Uncertainty in practice!

Two hours after publishing my previous blog post about living with uncertainty, I almost laughed at myself as there I was, on the Sark Belle, a river boat, the less sea worthy of all the Sark boats, heading to Sark from Guernsey in rough seas. All the other sailings that day had been cancelled but I did not know this, just as I did not know that the sea had been described as ‘lumpy’.

It was a surprise to me actually, that before we had even left Guernsey harbour the boat was already lolling. I usually like this boat, I always favour it over the other boats as it brings with it happy memories of calm summer crossings to Sark, and especially to the Sark folk festival, one of the highlights of the year in years gone by.

Yet here I was today, oblivious to what lay ahead, as the boat lolled from side to side hit by southerly waves, as we entered beyond what was actually the safety of the harbour, even though that didn’t feel exactly calm. Before too long I had both boys sitting on me, “a leg each mummy”, was the agreement as usual, not particularly comfortable, bony bums sitting on both thighs, but it’s what we do, to spare the arguments.

Not long after then I was gripping both of them into me as the boat appeared to lurch up and down and side to side, the bottom of the boat crashing back down each time a wave had passed. I sunk my head between them and gripped in closer, wondering how I had missed the weather forecast, as I glimpsed the a younger lady ahead and to my left side burst into tears and her boyfriend wrap his arms around her.

It got worse. The boat was really at the mercy of the waves and we were at the mercy of them too. My whole body was locked in stress and I noticed that my right foot was attempting to find a solid place to rest itself, to push into something, to find some certainty in my world that was now desperately uncertain.

I noticed what I was doing and I almost laughed out loud as I considered how funny the universe can be allowing us to put into practice that which we teach. How comfortable was I living on the edge, in an uncertain world as I perceived it in that moment? I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very comfortable at all. I was totally out of my depth, desperate for some certainty that all would be well in the end.

The boys hugged closer into me and into each other and I considered my fear. What was my fear in that moment? It wasn’t difficult to work it out, I had already run through in my mind where I might find an exit from the boat, if it rolled onto its side and overturned, and yet I had also considered that the whole experience would be so shocking and disorientating that I wouldn’t have any control over an outcome of survival however much I planned for it.

It struck me that my greatest fear then was not losing my life, although this was a consideration, but my sons’ lives. I wanted to protect them and keep them safe. It struck me then that this has been the source of much of the underlying tension I have felt these last few years. It is not so much the tension between all the different aspects of self, or the tension of the pace of the outside world with all its perceived expectations, but the tension that arises with trying to keep children safe, of the lack of trust in the inherent safeness of life on planet earth. 

In that moment, I did not feel safe. I was out of my comfort zone and was very aware of this. I know that yoga is all about living with uncertainty and I moved my awareness to my breath hoping that this would calm me and it did. I remembered Reiki and put my family and the whole boat in a Reiki bubble. I also prayed to the angels and asked the boys to ask the magic fairies to look after us, their equivalent. This all helped.

Yet, I was very aware that I needed to let go, and allow myself to be moved by the boat, by its rhythm as it navigated it’s path through the rough seas, and trust in that and in the captain. I was aware of other people on the boat, a group of guys ahead of me (beyond the lady who vomited) talking avidly, seemingly unaware of the risks that the rest of us had perceived, our concerns about seasickness and the boat rolling over. This made me think how much of our lives are lived in our heads, through our mind’s perception of reality, and how small the gap between truth and imagination.

To me that was one of the toughest boat journeys I have ever taken, that is my truth and my reality, yet to those guys (hardened sailors as it turns out) it was no big deal, and all the risks I perceived, were stuff of my imagination, not real, there was no truth in them, their mood remained unaffected, high spirited, just another boat journey. I was high spirited when the seas calmed as we got closer to Sark, and as I recognised how much my fears were imagined, and how much they are linked to my boys and not being able to – always – ease their suffering or keep them safe. 

Yet really we were safe. The universe has our back. It is our mind that doesn’t always recognise this. Life lived with uncertainty is not easy, but I see how it can make us much more conscious of the moment, come what may. And really the lesson, as always, is about perception and shifting to a more positive mindset. This too is something I am exploring at the moment, so more on this another time. We made it, and with more lessons learned before having set foot on beautiful Sark!

Dancing on the edge of certainty

I chanced upon this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Angels’; it was appropriate timing as I question edges and margins and lack of certainty, all the places that my practice currently takes me. Here it is:

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of 
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of 
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything. 
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not 
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not 
entirely anyway, other people’s 
heads. 

I’ll just leave you with this. 
I don’t care how many angels can 
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance. 

Life is a dance, and never more so than when you invite the angels into it. They are such a part of my life, that I forget that for other people this might seem rather strange. I love sharing angel cards with people especially for the first time and seeing their eyes open wide with the surprise at the angel card that has presented itself to them - always with an appropriate message, something that means something to them, and often fits in witty the context of a treatment or healing session.

Life is uncertain, and never have we been more aware of this than recently, with Covid. Yet still we try and find something concrete, something to hold on to, something to make us feel safe, be that our jobs or a relationship or possessions, even if we have outgrown them. We will hold on to the certainty of a yoga practice too, the familiarity of a sequence that we have practiced many times previously, and a style that we can almost do in our sleep, because it is so familiar to us and to our bodies.

Yet I have become increasingly aware, through the paradox and contradiction of the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga, that certainty in our practice can lead us down the superficial path of least resistance, the path well trodden, and not necessarily in our lives, but in our minds. It is easy to zone out of the body during a fast-paced asana practice, trying to keep up with the flow, trying to move the body and breathe, and put our bodies into the positions asked of it, always trying to further our practice, make our bodies bendier come what may.

I’ve noticed that we can stuck in movement patterns, feeding into the superficial muscles, allowing them to take over, and in the process denying the wisdom of the deeper muscles. So too in our life, we can lead very superficial lives, only allowing ourselves to delve so far into what may offer greater depth, but often this lacks certainty, it’s on an edge, a margin, a path not yet travelled, not yet lived, there’s resistance, and this send us straight back to where we were previously, to somewhere safe.

It takes courage to explore the backwater, to go deeper, to delve into the shadows, to let go of that which inhibits our growth, on the surface, to explore the edge of the inner landscape, to consider a life lived on the margins, neither here nor there, beyond definition, for it is a life lived with a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, not quite sure how it might unfold, not striving to be anywhere in particular, allowing the body to breathe rather than imposing the breath on it, and not trying to control an outcome, come what may, deeper truth and wisdom, compassion, forgiveness and the self, greater connection to the heart.

Our fears will keep showing up, reminding us of the reason we were searching for certainty in the first place, to conform, to feel secure, because everyone does that, and sometimes it’s difficult to live a life that goes against the flow, that tries to find a different path, a new way. Yet once touched, we know that we have to keep going, that we cannot stop, that we cannot go back, that we can no longer compromise that part of ourselves that craves a different life, that wants to go deeper than that life lived superficially, however much we may try and convince ourselves that that is OK and adopt anyone of our usual numbing strategies, so that we might forget that life could be lived differently.

I’m enjoying finding different ways of moving my body that is less harmful than the patterns I have adopted over the years, the patterns that I kept reinforcing on my mat, that allowed my body to maintain its armour, and it’s yang tendencies - albeit the tendencies are not so much of the body, but of the mind, which has dictated my practice for me. Now I get to sculpt the body, to do things differently, to chip away the armour and change the cellular memory, let go of the past which is still held in the body, informing my present.

The weight of responsibility will often weigh down the shoulders and impact on our ability to breath, tightening our upper spine, clipping our wings. We will struggle to truly find the comfort and ease of breath and body encouraged by the Yoga Sutras, forcing the breath, forcing the body. So too the hips, holding all those years of repressed emotions, the anger and hatred, sitting on them, impacting on the mobility and freedom of our spine, or our mind, we keep doing what e have always done and yet hope for a better outcome.

It is not enough to continue along the path of least resistance, the linear path, the safe one, certain, holding on to what we have always known and putting our heads deeper into the sand, even in ur yoga practice, even on our mat, even following prompts and instructions we can avoid being truly in the body, noticing it, but not noticing it, not knowing it, not knowing ourself, how can we know ourself if we are not truly present to the muscles, the bones, the ligaments, the flesh, our very nature, our nature.

So much of our physical tension of the result of mental tension, of lack of inner harmony and wholeness, fragmented, the good voice and the bad voice, the us before a yoga practice and the us at the end. How can we bring greater harmony to our whole being? I believe that this is the paradox. We might feel that life needs to be certain before we can find greater harmony and peace, and yet really, it is in the uncertainty, that this will reveal itself to us. A glimmer, a smidgen, a robin, a feather, a sign that this is the dimension where life might be lived, with the angels, a possibility, a potential.

Once we begin the journey to greater depth, once we step away from the superficial, once we notice more of the mind, with its comfortable and yet restricting and sometimes unhealthy patterns, then we can begin to notice more of the breath, and the certainty of this, and yet know that this is the breath between life and death, that the spine is the joint between life and death, that the exploration of the ancient sites is the space between life and death, that all of life is a dance between life and death and it is full of uncertainty that provides the joy that we seek, the possibility for inner harmony and peace. It is on the edges and the margins that life, the depth of life will reveal itself to us.

The eclipses and rage

This is some eclipse season, helping to shine a light into the shadows. I’m in the middle of a twenty-one day Reiki cleansing too, which probably doesn’t help, let alone all the work with my teacher and the energy work that I have been doing, to say nothing of the connection with the ancients and the ancient sites and their transformative energy. Yet I know that I am not alone and others have been going through it too, so I take comfort in this – I am not as insane as I might have thought! 

The rage when it came was all consuming. I could feel it coming. Over the years I have gotten better at feeling this and knowing that I need to find a way to release it, usually from  deep within the liver, which lends itself perfectly to holding  unexpressed and repressed anger, frustration and resentment - the solar plexus. It’s a horrible energy, which is probably the reason that we don’t always allow it expression, because it can be so damaging, at least if expressed unconsciously, which is often the case.

But it needs to move and be released somehow, it needs expression, to move, stuck energy does us no favours, it sits there in the shadows, our past still impacting on our present in patterns that might no longer serve us. It is helpful to let go of the past, so that we are not weighed down by it in the present, yet it can be so tricky sometimes because we don’t always know at the beginning what we are letting go of, the pattern only revealing itself when we are in process, so there is trust and faith involved.

 I could feel my skin bubbling with the holding on to all this hot rage and frustration, and I tried to access this, and allow it a path of expression on my yoga mat. I became aware of the need to forgive myself for something I had been giving myself a hard time about, and to forgive others who I felt had harmed me in my past (even though it wasn’t their intention to harm).

It is sometimes difficult to forgive if we believe that we have been harmed by another, because on some level we might want to hold onto the notion of ‘you harmed me’, so we can continue to play out our victimhood and buy into the blame dynamic. Yet at some point we have to take responsibility for our wellbeing, and we have to find the courage and strength to let our past and our unhealthy patterns go, so that we can free ourselves, and release the toxicity and negativity that may impact on us (not them), that clogs our livers and digestive systems. 

To do this, our higher self will call in a situation that will allow us to see more clearly the patterns that have been laid, because it will bring up in us the emotions that have been repressed, so that we might be able to shift things, shine a light into the shadows, allowing us to become more conscious in the process, less impacted by our past. Eclipses and solstices help to support this process, they will always shine a light for us, so I should have expected it, yet it still surprised me, the ferocity and intensity of the energy around the eclipse.

 The eclipse took place on the Sunday and on the Monday I felt the energy building. The pattern was becoming clearer, it was playing out around Elijah’s home schooling, and the same old feelings of helplessness and not being heard, old uncomfortable feelings around my worth and my power and powerlessness came up, feelings of annihilation and desperation, of harm and of sheer frustration. It was all there for me to see and feel how much the repression of all this was creating toxicity. 

 The healing process fascinates me, how we still, years on, find ourselves holding onto strands of all the stuff that we think we have looked at and resolved, as our lives move on in brighter and more empowered directions. Yet there is still sometimes a resonance and we don’t even know how this continues to play out, until the moon and the eclipses might help to make it clearer somehow.

I probably sound completely mad unless you too have been through this yourself because there is a moment when you  feel as if you might be losing your mind, as if you might now have reached a place of insanity because you see the world so differently to others, and this of course feeds into the dis-harmony and the lack of inner ease, because you consider that maybe you have gotten it wrong, that perhaps your inner truth, heart, guidance system is somehow flawed because others struggle to understand you.

I picked a fight, I did this consciously too, because I knew it would help me to release the pent up energy that needed expression. It worked and I found myself screaming with the rage of it to the sky and to the universe, as if now I really had reached a degree of madness, and yet it felt so good, to allow the rage, that aspect of self that is often denied. The tears came, big fat tears of anger, and then of sadness and then of nothing in particular, exhaustion perhaps, spent. 

 It’s like a storm, or a fireball that comes from nowhere and takes hold, wreaking havoc for a short time, churning everything up, moving stuff, and then blows itself out, and everything returns calm, if a little bruised, settling. It’s inner child stuff usually, the adult self needs to hold the child self that feels as if it has been harmed, needs to reclaim it and hold it safe. I always have this need to find my teddy bear when this comes up, this is the give away!

The whole process can be so healing and yet sometimes so difficult to navigate without falling into further patterns of victimhood and blame. If you can navigate it, as consciously as possible, allowing it then, it can be an extremely liberating process, leaving you with a renewed sense of self and compassion too. How it then unfolds is difficult to tell, but the attachment has lessened, because your present is not so informed by your past, limited, so there is greater potential.

You might notice this coming up for you these next few weeks as we approach another eclipse and a full moon. Be assured that there is nothing wrong, you are just being cleared out so that the new can enter in. So welcome it, whatever it brings, be with it, try to be conscious of it and avoid the usual coping and suppression mechanisms, be gentle and witness as best you can the process as it unfolds within and outside of you too. 

These are potent times, and I find it very exciting the potential of the new world we might create if we can go to those deepest and darkest places. Life will undoubtably becomes brighter the more we can embrace the vulnerable parts that we often keep hidden. Let’s see…the eclipses are here to help us create a brighter world and we can each be part of that, individually affecting the collective. 

Happy Midsummer!

Happy midsummer!

I was supposed to be celebrating at Stonehenge today, but Covid put an end to that, for all of us, including the Druids who are the ancient Celts, who hold ceremony at Stonehenge at the summer and winter solstices. However, it rained, so we wouldn’t have seen sunrise anyway, not in Guernsey nor at Stonehenge, so this eased the moment somewhat and does mean I got a little more sleep last night than I was anticipating even a few weeks ago. 

Fortunately, I glimpsed some of sunrise earlier this week, from Les Trepieds, which appears to be aligned with the summer solstice, this after seeing the mist that reminded me of the mists of Avalon! This has a rich wiccan past although it was referenced in relation to the witch trials and persecution so has a sad history too. It’s not somewhere I have spent much time, favouring the fairy cave instead, there’s something about its energy. However I felt it peaceful at 5am, with the sound of the birds and the sea. It took me back to ancient times perhaps.

I did visit the fairy cave that same early morning too, and the serious energy was quite in contrast to the energy of Les Trepieds. You have to be mindful with the fairy cave, respectful to the guardians, I have learned this over time. It is the same at La Varde, the pigeons will watch you anyhow, these are the guardians in time manifest, and they hold the secrets that they might slowly reveal to us if we respect this sacred goddess energy – I get a little uptight if I hear that people are messing with the energy. These are not summer solstice sites, at least that’s my experience.

As a family, we visited La Rocque Balan, to feel the midsummer eve energy, as there is reference to it having been a place of midsummer eve celebration in times gone by. The sun was lost behind clouds and there was a small party of ladies enjoying a picnic nestled in the rocks and a friend appeared to be holding ceremony with another friend by the cup marks at the summit – there are many theories as to what they were for, and geological explanations too; always a mystery where ancient sites of ceremony and worship are concerned.

In my mind I see a stone circle just below the main rocks, I’m always drawn here, there’s something about the energy, and Elijah was feeling it too. I was dowsing and he took the pendulum from me, the first time he has ever done that and wanted to learn how to do it himself and how to find the ‘energy focus’. As with everything, this is open to interpretation, which is perhaps the reason I love exploring these ancient sites, because we will never know, only in our hearts and third eyes, so there we can embrace all that is mysterious about this wonderful world of energy and moon/sun/star alignment.

I watched a lecture this week by Heather Sebire who used to work with my dad here on Guernsey, but who now manages Stonehenge, quite amazing! It was fascinating to learn more of this ancient site, which has long held sway over the archaeologist, the mystic, the astronomer and the poet and still evokes such a wide range of feeling and thought. I’m still buying into the idea that Stonehenge was built by the Druids, and I shall never forget spending sunrise here as part of my 40th celebrations, and watching the Druids and hearing the drumming and just blissing out on the Pagan energy, let alone the excitement at touching the stones.

I love touching stones and finding messages in them. Energetically I can sometimes feel things, we spent time during IVF treatment at Salisbury cathedral, I just felt this need to rest my head and hands against some of those old stones infused with the energy of prayer and connection to God, even if it is not a God that I worship. So too, to find hand positions in ancient rocks, here on Guernsey there are some in La Varde and the fairy cave, and probably elsewhere but these places are where I tend to spend the most time, and with La Gran’ Mère outside St Martin’s Church, who has definitely been changed, to transform her from goddess to man and yet the breasts give the game away!

I love not only the mystery of these sites but the fact that I might place my hands where hands were placed thousands of years ago, by those ancestors whose blood may run through mine, if you buy into this, and the manner in which we are drawn to that which we once were, as if we are remembering. Who knows. Another mystery, a reminder that we sometimes just don’t know, which reminds me of this beautiful poem I found the other day by Mary Oliver called ‘Angels’:

“You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of 
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of 
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything. 
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not 
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not 
entirely anyway, other people’s 
heads. 

I’ll just leave you with this. 
I don’t care how many angels can 
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance. “

I love too finding imagery in the rocks, seeing figures, faces, signs, these are all messengers, also open to interpretation. I’m always hopeful there may be some evidence of Ogham, the ancient Celtic tree alphabet, which appears on roughly 400 stones which have been discovered thus far, 360 of which are in Ireland and the rest scattered around Wales, Scotland, England and the Isle of Man.  It might well be an excuse to visit Ireland and all the Celtic sites there, but I see perhaps my own language in the stones here; a re-membering!

So happy midsummer to you all (there were two longest days this year, that’s unusual!), and happy new moon solar eclipse too. May more of the mystery reveal itself to you, may you tread your path on the edge, where the magic happens, on the margins, not limited by the perceived certainty of definition, dancing with the angels, always dancing with the angels, and stepping closer and closer to who you really are on the inside. The descent into the darkness will support this, so let’s descend gently and enjoy all that the shifting seasons and planets may bring.

Love Emma x 

Bursting bubbles

Crikey, this energy is something else! I’ve never really felt so clearly that the veil is thin and the portal opening. I’ve heard people talk about it, but never really got it, but I’m feeling it!

I’ve heard people say this is quite an intense alignment of the new moon solar eclipse and the summer solstice, to say nothing of the planetary shifts, of which I know little. I just know that something is happening out there that is impacting on what is happening in me, which means it’s happening in each of us collectively, so perhaps there will be a shift. It feels big.

I certainly feel that life has changed this year beyond recognition of what it was, and that 2019 was indeed the year that prepared us for the changes that have been ushered in. I don’t know how long it will continue, but it has been so lovely to live to my own agenda this week, with the boys, flowing with our own timings, meeting friends, being on the beach, just having a rather lovely time of it, no timetable as such, beyond when I teach and give Reiki.

But it’s not the outer changes so much, they merely reflect the inner changes that have taken place, and a long time in coming in many respects. I have known for a while that there is another way, but it has taken time and work to let go of the conditioning that prevented the flow and the re-alignment to take place. There have been leaps of faith too, and a stronger sense of living with uncertainty and the unknown, which is OK, truly.

I have been watching others talk about how we might find a new way, how we might save the environment and create better societies. I think it’s noble. But I also think it is very simple. That really, it is us who need to change, to deepen connection to self, so that all the other crap drops away. It’s all very well talking about how we might engage the community to deduce the changes that they would like to see, and how we might change business so that it better serves the economy and society, but until we re-define success, and shift the paradigm from one of material gain to one of wellbeing, then nothing will change.

Under the current system, business will always be about the bottom line and people will always want to be recognised for their successes, based on their ability to earn and maximise wealth. This is how so many see success. This is what underlies the choices and decisions that so many make. This is the generation of billionaires and fame for the sake of fame’s sake with social media highlighting this - a generation of people who want to be seen for the sake of being seen, and so many with something to sell (it’s the era of “I run my own business, but I need social media to do it’).

All of this just further buys into the illusion and takes us further away from our truth. If we want to save the planet, if we truly want to look after the environment, then we don’t need to wait for a questionnaire, or a discussion, or for government to decide what the new world might look like, we just need to start living more of our own truth, and the more we are in our truth, in our nature, our self, then the more we will in harmony with nature. You simply cannot separate the two.

There is a very noticeable connection between how we live in relationship to our self and how we live in relationship to the earth. I really do believe that the more we can live in harmony with self, the more we automatically live in harmony with the planet, just as the ancients did. Yet these days we live in a way that is harmful to self, and as a consequence the planet is harmed too.

There are very few people who do not harm themselves, either through the inner critic or through the choices they make in how they live their lives. The only thing that will truly save us is consciousness, and the only way we will become more conscious, is by doing work on ourselves. There is just no way to avoid it, despite the best efforts of many to side-track it, jump over it, somehow find a technique that they hope will make them conscious without them having to go through it.

It is my understanding that you have to go through it, have the break downs to make the break throughs, to delve deep into the shadows. Sure, life provides the opportunities, illness, accidents, traumas large and small, sometimes the perceived smallest traumas are indeed the biggest portals, the most direct route to the soul. And this is where it is at, where it has only ever been at. The heart and soul. We do need to get to the heart, and we need to allow the soul expression, this is how we grow and this is how we will change the world that we live in, by living in the self - having a clear sense of self.

We are each here for a reason, and I don’t altogether know that that is as grandiose as taking on a title or a label, “I am in this world to be a yoga teacher”, for example. I feel it’s more about being in this world to allow all that we are; consciousness. We are here to become conscious and live conscious lives, which, by their very nature, are in harmony with the planet that we live on, which is also conscious, far more conscious than us human beings - see how tolerant, patient, compassionate and forgiving it is to us; that is consciousness!

I feel the energy, these eclipses, are encouraging us to wake up. Not necessarily to wake up to the what we are doing to the planet, but to wake up to what we are doing to ourselves. To question the way that we have chosen to live, to open ourselves up to the possibility that we might choose a new way, that we might step outside the norm, as we step closer into the soul, and that because more of us will be doing this - becoming conscious and kinder to self - then the more we will shift the way we are living collectively.

This is a time for being deep honest with ourselves. For seeing beyond the limitations we have created for ourselves, based on our conditionings (societal, parental, educational etc) and to truly feel into what we might do if we could live the life of our dreams, a life that is harmonious. There will always be a compromise of course, but perhaps we will come to realise that we don’t have to compromise our self, that we do matter, and that in acknowledging this, in becoming more deserving, the light of the universe will flood through us and throughout the planet.

This is how the paradigm will shift, how we will come to reframe success beyond material gain and media (social and otherwise) fame, and how we will come to recognise that wealth is not something that can be measured by money in a bank account or by the size of house, or number of possessions, but how it is about our inner sense of worth and how we can be in relation to self and to others, about love and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness. How we live in harmony with all life. Let’s see; I have a feeling that the bubble must burst first.

The Mother with the Moon

As we approach the summer solstice and the new moon solar eclipse on Sunday, I feel that the ‘mother’ in all her guises, both literally and as Gaia, is very much in the field at the moment. 

However, it might just be me, because I have been immersing myself more in the goddess recently, listening to a series of lectures by Kathy Jones, who is a Priestess of Avalon and a Priestess of Goddess and the Founder of the Goddess Temple, Hall & House in Glastonbury, and I am reading her book too, Soul and Shadow, so am fully in that zone. So perhaps it is a case of law of attraction, given the information coming in. 

Yet, and as I always say, I am merely a micro of the macro so it is likely that you are feeling it too and I suspect it will become clearer and stronger the closer we get Sunday. For me the body has been getting my attention, a sensation in the breast and a change in consistency of monthly blood (sorry, probably too much information but this is how the body talks to us, how the wisdom comes through, as a result of changes in our own nature, the very bones and muscles and skin of our body in this very lifetime on Planet Earth).

It’s in this way, through the body, that we are made aware of stuck energy that is often the result of old repressed emotions that have not been allowed expression, this is e-motions (energy in motion) that need releasing, of wounds that still need healing, for the energy to be able to flow again and for us to feel increased wellbeing and greater presence (less weighed down by the energy stuck (and sticking us) in the past). 

I dropped into the body sensations, and tried to listen. I’ve channelled quite a lot of Reiki recently and this has undoubtably helped in me understanding a little more of what my body is trying to tell me, although there’s still always more to know (one of the many wonderful things about working with Reiki is that you receive as you give!)

I realise how much I have been giving myself a hard time for my perceived mothering failures, about the decisions I have made in the past about how I might live in relationship with my children, about going back to work when Elijah was only 3 months old, and how this has pained me for six years now, to think that I felt I had little choice and the guilt at leaving my son albeit with my own beautiful mum, which of course made it easier. 

I know that I made that decision as consciously as I could at that time, and that if I knew then what I know now, I might have found a different way and made a different decision instead, which would have enabled me to spend more time with my son when he was still so young. Yet I recognise that we can only ever make decisions based on what we know in that moment, depending on our level of consciousness and our perception about where we are and what we feel we need/want from life. 

 It is all too easy to reflect back now and consider how we might have done things differently if only we had known then what we know now, and to give ourselves a very hard time in the process, focusing on our perceived failings rather than the bits we might have got right, that feel more comfortable to us. I know also that this ‘hard time giving’ serves no one, not us, and especially not our children. There is nothing to be gained by being negative towards ourselves, yet as mothers we do this. 

Sometimes the weight of what it means to mother can be overwhelming, simply because we are desperate not to mess it up, not to cause pain to our children or to damage them in any way. Yet we are only human and life is messy and uncertain, and we are all of our own nature, which means with the best will in the world we can never do it for our children and we may never truly understand the way that they see the world, as much as we may try, which means that we may not always be the person that they need us to be, regardless of how much of ourselves we give to them.

I know all this, and yet I have been so conscious of trying to be all that is needed and to understand their needs and their wants and accommodate these as best I can without losing myself in the process, which is the trickiest bit, because sometimes we do lose ourselves, despite our best efforts! The trouble is that mothering cannot be delineated. There is no line to say that this is where I begin and this is where I end, that this is what I will give and this is what I will keep for myself, as this too is always in flux and it cannot be pinned down or made concrete from one day to the next. 

Today I am this way and tomorrow I might be another way, and I know now that that is OK. Somehow we will find a way. And the way weaves this way and that, and the wind drops and the sun sets and all is calm, and then the storm comes to turn this all on its head and there is no sunset that day and the wind does not stop blowing so that we cannot hear so clearly, and we are flustered and full of rage, and then the rain comes and it cools us down, and we start again, the heart open closing open closing, wanting always to be open but there are moments when it cannot be that way. 

So too it is with mothering and being mothered. How much do we open to the vulnerability of being loved and of loving with all our heart? It sounds so easy but sometimes it is not. There are moments when we lose the awareness that allows us to be so present, even for a split second and we might say something that is not aligned to heart, because we are protecting our own heart, because there is some wounding, some resonance of some hurt that we didn’t like very much.

Sometimes we can be mothered so much that we don’t even know who we are, because we are smothered by the weight of another trying to protect us, to the extent that we cannot hear our own heart and we cannot therefore find our own path with heart . And others not mothered enough, so that their heart lays heavy with the sadness of the rejection and the abandonment so that they reject and abandon a part of themselves and the possibility of love because they do not consider themselves worthy enough, or because it is too hard. 

And speak to me also, of how you might mother yourself?  I reflect on this too. The breast talks of nourishment and the womb talks of sacred space, of ancient wisdom. Both talk to us of our unique spiritual path, our path with heart, our way. This is in contrast to the way that seeks to include everyone in the same ‘mundane’ expression of life according to the rules and order and constrictions of society.  

The womb is our power, we know this, the dark space, the void, the deep mystery. Babies grow inside this, inside ourselves. This blows my mind even now, even having grown two real live human beings inside me, even having felt it for myself and seen the heart beat alone of both babies when they were six weeks in utero (we are alllllllll heart and there was validation as I wrote about in Dancing with The Moon). The breasts that nourish new life, that allow new life to grow, that bring baby to heart, so that there is a heart-resonance on a very deep level from the moment the baby enters the world and suckles. 

Even now, at three and a half years I am frustrated by those who tell me that he is too old for milk. It is not just milk! This is one of the most natural things that my body does. It brings my son directly to my heart and it nourishes him beyond the calories and vitamins of breast milk. It is the most beautiful thing in the world to me and I am grateful to my Ayurvedic doctor for recognising this, and normalising this and knowing that in Sri Lanka, her mother breast fed all the children until they were ready to let it go, maybe six, maybe seven, whenever they chose. 

These are the messages that I am receiving. And I know now as I write this and share with you that there is deeper meaning. That this is about following our own unique spiritual path and it is about breaking free from all that constrains us and prevents us from doing this - from our conditioning and the conditioning of those from whom we seek validation, and from society. We each have our own unique nature. An oak tree is an oak tree, it cannot be a beech tree however much someone might wish it to be, it is not its nature. 

There is this wonderful song by José González, called In Our Nature, which goes:

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.

Put down your sword.
Send home your dogs.
Open up your doors.
Let down your guard.

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.

Put down your gun.
Ignore the alarm.
Open up your heart.
Let down your guard.

It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature.
It's in our nature

This has always spoken to me, of the need to allow our true nature by letting down our guard. It is only in letting down our guard and allowing our vulnerability that we can truly know our heart. Our heart speaks of our truth and our truth speaks of our nature and our nature speaks of our soul.

Mother Earth she knows only the song of the soul, she sings of love and truth and justice for all, she weaves the magic of earth, water, fire, air and ether, and it is this, manifest, that nourishes us all, the big mystery, the dark void, the essence of all we are is the essence of all she is too, yet she knows only heart, she knows only vulnerability, because this is her nature and she trusts in that, and it this that is the ultimate lesson. She trusts in her true nature, she trusts her soul. And this, my friends, is where we find ourselves now, at the crossroads of the new paradigm.  

Can we trust our soul to nourish and sustain us? Can we find the courage to allow the deepest vulnerability, the greatest intimacy? Can we let go of all that distances us from our own nature?

The moon will tell us a tale, and the eclipse will tell us a tale too. And the sun and the rain, they tell us a tale too, of violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. We walk the rainbow bridge and she holds our hand as a mother holds a child, and we know that we will be safe, because we are held by the…great…mother…earth.

Love x

Pondering on new beginnings

I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been to be back teaching in the same space as students and be able to touch them! I missed this so much during lockdown, it is one thing being on my mat leading a session, but it’s quite another to properly teach, where you can actually touch and guide and try and help them. I am grateful to Zoom though, because at least it served a purpose and allowed me to continue teaching, but it just wasn’t the same.

I a delighted that we are soon moving to Phase 5 here in Guernsey. I realise that I was ranting quite a lot, in my inability to go with the flow of things, simply because I couldn’t understand the reason it was taking the States of Guernsey so long to make a decision about moving forward when there been no reported Covid cases for a significant amount of time. The Isle of Man moved to their Island bubble after only 22 days, and we will be waiting until about 48 days I think, to follow them into an island bubble.

Partly this has been my impatience, and because I don’t like limiting who can attend class, or not being able to run my Reiki courses properly, but also, it’s because I’m perhaps not as risk adverse or quite so fearful of covid as others. It just made no sense to me, much like so many other decisions that are made in this world, which are so patriarchal in their approach, ordered and rule-based, no room for the intuitive or for the common sense!

The more I have started to notice this, the more I realise how our lives are still so controlled by patriarchy, and the energy that this brings with it. I suppose this might be my resistance, especially as I find myself increasingly drawn towards the goddess and an alternative way of living, that allows more of the intuitive and the heart, that is less ‘certain’, less ‘black and white’, because if there is one lesson covid has brought with it (and there are many), there can be no certainty, and there is no black and white, as much as we might try and ensure it. Black Lives Matter further demonstrates this.

Yet the world continues to separate and divide, caught up in increasing rules and regulations, which are almost laughable, because no one knows. There was a time when scientists were saying there was little evidence that face masks worked, and now face masks will likely become the norm for public travel. This preventing us breathing properly, makes no sense to me, but that’s because I spend a significant part of my life attempting to breathe properly, to maximise the health benefits.

Anyhow I resolved last weekend, to let go of the ranting, because it does no good, just causes me harm, and does nothing to change the situation. Thankfully the situation has changed, or will soon change, and there will be no need for booking for class, and I won’t have to spray my hands with lavender, between touching each person, but maybe the crystals will stay, I quite like the fact there are more crystals in the room, and potentially revealing for students too, to see what they might be drawn towards on any particular day!

I’m contemplating greed at the moment too. Aparigraha, one of the five yamas, or ethical principles of yoga, also interpreted as ‘non-grasping. I feel it’s in the ‘field’ at the moment, caught up in the changes we might like to see in the world, in a different way of living that is not dictated by wealth alone, as is often the motivation for many of the choices that people make. As if wealth alone will save us.

Wealth fascinates me, I used to work within the wealth industry and it is interesting to witness how it impacts behaviour, how it orders and categorises people, how it allows power to play out in so many different ways, how it allows people to feel superior to others and treat them in a certain way. It is such an illusion yet so many buy into it, a marketer’s dream, as if life alone is all about the creation of wealth, the grasping onto this, and the drama that accompanies this. You don’t take it with you!

I’ve been fascinated by the multi-billionaires, what they do with their money, how they might use it to help others, and yet the power sometimes goes to their heads, and they buy into government to give them greater power to do what they please, as if they are above the rules handed out to the rest of the population, because somehow their lives and their opinions, and their intentions matter more than the lives and opinions and intentions of others who might not have as much money. Look at Bill Gs and all the conspiracy theories about him. Let alone Mark Z. It’s interesting reading about Elon M too.

This is an opportunity to bring in a new world order, to shuffle around what is deemed to be most important. I imagine wealth will continue to motivate most, and this when so many people in the world are not under the poverty line because covid and the world’s reaction to it, means that so many can no longer earn an income and so many are not able to now access support from charities, in the cases where their governments are not in a position to support them either - there is no social support in Nepal for example, you’re on your own!

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s an old story. Maybe we need to re-define what it means to be rich and poor. I’m curious to see how this unfolds. For now though, I’m grateful for the riches bestowed upon me in life here in Guernsey, the richness of this land and of the people who form part of my community, and my family, and all the beauty and abundance of life here on this beautiful Island, let alone the bounty of the harvest, their is much richness in that too. Thank you.

Abundance!

I met some friends on the beach with our children today and two of us were talking about the seeds that we had been given to plant, by our mutual friend, Fi. It seems that mine have been rather more abundant than my friend’s seeds, and she quite rightly pointed out that abundance comes in many forms, and this did make me think, because life can be abundant in so many different ways.

I have been lucky or perhaps it’s the result of my being a touch over-enthusiastic, because I have been blessed with about 500 pots of medicinal plants (sorry Tara, not to rub it in!!) (There are lots still to re-pot!). Typically the ones I am most excited about, the pot marigolds (so I can make calendula cream) have not been as abundant as say hyssop, or mother’s wort, or even gypsy wort now I come to think about it. Goodness knows what I’ll do with them.

Mind you, Fi did say to me that it’s not so much what you do with them that will bring the joy, but the process of actually growing them. This is so true and one of the fundamental teachings from the Bhagavad Gita, about not being attached to the fruits of our labours. There is a verse that can be translated as follows: “You have the right to work, but for work’s sake only. You have no rights to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your notice in working. Never give way to laziness either”.

If ever there was an opportunity to put this into practice then it has been growing the medicinal plants! I had no expectation or attachment to outcome, I was growing them simply because Fi had given me the idea and something in me said, “yes, 'let’s do this”. In fact it was Ewan who planted some of the seeds, I just gave them Reiki and have tended to them ever since. I’ve planted more along the way, although I wonder now the reason I did this, because I already had so many, and I am considering that in the context of my wider pondering on greed, which has come up in recent weeks as I witness the effect of greed playing out in the wider world and I have been considering it in my world too.

The thing is with the plants, I have just grown them for the sake of growing them and because it felt like my heart wanted me to do it and it has been hugely enjoyable. I have no plans of what to do with them, beyond the pot marigolds. This too has been wonderful, to not have placed pressure on myself to do anything with them really, albeit I have bought a couple more books on herbal remedies and what I might make, if I have the time and inclination, let alone the financial resource to buy all the bits and bobs that are often required in this whole ‘making things’ process!

The message from the Bhagavad Gita, is to renounce attachment to the fruits so that you can remain even tempered in success and failure, and that it is this evenness of temper, which is yoga. It is said that work done with anxiety about the results of the work, is far inferior to work done without anxiety, because this brings with it self-surrender. We surrender all attachment to outcome and just do it for the love of it and because - on the whole - it is our dharma, our reason to be in this world. There is an understanding that those who work selfishly, for the fruits alone, for the results of their actions, will end up miserable!

It is difficult though, because of course generally, we do need to earn money to live. This pandemic has certainly challenged so many of us with this. I heard myself saying today, “double the amount of work, for half the amount of income”, because this is what the pandemic has brought with it, and I know I am not alone, because others are saying it too. The additional administration these last few months to adapt to the changing circumstances has been huge and the income has been much less than it would be ordinarily because of restrictions caused by social distancing.

Yet I know that for me work is not just about income. I teach yoga and share Reiki because I love it. It makes me feel alive. I was positively depressed during lockdown when I wasn’t able to touch people and share it face to face, E was finding life with my dull mood hard work! So I am just so happy to be able to teach again, regardless of the fact that it helps me earn money. And while I know not to be attached to the fruits of the labour, I am grateful for all the abundance that fills my life, the plants, the vegetable patch, the friends, the bird that visit each days, the time with my children, the peacefulness of dusk, and the abundant sleep now my younger son doesn’t wake us as much.

Life is full of abundance. I suppose we just have to notice it, and step out of the conditioning, which always sees abundance in terms of monetary gain. We have to remember to enjoy the process, to do the work for the sake of the work that needs to be done, not because of an outcome. It’s much easier said than done. Even in yoga there is the grasping for an outcome. I noticed it tonight for the first time, when I asked students to establish an intention, something they might like to receive from the practice and I realised that this was setting them up to expect an outcome, to see their practice as something leading them somewhere, rather than just practising for the love of practising.

I notice it playing out during the practice too, this attachment to a pose needing to look a certain way, so that there might be pushing and pulling and a loss of the magic that might arise if only we could just be OK by allowing the body to unravel when it is ready, not because we are forcing it in some way. As if we might achieve more, whatever that might be, peace and harmony perhaps, a better body. I don’t know, we all have our different reasons for practice, our different attachments, our different ideas of how it might be.

But really, it is my experience, that just turning up on our mat is enough. Just being there with our body and with our breath and honouring both and surrendering to the process and to the practice. There will be greater abundance, simply because there will be a change, that will help you - if nothing else - to recognise it, because perhaps it’s always been there but you have just never recognised it, because so often we focus on what we don’t have, and miss all that is already filling our lives, the love, the silence, the noise, the craziness, the solitude. It is all abundant, it’s just our perspective that sometimes needs shifting.

We begin to notice more of the joy that comes with the work. In letting go to the fruits, we begin to see all that we had previously dismissed and overlooked in our quest to always be somewhere other than where we are. It’s actually liberating to live like this, albeit it demands another step outside the box, living in a society that is generally focused on outcome, always working towards a future date to improve from a past date already taken place. Life is so abundant, let’s give thanks for that!