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

A celebration of moving with lightness

We’re waxing down to the dark moon in a few day’s time and don’t I know it! I haven’t read too much about this new moon yet but what I did read confirmed to me that yes, this is a heavy one. In truth it feels like they’ve all been heavy this year, it is a heavy year, and from what I gather it’s not going to get any lighter just soon.

If ever we need to be reminded that we live in a world of uncertainty then this year proves it and as much as I might try to create some certainty in my life, arranging retreats and workshops in advance, I know that the arranging alone does not make them certain.

The practice, the yoga practice, the chanting practice, the reading of the ancient texts, the listening to the Sri Lankan monks, the Reiki, all of this, well it changes things. Everything changes. I was reading a lovely blog post about this yesterday and quoted from it in class. Even one yoga class will change us in some way, how can it not. But being changed is not easy because always we have to let go of our idea of how life should be lived and who we are, beyond the stories, narratives and titles we use to define ourselves.

I’ve not found that easy this year. I feel almost as if the roots have been lifted, my very foundations shaken as I have repeatedly questioned who I am and what exactly I’m practising and teaching, let alone how I’m living and how much of this is from my conditioning - most of it! On the one hand this is deeply liberating. but on the other it is very shaky and very unstable because I have to find a new way to be that might be more aligned, not just in terms of relationship with self but relationship with society too. The latter is almost trickier than the former.

I feel that each moon cycle has ramped this up a little, shone more lights into those places that I haven’t been able to see previously and there has been very little let up from one shift to another, one pattern showing up to another and all so much woven together.

There was a respite for a night spent on Sark, requested by my eldest for his birthday, his soul needing the peace as much as my own. It was magical as always, Sark air, the most incredible night sky and the rising half moon, cycling, no cars, peace, glorious peace and good friends to sit and chat with, a beach to ourselves to potter and swim. I died and went to heaven all in this lifetime.

There as a definite case of Sark blues returning back and into the thick of other people’s dramas and neuroses because we are all of us being squeezed.

I found my mat with renewed need today, and found my breath and a long yoga nidra. There was mediation and self Reiki later, and a need to come back to the texts, to something grounding. Then I thought maybe what I needed was to watch some yoga practised and I found this most beautiful video, which has warmed my heart and fed my soul and sorry if that sounds’s gooey but it was much needed and worked a treat - look at it, just BEAUTIFUL!!! It reminds me that it is worth it. The going against the flow, the doing things differently and all because my heart said so.

If your heart is saying so too then you’ll know that it’s not easy and that there are days when you just want to stay in bed and be done with it, when you might just throw your hands in the air and say that you’re done with it and join the treadmill again. But other days, when you are not so weary, when your children have slept and are not draining all your patience and energy and you are feeling inspired, that you don’t doubt it.

I don’t ever really doubt it, I just become tired by the challenges to almost help me deepen my faith in it. Then I’ll watch a video like that, or I’ll read this extract and I’ll feel strengthened by it, a bit like an angel card that says it exactly as you feel it, as if the universe really is able to commune with you, and it is, it is, it is. There is no such thing as a coincidence, the signs are everywhere, we’ve just got to open ourselves up to it:

“Freedom from the Known is one of Krishnamurti's most accessible works. Here, he reveals how we can free ourselves radically and immediately from the tyranny of the expected. By changing ourselves, we can alter the structure of society and our relationships. The vital need for change and the recognition of its very possibility form an essential part of this important book's message.”

I might just have stumbled across this book at just the right time, and what fascinates me the most is the fact I have finally stumbled across it, because Krishnamurti has been mentioned to me many times previously but all of a sudden tonight from nowhere, yet from a place of longing for something to shine a light, I find his name popping into my head and then I find my way to this book and this quote that means so much already. What force does that? Brings us to that which we need to connect? It’s not gravity and it’s not magnetism, so what is it, love? Divine? It’s amazing whatever it is.

So this is the video that I was watching that was like a light and gives me more strength to continue in the direction that my self practice has been taking me, with a little more lightness…and shining a light on those aspects of self that struggle with this, the linear, masculine and will based parts of me that have been so used to pushing my life forward over the years, of always trying my hardest to achieve come what may…come what may?! I’m pretty sure there’s a more gentle way. I see it in this lady’s practice and it inspires me on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvSBeujJKAo

Peace. That’s the word that keeps coming to me. Our inner peace. Reconciling all aspects of self, the right, the left, the active, the passive, the achiever and the complacent, the being in the middle of it all, the unknown and being OK with that. I’m pretty sure that the more lightness we can find in our movement on our mats, the less certain we are of form and more we allow the body it’s own beautiful expression, the more too our lives will be shaped by that lightness.

Enjoy the squeeze of the dark moon and her insights, and the new moon lightness that should follow…

xx

The yoga body?

“This yoga is not about gymnastics, contortionism or pushing, pulling and stretching the muscles. This yoga is about unsystematically undoing the tension in the body, so the body becomes freer and expresses an aliveness, clarity and beauty.” 

— Christine Borg

The moon, the moon, the moon…we have a super new moon on Friday and a whole heap of planetary stuff going on that is just adding to the general chaos of life lived at the moment.

The best thing I believe, would be for us all to retreat away for the rest of the month until the next full moon on October 31st has passed! Everyone is being squeezed a little, even us here on Guernsey who are fairly exempt from the covid and lockdown chaos seen elsewhere around the world.

I’ve talked to a few people who are all responsible for managing others and they all say it is a complete nightmare with anxiety and insecurity and depression running high and people sick and off work worrying about their potential covid symptoms and others just fussing, there’s a lot of fussing going on.

I’ve been questioning where yoga fits in all this because in theory it should have prepared us for this. Yoga teaches us how to be able to stay centred in the midst of uncertainty and wobbly times. It is a spiritual practice that helps to cease the fluctuations of the mind. Yet I have a sneaky feeling that much of the yoga that has been passed to us in the West is not really the yoga that the ancient rishis talked about and Patanjali codified in his Yoga Sutras.

I feel a bit peeved about this as many of you know, about the way yoga has become little more than an exercise class when it can be so much more than this if we allow it - if we allow ourselves to get out of our tiny little minds and see the world differently. The trouble is our education and society has conditioned us in such a way that it is difficult to see life differently, to let go of the rational mind as it has become and to access other parts of it that are not at all interested in what is right or wrong, but in something far more sacred and special and different altogether that cannot even be spoken of because it has a whole different language and vocabulary that is beyond our rational mind.

It’s even difficult to imagine this and I know that some who have come to class recently are challenged because the yoga that I practice and teach is one that is less driven or determined by the rational mind and therefore is not as rigid as it might once have been. Not to say that rational yoga is not without its benefits. It got me this far and I have definitely let go of many of the samskaras, the negative patterns and grooves in my mind that were there when I started, and I have managed to release the memory of trauma form my body so that i am able to enjoy greater intimacy in my relationships with others and with myself, and there has been a complete shift in the way I live my life.

But something still needed to change, and into my life this practice appeared that has been confronting and challenging and asks me to go deeper than I could have ever imagined and as difficult as this has been at times with the increased vulnerability and the need to let go of my notion of that which I thought was right (and many of my judgements along the way) there is something that keeps me attentive and engaged.

There have been a few times when I have thought, “to hell with it, what is this yoga anyway if it is not just postures for the sake of posture” and practiced in the old way and yet it feels so dead, so forced, so insincere and unkind to my body and to my soul. I lose my awareness drifting off, and while I might still rest at the end of the session, and there may be a sense of euphoria of moving energy and breath, the mind is not so free and calm and light, and the soul, hmm, the soul does not have as much expression, or room for expression as it might like.

Is this yoga?

It’s something I keep pondering on. We all have to start somewhere and anything that begins to tame the mind can only ever be a good thing. But when do we know that we need to move on? When do we know that we have gotten ourselves stuck? A student mentioned this week about taking a friend to class and knowing that he had a yoga body and that he would be good at getting into the advanced poses. Does that make him a yogi I wonder? If so are all the gymnasts in the world yogis?

I don’t think so. But I do believe that this is the illusion sold to the west and reinforced by all the many yoga images we are fed these days. Would a photo of someone attentively moving and connecting with that which cannot be named but is accessible though the body really help to sell anything? Maybe not, and yet to me it is the most beautiful thing, when you see someone moving in a way that encapsulates the ease of being in their own skin, or being in their own nature, of not denying this, of not pushing, pulling or forcing, of having no ambition beyond being their true self.

For the last few years I have been inspired by Christine Borg’s video called “Moving with Attention”, which is just beautiful and motivates me to practice in a way that allows more of my own nature, and to teach in a way that allows more of my student’s own nature too, that might make me appear to know very little, but allows me to access parts of the mind that at times makes me feel mad, but I know also makes me feel very alive and very much in my nature in a way that I haven’t felt in all my 17 years of daily yoga practice.

Just watch this, and right to the end too! http://www.christineborgyoga.com/practice/ It might just inspire you too!

This is what the moon is bringing up for me, this need to keep listening in and living from that space regardless of how difficult it can be because it means that life is often lived differently from the majority and that can trigger feelings of vulnerability and a little insecurity too, because there is nothing concrete to hold onto anymore…only more uncertainty in a life that is lived less and less in the right/wrong. Yet there is no other way, not when you have began and if madness and quirkiness is the result, then mad and quirky I shall become!

As Vanda Scaravelli said, ‘Yoga must not be practised to control the body: it is the opposite, it must bring freedom to the body, all the freedom it needs.’

Happy new moon!

Blame the moon!

This full moon has definitely been illuminating in many ways, shining a light into the shadows and, as always, bringing up fears and the opportunity to surrender to them. It has brought up a limiting belief too that has been awaiting release. 

I could feel it building all week, and with bad weather predicted and a Sark retreat to run I just had a feeling that the moon was going to make me face my fears around cancelling. I made extra time to meditate this week so that I could really feel into it and look at my fears and what underlaid them. I realised that there is only one way to manage a situation like this and it is to surrender to it, a little like when my waters broke six weeks early on the October full moon while leading a retreat on Herm and Eben arrived a few days later by Caesarean section. 

Me and retreats, we have a history, they provide a golden opportunity not only to me but to my fellow retreat goers too, to look at our fears and our patterns and potentially let them go. I don’t know that I’ve ever run a retreat that has been utterly painless or gone totally smoothly, they all bring with them a potential drama or issue, whether that be the weather, the boat, the hotel, the food and/or the student, there is always something that encourages me to surrender. This one was no different and I was remarkably calm when Sark Shipping finally told me they were cancelling (this after they had told virtually everyone else!) because I knew it was inevitable and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but surrender!   

A limiting belief around motherhood also came up too, and I have a feeling that this may have been in the field as I know I am not alone. I could feel this creeping in during the week too, but I wasn’t able to give voice to it or understand what was happening until the clarity came today with the moon. I stared to feel old feelings around lack of worth and this in relation to my role in the world. I began to doubt the work I do and my choice to let go of titles and patterns of over work and over achieving in my quest to live my dream of being a more present mother to my children.

I ignored this dream for many years through fear that it would never become a reality and I threw my creative energy into my work and making money, in the finance sector initially and then in the holistic realm as I wanted to share my passion for yoga and healing with others. I gave everything I had and fell into a pattern of over work and exhaustion, which had always been my way, as if proving my worth through working and earning money. 

Then the children finally came along and not without a bit of effort and yet still, with the first one, I continued to throw myself into my work because this is what I had been conditioned to do, by my education and by society if I hoped to be seen as a successful woman. Yet this made me ill. I was trying to be all things to all people and my eldest child was growing up without me being truly present, always in the office or running off to teach yoga.

When the second one came along, and this after a failed IVF round which made me appreciate the fragility of life a little more, I decided I wanted to step up as a mother, but even then the patterns had been set and I got dragged back into the office and working and trying to be all things until my body made me aware that this couldn’t continue, but I didn’t know how to change things.

Then life intervened and my eldest suffered with separation anxiety at school which presented me with little choice but to step up and be a much more present mother. It took a bit of getting used to because I hadn’t realised how much of my identity and worth was tied up in my role as a company secretary where I could command a fairly decent salary and have people take me (relatively) seriously.

It’s ironic in many respects because as a career girl I used to judge those mothers who chose to stay at home, and those who worked but whose priority was their children. I had been sold the idea that to be a successful woman in this day and age, I needed to take my work seriously and put the needs of the business before both my children’s needs and my needs but I slowly started to wake up to this and the illusion I had been sold.

I started to notice how no one questioned the way in which we women are expected to be all things, how women were actively encouraged to put their children into childcare so that they could carry on working, women forced to stop breastfeeding, not because they wanted to, but because it impractical to continue once they returned from maternity leave and this sometimes after a mere 3 months.

Understandably many women have no choice, they have mortgages and bills to pay and they need to work. This was one of the reasons that I felt the pressure to return to work 3 months after having my eldest, but actually we could have coped. The reason I returned was because I didn’t know that I had a choice, it was what we women did, we had children and then (on the whole) we returned to work. 

I needed to earn money for the sake of earning money, I needed a career for the sake of having a career. I did all this because everyone else was doing it and it was expected of me. I did it because I expected to keep doing it. What was the point in all my education and professional training if I just gave up and stayed at home with my children? It just wasn’t even something I seriously considered; I was sold the notion that I would go mad, become brain dead, if I just stayed at home with my children.

It’s sad really, that we women have been conditioned to believe that we don’t have a choice. Some may well not have a choice and I am sorry about that; sorry that we live in a society where so little value is placed on the role of the mother in raising her young children herself if she chooses. I appreciate that not everyone wants to be with their children, and that is their right and choice too, it’s hard work and I was grateful for the distraction of work on many occasions!

Usually I don’t question the choice I have since made, to give up title and accumulation of wealth in exchange for more time spent with my children, but clearly there is something unresolved within me about it for it to have come up on the moon. I knew it was around feelings of self-worth but it wasn’t until today that I realised that this was in relation to my role as mum.

We finally watched Social Dilemma last night and this helped me to see some of the light. I saw so clearly the dark side of capitalism and how much suffering it creates in its pursuit of the accumulation of wealth above all else. This is partly the reason the earth is in such a mess and humanity too, that we sell out on that which is important in our pursuit of happiness=wealth=success. 

We know on a very basic level that this is not true, that wealth does not create happiness, yet we spend our lives trying to accumulate it anyhow and always at a cost. We equate money to success. It is very difficult to value motherhood, how can we measure it? And it’s this that makes it so tricky, when we have grown up in a society which is always trying to evaluate everything and put it in its place, even my six year old is evaluated on the speed at which he can answer sums to 10; its ingrained from a very young age.

Today I see this pattern so clearly and the extent to which society has lost its way.  But I also know how difficult it is to make the change, to go against the flow of things because something inside you tells you that it is not the way for you, to follow like a sheep, but this brings up fear because the way you are choosing is not known, it is not certain, it has no definite outcome, it is of the heart and soul and of trusting in that and having faith. 

 Keeping our faith high, and trusting in that little voice inside is not easy. This moon has made that very clear. But there really is no other way, not really, not if we are trying to live with integrity. It was this that struck me the most watching Social Dilemma, the way in which those humane IT guys live with integrity, and this gives me hope for the future of humanity. It also made me realise how easy it is to buy into the illusion and how we have to be really mindful about this. 

It is easy to convince ourselves that our actions are OK because everyone else is doing them. I know I’ve been kidding myself about that and air travel for a while now, justifying it somehow and yet knowing that it is not a sustainable way to travel, and in conflict with my other efforts to live more sustainably and with respect for the planet. There are many ways that we kid ourselves and buy into the illusion that its all OK. 

Social media is a prime example of this. I have been going on about it for months now and you can just imagine my joy that others are now taking note as a result of Social Dilemma. No doubt many will watch it and know they need to do something, but will continue to bury their heads in the sand because they will continue to buy into the illusion that this is the way that the world works now, this is the way to stay connected, the way to run a business, and the way to be someone.

But hopefully if enough of us find a different way, let go of the need for titles and the notion of ‘being someone’ and the idea of the happiness=wealth=success paradigm then things might change more positively. As for the over work and over achieve pattern, I can see this still so clearly rooted in the fear of not being good enough, of not being enough, of not being useful to society and of not living a life of purpose. Yet what could be more fulfilling or give my life more purpose or be of more value for society than me nurturing, watching, listening to and meeting the needs of my children? Let alone me meeting my own needs, that I have recognised too. 

This one of meeting our genuine needs requires a paradigm shift, meeting the needs of our children and ourselves, of genuine connection and simple living. It’s back to basics, coming full circle, knowing where our food comes from and having time to prepare it into a nutritious meal for our family, of re-prioritising and realising what is important, of valuing motherhood, of taking responsibility for our physical, mental and emotional health and looking after ourselves and our planet and saying no to anything that compromises any of this, including our own fears.