied this. The kidneys because of deep rooted fear of not being able to touch or to use holistic therapies to heal (as these rely so heavily on human touch). I feel as if ancestral and past life wounds were touched, around Wicca and the deep memory of the persecution of healers (the witch hysteria during the mid 1400s ).

There was anger in this too, then, for this Wiccan history, and also for the collateral damage of trying to protect the vulnerable from Covid-19 and yet creating so much more suffering and vulnerability in the process. There is a thin line and I don’t envy anyone having to manage this, but I do feel as if a perspective shift is required. The state has done such a good job in conditioning (and controlling) everyone to (through) fear, that now it has a huge job on its hands to condition everyone that life is again safe to be lived.

There is a fear that for those of us who teach yoga or in some way offer our hand to heal, will not be able to do so, in the flesh, for a long time to come. Yet I know that in every ending is a new beginning and I take comfort in this. I am grateful that yoga and Reiki can be shared distantly, albeit it is not the same as physical touch, but at least there is the option. Plus I know that healing can come in so many ways, and I recognise in my own life how this pause, and this space, has revealed other things to me.

I keep returning to Rebecca Campbell’s marvellous quote about all this, well about letting go really, which is what this is all about, and how the power comes into it too, because I have a feeling that this is where it’s at really, coming to understand the nature of power, beyond labels and this idea of being someone. There has been so much emphasis these last few years for women, especially within yoga, to step into their power, and yet I can’t help thinking that we have been attempting to do so while still ignoring the deep feminine.

“In order for the new to arrive, we must first allow the old to shatter. Sometimes this happens on its own. And sometimes it requires that we do the smashing. To tear apart what we’ve built because things have changed, including you. To admit that while it once was aligned, now it no longer is. This shattering requires both courage and faith. Courage to let go and faith that the pieces will come back together again in a way that was more aligned than it was before” Rebecca Campbell

I’m not sure that the deep feminine, the inner witch, the healer, the carer, the mother, the grandmother, the wisdom keeper, I don’t know that she needed to be any more than what she was. She didn’t need to be on a pedestal, or splashed across social media, nor rushing around the world sharing her wisdom. She was contented to live it and share it with those who sought her, not because she was ‘someone’, but because she was her-self. There was a sacredness to her life and to her offerings too. There was the power, in the sacredness of it all.

I have found the break form social media thus far extremely liberating, empowering. I don’t miss it. It’s refreshing not knowing how others are living, and not concerning myself with it. There is less external noise and more time to be with those who matter the most. It has also freed me in my teaching, to offer what I love and what I have learned over all these years of studying the self, with those who most value it, there is (for me at least and I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant as that is not as it is intended) a deeper sense of the sacred. This too came through with the moon.

There is a re-alignment of power at play and for us women this means that yet more ideas of what this might mean need to drop away. We are entering a new paradigm and the idea of what it means to ‘step into our power’ also needs to change. The joy is that life will create this shift, the universe, the moon, the stars and the planets, they will all play their role to ensure that we have the opportunity to listen.

We might not heed the call, we might not make the space, we might grip on so tightly to how we think it should be, that we don’t hear the whisperings of another way. But the signs will be there anyway, the illness, aches, pains, tensions, the dodgy skin, the irregular period, the people, birds, animals and insects that cross our path, they are all message keepers, if we pay attention.

It’s not easy to pay attention though. Sometimes when working with my teacher, she is asking me to be so attentive that I find it difficult because I have to be very still and very present, and very much inside myself. Yet I know that if I can stay with it, then I will touch something that I cannot touch when life is lived externally, or busy, or noisy. The practice comes in being present and attentive, and this is tricky beyond the yoga mat when there is so much distraction.

Yet I have feeling that this is the power of the deep feminine. It is not about what we might create or produce in the external world (that’s the illusion, the trap), but how life is lived in relation to the self. That’s not so easy to teach, and not so easy to explain, because we all have that wisdom, and it is for us to reveal it to ourselves, given the right conditions.

As I am writing this, and as I searched for the above quote to share with you, I came across this other one, and feel like leaping with joy because while I have read it many times before, I feel as if it is only now I have an embodied sense of it being my truth too. Which means it is possibly yours too. This is where the moon has been taking us. This is the power of the deep feminine and it is not at all what others might have us believe, those making the noise and yet still living from a masculine perspective of results and external adoration.

“The deep Feminine, the mystery of consciousness, She who is life, is longing for our transformation as much as we are. She holds back, allowing us free reign to choose, nudging us occasionally with synchronicities, illness, births and deaths… But when we make space for Her, she rushes into all the gaps, engulfing us with her desire for life and expression. This is what She longs for, this is what we are for: experiencing the Feminine through ourselves. We simply need to slow down, and find where to put our conscious attention. And it is this, this willingness to look again, this willingness to put consciousness onto our places of unconscious, to express what we have always avoided, which starts the process of unblocking, so that She may flow through.” Lucy Pearce

All is well. That we must remember. Power is power is power. Knowing the self is power. Healing the self is power. Retreating into the self is power. Finding courage, that is power. Being still is also power. There are so many ways that we can embrace our power without losing ourselves in the power of it, of trying to be anything other than what we already are, and this, this is the key to true power - and it is found in love, and it is found in surrender, and it is found in vulnerability and it is found in being deeply attentive.

Love Emma x

The sun, the bee and the moon!

Today I have mainly been trying to stay aligned to soul. 

This meant taking the whole family with me for a brief cliff walk to watch the sunrise, which was just amazing. This was soon followed by a high tide swim, albeit only E and I swam, the boys played titanic on the beach, but the combination set us all up high vibration for the day ahead.

Then, aside from the online learning, washing, cleaning, cooking and shopping, I mainly spent the rest of the day re-potting my medicinal herbs (I’m so excited, as all but two of the 15 herbs I planted have come through and I have so many marigolds, marshmallow, hyssop and woad that I don’t know what on earth I’ll do with them all!) and practising the brahmari breath! 

The brahmari breath, the bumble bee breath, is just wonderful for calming the mind, soothing the nervous system and keeping the energy high – you can literally feel the vibration within your body. The bee knows best, without the bee life would be a bit tricky, so best we bring as much of the bee as we can into life – the queen bee at that, we should all be practising the brahmari regularly! All you need to do is take a breath in through your nose and then hum as you exhale, for as long as you can. Repeat, repeat, repeat! 

I was also reflecting on how easy it is to fall asleep again while awake, and yet how necessary this is for the process of moving from a state of contraction to expansion. To expand, we have to first contract, then we expand and then we contract, as the moon moves through this cycle so do we, from one stage of being to another, and in tune with her too – her energy encourages it if we are tapped in. It’s beautiful really. 

Mind you it’s been a beautiful day all around and I am grateful to the ancient wisdom, which always knows best - to father sun for his high energy, to the bee for its vibration and to the moon, for her energy of contraction and expansion and letting go and beginning anew, and to spring-time Mother Earth for her potency. I’m excited about this next moon cycle and just help I can stay in tune!  

The reality of online learning and the inner child!

We popped to the beach first thing this morning for a swim at Saints because I felt that I needed the energy of the sea and the sun, and some grounding as the beginning of online learning loomed ahead.

Back home and we used Face-time to connect with my Dad who has very kindly volunteered to help with Elijah’s online learning, and bless him, spent 2 hours yesterday trying to navigate the online portal so we might be prepared for the beginning of Elijah’s official online learning.

Admittedly this probably wasn’t the best time for E to go off shopping but he figured the queues might be easier than usual, so he left me at home with both boys, as will become the norm when he returns to work soon (hopefully for him as a sole trading gardener). The idea was that my Dad would oversee Elijah’s work and I might manage my wild child, who needs lots of attention, especially at the moment as he’s still angry that he can’t see my parents or play with his friends at pre-school.

However, it quickly became apparent that I needed to be involved for the majority of the session with Elijah too. Not least because we needed to use my laptop to access all the online links that were provided through the online learning website, but also because Elijah is only 6 years old and isn’t yet able to write or read without some assistance - and certainly wouldn't have accessed the links on his own or read what he needed to do.

Five minutes in and by then Eben had dressed himself as a fireman and was whacking the walls with his sword. I suggested we might do a jigsaw at the table, and sent him off to retrieve one, but he returned with Pop-up Pirates and as anticipated, this game lasted all of about 2 minutes before he started attacking the pirate with his sword. He wandered off and I turned back to Elijah who needed the next video accessed.

Distracted by assisting Elijah, I just about heard the front door open maybe 5 minutes later, and wondered if it might be the postman, but a minute or so later when I realised it wasn’t the postman and Eben hadn’t re-appeared, I realised it must have been Eben who had gone out the front door unaided. Minor panic ensued as I rushed outside and through the gate to our parking area but couldn’t see him. I ran back in the house and there he was in the back garden, he must have walked around to the back of the cottage all on his own. That was a first. And a last!

My stress levels were now rapidly rising. I retrieved Eben from the back garden and wondered what on earth I might do with him, painting didn't seem the best option, so Dad suggested he join us to watch the Gruffalo on my laptop, Elijah’s next task. So he sat on me for all of a minute, more interested in tapping the keys on my laptop, than watching the video, which always panics me as I wonder if he might find the one button to press that may mean I can never work my laptop again!

So off he went, still wearing his shoes (we’re a shoe-free house and he’d sensibly put these on before letting himself out the front door), to try to find something else to do. Fortunately E arrived home soon after then although I suspect he wished he hadn’t, because the noise of him unpacking the shopping and boiling the kettle, and the noise of Eben firing his pretend gun at us was all too much for Elijah who was constantly distracted, which caused my Dad to suggest that perhaps we should give-up on the rest of the online learning for today. “No!”, I virtually shrieked, “we have to submit work!”.

At this point E found Eben attempting to comb the cat’s fur with his comb, so he proposed that he might take Eben outside and entertain him, while we carried on with the online-learning. So with such relief from me, off they went and I set about trying to sort the account for Elijah on the Class dojo system, but because I was having to use both my phone and my laptop, the WIFI struggled and we lost connection with my Dad! Blinking WIFI!

Fortunately I did manage to get the dojo to work, which is just as well because if not I might literally have hit my head against the table or used Eben’s pretend gun to shoot myself with the despair of it all! Elijah’s long suffering teacher will no doubt be as delighted as me, bless her, she tried to send me a number of links in the hope that one of them might work, and thankfully one of them did, so thank you Karen because I bet you were inundated with other parents unable to work this and that link too!

With WIFI working again and the connection with my Dad re-established, I was finally able to make a cup of tea as Elijah read to him, before I took over with the writing. Once that was done - and it took some effort I can tell you, Elijah is not really interested in this home-learning malarkey, he’d rather be playing (don’t blame him) - I managed to photograph his work and upload it to the class dojo. If I hadn’t have decided that 2020 would be a good year to give sobriety a try, I might have poured myself a very large glass of wine and been done with the day then and there!

Instead, I prepared lunch and tried to catch up on the emails that had come in this morning, including one about increasing my public liability insurance so I might be able to teach yoga at Sausmarez Park this summer. I add that in, to give hope to the fact we might, at some point, before the end of August, join together outside for some yoga without a single device in sight (no mobiles allowed!).

Lunch prepared and E and Eben now back in the cottage, I escaped upstairs and to my mat, where I promptly burst into tears with the stress of it all- and this, I know, ironic given that I’m a yoga teacher! But in that moment I felt like the most useless mother in the world, not least because I’m forcing Elijah to do something he doesn’t want to do and has no interest in doing, but because I’m basically having to ignore my 3-year old to the extent that he leaves the house and wanders off on his own, because I am distracted trying to do the requested online learning set by the powers that be. Nonsense.

I suddenly realised, I as I attempted to move my body and focus on my breath that this whole online-learning debacle has massively triggered inner child stuff, much like the IT issues I have had over the weekend. Just as I would have felt in childhood at some point, both the online learning and IT have brought up a very old pattern of feeling unsafe, powerless and useless. It was a relief to recognise this pattern and to see it for what it is. To know that at some point in the past when those feelings came up I would have reacted by getting stressed, angry and emotional, anything to avoid the uncomfortableness of the initial feelings.

Here we are again…those old feelings of loss of safety (overwhelm), powerfulness and useless have been triggered and I end up getting stressed and angry and emotional. That pattern hasn’t been triggered for a long time, not really, at least not with this intensity. Which is what got me thinking that this is part of a bigger picture, this inner child stuff. I’ve felt it the last few days and it now makes sense to me, and I can’t help thinking that the new moon on Thursday has something to do with this.

The intensity of the combination of lock-down, online learning, Coronavirus, being at home 22 out of 24 hours a day, temperamental WIFI and attempting to teach online, is definitely going to trigger something! And because I’m being triggered, and I’m part of the collective, i suspect that everyone is being triggered in their own way and is experiencing some inner child stuff coming up for them right now.

You’ll know it, because it’ll be a pattern, a certain way that you behave, a certain feeling or feelings that come up when you are feeling really tested and totally out of your comfort zone, when you are feeling vulnerable as you would have done as a child, when it felt as if your world was changing and you had no control over it. You would have reacted a certain way and since then, every time those same emotions of vulnerability and being out of control are triggered, you’ll react in this same way that is rarely helpful, because it is unconscious, it happens without you noticing the role you play in it.

This is the inner child, the part of ourselves that we stashed away because it was too painful to feel the feelings that the child in us was feeling at that time. Yet those feelings are still there and from time to time they will be triggered and we will have the opportunity to see them for what they are, to recognise that it is just our inner child crying out to be held and loved, before we react in a way that we learned to do back then and have been doing ever since, but that just harms us and separates us even more from the inner child, perpetuating the cycle.

Catching myself as I did, and seeing the truth of the situation, I decided then and there that I was done. It is time now - as it is for all of us - to hold my little inner child in my hands as if she is as precious as my own children, and look after her with tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and love. No more will I give her a hard time and respond to her with anger and frustration at that which I can not control. No more will I try and fit Elijah and I into a system that doesn’t work for us, in which we don’t fit right now.

Enough. We will do what we can, Elijah, Dad and I, accessing the online resource when it works for us, but we’re not going to lose sleep over it, or get upset about it, or force Elijah to do stuff that he doesn’t want to do for the sake of his ‘education’. The whole education system needs a shake-up anyhow, but not this way, and not now. I will no longer put Elijah’s ‘education’ above the needs of Eben either. That too is nonsense.

This whole period of my boys life is tricky as it is, cut off from their beloved grandparents and their friends and the wider community, their routine is out the window and they’re missing playing at the park and going swimming, all the usual things that children loved doing. It’s not fair for them having to endure stressed parents who are trying to do their best, but are finding it a bit tricky to manage all that is expected of them by the Education Department, while trying to hold down jobs, go shopping while social distancing, and maintain sanity!

So this afternoon we did the other thing that the inner child needs and that is have fun. We borrowed a dog and we took her to L’Eree where we threw the ball for her and we walked and we laughed and we played. The boys removed their clothes and ran up and down the beach nude, we collected litter and crab shells, we chatted at distance with some friends who happened to be walking past, and we had a jolly good time as a family together.

This is what my children need right now. They need me playing and having fun. They need to be out in nature where they can connect with the elements. They need to be free to explore their world and learn from it. They need to be held as gently as I am now holding my own inner child, showered with compassion and love, not ignored in the quest for education, or forced ‘to do learning’ in a way that is alien to them.

We even popped into the fairy cave, because I longed to feel that ancient energy and to call upon the guardians for strength and protection, to usher more of their wisdom into this world, because if ever we needed it then now is that time. It is extremely calming in the cave, and was definitely a tonic for the soul, and for the inner child, ahead of the new moon.

It’s been a tricky moon cycle that’s for sure, but I’m grateful for the insight that today brought with it, to notice the triggers and the underlying feeling, and to rise above it and find another way to be with it that is not angry or frustrated or negative but is loving and kind and gentle. We are all doing our best. We must remember this. And when something isn’t working, rather than battle against it, it’s a sign to turn the devices off, to get outside and to have fun together, changing the memory into something positive and worth remembering.

Happy new moon you lovely people.

Sending you a huge energy ball filled with Reiki, love and compassion.

Love Emma xx

The full moon lunar eclipse

There’s a full moon lunar eclipse occurring tomorrow, this two weeks after the new moon solar eclipse, back on 25/26 December 2019.

It’s a Cancerian full moon too, and I must admit that when I heard this I expected it to be watery and emotional, especially as I am a Cancerian. However it has been anything but that for me, although there is still time!

I haven’t read too much about it because I really wanted to just feel into it for myself, and I have a sense that if you have been doing the work on yourself, then this moon will usher in the fresh energy that you have been working towards.

It will come as a relief after a tricky 2019, as we were repeatedly encouraged to let go of anything inauthentic and to dig deeper into our truth and who we are. This will have become clearer during the year, whether it was by choice or forced upon you by events seemingly out of your control.

2020 is meant to be the year of ascension and I do have a sense of this. Life needs to be lived differently, I think we are all realising this, and while it’s perhaps not clear exactly how this will look, we are all beginning to recognise the role we individually play in this.

We know that we have to live more sustainably, with greater respect for this beautiful planet which houses us. Many of us also know that we need to take greater responsibility for not only how we live, but how we relate to ourselves too - for our own health and wellbeing.

It’s time for us to be bold. To recognise our true values and live by these, regardless of whether they go against history and how life has been lived previously, whether they accord to expectation of not, whether that be family members, friends or society as a whole. It doesn’t matter. We have to find a new way and that new way is in each of our hearts.

We all know that living in accordance with the heart is tricky, because there is no script, no map to follow and no historic records to follow. It’s a big leap of faith but a necessary one. This is ascension really. A leap of faith. There’s no need for talking or discussing, it’s just a matter of getting on with it, being in the experience.

It’s a huge coming home to self and to the family and to what matters most. It’s a bit of a paradox - while there is the idea of ascending upwards into the ether, there’s actually a strong energy bringing us back down to earth and into the root, reminding me a little of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food, water, rest and warmth - cosy and safe in the bosom of the world!

I can’t help thinking that Harry and Meghan are truly embodying this. Them stepping away from the expected roles they are meant to be playing in the Royal Family is bold! Someone wrote that Harry is following his heart, not his head. Well good on him I say. Meghan too. For being bold and having the strength to not only honour their hearts but to act on them and in the most public of arenas too. They’ve chosen to take responsibility for their mental wellbeing and to put the needs of their family first. They’re making a safe home for themselves and their son as they feel best.

This moon is encouraging the same of us all. Many of you will have seen this playing out in your own lives as you’ve made decisions this last year that support your wellbeing and that of your family. Others know that the changes need to be made, but have yet to figure out how you might make that happen. I’ve a feeling this eclipse will help to move us all on in some way. How we respond to this is up to us. It’s watery, so it’s best to flow, life is easier that way somehow.

Enjoy the moon.

Love me xx

New moon and Equinox shifting

We’ve a super new moon on Saturday and I don’t know about anyone else, but I am certainly feeling it. Phew.

Like treading through treacle.

Emotional treacle.

But at the same time, the speed at which things are ‘popping up’ and ‘popping out’ is pretty fast, and has been since the last full moon. 

Everyone says that the energy around an Equinox is fairly potent and the layers between the dimensions are relatively thin, and this is certainly my experience this Equinox.

All of nature is in flux, as the light decreases and the colours change and the relentless wind blows the old away. This change should be welcomed, for it is bringing with it a collective shift in perspective that is long overdue.

It’s easy to fight it, to cling on to what we know, because it is scary letting go into the unknown - how can we know that there is another, more aligned way of being, until we have experienced it. It’s a tricky one. 

Sometimes we don’t even realise we are fighting change, or clinging on to a version of ourselves that needs updating. We might have a sense that something is amiss, a depression, for example, or a feeling of weariness and heaviness, or an overwhelming need to scream (as if the scream itself may release something). Sometimes we might just feel as if we have outgrown ourselves.

When we finally let go – and the universe will provide opportunities for this – it can be such a relief, because all of a sudden the heaviness lifts and we experience a lighter and brighter perspective and version of ourselves that we hadn’t even known was there in the first place (this can be both exciting and slightly depressing with the recognition that there is always more potential that we may never realise in this lifetime). It’s as if the world itself has changed, and yet it’s just that we see things differently as our perspective shifts.

This might bring with it some challenges though, because while we may see things differently, those around us may not be party to the same vision. It takes courage to live from this new perspective, because there isn’t always a template. This can be scary, and can prevent us making the leap in the first place as fear might take hold.

However, there is nothing worse than living a life that no longer fits. The resistance and the fear of change becomes much more painful than the uncomfortable feeling that accompanies the surrendering in the first place. Yet many never make the leap, and numb out instead – there are many, many ways we can numb out, just think about it, we all have a go to numb-out-approach.

If there’s one thing yoga has given me (and it has given me many things) is the ability to become increasingly comfortable settling into the unknown. This is mainly because the practice itself leads us into the unknown, to those parts of ourselves that we might not yet know or that we have been resisting, or have been in denial of, or have rejected for some reason. Furthermore, it directs our lives in ways that we couldn’t ever have imagined, and all it asks of us in return is to keep surrendering and practising.

It’s this reason that many stop practising yoga, because it all becomes too confronting. Why look at ourselves honestly if that is going to make us feel uncomfortable? Isn’t it better to rest in ignorance, comfortably numb, drifting along? That approach has never worked for me, there is too much of a drive for the truth, however difficult that might be, but I appreciate that we are all different. 

Surrendering is also not easy. There’s no guide on how you might achieve this. Generally, life will provide an opportunity, the final straw, so that there is no choice but to let go, no more fighting. This summer I had that experience, as illness took hold and forced me to surrender to another way of being. It was much needed as the way I had been living was unsustainable and was no longer fitting. 

But I feel as if that process continues on, that while I might have felt a settling a few weeks ago now, I have been shaken up all over again by this energy that is whipping through our cottage and sending my youngest wild. There is more that needs to shift, I was only touching the sides previously, there has to be another, more sustainable way to live, one that is even more aligned to my truth.

It’s perhaps good timing (as these things tend to be) to find myself reading Simon Haas’ book about dharma and making enlightened choices, because in here, he shares this quote, which struck a chord with me:

 “The low minded person thinks in one way, speaks in another, and acts still differently; but the great soul, or Mahatma, says what he thinks, and does what he says.”

It’s this reason that I find Greta Thunberg so inspiring. Here is someone who is not only living her truth but speaking it too. Her speech to world leaders was genius because it cut right through our denial and said what many of us have been feeling:

 “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight”.

Speaking and living our truth is something that keeps coming up, and this new moon is just accentuating it. It’s not easy because on some level this is tied into boundaries, and boundary work is definitely not without its challenges, simply because it asks us to take ourselves seriously, and this brings with it a need for a shift in perspective.

So here we are. 

Being asked to consider our truth, and to look at where our actions are out of kilter with this, and to consider our boundaries too. It’s in the field, we can’t escape it.

It’s noble work, and needed.

Underlying all this – before it all gets too heavy – is to acknowledge that essentially all is well. Mother Earth is supporting us from below and the universe from above, and the moon and everything else in between. We can feel gratitude, for there is much to celebrate – we are on the cusp of a significant moment of change.

Each of us has a role to play, and it’s important to remember this, because it can be easy to feel lonely and isolated, as if only we are going through this inner shift that needs to be made. It’s also important to acknowledge that we have our individual role to play – our authentic offering to the world that is aligned to our truth, not anyone else’s (this awareness should keep the ego in check and stop us feeling threatened by others).  

We are part of the collective and so any change or shift we experience will shift the collective consciousness too. This is exciting. It makes the need for inner work even more important, for we can literally shift the collective experience of life on Planet Earth. This is important to remember when we start to feel overwhelmed about the current state of the world affairs and wonder how we might ever be able to change it. Just do you work, make your changes and this will impact on the collective.

We’ve heard it a zillion times before, but the change has to begin with ourselves. We can faff around trying to change our outer world, but until we change the inner world then the change is only superficial. What to do?    

 The clarity may well come with this new moon. Opportunities to surrender may also arise. The weather is supporting this, so try and flow with it as the wind clears the cobwebs away, and the rain cleanses our energy. We may have a greater sense of our truth and how we might manifest this in the world, and we may also feel renewed gratitude.  Let’s see! 

Happy new moon!