For you beautiful ladies

I've a hard time dealing with the death of people before their time.

A few many years ago now a lovely lady and neighbour came to me for Reiki.  She had cancer from which she was recovering, only that it came back again and despite the Reiki and the other treatment she was receiving she still lost her fight for life and with that her teenage children lost a mother and her husband a wife.

Her passing had a huge impact on me.  She used to swim at Saints Bay with her friends and if you go there you will know that there is a rock to your left that looks like the hand of someone showing his or her fingers up to the world.  Before she got too sick to swim, my beautiful lady would swim with her friend in the early morning and sit and drink champagne and feel some sense of connection with that hand as she wanted to stick her fingers up to the world too.

So did I when she died and I must admit that every time we go to Saints - which funnily enough is a regular thing for us these days - I always think of her and I take great comfort in those finger rocks!  In any event after her passing, I took a break from channelling Reiki because I figured it didn't work anyhow right, because after all she died.

A few months later I received Reiki myself, from a lady who also channels from the other side.  And she channelled for me that day and I was told that a beautiful lady wanted to talk to me, to reassure me that the Reiki had helped her enormously, brought her a lot of comfort and that she was ok, safe on the other side and that I was to start practicing Reiki again. Mind blowing really, but so comforting,  I remember that experience like it was yesterday.  I still think of that lady reguallry and the impact she had had on my life.

It was a few years later and over some wine that I was having a deep conversation with our lodger at the time who was a palliative care nurse, and we were talking about healing and death and she reminded me, or educated me I guess, that healing does not necessarily mean getting better.  This was lost on me.  As a healer, I expected people to heal, make changes, live another way, learn lessons, get better, move on, do whatever it took to - essentially - LIVE. But alas here she was giving me a totally different perspective and while it comforted me a little it also horrified me that healing did not necessarily mean living happily and forever after and I had to take some time to process and accept this.

But it was hard for me.  And the passing of Sue most certainly pulled the rug from under my feet.

I met Sue in Goa when I attended a yoga retreat led by her and my most special yoga teacher, Emil.  While Emil led us through the more contemplative, philosophical and meditative part of the 2 week retreat, Sue led us through the asana and the kitan and the dancing.  She was full of life and confrontational with it too.  I'll never forget the skinny dipping night when she pulled off all her clothes at the outdoor pool and dared us to bare ourselves whole, us Brits and Swiss had more of a problem with this than the other Europeans and hid under water!

I invited her to Guernsey and she came and stayed and led a weekend intensive with lots of asana, devotional singing and dancing and I will always remember leaping around St Peter's hall and one of my fellow attendees having such sore calves from all the dancing that she couldn't attend the next morning, let alone the poor solitary man who decided the female vibe was too much for him. So too the deep conversations we had and the pouring of souls and the richness of her eyes and her vibrancy and inspiration for life.

Sue joined a few of us for a meal and the family for walks and happy times on the Sunday so that we all connected on some level and we vowed to stay in touch and she was keen to help with aretreat on Guernsey.  We stayed in contact following the weekend, but life shifted and mine was focused on conceiving Elijah and hers, I was later to discover, was focused on saving her own life. So actually the contact became silent and despite sharing the joy of Elijah's birth, I never heard a word back. I know now the reason for this because 10  months later later I heard the announcement of her passing.  Rug was pulled.

I could NOT get my head around the fact she had died.  She was Ewan's age, late 40s and vibrant and beautiful and a dedicated yogini who set up yoga on a shoe string and oozed beauty and loveliness and was just such a special alive person.  Dead.

I just could not process it. It really affected me. She led an ultra clean life, she practiced daily, it was her life.  She sang devotional chants in the most beautiful way, she was a yogini nomad travelling to share her joy, to die from stage 5 breast cancer, it made no sense.

I found a video of her at a cancer conference, in which she said that there was more at work than diet, or thinking or whatever it may be, that she had the healthiest lifestyle, that she did weeks of juicing and other alternative nutritional therapies, positive thinking, a lot of processing of the issues she had from her childhood and all sorts of things, and then chemo and then all sorts of other allopathic things and yet she was STILL was called to the other side.

It left me broken really. Not that this is about me.  But it blew my healing world to pieces and I felt sad that I never got to say goodbye and thank you to such a shining light. She was all I ever could imagine being, so dedicated to the practice, to the nomadic yogini world and to the children she helped. So now, here, Sue, thank you. I listen regularly to your kirtan CD and sometimes I sing and sometimes it reduces me to tears. 

I re-read a book recently by Caroline Myss called "Why People Don't Heal and How they Can", to remind me a little.  Because some people don't want to heal, I see this a lot, some people derive so much attention from their illness that they do not want to lose that attention by getting better ( we talk about this in Reiki 1).  So too others derive their whole identity from their sickness that they have not idea how or indeed who else to be, it is their story, but also the person they have chosen to be.  I am sure we all know one of each of these.

And then there are others, for whom healing means a gentle passing to the other side. They are no longer meant for this world. And Reiki and reflexology and massage and counselling and whatever else it may be, helps them to come to terms with their next step to the other world.

And I understand this now, as a healer, I get that healing does not mean necessarily getting better.  It can. And for many the healing journey is profound and awakening and life enhancing and indeed life prolonging. But for others, it is simply a comfort and a coming to terms with, and an acceptance of, their dying from this world and their transition into the next.

There should be some comfort from that recognition.

Yesterday a most beautiful lady passed on to the other side.  She was still so young and she leaves behind two daughters who are 7 and 3.  She attended a yoga retreat with me in Herm a few years ago now with her two friends so that united they were the 3 witches. It was here, on Herm, that she discovered the joy of Reiki and she went on to study to Master Level and during the course of her illness she embraced all alternative healing modalities and nutritional therapies.

It was her path I suppose, not that that concept will bring much comfort to her family and to the daughters who will grow up without their Mum. And I have to dig deep if I am honest to trust that this is how it is meant to be, that there is a reason for everything, and that all will be well in the end. But the practice assures me of this.  It does. We practice to put into practice moments like this.  Perhaps it s a cop out, but it eases the pain in my chest and calms my tears.

Earlier on today my Mum (as only Mum's can) told me that she had read a few of my blog postings and complained that I pontificate and preach a little. I don't mean to, I just love writing and I like to share.  But regardless, it is at times like this that I think, it is all relative anyway. Death has a habit of stripping back the layers so that we are raw and exposed. This is how it is. Life. Death. This is another wakeup call on the back of so many recently, to remind me that it is not about going out and getting wrecked, or living life precariously or dangerously, or on an edge, but to love. just love. Just love yourslef. Just love everyone.

No pontificating, merely an observation that perspectives shift.

Always. Ever. Is. Love.

Love, love, love.

F - love and peaceful passing beautiful lady - Namaste.

x

So it was both a shock and a comfort to hear her words.  That for some, like

Jill's chunky winter warming soup

Ingredients

• 1 onion finely chopped
• A mixture of veg to taste, chopped into pieces about the size of end of little finger.  We used celery, pepper, sweet potato, baby sweet corn, carrot, calabrese, courgette, aubergine, green beans and peas.  About a fistful of each.
• A jar of passata.  We used our own roasted and puréed tomatoes.
• 2 or 3 tins coconut milk
• 2 level teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 level teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 level teaspoon turmeric
• 2 level dessert spoons vegetable stock powder.
• Olive oil

Method

• Prepare vegetables.
• Mix spices with enough water to form a paste.
• Using a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, fry the onion over medium heat until it is translucent.  Clear space in middle of pan and add spice paste.  Fry for a few minutes, stirring frequently.  Addpassata, then coconut milk from 2 of the tins (wash each tin out with 2/3 water and add to pan).  Stir well to combine, then add vegetable stock powder and all vegetables.   Bring to the boil stirring frequently and then lower to a simmer for about 30 mins, depending on whether you like your vegetables to have a little 'bite' or not.
• If it seems too tomato'ey, add the 3rd can of coconut milk.
• I have not specified adding salt, as I try not to, but you can of course add if you like.

Enjoy x

Living with gratitude

So I had a few days this week where I was feeling really out of sorts, you know those days, when you just feel a little bit down and a little bit vulnerable and a little bit insecure. It was odd because it seemed to come from nowhere and I just felt really exhausted and all I craved was quiet space away from all the noise and hectic nature of daily life.

I haven't felt like this for a while so it threw me somewhat and by day 3 when I was still out of sorts, I had to really remind myself not to wallow in it (as I have had a habit of doing in the past) and to remember that at some point it would pass, "this too shall pass", and that it is all part of the bigger picture and a healing no doubt.

See the thing is when you live in this healing world and you are practicing yoga and channelling Reiki or whatever else it may be trying to help others and working on yourself in the process, well like anything really, you can't just always go, go, go.  There has to be some time and indeed space for integration, so that transformation and indeed healing can take place, so that the light can come in.  There has to be some down times, and in more ways than one, time for sleeping, and a time for being alone and a time for nurturing one's soul and listening.

And actually this is what I came to recognise.  That my soul was feeling constricted somehow, ready for a shift, for more light to come in, but my mind was holding on incredibly tight ("not too tight not too lose, find the middle way"), wanting things to move forward but trying to control the process and figure out how things may or may not turn out. On a rational level I know that this is such a waste of energy, and so silly, because it keeps you stuck and prevents you growing and stops the soul from expressing itself more fully, but there I was, mind consumed by thought, trying to create the next step but seeing only brick walls. And with that came the frustration and a sense of feeling a little sorry for myself. And the acute tiredness.

Usually I attend a yoga class on a Wednesday evening but I was feeling so tired that I debated a glass of wine instead...and then reminded myself that this wasn't going to help, so I got myself changed and ready for yoga instead.  Now usually I can just keep going, it is not always a good trait and has seen me suffering with glandular fever and adrenal fatigue in the past, and this has always been a very challenging habit to break, so it wasn't an easy decision to make...I love yoga, I love yoga classes and here I was with a free night and an opportunity to attend the class.  But for once, ah yes, amazing really, for once, I properly listened to my body and decided sleep was the only option to take.

But before I went to bed, I sat on the sofa and googled 'gratitude' as I have been meaning to write a little on this.  And I came across this fabulous site, which made me realise exactly what I was doing mentally...an old habit, a negative tendency then, in trying to change things externally, without realising that I need to change me, by letting go and letting grace in, trusting then, and patience some more.  A change in perception really. Stop trying to grasp and hold on so tightly, laughing and taking some much needed mental time out (no wonder the body gets so tired when we think too much!).  So perhaps it was no coincidence that I came across Marianne's blog, "The Meaning of my Life" where she writes:

"It is easy to feel grateful when everything is going well in your life.  What about when things are not going well?  When there are burdens, struggles, drama, it’s hard to feel grateful.  Do we wait until life gets better again or can we start where we are, in the midst of problems and challenges? I learned that when our outside circumstances are not changing, it’s time to go inside. Change begins with me.

What is gratitude? According to my old beat up Collins Paperback English Dictionary, the definition is, “a feeling of thankfulness”. I looked up “thankful” and it read “appreciation”. I looked up “appreciation” and it read “to value highly”.

That is exactly what I found out when I began to practice and develop the ability to feel grateful; I began “to value highly” my life and the lives of those around me. It pains me to admit it, but life’s challenges frustrated and depressed me. Most days were a struggle until I learned about the gifts of gratitude.

The gifts of gratitude are; increased self-esteem, happiness, enthusiasm, peace, and joy."

Marianne reminded me how powerful a gratitude practice can be. The five Reiki principles touch on gratitude and during a recent attunement session I asked the attendees what this meant to them, and I was strangely surprised to hear the differing levels of awareness so that for some gratitude meant being kind to others as away of expressing gratitude, while others were more inclined to acknowledge with gratitude the positive aspects to their lives, which is certainly more so how I have come to recognise it in my life, by practicing and developing the ability to feel grateful then.

Discovering the power of a gratitude practice was certainly life changing for me.  I mean I have always known of the word, but I never really incorporated it into my world.  For many years I didn't really feel there was much to be grateful for in my life as it just seemed dark and miserable and I was resentful of the way it was passing out...little did I realise that it was that exact thought process that was keeping me limited and trapped in a dark and miserable world, rather than the world itself.  We choose our thoughts after all.  We do have a choice.

It was after a Dru Yoga class that I attended in Australia many years ago now, that gratitude properly came into my life.  I was feeling down at the time as there was some shifting going on in my personal and family life and I was miserable and a little lonely and a little lacking in clarity. My wise white witch cousin has been emailing me and asked me to let her know of 5 positive things to happen to me that day - that same day I attended the one and only Dru yoga class I have ever attended and I was given a piece of card which read, "Gratitude turns what I have into enough and more!"  The Universe was clearly trying to shift my perspective!

I still have that piece of card, it sits on the bookshelf the yoga room and it has become like a mantra to me over the years.  I started working with it that very day, I wrote down and shared with my cousin the 5 positive things I recognised that day and days thereafter. I was surprised to find that it really did start to open up my world again asI began to recognise and appreciate the smaller things that we (or I then) can often overlook in searching for the perceived bigger and better things (an illusion in fact).  So that the sunset becomes brighter and more magnificent than it appeared previously, the stars more awe inspiring and the world becomes full of beauty and magic again.

And the other thing is that you start seeing beauty everywhere and make more of an effort to make the most of it, so you get up earlier to see the sunrise, or you make the effort to go and see the moon rise, and strangely or not so strangely stuff starts to make better sense in your life, there is more clarity, the perspective shifts.  Plus often you will find that new opportunities present themselves now that you have allowed a more creative and powerful energy into your life, grace then, to elevate your soul and allow it to shine beyond the confines of the planning and judging ego. As Lynn Robinson writes:

"Sometimes a subtle shift in perception about a difficulty  you are facing opens up a world of options that did not seem to exist previously.   I remember a time when my business had been really slow for a few months. I was getting a bit panicky about it and prayed for some way to turn this around. I decided to go out for a walk to see if I could get out of the depressed mood I was in. As I walked I thought about all the things I was grateful for in my life. As my mood began to lift and I felt more hopeful, marketing ideas for my business started to pop into my head. Before the end of the walk I had a plan of action".

And it is interesting because on Wednesday night I went to bed and wrote in my journal as I always do but I also made a list of 5 things I was grateful for that day and went to sleep earlier than I have done for a long time. And the next morning I felt different, my mood had lifted, sleep is so very healing, but so is just giving in. And I got to my mat and set myself up for one of Cyndi Lee's practices and was amazed at the coincidence of hearing her talking, which went a little like this:

"The best way to be safe I think actually, is to listen to your body and to listen to what they call your second brain, your gut. A lot of the times when we get in a situation where we feel vulnerable or insecure or emotionally exposes we retreat into hope and fear and we aren't able to act properly and this is because we have this habit of just responding to that exact moment when we had that feeling of insecurity and we forget the bigger picture, we forget about impermanence, we forget about the story".

This fascinated me, not least the timing, but that this teaching is so true. In times like this, when we feel vulnerable and insecure, we really must listen to our bodies because there is a reason that we feel like this and if we allow the body to guide us, well who knows what will happen next - there is a bigger picture to everything, we just have to get out of our own way and out of the heads.

And of course that day, Thursday, was strangely full of coincidences, a day of flowing and a day of lightness. New opportunities came in and so did new ideas. And this happened, not because there is anything special about me, far from it, I am as ordinary as the next, but simply because of the gratitude practice, and the sleep, grace was dancing again, my soul was free.

So next time you feel insecure or vulnerable or a little out of sorts, take some quiet time out, find some space, breathe, connect to the earth, and start a gratitude diary so that you write down 5 positive things you have noticed that day and you give thanks. And you get some sleep.  And you see what happens and acknowledge when things shift.

With gratitude for the teachings, the process, the journey and the challenges.

xx

Sponge practice

I always find it interesting how we can have such different perspectives of the same thing.  I have noticed this cropping up a bit in my life recently, a lesson I think in judging things, but that aside I have been fascinated by it.

For example the other day we were driving and we could notice something lying in the road ahead of us and I was absolutely convinced it was a dead seagull and had reacted as such so that already I was doing the "oh no, poor thing" and thinking about how Ewan would feel compelled to stop and move it to the side of the road, in respect really.  But alas when we got to said seagull, it was not a seagull at all but a plastic bad all squashed up. 

It really made me think how often we perceive things to be a certain way only to later realise that our perceptions were exactly that, perceptions, which will be subjective and different for everyone, reminding us that there is no one way.  There are different ways to see the same thing.  And from that comes a whole dialogue about judging.

But what interested me this week was how this showed up in class on Monday night.  It was a tough class I believe, in so much as I was fully energised and had practiced a relatively challenging Cyndi Lee practice that morning (following a recording of a class she has taught at a yoga festival in Vermont in the Spring so the students were all primed for such a class) and that had undoubtedly influenced my teaching that evening.

It seemed that it was a little bit of a marmite class.  You either loved it or you loathed it.  It was the same class for all those people, but perceptions where very different.  I think Cyndi would call it a "sponge class" and I like this analogy, because what it means is that the class wrings you like you wring a sponge, so that you can see what happens when you are squeezed (challenged then).

And all sorts of things happen.  Some thrive on a challenge, rise to the challenge in fact and find they can move their bodies and find new boundaries, experience new things, have positive realisations, connect more so with their breath, notice the limitations of the mind and let go of these and feel more empowered then in their practice and perhaps later in their life. 

Others, however, are all wrung out and do not like what they find - the inner judgements are highlighted, they feel rubbish about themselves and their bodies and they question what this yoga malarkey is all about, isn't it meant to make you feel better about yourself?  Isn't it all about calming the mind?

Well yes and no.  Ultimately, yes, yoga can help to still the mind, reduce suffering and enable us to experience more inner peace and harmony.  But this is not a constant.  how can you know light without knowing the dark, how can you know happiness without feeling sad, and how can you know peace without knowing suffering.

So some days out yoga practice challenges us.  It will - as this class showed - be different for everyone depending on what is going on in your life, in the mind and indeed the body, how you are feeling on any given day. Our yoga practice can show us, make us very aware then of our negative tendencies. 

Perhaps we find we judge ourselves constantly in life, feeling we are not good enough, this is wrong or that is wrong, we are never as perfect as everyone else feels.  Well certainly this will show up.  We will have days when we are very aware of this mental patterning.  And it will feel desperately uncomfortable.  Perhaps the class is physically demanding, or focuses on hips and our hips are tights, so we feel really rubbish about ourselves.  Well here is the opportunity to try and figure out what is underneath those negative tendencies, what is driving them, where is it, what is it?

And other days we are at one with ourselves, the practice is a joy, our body does what we want it to do and we love yoga.  We want to practice it all the time because it helps us feel better about ourselves. We feel we are healed, we want to share yoga with everyone, it is the way!!!  And this is great.  Until we have a sponge class.  And it all comes back again.  And we realise that we are still not healed, that stuff is still there. SIgh.  Will we ever accept ourselves as we are.

Well yes.  Over time. And with practice. The more we learn to recognise that it is just our thinking that is making us feel this way or that way, then the more we are able to change those thought patterns and the habits and the negative tendencies.  And this is yet another reason that I love yoga.  for it gives us just what we need, when we need it most. You just have to learn - as with life - to let it go.

I mean there is a whole other issue here about working say, on hips, or the heart and what that throws up for us, because we sit on a lot of emotions and they get stuck in our hips and our practice can start to bring this up and this can make us feel angry and frustrated and tearful and irritated, and this should be embraced for it means the stuff is coming up for us to acknowledge (not get involved with) and let go...gone, hoorah, lighter body, happier hips. 

The heart too of course, lots of stuff gets stuck here, so we do backbends and it makes us feel terrible vulnerable and sometimes sad and sometimes happy and sometimes terribly exposed and we feel all those emotions that we have been held there all this time, the old stuff, the new stuff, the broken hearts and all that pain. Sometimes it is terribly challenging and sometimes it is terribly enlightening. 

Whatever arises, try not to take it home with you, try not to react to it, try not to get attached to it, or run away from it.  Like a vinyasa, it arises, it abides and it dissolves.  As we will do one day. Sponge practices are great for recognising and experiencing this and who knows what will happen the more we work with this, become aware of this, noticing our automatic ways of reacting...

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers". M Scott Peck

Keep practising!

With gratitude x

.

"Ground me" by Emma

I asked for the carpet to be

pulled from beneath my

feet and

you arrived, you entered

my life and tore me apart piece by piece.

I dreamt, lived, loved and

drank your spirit, day

In day out, up, down

yes you span me around.

You dreamt, lived, loved and drank me

too. Bit by bit, piece by piece.

I am naked, born free.

God how I love the essence of

our beat. Our life. Our love.

Our world. Oh yes, you

pulled the carpet from beneath

my feet. Thank you.

2 June 2010

Samhain

Today is Samhain, which is rather exciting for those of us who follow the Celtic calendar as this is a time for new beginnings...the start of the Celtic New Year.  I know I shall be giving some thought to my intentions for the year ahead and giving thanks to the sun and the moon and the earth and the Divine Goddess. So happy Samhain everyone, enjoy the chaos!

Here is some further information about Samhain courtesy of Lady Sabrina in her book, "Exploring Wicca": "Samhain, which means, "end of the summer", is celebrated on October 31. It is the end of the agricultural season and the beginning of the Celtic year. Samhain is the festival of the dead. The day was Christianised when the day that follows was designated All Soul's Day or All Saints' Day. This is a time of chaos and the reversal of normal order; endings and beginnings occurring simultaneously.
For our ancestors, Samhain was when the majority of the herd were butchered, pro...viding food for the winter months. Salughter, barren earth, and decreasing daylight made the concept of death an ever-present reality. Because of this, Samhain has always been considered a time when the veil between the worlds was thin, a night of magick charms and divination, when the dead could be easily contacted.
On an individual basis, this is the time to rest and re-evaulate your life and goals. Now is when you want to get rid of any negativity or opposition that may surround your achievements or hinder future progress. Samhain should have seen the accomplishment of your desires, and now you need to stabilise and protect what you have gained. This is important because it is impossible to concentrate, let alone ut energy into new gols, if what you have is not secure."

With gratitude

x

It's funny how life works out

It is funny how life works out.  Recently I was practicing to one of Cyndi Lee’s yoga DVDS and heard her saying, “Can you be in your practice without wishing it was different, without losing awareness and drifting into the past or future?”  This resonated hugely with me and I started to repeat it to myself, almost as a mantra.

“Can you be in your practice without wishing it was different, without losing awareness and drifting into the past or the future “, can easily translate as, ‘can you be in your life without wishing it was different, without losing awareness and drifting into the past or the future?’ Little did I know at that time how much this sentiment would assist me in the challenges of life in the weeks ahead.

Of course I was already very well aware how much one’s awareness shifts from the present but I liked the way she put it. It never ceases to amaze me how much we reflect on the past, go over and over situations in our minds, imagining different scenarios, and wishing that if we had said this or had done that, then our present situation may be different, so that at times we almost torture ourselves, blaming ourselves for the way in which our past actions create our present reality…if only we had known…and over and over it we go...

And then we plan for the future, running over and over potential scenarios in our heads, scheduling, worrying, thinking, trying to second guess, what if, what if, what if, and stress ourselves out in the process, and get all anxious and worried so that sometimes things become overwhelming and we want to turn and run.  And then we create all this expectation, thinking about and imagining that wonderful night we have planned, or the trip away, or whatever it may be, and then we end up feeling disappointed and upset when things do not turn out the way we expect because life rarely works out that way…

And I am also very aware that beating ourselves up, or staying stuck in the past, or creating expectation, or living for the imagined future can only really lead to more disharmony and suffering, because it generally means we want things to be different somehow, that we are resisting our present reality or indeed have forgotten to be present at all. And the funny thing is, it is generally us (good old us) who creates this suffering. 

Frequently there is a tendency to want to blame someone else or the world or God or whatever it may be when things do not go our way, but often our suffering is caused by our thoughts and the way in which we engage with them and allow them to take control of us so that before we know it we have reacted to situations and events and fuelled our own habits and negative tendencies and played out our dramas and stories.

And I find it interesting how this shows up in our yoga practice.  Can we be in our practice without wishing it was different?  Can we be in Pigeon Pose for example, with our body feeling a little challenged, and just sit and breathe with our discomfort, without losing ourselves in the story, without wanting to get out of the pose, or leave the class or drifting off, without judging ourselves or the teacher or someone else in the class, or feeling sorry for ourselves, playing the victim role, or doing whatever it takes – on some level – to remove ourselves from our present experience?

Can we be in a forward fold and be aware of the sensation in the back of our body and the change in our breath as we fold in on ourselves without allowing the mind to drift so that perhaps we notice our toe nails need cutting and before we know it we are thinking about nail polish and booking appointments with beauty therapists and wondering what we will wear to a party on Saturday night, if only we had a party to attend, but if we did have a party to attend what we would eat and then we notice we are hungry and we think about the foods we may eat after the class and then we remember that we are on a diet and we start imagining how much our life will change, heck we may even be happy, when we can get into those size 10 jeans. It’s true isn’t it? It is amazing what happens, all those lives imagined in one single pose let alone a whole yoga class!

And so to our life, for the interesting thing is that what happens in our practice tends to show up in our life.  Or to put it another way, what happens in our life shows up on our mat.  So that we can begin to notice our habits, our negative tendencies then, our thoughts processes, the way we react to challenges in our practice and from there we can start to notice how these traits show up and influence our choices and the decisions we make in our life so that this shapes our experience of life; every cause has an effect.

For example in the past, when things got a little challenging in my life, I had this habit of running away, booking another trip and getting the heck out of there!  It showed up in my practice, in fact I noticed it there before I did in my life (in life everyone else noticed it but I was in denial!).  In Pigeon Pose then, which for me was always very challenging, I had this overwhelming sense that I had to run, get up and get out of the class and just go very far away.  Sitting with the sensation was incredibly painful, physically uncomfortable to a point (in the discomfort territory opposed to the- injure-oneself-territory, there is a huge difference), but painful and uncomfortable on many other levels too. 

On the times I sat there with it – on my yoga teacher training course for example we were encouraged to hold the pose for a significant length of time to really check in and see what would arise the more we stayed present to it, be curious to it then – a few tears would arise and some anger and frustration and agitation, not from physical pain as such, but just the awkwardness, the discomfort then, from the sickie “urghh” feeling deep within.

And from this experience I learned that when you stay with the sensation, when you go deep into it and breathe and stay present with it, well things start to shift (for me at least), so that you notice how everything does quite literally arise, abide and dissolve. And I noticed that the discomfort arose deep within my belly and that at its core, right at its very core, was fear, good old fear, false evidence appearing real, an illusion no less. And once I recognised the fear and stayed with it rather than running away from it, well it too dissolves and loses its power…

Of course life with a family now means that I cannot run away so easily when things get tough.  But that aside, over time I have worked with it, so that the pathways have shifted, the fear does not have quite the same hold.  I mean it arises still of course - I am human after all - and it is there when things get challenging and I feel I am out of my depth, but I try to catch myself and remind myself what is happening now – ah yes, fear arising, ok, let’s breathe and get back to the mat, to the ground and to the heart, and sit with it and allow it to dissolve, to pass, “this too shall pass”.

All of this, at its essence, is teaching us about retaining one’s equanimity, about staying grounded and sane and ordinary when all around you is chaos.  It is about letting go of the story lines and the drama and the victimhood, and about accepting things for what they truly are.  There is a lot of loving strength and power that comes from living one’s life in this way, from a place of love and understanding, rather than fear and drama.  And with practice it strengthens our faith in, and trust of, the process and knowingness that there is a time for everything, a bigger picture then.

So all this came to mind in good timing really, quite a coincidence then (not that there is such a thing!), for it is one thing to understand a concept, and quite another to put it into practice and “know” deep inside you what the words mean. So often in life, and more so these days I find, there is an awful amount of chatter, about what we should be doing to change the world, how we should be eating this, or thinking that, or buying this or watching that, but I really do wonder whether we would be better using our energy to turn inwards, to practice and to discover and realise our own truth and increase our own sense of equanimity for a more harmonious world.

So it follows that we experienced a failed IVF cycle.  It came as a little bit of a shock really as we had only known IVF to work, resulting in the healthy delivery of our son Elijah.  But alas clearly this time it was not meant to be, and with the shock came sadness for the imagined life that I had hoped to create. There were also tears and confusion and I could feel the old tendency for drama-when-crisis-occurs beginning to kick in (reach for the wine to numb the pain and be melodramatic type thing)…but it was there, that mantra, repeating itself in my head, “can you be with your practice without wanting it to be different”…could I be with my life without wanting it to be different, could I accept my present reality without drama and, more importantly, allowing myself to become a victim…

I took some quiet time that day to be with myself and took to my mat.  I gain a lot of comfort from practicing yoga, especially when things get tough, for it encourages me into my body and out of my head, so that you feel the stability of the earth beneath you and your heart beating in your chest and if you are lucky you gain some respite from the thoughts, or at least they don’t grip you so much. And then the angels, there is always so much comfort to be gained from communicating with them, to feel supported and to be reminded of the bigger picture.

And the timing this time, quite simply, was not right for us. There is a time for everything, you only have to observe nature to know this. And deep, deep down, I had known this before we even began the cycle, so absolutely no need for comfort or kind sentiments.  I had felt too much fear and doubt during the whole process and a lack of connection to the implanted blastocyst; there was some part of me resisting the process, sabotaging it actually, I was still not ready, not all the jigsaw pieces had fallen into place, quite different from the first experience where I was excited and had absolutely no doubt that it was the right time, all the signs were there and I felt it deep inside my heart.

Furthermore I was well aware before we even began the cycle, that it would be inevitable that at some point I would need to know what it felt like to experience a failed cycle.  A number of friends and students have also experienced failed cycles so it means that now I can be a more empathic and compassionate friend, teacher and healer plus it has also given me a much greater understanding of the dynamics of an IVF cycle and the manner in which it needs to be approached and felt on all levels (I could write for some length on this, but now is not the time).

It is perhaps also not surprising that after receiving our news and processing it that day and coming to a level of acceptance - helped enormously may I just add by the fact that we already have Elijah I do appreciate that - I came across this fabulous quote from one of my favourite authors, Stephen Cope, which reads, “Through practice, I've come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting to things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I'm suffering, I find this war with reality to be at the heart of the problem".

And this made me chuckle, because it is so very true. There is much relief and comfort in just accepting things the way they are, not blaming others or the world, not wanting things to be different, but just being ok, regardless of the challenges, with how things are. So it is not ideal, two months of pumping drugs into your system and not receiving the outcome you intended is of course heartbreaking, but what makes it worse, is the holding onto it, the not accepting, the drifting into the past or into the future, the ruminating and imagining, the blaming and disempowering yourself by becoming a victim, and forgetting the bigger picture.

It made me laugh a little more a few days later too for yet more opportunities presented themselves for me to put into practice my practice and the mantra I was repeating (you have to be careful with mantras it would seem!), so that our television broke (and even funnier, within minutes of me saying to Ewan that I wanted to reduce Elijah’s exposure to it) and then hours later our boiler broke so that it was cold showers all around (but oh so refreshing, I had forgotten!). Can you be with your life without wanting it to be different…a challenge yes, but doable too, humor helps a lot.

And so I am eternally grateful to my practice for all that it has given me and continue to give me in recognizing my tendencies and habits and helping me to stay sane and grounded and ordinary when chaos prevails.  I take great comfort in my practice for this, for the sense of equanimity it provides me, for the faith and for trusting in the process. This is the reason I take to my mat each day, however confronting and challenging that may be. And this is also the reason that I like to teach yoga and share my experiences with others because I sincerely and utterly believe in the practice and I am sincerely grateful to Cyndi Lee and Stephen Cope for sharing their practice and experience with me – their wisdom has been of great comfort and help to me.

It’s funny, because I wasn’t quite sure how to end this blog post, it has been an interesting time of it, I’ve learnt a lot, and then I read this posting from Rebekah Shaman this evening, which summed it up nicely: “Last night some deeply hidden fear and sadness came up (thank you Taurus full moon!!) As I acknowledged it for what it was and gave myself permission to just feel it, without judgement, shame and regret but with compassion and love, I felt my heart melting, dissolving the fear and sadness away and tears started to flow!

On the shamanic path we know that without fear, there can never be courage, without happiness, you can't know sadness. It’s the blessing in the burden and the burden in the blessing...when we recognize our shadow side and learn from our mistakes we begin consciously creating a different future...”God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”( Reinhold Niebuhr).

Freedom, a poem

Freedom...by Emma

The emptiness arose to

Break me free. It

Entered, it settled, it

Resonated around my

Being.

I drank the wine and

Tasted the smoke.

Come my beloved, hold me

High, lull me to sleep.

Gentle calmness and

Happy people sit.

My mind is cracked, you

Stand and hold me safe.

Bit by bit you fill the gaps,

Help me to feel life, no, to

Feel real, yes that’s it.

2 June 2010