"Remember to Sing" by Sue Pendlebury

For those of you who love signing Bhajans (as we do on the Herm retreat for example) then I can highly recommend this beautiful CD called "Remember to Sing" from the wonderful Sue Pendlebury, who taught a yoga workshop on Guernsey a few years ago and sadly passed away last year at the age of 48. This CD is a collection of her singing Bhajans, making it incredibly easy for you to sign along. All profits go to the Sue Pendlebury Foundation http://www.suependleburyfoundation.org/

Blackberry, Apple & Thyme Jelly by Jill Després

My Mum is an amazing forager and maker of all things natural and yummy - the apples and thyme grow on the property and Dad and her picked a huge amount of blackberries around St Germain Nature Reserve...here is the recipe...

3lb blackberries - washed
1 1/2 lb Bramley apples - roughly chopped, core and all.  Don't peel
1 pint water
2 or 3 large sprigs of thyme

Put all above into pan, bring to boil and simmer for an hour.   Put into jelly bag suspended above a bowl and leave overnight.

Next day measure liquid and match with same amount of warmed sugar. Over medium heat ensure sugar has dissolved completely and then boil vigorously for about 10 minutes.  Test as for jam.   Once setting point is reached, test to see if the thyme flavour is to your taste, if not add thyme leaves to taste.

Sterilize jars and bottle as soon as possible as it sets really fast!

Good with pork, chicken, duck and turkey, but also works with lamb.  Keeps well, I am just finishing some I made in 2013 and it's fine.
 

The Journey by Mary Oliver

I read this poem at the recent "Dancing with the Divine" yoga session and I have been asked to share...it is beautiful...

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

The Darkness

I have been writing poetry on and off for a very long time, since my teenage years certainly and a little before then too.  It is nota process I can force, or decide to do. It just happens.  Generally during dark nights of the soul, or when I am experiencing some inner turmoil, or when I am inspired by some landscape or some energy, and the moment just takes me. 

I sometimes find words written on scrumpled pieces of paper in drawers long forgotten, and I wish I had dated them and made more sense of them at the time, jumbled as they are together now, words that flowed with wine, or with the mood of that time, that make sense in the darker moments of my life. We need the dark to find the light.

And sometimes it is in our darkest hours that the soul finds deeper expression.  Depression was my story for quite some time, many years it framed my life, my friend, who both enlightened me with the opportunity for moments of soulful connection and at times scared me with the depth of its dark despair. Spirit, heart and soul often depressed (body and mind too).  Depressed = made smaller and shrunk. But sometimes don't we have to shrink to expand again?

Moments of depression still arise.  They don't scare me now. I have made peace with them. But I do still have to catch myself and remind myself that this is part of the process of life.  My life. Our lives. For we must be in the dark to see the light. The soul is seeking further expression, that is all. Uncasing, uncasing, uncasing. And the heart, well the heart is healing to love more.

Here is a poem I wrote about those times:

There are cracks in my mind.

I can feel them.  Like paving slabs,

Drifting slowly apart.

My hopes and dreams slide down these cracks,

One

By

One.

In a steady stream,

Like water flowing over a

Ledge.

A waterfall in my head perhaps.

But there is no rainbow,

No sun and no place to call home.

And the only water (if there is any)

Tends to run endlessly down my cheeks.

I call it my pit of despair,

My darkness.

“The darkness has come again”.

It is a funny world, in my mind.

I hate it when the cracks appear.

x 

Powerful energies...

EVERYONE should read this...powerful energies of Equinox today, Mercury retrograde, a powerful blood full Aries moon on Monday and a Lunar Eclipse too. This really is a time of many endings and new beginnings...heart not head...and turn off the news, the media are dragging us all down with their negativity...remember that YOU need to be the change YOU want to see in the world...wake up, wake up, wake up, heart, heart, heart...Rebekah Shaman is spot on as always....THANK YOU Rebekah...http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bf3182281c10722c7eea99902&id=dabcc0002c&e=eae0fe6be6

The Autumnal Equinox and balance!

It is the Autumnal Equinox tomorrow on Wednesday (23rd) meaning that we have a balance of day and night (light and dark), one of only two times this happens in a year. So to celebrate and to help us ground with all the spacey/mental vata autumnal energy going on, we balanced and balanced and balanced at yoga last night. And I ran out of time to read a quote...

...This quote in fact from the favourite Cyndi Lee (and I am a teeny weeny bit excited about the fact I am on a workshop in London with her and Vicki soon, yey!)...

"Falling is simply part of the process of learning to balance. Every baby knows this. If they stopped trying every time they fell, none of us would be walking today. Being on balance and falling are two sides of the same coin. The way to experience a balanced life includes falling, dusting ourselves off, looking at what we learned from the experience, and getting back on the program. My teacher, Gehlek Rimpoche, explains it this way:

"How does spiritual development grow within a person? It is not going to suddenly hit you. It only works this way - you go and go and fall and get up and move and go and fall. Fall down on your face, get up, clean it up, remove, wash it, put your dust off, go and fall down. Doesn't matter, get up, go. Falling down doesn't matter, get up; fall down - that doesn't matter, get up again. Get up a hundred thousand times. That is what it is really. Nobody is perfect. Nobody can do it right from the beginning. Everybody, including Buddha, went that way: fall down, get up, fall down, get up. And that is what we should do. And if when fallen down twice or three times, you say, "Ah, forget about it," it is worse; that is really bad, very bad. That is shutting down your own development, totally shutting it, like shutting the door. Fall, get up, move, fall, get up, move! Everybody does, it doesn't matter, don't feel bad, but feel happy about it, go ahead. That is how people move, otherwise everybody should be Buddha from the beginning. No nobody is. So don't even worry when you fall down; it doesn't matter, but make sure you get up! That is very important. If you fall down and sit there, you remain there. Make sure you get up. That's what it is".

Enjoy falling, it's your most valuable tool for learning balancing poses. When you fall you learn about how much effort to use, how to stack your bones, how to use your visual focus, how to ride on the movement of your breath...The actual pose is not going to get you through your day but the composure, equanimity, balance, and patience that arises from standing on the threshold of every moment will".

So embrace the falling, the highs and lows, they are all part of the journey. And enjoy the Equinox and ground, ground, ground!

x

The Autumn cold(ness)

Urghh.  It is that time of year.  Autumn.  Which I love.  But the increasing cold mornings and cold evenings seems to brings colds with them.  It is not only that of course, the start of the school season and everyone returning to work and clubs means the germs are properly circulating!!  Plus the change in season lowers our immunity a little making us a little more susceptible.

I succumbed to the dreaded cold and I was reminded how tiresome, quite literally, this little virus can be.  Urghh.

But it comes as a warning and as a healing too.  A warning - or me at least - that I have been doing too much again.  And a healing - because I have been doing a few physical/emotional/mental/energetic healing sessions with a marvellous healer I have found - and how else is the body to heal I it is not given time to rest.  So the body invites in the cold virus, it is really rather clever.

Sleep is challenging or us, simply because we have a 22 month old who likes to wake throughout the night and longs to sleep with his arm around my neck, which is generally what happens at some point during the evening. And so this does challenge the "resting" aspect of life from time to time.

So the cold was a blessing in disguise really, for it meant I got to stay in bed and sleep on and off (as one does with a sleep depriving toddler) or a whole 12.5 hours.  Wow!  I haven't stayed in bed for that long for a t least 22 months and probably a long time prior to then too!!!  It did work some magic I have to say.

But what also helped, at least in dealing with the cold virus itself was elderberry extract.  I swear by this stuff.  It takes days off a cold.  It is completely natural and you can buy it from health stores and even Boots these days.  I believe that the elderberry manages to take the spiky bits off the cold virus so that the virus can no longer puncture the cells of the body.  or something like that.  Regardless, a day and a half on Sambucol and that horrible rawness of a cold has eased and you start to feel human again.  That and lots of water.

But it is the rest that really does it.  And for me it has come as a good reminder that things that have been a little out of balance in my life recently and with the Autumnal Equinox on its way - representing balance as the days and nights are of equal duration - I am encouraged to make some changes, and essentially to GROUND down.  Yes it is vata season in the Ayurvedic (science of life) calendar and this will affect all of us on some level.

I love what MindBodyGreen say about this:

Picture it: you sit on your mat, intent to get through your yoga practice, and before you get to your first downward dog, you're off -- chasing the dust bunnies from under the couch, glancing through the day's mail, feeding your cat -- indulging in distractions, seemingly unable to sit still.

Yep. It’s vata season. In ayurveda, sometimes referred to as a sister science to yoga, or the science of life, the elements of air and space combine to create vata. And in the ayurvedic calendar, autumn is when these elements elevate in our external environment (think wind, dryness, crackling leaves) and, as a result, in our minds and bodies as well.

Case in point: I was making a 4-hour drive home from wrapping up teaching a vata-pacifying yoga workshop in a nearby state. Filled with reflections of the workshop: the satisfied practitioners, the solid turnout, the joyful effort, I couldn’t settle into what had been a job well done.

This reflects a classic high-vata symptom, where we are virtually hovering above our physical bodies, too anxious, nervous or just plain flighty to connect to our ground of being, to our root. Even as I arrived at home, hoping to settle my nerves after vata-aggravating travel (it nearly always is), and in doing all I know how to do to settle those pesky air and space elements and bring them into balance, I still had two sleepless nights. What’s more, I felt the symptoms of a low-level panic attack as I tried to go about my days after returning. Sensations of hot/cold, pins and needles, and difficulty concentrating plagued me. The irony of these vata aggravations, brought on by an exertion to teach others how to guard against these very imbalances was not lost on me. Not that it made me feel any better.

Eventually the symptoms lessened. Nonetheless, as a person with a good deal of air and space in her constitution, these signs of fall are never far away for me, and a great many others, this time of year.

So what should we do at this time of year?  Well anything that helps to ground our energy so think grounding and nourishing soups, anything with root vegetables and squash, short grain brown rice and wholesome food - this is NOT the time for a raw food cleanse!!

We should try to engage in a grounding yoga practice with the Ujaii breath.  This is not the time for lots of kicking up and down into handstand or moving frenetically on our mats - this will just promote the frenetic vata imbalance instead.  Long slow movements and long held poses, fluidity and grace and balance.

Typically computers, talking on the phone and driving aggravate vata.  So at this time of year we really need to be mindful of how much we are doing of any of these and encouraging a routine, we need to think grounded and routine certainly helps us to ground.

As MindBodyGreen says:

"Without air and space in balance in our minds and bodies, spiritual practice is not effective. Vata allows for creativity, spontaneity and lightness. It gives us the space to allow everything to exist, to juggle what we have to with our modern lives and not go crazy doing it. We need air and space. But often this time of year, we need a little less of it so we don’t feel like we’re losing it along the way. Give yourself a break, most importantly. Finding balance with any of the elements is a moving target."

So I guess colds come to encourage us to take a break and to re-focus and try to find and indeed to create a little more balance in our lives. Don't forget the Sambucol!

x

Making the world a better place

On facebook I have been receiving postings from "Save the Children" promoting their Syrian refugee appeal and I looked at some of the comments and was horrified to find such hatred, fear and negativity.

So many of the people making comments are disgusted that "Save the Children" is raising funds for Syrian refugees - they feel the cash should be used for UK children and they are convinced that the majority are terrorists who are going to take over Europe.  The language they use is full of anger and hatred towards Muslims and the comments are just plain nasty.

It saddened me and left me feeling a little weary.  How on earth can people turn their back on those suffering just because of their nationality or religion.  And it was with some relief that I came across this quote from Louis Pasteur, "One does not ask of one who suffers: what is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me".

Do people really not realise that we are one?  That what I do affects you and what you do affects me.  The affect may be minimal but add up all the minimal affects and well...we have a world in trouble.  It reminds me a little of this fabulous quote, "When a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world it can cause a hurricane in another part of the world" (Author unknown).

The thing is we want a peaceful and happy world and yet so few of us are actually peaceful and happy within ourselves.  We can be our own worst enemy, we can be damn right nasty to ourselves at times what with the often endless berating and judging and considering we are just not good enough compared to others in this world.

And then what about in our relationships with those closest to us, with our friends and family members, and with those we interact regularly, our work colleagues and those we see in our daily lives. Are these relationships and interactions always peaceful and happy?  Or are they sometimes angry and tense, frustrated and fearful, irritated and volatile.

Because you see the thing is, it really has to start with us.  We have to wake up.  We hear it all the time at the moment huh, "being mindful", "a new consciousness", "being awake".  Well this is what it means.  Waking up, being aware of US, of out thoughts and our behaviour patterns and how these affect our interactions with others and the energy that puts out into the world.

It is one thing to sit on our cushion each day and meditate or to move on our mat practicing yoga asana and quite another to bring it into the real world.  This is where the practice really becomes the practice. In the real world.  With us. With how we are and what we put out into the world.  I mean how can we really hope for a peaceful and happy world, when we struggle to find peace and happiness in our own lives.

And it is very easy to drop into a blame game - it is easy to make our shortfalls and our unhappiness someone else's fault, those refugees or those terrorists or that person who looked at us that way, or that family member who didn't do or say what we wanted them to do or say, that work colleague who wasn't very pleasant to us and on it goes, but ultimately it is up to us to choose how we react to people and events in our life.  And we need to take responsibility for that.

Life is not always easy, there are challenges all over the place, and people can be nasty to us and we can feel wounded and hurt, but we really have to dig deep to love and forgive and let it go.  So easy to say I know.  It keeps appearing in my life too.  There are some people who really challenge me, their actions are not always pleasant and their interactions with me leave me feeling frustrated and exhausted and I know that I need to dig deep and learn to forgive and appreciate their Divine light within and love, love, love.  Sigh. 

And really this is the only way that the world is going to heal.  If we heal.  And there is a lot of darkness, I get that.  But that is the reason it is so important that we make ourselves light.  That we resonate love and compassion so that we can overcome all the anger and fear that is so very, very prevalent in our world at the moment.  We have to let go of the fear and forgive the darkness, forgive the fear and the darkness within us then. Honestly the more you can let go of, the more you can forgive within yourself, the lighter you will feel and indeed resonate and the lighter the world.  Seriously.

And this is where we come back to the need for us all to take responsibility for our SELVES.  Our soul. Our Divinity.  It is time to embrace our light and embrace the Divine in our lives. As Marion Woodman writes, "The point is that the loss of soul connection, loss of connection to our femininity, may be the real cause of our anguished condition. Living without our soul leaves an ache in our belly that nothing else can fill. When you connect more consciously with your soul, her wisdom and grace will help you with everything in your busy life. Soul wok isn't another "thing" to "do" in your life. It is your life".

Furthermore, as written by Sera Beak in her book, "Red Hot & Holy" (a fascinating read if you are into the Divine), "According to Woodman and other experts, our lack of soul connection is projected into the world around us. We can witness it in environmental devastation, rampant consumerism, political corruption, economic crisis, 50 percent divorce rate, body-image disorders, poverty, abuse, rape, and a host of other unhealthy epidemics we are currently facing. Sufi teacher Anat Aughan-Lee says, "What we deny ourselves we deny to all of life. In denying the feminine her sacral powers and purpose, we have impoverished life on personal and global levels in ways we do not understand".

The polls are in: if we dare to continue withour our souls, life as we know it will end. There is simply no more time for denial....In this day and age, more than any other time in history, we need to be consciously connecting with our soul as much as we need to be breathing air...As the world continues to change, she is our wisest adviser, our natural-born leader, communicating the best course of action for us and for this planet. She is our inner reality check. Learning to follow internal divine direction before external direction is not just an airy-fairy spiritual ideal; it directly affects human and planetary survival. It is the most practical and more compassionate thing we can do - and the most natural".

It really is time.  To listen. Deep. Within.

Time to be quiet.  To sit and to be still. To practice yoga and focus on your breath. To take time in nature and feel its energy. To get our feet on the earth. To open our hearts.  And to be fearless and courageous and have the strength, have the STRENGTH to LISTEN, to truly listen to what your soul is saying. Because sometimes that is the hardest part because quite often the soul is trying to tell us that we need to make changes.  And quite often we have to be prepared to face our SHADOW SIDE (more about this another time).

The Divine, the Divine, the Divine.

And we can talk about what we need to do.  And we can get all spiritual and all "love and light" and use a million superlatives in our dialogue. And we can read a zillion yoga and meditation books.  And we can wear Mala Beads and expensive yoga attire. But we need to do some work.  We need to incorporate all that we know to be true, our deepest truth as compassionate and loving human be-ings, our longings, into our life. 

I just love what Caroline Myss writes, "Talking about spiritual teachings, and reading about them, is not a substitute for living them on a daily basis in the arena of your life. You must be willing to incarnate your theology and illuminate the world around you with the power if your soul, a power that ironically may not even require your voice at times. Such power comes through even in silence. Your sole/soul requirement is to commit to being devoted to your inner authority - to the divine. That devotion will give you the will to follow through on all that you are guided to do, say, and become in this life."

So truly, it is time. It is time to turn off the TV, turn away from the fear that the media are creating and indeed promoting, and turn to the light instead.  YOUR inner LIGHT. Your SOUL. Forgive yourself where you need and forgive others too (it does not mean you condone their actions only that you no longer wish to carry that weight and anger and bitterness around with you anymore (after all, the only person you are harming is yourself)).

Try and love yourself a little bit more (not in the ego, "I am so wonderful look at me" way, just in the, "I accept myself just as I am" type way instead) and try to wake up to how you interact with others and the world around you. Are you doing your best to be kind, compassionate and loving? Are you living in alignment with your inner truth, or are you just doing a huge amount of talking?

Wake up. Being conscious. Yoga. Going within. It is here. Now. This moment. Love. Forgive. Compassion. Every single way of being you would like to see in the world you need to bring forth in YOU.

A HUGE THANK YOU to those who have supported the Save the Children Syrian refugee charity today by joining the fundraising yoga class and sharing your light and helping to raise the vibration of the world through your practice, opening your heart chakra and increasing your sense of love and compassion and the energy of love and compassion in the world - we have raised £516 thus far! 

Love xx