The snow moon squeeze!

The snow moon was healing and illuminating in its intensity. Phew. Not only was it difficult to sleep, but it flip-flopped us between extreme tiredness and hyper energy. It was helping to heal core beliefs if we allowed it and also shine a light into more personal and collective shadows but in quite a life changing way.

I had read that it coincided with us going through the photon belt, which fascinated me as I don’t know much about this. The first website I came to on a google search read this:

“Can you feel it? The pace of life has gotten so fast that you can barely keep up with it. It’s not that you are getting old, tired, or lazy. The worst possible thing you could do now is try and keep up with the hectic flow of life.

A better choice would be to simplify your life. Get a smaller home. Work close to home or, even better, work from home if you can. Trim the excess from your life the best that you can. If it isn’t essential to your life, then let it go for now. Make peace with yourself and let go of the inner conflict.

Resolve to love and care for yourself unconditionally. Earth has entered new territory. The old earth paradigm will no longer work; in fact, it hasn’t worked for a long time. Let go of worn-out traditions and cultural expectations. Go within and do what feels right for you, even if it goes against societal norms.”

It resonated! Yes! Admittedly we are all being forced to slow down, lockdown does that to you, but I resonated with the article in other ways. It was interesting timing too as I had just finished an email discussion with my cousin about the lessons we are being encouraged to learn about slowing down and appreciating that happiness cannot be bought and doesn’t come from controlling others either, contrary to what media may tell us.

A previous trauma was finally healed for me over this moon cycle and I cannot tell you the relief, it has been almost 20 years of trying to clear it from my body so that I am no longer holding an emotional resonance. I might be kidding myself, but I feel different, finally free and able to see the blessing in the curse. I’m pretty certain that every trauma brings with it a gift if we can heal ourselves and let go of our story around our wounding and victimhood. 

To do this, we need to release ourselves from any vested interest we may have in holding on to what has happened to us. We have to remember that it was in the past and the longer we hold onto it, the more we allow it to negatively impact on our present reality and our ability to move on in a lighter, freer and more compassionate way. I had been trying to let go, for a good while now, but there was a sticking point, as is often the case, but finally the vested interest dropped away – sometimes the pain of holding on is greater than the pain of letting go. 

When we finally recognise the gift and the new beginnings this brings, then we wonder why we held on for so long in the first place! Nature abhors a vacuum and we will know that we have created a vacuum when we feel stuck. The only choice then, other than sticking our head in the sand and pretending all is OK, when it clearly isn’t, is to do something about it, to have the courage to really go in and own it, truly own it, however uncomfortable the feeling. We can do it! The moon will help! It’s for the good of the collective!

There was more though, because the light was bright, especially the light flooding through our blinds that Thursday night! It illuminated for me a shadow around ‘agendas’. I started to see through some of the media and political crap that is based on agenda rather than truth or purity of heart. This made me curious, not least because I had been blinded to it previously (opposed to put my head in the sand and pretend it is not happening), and how much it was detrimentally affecting me.

 Here I continued to voice my concerns around the optional nature of ‘human rights’ in times of pandemic, quite in contrast to advice from the WHO or the UN. Let alone the uber conservative approach and proliferation of fear here on Guernsey about a virus that we are, one way or another, going to have to live with, if the fear and the loneliness, let alone the loss of mental and emotional wellbeing don’t kill us first, as has sadly been the reality for a few who chose to take their own lives locally, to say nothing of those who are dying while still living (I think of care homes…).

This wasn’t meant to be a rant, more so a sharing, because I know that others felt it too, that they could see more clearly the crap that we are fed. I read a letter someone had written to the local paper saying that he hadn’t wanted the vaccine but decided he needed to put his blind faith in the pharmaceutical companies and government for they surely must have his best interests at heart, I’m not a conspiracy theorist or antivax (I want to stress that) but I did think that man was a braver man than me, the only people I put my blind faith in are neither wealthy or powerful people seeking more wealth or power, but the Goddess, the angels and the divine!

 It made me laugh the coincidence of the timings, because as I was thinking about blogging about this, a soul friend sent me a copy of a blog post by Caitlin Johnstone, which validated exactly how I was feeling: “Just as clouds are always water droplets in the air no matter what shapes they take, news stories are only ever one dynamic playing out with different appearances. There is only ever one news story on any given day, and it is always the same news story: wealthy and powerful people seek more wealth and power, and narratives are spun to advance these agendas.”

This feeds in well with where the moon illuminations were taking me to a conversation I was having with E about agendas, yoga teachers agendas as much as anything else, but it got me thinking about my own agenda as a yoga teacher, because we can see clearly others’ agendas when we have recognised it in ourselves. I was questioning how much our motivation for what we do is based on what we might gain in terms  of fame and/or fortune, and in turn how much of what we do is then based on outcome.

I’ve been pondering this quite a bit recently, and the full moon helped me to come to terms with my own inadequacies in this regard, the times when my motivation for teaching has not been of pure heart, where I have been driven by the need for recognition, as if to validate my self-worth, to be someone, fame then, and at other times the draw of the fortune and being wealthy as if this might also prove my worth in the world and provide a sense of security that is otherwise lacking.

I’ve worked with both of these a lot this year as those of you who read this blog regularly will know so I have made progress in letting go of the insecurities and the inherent cultural, educational and societal conditioning, which might have previously driven me to seek fame and fortune in the first place. But still, I had to ask myself this full moon, what is my agenda for doing what I do, is it purely from a place of heart and joy? On the whole yes, but it is a conscious awareness, because it is very easily to be side tracked by the idea of fame and fortune along the way as it is sooo ingrained in us all.

But it’s more than that. It comes down to our dharma, and our sacred truth, and doing what we are here to do, whether we want to or not,  but because we recognsie that it is our duty. It’s one of the central messages of the Bhagavad Gita, that each and every one of us is born with this sacred duty that we must fulfil during this lifetime, whether that be being a warrior (like Ajuna in the Bhagavad Gita) or a mum or daughter etc. It’s the sacred duty that sustains the cosmos, society and individual, and helps us to recognise the blessing in the burden.

The other theme relevant here is the lesson about doing our duty but not being concerned with the results, in so much as the fruits of our actions are not for our enjoyment and even while working we should give up the pride of doership, and yet not get attached to inaction. Basically when we are focused purely on the job we are less distracted by the potential results – not attached to outcome! There is of course a spiritual nature to this too – that our actions are for the good of humanity, not for us individually. 

Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa were embodiments of this wisdom. They were both selfless in their service to mankind. It was not for their enjoyment that they acted and behaved the way that they did, but because of pure heart and a motivation to fulfil their duty in their lifetime with an awareness of the spiritual inherent within this. They did not seek validation of their efforts through fame or power, nor were they concerned about the value of their work and being recognised or praised for this. They valued what they did, because it came from God (however you define this) and their relationship with him/her directly.

It’s inspiring and also motivating, if that’s the right word, the idea that we may each of us live according to this wisdom, of doing what is ours to do and leaving the rest for those better placed to do it. To do without expectation of gain or of validation, but do for the sheer joy of doing, taking responsibility, living our duty. Unfortunately though, not all of humanity can be so selfless, and most are orientated towards outcome and fame and fortune being right up there under the illusion of success. 

Still it doesn’t matter what others do, it can only ever be about ourself, and settling more fully into our own truth and our own heart. It’s always easy to deceive ourselves, just as we are so easily deceived by others who we believe should have our best interests at heart. So we need to be careful, discerning, compassionate and gentle. The moon was helping us see more of this, and to be all these things. It’s still squeezing even now, like an aftershock, we may still feel agitated and aggrieved, until the energy settles again and we can find a new balance and a new way of being…if the photon belt theory is to be believed that we are ascending, those of us who want to that is, and others are opting out, which way will you go?

Bring Kālī into our lives: the power of change and time

There is no doubt that I lost some of my grounding last week, but I have found the earth again and with that I have felt drawn back to Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s work and to the Goddess. Not that they went anywhere, just that the calling has been greater this last few days.

I have it in my mind that over lockdown and through the Yoni Yoga classes, I would like to share more on the Daśa Mahāvidyās, the ten great wisdom Goddesses, albeit I hope we might run out of time and lockdown won’t last for ten whole weeks… but one can never be sure! If there’s one thing Covid has taught me, it is to go with the flow and stop trying to make life certain and known!

It’s Kālī who I am especially drawn towards. She is the Queen amongst the wisdom goddesses and contains the whole circle of siddhis, or magical powers, within the reaches of her power. Acquiring a siddhi is a threshold between worldly and transcendental awareness, as a junction between the two and as a passing through, it is a kind of initiation.

Uma proposes that a women may encounter eight female siddhis in her life including:

·      The onset of menstruation at menarche

·      Menstrual cycles

·      Female orgasm

·      Pregnancy

·      Miscarriage

·      Labour and birth

·      Lactation

·      Menopause

Because the physical siddhis are naturally arising physical experiences, it is important to understand the difference between merely experiencing their physiological aspects as bodily functions, and recognising these experiences as potential siddhis. It is conscious recognition that transforms the physiological and physical experience into a siddhi. 

As Dr Christiane Northrup writes, “Unconscious biological instinct and biological instinct that is honed and refined by consciousness and choice are two different things”. Thus if women are able to relate to their emotional, physical and physiological experience in any of the above events as siddhis, or as sources of insight, wisdom and opportunities for spiritual expansion, then they will need to approach them with conscious awareness. 

This leads me to Kālī, the greatest of all powers, whose powers of transformation, liberation and destruction both contain and permeate the whole of life. The literal meaning of Kālī is time and she teaches us that time is an inescapable power. As Uma writes:

“Kālī is also time and change from the perspective of cyclical knowledge; for the way that time is measured out in women’s lives is through the repetition of cycles, each one the same yet different from those before and afterwards. When we place this powerful goddess as the protective entity around the cycles of our lives, we embrace the inevitability of chance as a potential for great wisdom and understanding. Kālī in her closeness to death and darkness, shows us the necessity for self-acceptance and surrender. Her mahā-siddhi, or great power, is the power that comes with acceptance of change, and the willingness to let go in order to grow.”

I feel that this is pertinent for us all now. This is a great time for change and for letting go. We were given the opportunity here in Guernsey during the lockdown in 2020 and the opportunity has come again. I really do feel that there is a significant power around us right now, a true opportunity for wisdom, insight, spiritual growth and raising of consciousness, if we are able to surrender into all that life is giving us rather than turning away from it.

As a true pitta kapha, I have always struggled to let go of things, of past experiences and of believing that things have to be a certain way. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I have been drawn to Kālī these last few days, because I know that this is absolutely a time of change, of letting go of the picture we have in our heads of how we think it should be, and opening ourselves up to something that has yet to be lived and experienced.

Uma continues, “At its most profound level, Kālī’s siddhi empowers us to drop the limitations of who we think we are in order to encounter the limitless potential of what we can become. Kālī invites us to surrender completely any ideas that come from a desire to fix or define our sense of identity. To access the unlimited powers of her siddhi requires that we allow a part of us to die, the part that most strenuously asserts that it is the very source of our identity: our idea of who we are”.

The idea of identity is a challenging one for us women, because the notion of what it is to be a woman have been manipulated and changed by patriarchy. I joined a series of lectures on goddess led by a high priestess of Glastonbury and I was amazed to see the way in which the depiction of women changed when patriarchy came in. Prior to patriarchy, images of women were drawn and carved with full breasts, hips and thighs and a soft belly – women were powerful for they created new life and these child-bearing aspects of her were revered and celebrated. Many of the images did not show her face, for this was not deemed important. 

Then patriarchy came in and the image of women changed. Now she was sexualised with pert breasts, now covered, seductively, and longer thinner limbs, a face and hair, a clothed body with none of the fullness that was evident in the early goddesses. Her power was taken away. The maiden was objectified by men, menstruation was seen as dirty and birth kept hidden, the mother was no longer revered for bringing new life into this world. The wise crone was no longer celebrated either, her wisdom lost.  

Even now, we expand a huge amount of energy on attempting to fight off the signs of ageing. Still society celebrates the body and face of the maiden. Women have a hard time transitioning from maiden to mother, not least because of the demands on, and changes to her body, coupled with the overwhelming reality of life lived with a new baby and the constant sleep deprivation and need for lactation, but because of the loss of identity living as we do in a society that still only values the maiden and her youthful beauty. 

 As Uma writes, “Whilst it is deeply frightening to let go of the idea that we can always appear to be a certain way, with the passage of time it is absolutely inevitable that Kālī’s power needs to be faced. Such is her power, that if we choose not to engage with its effects through conscious acceptance and willingness to surrender, it will get to us in the end through suffering, grief, bitterness and regret. In relation to the cycles of a woman’s life, what Kali siddhi offers us is the immense power to recognise that the only constant is change itself. In our youth, our menstrual cycle teaches us this lesson over and over again, and the sooner we wake up to what we are to learn, the sooner we are able to embrace our limitless power and potential to live life in freedom”.

It’s fascinating to me, because the menstrual cycle prepares us for the changes ahead, and for what it means to be a cyclical woman living in touch with our cyclical nature, if we choose. We are the micro of the macro and we wax and wane as the moon does too. My boys have a bonkers barometer for me, I’m more bonkers at certain parts of the moon cycle apparently! I’m no doubt more bonkers at certain parts of my own cycle too, and in the moments when I am encouraged to transition from one way of being to another, because it is always messy!

My yoga teacher always says that yoga is teaching us to die well. By that she means that our practice can give us the opportunity to cultivate the ability to let go with ease and grace. Our every practice is an opportunity for this. I clung to my vinyasa practice for many years, and the transition, the letting go, to something kinder and gentler and compassionate, more aligned with who I wanted to be, was tricky for me. My identity was tied up in my yoga practice and on what I felt it was giving me physically. 

But the process taught me to trust the practice, that this takes us from one way of being to another if we allow it. But more often than not, we cling on through fear of something, of having to go deeper often, of having to be honest with ourselves to the extent that we can no longer ignore that inner voice that knows that there is more to us than we are allowing, another identity if we can only get out of our own way and die to the world as we know it.

Life supports this process too if we allow it. Those shifts from one way of being to another, of maiden to motherhood and on to wise crone, from menstruation to menopause.  And those cycles from one identity to another, of one way of expressing ourselves in the world to another. But all of this with conscious awareness, of being open to life as it unfolds moment to moment.  

I feel that lockdown here in Guernsey, the virus then, the corona-virus (corona = crown) is bringing with it an opportunity for significant change, of spiritual growth and a shift in individual and collective consciousness. Not only is the wheel turning again as we move into Imbolc and the stirrings of spring, but there is a turning into something wiser and deeper and more authentic and real if we allow it. 

This is a time of conscious acceptance and surrendering, of letting go of who we think we are, and who we think we have been, to become the person we are now meant to be instead. We might not know what that means and how that looks, but we can take comfort in knowing that it will only ever be for our highest good.

If this resonates with you on any level, then call Kālī into your life, but be prepared. She is a force to be reckoned with, a power like no other. She is heavy so that the weight of her power can spiral out to influence the movement of every cycle. She is also the power of time and change, these being the only true constants. So we embrace all of this; we are like stars in the night sky that appear to be fixed but are in fact wheeling around in a constant heavenly dance of shifts and change.

In our practice, we encourage change. We settle into the watery element of the pelvis, spiralling and moving, as we go with the flow in the outer world too. We find our roots, that which holds us steady, and we find our heart too, and open this to the world as if the one and only thing we might ever do with our one life is take the risk and love and create, over and over again. 

Trust the heavens and the earth on the new moon

Oh my goodness, I think I died and went to heaven this evening. I had this feeling we needed to come to Sark, no idea why, just a break, because I love it, because I needed to recharge, there was no reason really, just felt the pull.

Coincidentally, the lights were being turned on in the high street an hour or so after we arrived. Wow! There was quite a gathering, I didn’t realise there were so many people with children living on Sark, more so since the recent influx. The Sark School children treated us to some amazing singing, I was super impressed, well done you lot, and your teacher. Then Santa arrived and the lights were turned on. Another wow!!!

The lights are amazing!!! And overhead, the Sark skies, oh my goodness, we were so lucky after such a wet start to the morning, and here, the most incredible clear skies. Sark never lets us down, thank you!

I hadn’t anticipated the dark skies cycle ride home. I didn't think to pack a torch in my hand luggage, and my phone had run out of battery, so I attempted to cycle Eben and me home in the pitch black. Alas though I shouldn’t have been concerned, the message this new moon is bringing (an eclipse too, super potent and with the solstice soon and some planetary stuff going on) is to trust the earth beneath our feet and the heavens above.

This has been coming through all week, not least within me, but my students and clients too. Maybe it’s Covid, but I think Covid is a mere trigger for something much more ancient, an old pattern of humanity, our collective inability to trust that all our needs are met in each moment. That we don’t need to try to hold it all together ourselves, control outcomes, that we really can go with the flow of life, as nature does with such ease and grace.

I’ve seen this showing up in bodies all week, mine especially. I had no idea how much stress and anxiety I was holding deep within. I can definitely trace it back to childbirth, when I felt the earth drop away from me with a planned C-section due to full grace placenta previa with Elijah. I was extremely angry that I wasn’t being gifted the home birth that I dreamed, but I was also fully fearful, for the first time in a long time of what lay ahead.

This was not fear of motherhood, although if I had realised, I would have feared it, but more the actual birth and whether the surgery was going to go as planned. There was the fear that I might need a general anaesthetic and neither E or I would have been present to witness the birth. There was also the fear of a blood transfusion, which I knew I didn’t want, and having no choice due to the possibility of extensive blood loss.

I have never been as scared as I was waiting for E in that theatre room, almost willing him into the room, as validation that we would both get to witness the birth of our baby. I cannot tell you the relief when i did see him, it was indescribable after the weeks of stressing about it. This is me too, who should have known better, who should have trusted in the universe and remembered the Reiki principles, but I had fallen out with the universe by then, my faith had been tested and I hadn't risen to the challenge, I hadn't found the strength too go with the flow, not then.

Motherhood itself was a shock to the system. Literally. I was in shock and yet I tried to keep going, do what I’d always done, ensure some solidity, some continuity, some grounding to my world that had changed in ways I could not, ever, have imagined. I realise now that because it was so absolutely scary and demanding and all consuming, and me so selfish previously of my time and energy, that the change was so HUGE that I have not stopped running since.

I caught myself last week, breathing again, easily. Life has slowed down, both boys being cared for, me alone, and I realised that I can stop running now, that it has become manageable and less scary, joyful and pleasant instead. If you had asked me about that event year ago, I would have been too busy running, a 3 year old is the trickiest age for me, so it was a relief when our youngest made it to four a few months ago. Life has changed and there is more time and space and I have grown into motherhood, finally.

But it’s still in my body, the running, tight, in the fight/flight musculature, deep tension, so deep that it’s taken me seven years to find it, to get through the layers, to flow down enough to find the holding that accompanied that first caesarean section. A lot has happened during that time, three books have been written, a number of retreats have taken place, innumerable people have been assigned to reiki, our consciousness, collectively, has increased, life has changed. But there has still been this holding deep inside, drawing in more of the same; stress.

I write about it extensively in my new book, From Darkness Comes Light’ so I won’t repeat myself here, you’ll just have to wait. I can’t wait to finish editing it, I’m proud of it, excited to get it out there when the time is right. It’s madam dig deeper into my shadows, my skin drawing me in, my barrier between the inner and outer world highlighting my tension. Motherhood has a lot to answer for, and yet it is the greatest gift, not only bestowing us with daily mirrors, but making us look at our every core belief, our conditioning and our mental imprinting. It’s been an interesting seven years and only now, everything has a seven year cycle right, I’m opting through then other side,.

The universe has our back. We have our own back. Try and reflect back to what was happening for you seven years ago because I think the universe is bringing anything unresolved back up. Consider your connection to the earth, your deep trust in it (or lack of trust) and your connection to the heaven, your faith in some higher power, however you name it, and look at where you hold your tension, physical, mental and emotional.

The more I have practiced with an awareness of my spine, the more I do feel as if I have my own back. All of our roots have been shaken this year, all our core beliefs challenged. Once we were told we couldn’t work from home, couldn’t be trusted, now we are actively encouraged to work from home. Once we were watched 24/7, now we have greater freedom to pop to yoga classes during our working day, go sea swimming, sneak out, make up our hours later. The world kept spinning. Life continued. We’re starting to see how some of the stuff we’re been told, our conditioning, is a great big pile of poo. We’re reclaiming our power, step by step.

My whole world was turned on its head simply because I discovered a way to practice yoga that was actually kind to my body, that didn’t force it to be a certain way, that wasn’t exercising it for the sake of exercising it, that wasn't trying to change it’s fundamental nature. As someone who had suffered for years with an eating disorder, this was profound, I cried with the sheer relief that there was another way form the one I had been trained and had grown weary of. I was bored, the practice was no longer sustaining me. We have to evolve. Get out of our minds, out of our conditionings, we have to trust.

Which brings me back to Sark, because as I was cycling home in the pitch black I was wondering how we might make it home as I really couldn’t see anything ahead. And then, lo and behold, another cyclist (not daddy as it turned out) appeared from out of nowhere with lights, which saw me to the next section of path where a mobile scooter was travelling along with a whole heaps of lights so I could see a little further ahead, to the junction when daddy did finally appear!

It struck me as rather appropriate as I question trust and faith and the path. That the light appears to help us move along our path when we are on it, and we just have to trust in that and have faith. Sark is amazing, it really does allow us to go with the flow and notice the comfort that comes from that, when we truly let go. The lights are amazing if you happen to get a chance to visit (taken me 45 years though to make it for a pre-Christmas Sark!).

Enjoy the new moon if I don’t see you before then, it’s a potent one, so really pay attention to what it is trying to show you.

x

The Secret Kissing of the Sun and the Moon

There’s this wonderful Hang Massive song called ‘The Secret Kissing of the Sun and the Moon; and Got to experience this for myself on Sunday, such was that amazing full moon energy.

I just had this feeling I needed to head to Le Varde to sit with the ancients. My soul has been craving calm and never is it calmer than here, even Elijah felt it, there’s something incredibly incredible about that place, I sometimes wonder if I might be transported to another place in time and space in there, like a portal just awaiting the right alignment.

I also had this feeling that we needed to head to Fort Le Marchant. I’m pretty sure I must have headed out there at some point in my life but not consciously and I couldn’t get over how amazing it is out there and this on my doorstep, I pay a fortune to travel to other parts of the world to find this albeit there were lots of dog walkers and it’s the solitude I pay for in the Outer Hebrides etc.

We were out on our own at the Fort ever so briefly until we chanced upon another yoga teacher as it happens who was out there to enjoy sunset. Our timing was perfect and totally unintended, but as we left, we got to see the sun set to the west and the moon rise to the east, my goodness, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! The universe was abundant in all her glory and there too followed a skinny dip and howl in the dark sea lit gently by the light of the full moon above, this with a soul swim friend, thank you Jo.

Monday I awoke forgetting it was E’s birthday, and settled into my meditation before I remembered, whoops, so gave that up, there were presents to be opened, by the children obviously! Once that was completed though my pendulum called me to the Bach floral remedies and the Star of Bethlehem appeared, I don’t know that I’ve ever dowsed this one before and lo and behold brought with it the word ‘shock’. Of course!

This last week especially I have noticed a pattern in bodies I’ve been interacting, and souls too of course, this deep distrust in heaven and earth and here of course sitting in the centre is a deep shock, covid will have escalated these feelings, the shock of arriving on planet earth probably set the scene, the arrival into the bright lights of this world, unless you were fortunate to arrive in the dimmed lights of a maternity room or at home. Many more these days appear in theatre, bright lights and clinical introduction to planet earth, was that what was intended?!

I did think to myself that if it is true and Le Varde was a fertility chamber and with that a portal for new life to enter, then what a space! A calmness that you might not find in the hospital environment or in the stressful and chaotic nature of our lives lived these days. But I am reminded that we have a choice and it is up to us the choice we make, the thoughts we allow ourselves to think and the manner in which we relate to our environment, externally and internally, a reflection of each other perhaps. Something somewhere always has the possibility of shifting, of pausing so that the change can come in.

I was talking about this with my philosophy teacher yesterday and I am blown away by the Sutras and the manner in which they address all this! The first step is to become aware. To notice that which no longer serves us and at least then we get to choose. Until that point we have no idea that what we’re doing is even a choice, or that it is no longer serving us. I’ve always found yoga and Reiki so helpful in helping to show up the patterns so that we start to become aware of what might need to change.

Then we start to make a conscious decision to do something different, little steps, baby changes, one glass of wine less each night perhaps, chocolate only once a week, an earlier bedtime if we can manage it, an earlier start so we might incorporate a 5 minute mediation, committing to a yoga practice twice a week, little things that we can commit to, that we consciously decide to change and as we do we make space - inside and outside - for the mystery to weave her magic in our life.

That’s what the full moon revealed yesterday, more of my own patterns, around stress and rushing, around shock that I can continue to ignore and hope will go away, or I can take ownership and responsibility and change something, me, mainly! So I’m grateful to the moon and her illuminating more of where the path is right now, not where it’s going, because I’m becoming increasingly aware that we can really only be aligned with it in this moment…this moment right now. Let’s breathe to that!

Trust on the full moon

The message this full moon is trust.

I’ve worked with a number of people this week and there has been a common theme, this I feel in my own body too, a deep distrust, in the earth below and heaven above, not consciously, but from a very old place, past life, and from this life mental imprinting, which causes us to hold on extremely tightly, especially around the centre of the spine and in our solar plexus.

It’s an old pattern for us all, eons ago, and the full moon is bringing into the collective consciousness. I’m pretty sure you’ll be feeling it too.

This isn’t about letting go for the sake of letting go, this is about deeply trusting instead and in that deep deep part within yourself. This is knowing that even in the darkness and most challenging moments of your life that your soul has your back and that life can still be meaningful and hopeful. That actually it is sometimes those darkness moments, which will bring the most meaning and sense of hopefulness into your life, give life greater meaning.

So we trust in that and we start to notice the mental imprinting which conflicts with that, the need to control and make certain, to plan and organise and try to mitigate (and litigate) all risk from our lives. Covid taught us that. We can’t! It’s not easy, it’s one of the most challenging spiritual lessons, to overcome our deep distrust and need to control outcome and brings us right back to duality and to the mind and the manner in which this is really our problem!

It starts by noticing and the body provides us with this opportunity, in our yoga practice to notice where we are gripping and holding on for dear life, in all postures, not just those that take us out of our comfort zone, and the way we are challenged when presented with something new, a different movement pattern or way of practising a posture, and of the way we cling to notions of principles. Do not be fooled! The more you cling on to what you’ve been told, to an idea or a notion of something that’s concrete, absolute and somehow certain, the greater the fall when you realise that contain the soul.

It takes us to the path. I’ve finished writing my book about depression and I write in there about how the ‘sod it’ moments of my life have often been the most fruitful, not the carefully planned ones, not the arranged ones, but the ones that happen when I let go into spontaneity, and when I am therefore least expecting it, something new will pop in to lead me down a different path that I had literally not imagined.

This quite in contrast to the vision board and moon manifesting that I have done in the past, and which exerts a certain amount of will and a lot of energy to create an outcome. This approach started to settle uncomfortably with me, because even though I might have felt it came form heart, there was a lot of pushing and expectation of outcome, which took up a lot of headspace.

My yoga teacher just this week commented that if you think you’re following your path, you’re probably following someone else’s instead, because you’re path reveals itself to you moment to moment. This morning I stumbled across a quote, “trust in the path your soul is leading you to”, which just sums it up beautifully for me. It helps to turn it all on its head, so it is not about directing the path but about allowing the path to unfold moment to moment as your soul reveals itself to you.

This helps us get out of our head and out of our need to control and asks us to go deeper, to come from a different place entirely, not just of heart but of deep trust…of root and crown and everything in-between. There is a point where they meet, where the path reveals itself, in the down and the up and the up and down and it is that place that we let go into, the deep mystery and the deep unknown. This is where we find what we have been seeking and it will only reveal itself to us when we go within.

As Rumi wrote:

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about."

There is no language for what we might find, no need for adornments, no need for anything other than courage and vulnerability and an openness to all that might be revealed when we find that place beyond the limitations of the mind.

Trust. Undoing. Releasing.

Enjoy the full moon!

xx