November sea swimming for the soul
Oh my gosh, we are all going to wash away at this rate, how can there be so much rain?!
Having said that, wasn't Sunday lovely, such a novelty to have a windless and rainless day - well part of it in any event.
E and I managed a few swims I the sea this weekend too. Saturday after a massive clean of the house (me, not Ewan, nesting you see!) we went in at Petit Bot, which was not particularly enjoyable as the waves were quite high but it did make me feel more alive afterwards. Sadly the cleaning, well the hovering, has not helped my sacral iliac and spd issues, I am told it is a common problem for flexible pregnant yoga practitioners but did mean I was positively waddling when we went shopping later in the day and actually there were moments when I didn't feel I could walk much further. Amazing how the body does what it does to help prevent you doing yourself some serious damage. Needless to say Saturday evening was spent lying down and resting the joints.
Sunday I felt much better and so decided to have an active day - I am making the most of it while I can as the baby will be coming this week, by C-section, due to placenta previa. We went for a swim at Saints Bay this time, it was wonderful, high tide and the sun came out. Typically there was one other swimmer there when we arrived but then we did have the place to ourselves. I just love that you can do that over here, find a spot away from the rest of the world. It was cold and the stones underfoot certainly gave the feet a good massage!! Still I felt much more awake afterwards and set me up for the rest of the day.
I made the most of the calmer and drier weather and cleaned my car before going for a walk of sorts with Mum - certainly wasn't our usual pace as I had to waddle to keep my pelvis in check! E and I managed a swim at the Grande Mare a little later, now this really does help the back, you just have to avoid breast stroke. I finished off the day with pregnancy yoga on the ball with the lovely Anita Davies. Admittedly I wasn't able to do much, but all the breathing and relaxation certainly chilled me out for a good night's sleep ahead.
The most challenging aspect of the pregnancy now is the heart burn. This could be complicated by my anaemia and the need to take iron tablets and also the fact the baby is not able to engage so is still quite high and therefore pressing into my stomach but my gosh, I will be pleased to have my digestive system working properly again soon. Aside from that, I am going to miss my bump when the baby has been born. I am familiar with the bean's movements, there is a pattern to it, and it will feel weird to sit and work and not have him/her with me. Same with Yoga, I shall have to sit him/her in the room as he/she may miss the energy of it all as it has been such a part of him/her the last 9 months.
And on that note it is indeed that time of day. Time to go practice and pray for brighter skies later so that we can all enjoy some fresh air without getting soaking went in the process - as a gardener poor E has no choice but to be out there in it!! which reminds me, it is a full moon at the end of the week, so we could be having an interesting time ahead!
With much gratitude and love.
xxxx
This and that
So it seems that we have made some progress with Bazza cat. We let him out and he came back again! I was really chuffed. The funny thing is that now he is able to go out, he doesn't seem quite so bothered. We are not sure if that is due to the other cats in the area or the fact that now the opportunity is there, it is not such a big deal for him.
We had to take Flufster cat to the vet on Saturday. She developed a really dodgy eye throughout the day so we registered her at a vets (bearing in mind she moved in with us) and took her in. It turns out she was is actually a "he", which is kind of strange to get our head around as now we have two boy cats and I can't stop referring to Flufster as a she. Anyhow turns out she has a puncture wound from another cat on the side of her head. We shall never know the truth, whether it was Bazza or not, but all seems rather coincidental to me!!
So life really has been about the cats. And of course a little about the baby. Phew the baby must be getting rather squashed in there the poor little thing. Incredible to think that if everything was going to the natural plan then I could still have another 4 weeks to go, what with them often being late the first time around. Probably just as well I don't have that long to go, not quite sure how I would walk, let alone sleep. The only comfortable place would be the swimming pool where one feels weightless!!
Talking of swimming, we have been going swimming in the sea at the weekends. Last Sunday was particularly rough down at Petit Bot, but a fabulous way to wake up and feel alive. That is the bit I enjoy the most - certainly not the getting in the sea, but the feeling one gets afterwards. I love the fact that it is often just Ewan and I down there too, he thinks I am strange but I love the freedom that comes with having a beach to yourself and the opportunity to change without having to hide behind a towel. You and nature. Can't beat it.
It is rather strange not teaching, all of a sudden I have much more time on my hands, which has been welcomed, work has been particularly busy so it is lovely to come home and be able to go swimming or read or lie in front of the TV and watch the wonderful Downton Abbey! It is a novelty of course, but one I am embracing all the same.
So that is life for me, constantly on the change, or so it seems. Shame the weather seems stuck on rain, would love to see a few more of those crisp autumnal days.
Oh well, time to go practice...
xxx
Acceptance...just sit with it and see what happens!
There was an article in the Sunday Times Style magazine that caught my attention this week. It was entitled "Meditation Generation" and was suggesting that the "Millennials" are turning to meditation where Generation X turned to Yoga. I am not sure I totally agree with this as many people have been meditating for many years, just they don't make a song and dance about it as much as is made these days.
Still I like the opening quote, which reads, "The model and actress Daisy Lowe started practicing transcendental meditation earlier this year. "I do it morning and evening, for 20 minutes, wherever I am. On the bed or the sofa; in the garden with my little Maltese, Monty, in cars, on trains or planes; and once in my friend Joseph Reuben's dressing room".
"It is powerful at first", she says. "So many people in my life fell away". I assume she means flaky showbiz chums and she laughs. "Some of those went, but I had the worst break up with a really old friend. Then people I hadn't seen for years started coming back into my life - people who don't drain me, who I have a balanced relationship with",
Of course this resonates with me too. Beginning a meditation practice was indeed quite a profound experience in terms of how it does change things on the outside, the more you sit with things on the inside. Your energy changes and people do drop away, but more than that, it is that word balance that comes into play. Not least in terms of balanced relationships as mentioned above, but more so balance to one's life.
People frequently tell me they would like to start meditating and do I know of a class they can join. Well I do, but of course going to a class does not make "meditation" any less challenging. Like everything in life you need to practice and yes of course, you can encourage some discipline in your practice by attending a class, but really you just need to get on with it.
I didn't really start practicing meditation in earnest until over a year ago now. I wasn't ready really. I mean I did meditate, I used to attend a class and of course I have attended many Yoga retreats which encouraged daily meditation and I have gone through spells where I have listened to guided meditations or undertaken a 40 day kundalini meditation plan, but I hadn't committed to a regular practice.
That all changed last year where we were faced with fertility issues and most of the holistic material I read suggested incorporating a daily meditation practice into your life. So this is what I did. I started sitting for 20 minutes each morning watching my breath, "I am breathing in, I am breathing out" and trying to catch myself when my mind started wandering and labelling such wandering "thinking" for that is exactly what it is. You do it without judgement, there is nothing wrong with thinking, the challenge is to catch the fact you are doing it, "awakening" to it therefore, and with that awakening comes present moment awareness, and in theory the more you practice that, the more present to you are in day to day life.
Not only that of course, meditation comes with many positive benefits including the prevention, treatment or even cure for many things including stress, chronic pain, depression, backache, colds, weight loss, insomnia, arthritis, eczema, loneliness, anxiety and of course learning to accept and deal with what is happening in each moment and encouraging, therefore, an ability to go with the flow and allow stuff to wash over you so you can maintain greater peace of mind and wellbeing.
While I only sit for 20 minutes a day, it can still be a challenge, but the more you do it, the more you will find you miss it if you don't do it. Taking twenty minutes out to sit in silence is indeed a joy in what is often a noisy and frenetic world we live in these days. I have no doubt that the meditation has played a powerful role in helping me to deal with the challenges that this last year or so has brought to me.
At 20 weeks I was diagnosed with placenta praevia, which affects 1 in 200 women. Basically this means that the placenta sits low in the uterus, which is far from ideal, as it can block the baby's natural exit into the world and result in extreme blood loss for the woman, which could lead to death. There are 4 grades to placenta praevia depending on where the placenta is sitting and I have the most extreme, which I believe takes me to odds of 1 in 1,000.
This was not an easy diagnosis to accept initially. I had planned on a home birth so I could tap into the spiritual energy of the whole natural birthing experience from the peace and quiet of my own home. In fact I was very passionate about it and read many books in preparation. So discovering that I have no choice but to go to the other end of the birthing spectrum and have a C-section in a very medical environment was far from ideal.
Still, as is always the case when life throws such challenges to me, it encouraged yet more time on my mat, to meditate and practice Yoga and just be with what is. I turned to the iching too, a wonderful book that helps one to deal with life's changes, so that you can develop a deeper understanding of what is going on for you. Of course there were tears for the loss of the much longed for and envisioned birth, but also there was an acceptance of the present moment and the fact that this is how clearly how it is meant to be and with that, no doubt many benefits.
For example I quickly realised how judging I had been towards women who chose a more medical birthing route, and how limiting I had been in considering that one can only tap into the spiritual nature of childbirth from the comfort of one's own home. So if anything, the fact I have had to go through this process has been transforming on many levels. Not least in letting go and going with the flow, but also in terms of realising that every moment offers an opportunity for spiritual growth.
It sounds obvious I know. But I also now know it to be true. As is always the case at times like this, people and books come into your life to help to learn more about whatever it is you are going through. And I don't mean in my case, learning more about the condition, but more so about how to live more in touch with what is going on. In the past I would opt to run away from anything too painful to deal with in the moment, be that literally going away, or be that consuming that extra glass of wine to numb the pain. Being pregnant meant I could neither run away nor drown my sorrows, so that has been a hugely liberating experience, for it has proven to me that there is another way and that other way does involve just sitting with it and making peace on the inside.
It doesn't mean it is always easy, there have been days of self pity, but at the end of the day, we choose our experiences. And meditation, I believe, helps us to catch ourselves when we are choosing an experience that does not compliment our higher self, that does not do us any favours. Of course we are bound to stumble along the way and mistakes will be made, for how else do we learn and grow, but with practice and time, well, I don't know, stuff just changes, we transform. And then the challenge is stepping into that transformation and realising we are not the same person we were a few months earlier, if anything, we are becoming more and more true to ourselves as the "rubbish" drops away.
The whole pregnancy journey has been an incredibly humbling experience and I wouldn't change any aspect of it. So I have to have a C-section, but it could be worse, it can always be worse, and no doubt there is a bigger picture to all this that I am only now beginning to glimpse - I am a great believer that things happen for a reason.
It is like that wonderful quote from Jack Kornfield:
..." Occasionally we get to choose the cycles we work with, such as choosing to get married or beginning a career. At these times it is helpful to meditate, to reflect on which direction will bring us closer to our path with heart, which will offer the spiritual lesson that it is time for in our life. More often we don't get to choose. The great cycles of our life wash over us, presenting us with challenges and difficult rites of passage much bigger than our ideas of where we are going. Midlife crisis, threats of divorce, personal illness, sickness of our children, money problems, or just running yet again into our own insecurity or unfulfilled ambition can seem like difficult yet mundane parts of life to get over with so we can become peaceful and do our spiritual practice. But when we bring to them attention and respect, each of those tasks has a spiritual lesson in them. It may be a lesson of staying centred through great confusion, or a lesson of forbearance, developing a forgiving heart with someone who has caused us pain. It may be a lesson of acceptance or a lesson of courage, finding the strength of heart to stand our ground and live from our deepest values...Difficult cycles are everyone's practice".
Time and time again, if we are indeed following a spiritual path, then we will be given many opportunities for growth and transformation. You could say it is answered prayers, for prayers do get answered but perhaps just not in the way we expect. For example if I pray to be of service, to be a better Yoga teacher, then no doubt life will present me with many an opportunity to delve that little bit deeper, to develop my sense of compassion, or awareness of healing or perhaps my experience of certain situations so that I can have more empathy towards others. There is always work to be done. But the key perhaps is to just get on with living, to let go, let go and let go again, and remember to keep your feet on the ground, smile and laugh and have fun!! Oh and of course, sit and meditate a little every day if you can as you never know what may happen! Which leads me to a final quote from Jack Kornfield:
"Every spiritual life entails a succession of difficulties because every ordinary life also involves a succession of difficulties, what the Buddha described as the inevitable sufferings of existence. In a spiritually informed life, however, these inevitable difficulties can be the source of our awakening, of deepening wisdom, patience and compassion. Without this perspective, we simply bear our sufferings like an ox or a foot soldier under a heavy load. Like the young maiden in the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin" who is locked in a room of straw, we often do not realize that the straw all around us is gold in disguise. The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love".
It is all so true. Life is full of magic even in the midst of all the madness...or perhaps even more so in the midst of all the madness!
With gratitude.
xx
Cats: how they have changed my world!
I have always loved cats. My first cat was called P.C. because I was only little at the time and "puddy cat" was the best I could do so the folks shortened the name to P.C. he was a lovely grey moggie who I used to dress in my doll's clothes and push around in my doll's pram. When he got old and was unable to move so easily I made him a ramp so he could walk up onto my bed as jumping had become a little challenging for him. I was devastated when he had to out to sleep when I was about 13 years old. That is one of the only times I have ever seen my Dad cry for he loved that cat too.
With his passing the only way to console us was to invest in a new cat. We wanted another grey cat and the only way to guarantee one was to go pedigree. This was rather exciting for I had wanted a British Blue for some time. So Mum found a breeder in Jersey and we signed up for a kitten. The kitten was born on Christmas Day and while we had to wait a few months before it was able to come over to us in Guernsey, Dad and I went to Jersey twice to see her when she was little.
We had actually asked for a boy, but she turned out to be a girl and the breeder was quite keen to breed her. We sent her over to Jersey when she was of the right age but she went ballistic when the male cat was put into her cage. We regretted very much sending her over as that whole experience, not least the male cat, but also another inter-Island flight, didn't do much to help soothe her nerves. She was always a little bit highly strung but wonderful with the immediate family and we loved her very much. She was called Ashe and she was my best friend during my teen age years.
Going to University was upsetting for both of us. Mum had stripped my bed and she went into mourning thinking I had died. I missed her hugely while I was away and was always so excited to see her again when I came home in the holidays. And of course from then on, we always made sure to leave my bedding, and therefore my smell, in the house when I had gone. These days you can Skype your pets when you are at Uni, you can even put them on facebook and receive regular updates, how times have changed!!
When I was about 26 I bought a house with my brother and we moved in together leaving Ashe with my parents. Life was very different back then. I was a professional working my way up the career ladder in the fiduciary world. I smoked and drank wine regularly to ease the stress of it all (or so I thought, of course it is counter productive!). I spent most of my spare time playing sport. I was a county and regional netball player as well as playing local club. I also played club and Island level volleyball, as well as enjoying regular swimming and squash. Despite all this I was deeply insecure, hormonally imbalanced, and a bit of a lost soul.
It is difficult to remember the sequence of events but I took a sabbatical and went off travelling around the world when I was 27. I only lasted 5 months as I finally left a dark and destructive relationship while I was living and working in New Zealand and fled back home to Guernsey. That was a really dark time in my life and I lived with my parents for a few months as I tried to gain a grip on myself again. I started running with a friend (amazing how healing running can be and how it moves you literally from A to B in your life) and that was really a turning point, not least the opportunity to run away from what I had left behind, but also the time to think and reflect and work out all that anger and frustration, let alone the healing benefits of exercise and being outside in nature.
We ended up signing up for the London Marathon and so that winter was spent running! I had moved back into my house by then and met a wonderful man who was really my knight in shining armour and I shall always be indebted to him for his kindness. Work was going well, I had thrown myself into it, and when I was given a bonus I decided it was time to bring some cats into my life. Not sure why, I just had one of those feelings. So I researched and found a breeder in Kent and ordered myself two male British Blue kittens.
Now this was the strangest thing - or not, as these things are never as strange as you think - I decided to call them Alfie and Bertie after my grandfathers. My brother came with me to collect them from the airport, these two balls of grey fluff meowing in their box, and we discovered that their pedigree names were Alfius and Bertius. Now how weird is that! So they were meant to be, a gift from above there is no doubt.
One of them, Bertie, had a beard. I jest not. He had this pointy beard and as a result he was £50 cheaper than Alfie, who could have been a full on show cat as he is so typically "British Blue". They were just such lovely cats each with very different personalities. Bertie, our wizard cat, the one with the beard, was so friendly and giving and incredibly hapless too. It was nerve wracking at times, once he got his back paw caught in the top of the radiator and was hanging from it when I rescued him. Then another time he jumped into the bath by accident, full of water as it was. Another time he got a plastic bag caught around his head and was running around the house like a lunatic. He was definitely using up his 9 lives very quickly that first year!
Alfie on the other hand was a very nervous cat and I had to work really hard to try and get him to come out of his shell. He very much lived in the shadow of Bertie and was very selective about who he allowed to touch him, I guess he is shy really. Still, he was also lots of fun, just not quite as hapless as Bertie!!
There is no doubt those cats came into my life for a reason, into my brother's life too actually. Cats have this ability to help heal, not least by their very nature, but just stroking them can have such a calming effect and they can really touch the heart and reveal it again. Combined with all the running and the knight in shining armour, the guardian angels were indeed working hard using all these earth angels to move my life on, get me back on my real path. It is perhaps therefore, no surprise, that a few months after getting the cats and a few months after running the marathon, that my brother and I started attending Vanessa Lasenby's yoga classes. And as soon as we started we were both fairly hooked. Little did we know how much our lives were about to change.
It was about this time that I also discovered Carol Champion and nutrition, and Alyssa Burns-Hill and Reiki. The combined effect of good nutrition, Reiki sessions and the Yoga certainly helped to change my perspective on life(and heal) and within the year I had left my full time job, sold the house and bought a ticket to go - strangely as I didn't know it was such a Yoga mecca - to Byron Bay Australia, which I had visited about 5 years previously and felt drawn to visit again. My brother had also gone through some change and was also off travelling before moving to the UK to live with his girlfriend back then.
As for the cats, well my parents were happy to have them move in with them. So that is exactly what happened, the cats settled with Ashe (who sadly never quite got over having her house invaded by two younger male cats) and Ross and I went off travelling. Strangely, or not, as these things never are, within a month of us travelling and the day before Ross joined me in Byron Bay, Bertie was killed by a car in our quiet clos near Vazon. It was the most unfortunate of things because we had lived in town with the cats previously and the traffic there as far worse than the slow moving cars in ur clos, but it was obviously meant to be. My parents were devastated, my Dad particularly as he had established a relationship with Bertie at that stage and was there when it happened.
The folks felt really responsible but there really was no need. I have no doubt that that wonderfully giving and magical wizard cat came into our lives to move us from A to B. And here we were both of us now in Byron Bay and his work was done. of course we didn't realise back then how much Byron was going to shape our lives. For me it was the beginning of many trips to the town, undertaking my Yoga teacher training course as well as attending an enormous amount of classes and doing a brief apprenticeship of sorts with an experienced teacher based in the town. My brother also ended up doing his teaching training there and met his Australian girlfriend with whom he now has a little girl and they all live together just a little bit out of town. So of course my folks have now also travelled to Byron a number of times and E and I will no doubt continue to return over the years.
Back here in Guernsey the folks contacted the breeder and they bought the sister of Alfie and Bertie who the breeder had kept to breed. So when I returned to Guernsey from that first trip, I met Bumble Bee, the incredibly giving and happy go lucky sister of Alfie and Bertie. Alfie has changed over the years, adjusting to being the centre of attention after Bertie's demise and also terrorising his sister when he is bored! As for Bumble, she is such a cute cat, sadly has an eye problem and we have flown in a private plane to the UK with her to get her eye treated properly at a specialist cat eye clinic outside of London. The things we do for our pets!!!
Anyhow, over 3 years ago now I moved in with E in St Andrews leaving my cats with my parents - my parents are besotted and would be bereft without those cats! And not long after I moved in a black and white fluffy cat started coming into the house. E discouraged her initially but over time he got used to her coming in and started stroking her and making friends with her. And then to cut a long story short we started looking after her. She had lots of ticks and was scrawny and flea ridden, so we fed her, de-ticked her, de-flead her and de-worked her. Three years on and Flufster, as we call her, basically lives with us. She does have an owner, the son of one of our neighbours who no long lives at home, and over the years she has moved from house to house, so that she actually has 3 names - Rocco, Sweep and Flufster. rather funny really!! We live near the Baliff and rumour has it she has been caught sleeping on his bed!!
I love the Flufster cat, she is her own person, does her own thing, not scared of other cats and can be very giving. There is no doubt that she came into our lives for a reason as so much has changed during the last 3 years and E loves having animals back in his life after years without them. One should never underestimate the positive influence of pets in people's lives.
All was well and good, we were all settled, baby on the way, nice calm house, lovely. And then E's brother and sister-in-law moved to Australia with Specsavers about 3 weeks ago now for a 2 year contract, and prior to leaving they were desperate to find someone to take in their cat, a 6 year old Bengal cat called Bazza. We didn't like to think of him being left on his own to go feral so E agreed that we would take him in. Oh what a decision that was!
Bazza did not like moving in with us. He is half Asian leopard and a hunting cat and being locked in my Yoga room with all those crystals and incense was not doing it for him. Those first few days were awful. He could smell Flufster and he roared and hissed and was really rather scary. We let him into our main living space and on the occasions that Flufster was also there he became inconsolable so that E actually had to wear gloves to move him back into the Yoga room. Upon reflection the poor thing was super confused, he didn't know that his family had gone to live the other side of the world.
Five days into having him it was a full moon and he was beside himself to get out and I was beside myself to let him out as he was disrupting the whole calmness of the house so we put butter on his paws as you are told to do and let him into the garden. Big mistake! We didn't see him again for 5 days. He only managed to find his way back to his old house a good couple of miles away. How do cats do this, it is incredible!! We had a feeling that was where he was headed so we left some flyers around the area and a kind neighbour called to say how sorry they were to hear that he was missing and that they missed him for he kept the vermin population under control in the area. She seemed to think he would be better living feral in the area. In fact I had decided I also thought he would be better living feral in the area, especially if he was that territorial.
Still it was not meant and while he did go back to his old house and the new residents gave him some tuna, he didn't stick around and 5 days after leaving us E got a call from the animal shelter saying he had been found in Torteval, what a wander indeed!!! So E had to go and collect him and I came home that night almost a little disappointed to find him back in the Yoga room again! This time though, things would be different. We were no longer scared of him nor going to put up with his roaring and hissing, which is essentially a front for the fact that he is a bit of a scaredy cat underneath it all. He had to fit in with us and not us with him - good training for the change of parenthood perhaps!!
Nine days in and he is really getting quite irritated that he cannot go outside. But progress has been made, he purrs a lot and enjoys being stroked and fussed over. Both he and Flufster can now be in the same room, although she does tease him a little and he still hisses at her, and I wouldn't like to leave them alone unaccompanied just yet. He is really rather entertaining, although I must admit it took me a while to find the entertaining side to his actions last night.
I came home from an 8 hour day in the office and had half an hour before I had to head to teach again and was looking forward to sitting on my mat for 10 minutes. But alas it was not meant to be for Bazza had managed to push the wicker basket off the top of the washing machine, spilling its contents all over the floor, shredding a toilet roll, slicing open the bags of dried cat food and spreading their contents all over the floor. Sigh. I left E to clear it all up and went off to Yoga instead, which of course helped me to realise the funny side to it all by the time I returned home again!!
The animal shelter have told us we have to keep him in for 5 weeks. However I suspect he will have done quite a bit of claw related damage by then so we may have a bash this weekend and accompany him into the garden this time. I'll let you know how we get on!!
It does make me laugh how cats come in and out of our lives and what they bring to it with their timing. A year ago we were footloose and fancy free and now here we are, E and I, two cats and a baby on the way. Life will indeed never be the same again - and that is the point isn't it, change is always a good thing, even better when it happens and we just have to get on and deal with it.
Happy Halloween - the night of cats on broomsticks, happy flying this evening!
xxxxx
Necessary healing...of course it is all about the practice
"Many people first come to spiritual practice hoping to skip over their sorrows and wounds, the difficult areas of their lives. They hope to rise above them and enter a spiritual realm full of divine grace, free from all conflict. Some spiritual practices actually do encourage this and teach ways of accomplishing this through intense concentration and ardour that brings about states of rapture and peace. Some powerful yogic practices can transform the mind. While such practices have their value, an inevitable disappointment occurs when they end, for as soon as practitioners relax in their discipline, they again encounter all the unfinished business of the body and the heart that they had hoped to leave behind....True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds: our grief from the past, unfulfilled longing, the sorrow that we have stored up during the course of our lives. As Achaan Chah put it, "If you haven't cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun". This healing is necessary is we are to embody spiritual life lovingly and wisely. Unhealed pain and rage, unhealed traumas from childhood abuse or abandonment, become powerful unconscious forces in our lives. Until we are able to bring awareness and understanding to our old wounds, we will find ourselves repeating their patterns of unfulfilled desire, anger, and confusion over and over again" (Jack Kornfield).
I love what Jack Kornfield says, for it resonates so much with my own experience. I appreciate we are all different however and all have our own experiences, so sharing is as good as it gets. It really is all about the practice.
Many people have asked me lately if I am still practicing while pregnant, which I find an interesting question, for the fact I am pregnant should not really change anything, in so much of life is a practice, pregnancy is a practice, and yes, I still also get on my mat to practice. In fact pregnancy has provided a wonderful opportunity to learn so much more about the conditioning and patterns of one's life, of the need to let go to re-create and allow new energy into life, of patience, oh yes, lots of patience, and of course of one's attitude, armour and "reaction" to change. It is marvellous and I am grateful for each moment of this rather incredible journey and opportunity to work on myself and try and be a better person.
I only have a few weeks to go now, this is my last week of teaching for I am noticing that my energy levels are more challenged than normal and I am drawn more to retreating. Which is perhaps not surprising as Mercury is retrograde and we should all be retreating a little, spiritually at least, so we can allow the effects of the last few months sink in. This is certainly not a time for beginning new projects, instead we should take a back seat for a while, at least until 10th November when Mercury is no longer retrograde.
There are big storms on the way, yet another opportunity to stay centred as the storm blows off all that excess energy around us. No doubt it will create all sorts of confusion - as Mercury retrograde does - but perhaps we will feel much clearer when it has all passed. I, for one, am looking forward to pinecome hunting thereafter, should be quite a few fallen over the next few days, nothing quite like foraging for the winter fire, nature's gift from a stormy day.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the wind gets up the cat's tail. We have taken in a Bengal cat who is struggling to adjust to his new home and our existing cat (who is not the slightest bit perturbed by all the hissing and growling). But more on that another time.
With much gratitude...and happy practicing.
xxx