Recipes Emma Despres Recipes Emma Despres

Sing's Vegan Chocolate Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

  • 60g Raw cacao butter

  • 50g Raw cacao powder / cocoa powder

  • 2-3 tbsp Sweet freedom / agave nectar

METHOD:

  1. Place a clean bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Ensure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water & no water goes inside the bowl

  2. Grate the cacao butter, add to the bowl & allow to melt slowly. Don’t keep the water boiling, turn the heat off and just give it a quick blast every so often if necessary

  3. Once melted, add the cacao powder & stir in thoroughly with a balloon whisk or fork, until it starts to slightly thicken

  4. The chocolate should be runny & easy to pour

  5. Add 1 tbsp of Sweet Freedom & stir in very thoroughly. It will thicken as you add the Sweet Freedom

  6. Taste it and if you prefer it sweeter, add more 1/2 tbsp at a time, mixing thoroughly and tasting after each

  7. When the mixture suits your taste, pour gently into the mould using a jug or spoon

  8. Place it in the fridge to set for an hour or more (or in the freezer if you can’t wait that long)

  9. Any remaining chocolate is the chocolatier’s treat!

STORAGE:

Keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 weeks (even longer in the freezer)

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The Eclipse Message - In Our Own Nature

Well that was a potent shifting eclipse, helping to release a deeply held core belief that was no longer serving, bringing with it a surge of energy and clarity.

For many there has been a deep holding in the solar plexus, asking us to literally dig deeper into the wounding around loss of love for self, while paying attention to the many ways we harm the self, the words we use to talk to ourselves and the way we live our lives in relation to self - are we kind and loving to self or do we give ourselves a hard time.

It is often so deeply ingrained that we can’t see or hear it. We may have an idea that we have work to do around self-love but it seems so vast and vague a concept that we have no idea where to begin, other than repeating positive affirmations and going for some healing sessions. Little do we realise the extent to which our inner voice is tainted by criticism, because we are so used to hearing it that we cannot separate it from ourselves - we confuse it with our true selves, believing that we have no choice but to think the self depreciating thoughts, and give ourselves a hard time in the process.

We might try to give ourselves a break, do something loving for the self, but we’ll likely take away from it at the same time, feeling guilty, or stressing about finances or whether we’re worthy enough to receive. We frequently self-sabotage, limiting ourselves by the stories we tell ourself, focussing on our perceived failures and uselessness, rather than celebrating the many amazing things we do on a daily basis, making sure our family and friends are cared for, let alone trying to be a kind and respectful member of the human race, for example.

It’s difficult to shift perspective and let go of the mind-set that sees us as flawed and always in need of fixing. New-age spiritualism and healing has done nothing to alleviate this, and in many instances merely feeds the illusion established by orthodox medicine, so deeply ingrained in our psyche that even those of us who live in the holistic healing world don’t realise that we’re still buying into elements of the old paradigm, believing that there’s aways something we should be doing to fix and heal ourselves, improve our imperfections, signing up to yet another course that promises to take us on an inner journey to clear our stuff and help us to love and accept more of ourselves in the process, give us back that which we (mistakenly) believe is missing.

Inevitably we come away feeling better for taking the time to be with ourselves, even transformed and changed, and we’ll talk about ‘clearing some stuff’, of ‘feeling lighter’, of finding more of ourselves. It’s all wonderful and valid and we feel great, until the buzz drops and we find ourselves back in a similar old place of feeling uncomfortable in our own skin and we start looking outside ourselves again for another book, another course, another crystal, another full moon ceremony, another nutritional approach, more supplements, another potion, another latest trend in new age healing, and off we go again, forgetting that we need to go within.

In Sri Swami Satchidananda’s translation of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali he writes: “Many saints were illiterate. They never knew what a school was. But we read their ideas even now. None of the Upanishadic seers went to colleges or universities. They merely sat under trees and watched nature. But their words are crest jewels now. What did their learning come from? It came from within. There is a wealth of knowledge on the inside. The scriptures say, “Know the One by knowing which you will know everything”…

Saint Thirumoolar said “a person was running and running in search of the Light. He spent his whole life doing that. Ultimately he collapsed and died because he couldn’t reach it.” Millions and millions of people collapse this way because they don’t know that the Light is within.”

It’s absolutely true. It’s often the hardest thing, not least loving and accepting the self but taking back our power to the extent that we come to know our own truth by going within. It takes time though, to sift through the many layers of conditioning that prevents us from accessing our true voice, the one that knows no harm, that is aligned to the greater plan, that understands nature and its working, that knows that there is nothing to be done, there is no personal action, just a sense of our place in the grand scheme of it all for the greater good of the cosmic plan.

This can bring a huge letting go of all we once thought was the way, was our nature, the one of achieving for the sake of achieving as if to prove our worth in the world. Even in the spiritual world we see this played out, always this need to be someone, feeding the need for validation and acceptance, because we struggle to find that within ourselves and therefore externalise it instead. There is a risk of judgment too, judging those who don’t feel the same way, but even this just boils down to the same thing, judgment of self ultimately. Self-love is key in setting us free. Self love is also key in helping to free us from polarity.

I’ve certainly noticed a positive shift since spending more time being still and quiet in nature, as if nature comes to greet us and we become less separated from it. It helps us to recognise and accept more of our own true nature, that we are the way we are, and even thought that’s different to others and doesn’t necessarily tick a box, whether that’s in the spiritual world or not, doesn’t matter because ultimately there’s nothing wrong with us - we’re all inherently perfect, we just need to recognise it.

In this way we start to hear more of our own wisdom and that which comes to us from nature, that connects us in to deeper levels of consciousness. We are more likely to do what we can to lessen the external noise, to switch off and switch in, to draw a line in the sand, know when its time to put down the self-help books and take a break from the ceremonies and courses and go it alone, into the depths of our own soul that is connected to all of the wisdom, if only we could quieten our minds to the extent that we could hear it, if only we love ourselves to the extent that we believed in our ability to receive it.

We have to be so careful about putting people on pedestals. Some will want us to place them there and others we will put there. People tend to fall from pedestals and we run the risk of feeling betrayed and disappointed if they do not live up to our ideals. Furthermore this merely fuels our disempowerment as we give our power away to those we have placed on pedestals believing them more enlightened or sorted than we are, forgetting that we are all mirrors and each one of us has something to learn from another - we will always see our stuff in others if we can remove the rose tinted glasses that encourages us to see the world in a rose tinted way - if we do not know ourselves we will make mistakes in knowing other things and other people too.

The message was clear on the equinox - go within and love and accept the self -be in our own nature. It’s no easy feat, a lifetimes work for many and others fall at the first hurdle and turn back to their usual numbing techniques as a way to avoid having to be with the self and love ourselves for who we are, for our true nature. We all have a choice and equinoxes have a habit of highlighting where we need to chose differently, where we need to re-align and do the work in letting go rather than fixing.

Love Emma

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A new perspective - new moon solar eclipse

It’s intense! There’s no other way to describe the energy as we sit here sandwiched between two eclipses, the moon waning towards the new moon solar eclipse on Thursday, this two weeks after the super full moon lunar eclipse. Phew. 

For me it’s all about perspective and I am absolutely finding myself in the thick of it as I evaluate the way I perceive things and question this. There are always two sides to every story and always another way to look at things.

This was brought home to me when I was reading a book about paradox and healing, and the fact orthodox medicine view healing in a totally different way to those of us who work holistically:

“Our present assumptions about scientific thinking date back to the time of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). At the age of 23, he had an intuition which led to the publication of his famous essay, “Discourses on Method”.

The essay contains three tenets which have over time become the fundamental building blocks of our modern scientific culture. They are: the certainty of scientific knowledge; the separation of mind and matter; and the universe as a machine”. Dr Michael Greenwood & Dr Peter Nunn

Of course this is in such contrast to how I perceive the world within which I live. As far as I can tell reality is observer-dependent, what is seen depends on who is seeing it, so there is no such thing as objectivity. And the strange thing is, while this has now been accepted by physicists, modern scientific medicine has not yet been impacted. 

Furthermore, modern medicine still consider the mind and body separate, to the extent that physical illnesses are for the body and mental illnesses are for the mind and there is no connection between the two. This has led to physical medicine and psychiatry being geographically separated, as we have here on Guernsey, two separate units, one for the body and one for the mind. 

This approach to medicine also encourages the reductionism – the idea that the body is better understood if broken down into separate parts. This leads to specialists, specialising on one part of the body as if that part functions solely alone (and without any impact from mind or soul). GPs are seen as a lesser breed because of their generalised knowledge, no specialism. 

Often people come to me for Reiki with a specific issue, maybe a sore shoulder, and they are surprised when we find a mental and emotional element to it, and that the source of the pain and discomfort has originated from somewhere else in their body. To me the separation of mind and body is bonkers, so too medical reductionism. But to most of the world, conditioned as people are to this medical model, it is accepted as gospel truth, irrelevant that Chinese medicine and Ayurveda are both 5,000 years old and view the body and health from a totally different perspective.

This is the thing about perspective. There’s always a different way to look at things, but this is dependent on how our minds have been conditioned and trained, our bodies too. My yoga teacher was talking about this recently, how a tiger can be trained in a circus to perform tricks, but in the process the tiger-ness of the tiger is removed from it. So it is too with our minds and with our bodies as well, in yoga we can run the risk of removing our ‘ness’ if we just copy what everyone else does and try to train our body someway as if we too were training to perform tricks in a circus.

The sacred sites that I visit have been teaching me about perspective, my dowsing rods too. I can be at the same site with my stone friend and yet both of us can have a totally different take and perspective on things, even our dowsing tools will tell us different things, because our perspective is different, which will inevitably affect our intention. 

Perspective has shown up as well with the vaccine and the division this has created. I did write to HSC and CCA this week to voice my concerns about discrimination and separation, but of course absolutely everyone has a different perspective and the last thing I want to do is feed a war, and us against them thing. As I’ve said before, I couldn’t care less what anyone else does, I just feel it is important that everyone is safe to make their own choice without fear of vindication.

It’s not going to help the world if we all start judging each other, because we can only see one side of the same coin. At the end of the day we are all doing our best, and we would do well to remind oursleves of that age old saying about not judging a person unless you have walked a day in their shoes. We will always have a different perspective on things. 

This is absolutely showing up this new moon and I am very aware that my mind is being asked to let go on this eclipse, of the way it seems the world and holds on tightly to false and limiting beliefs and in the process, change the perspective. It’s not an easy process, it never is, but sometimes we have to break down to break through and it’s not the first time and won’t be the last time to have to let go of the way I see the world so I can see it from a different perspective.

Eclipses are renowned for bringing change - a new perspective for the collective as well as each of us individually. We might think this means outer change, a new job, a new partner, more money. And it might mean all this, but really, it’s inner change that they bring, which will ultimately change our outer world too, but sometimes in subtle ways, so that perhaps we don’t feel the need for the new job or partner or greater abundance, because we start to see things from a different perspective and realise we had it all anyway, if only we could get out of our way to see it and just get on with living it, rather than flip flopping from the past to the future and back again.

This is a time to open your hands and let go – this is a Gemini new moon, everything is up in the air, so let it all go, everything you have been holding onto and trying to intellectualise and figure out. Whatever lands back in your path again will reveal itself in time and you’ll know then the direction to take, the eclipse will align you to it, trust in that, there’s nothing to do but just open to it and seeing things differently in the months ahead.  

In the interim, keep getting on your mat, keep breathing, and keep doing what you can to nourish yourself spiritually. Which is what I am off to do now, it’s almost sunset…

Love Emma x  

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Nature's abundance

This wasn’t the jasmine I had imagined when I ordered the seeds, but alas, I am now the lucky owner of numerous jasmine plants, which I’ve managed to plant in the ground having cleared a space. Those of you who come for Reiki treatments will see them lining part of our parking area - I have literally had to use whatever space I can this year, digging up bits of lawn to allow more space to grow!

This is the first flower blossoming yesterday, delighted with the earlier rain showers.

As part of an online Reiki course I worked with crystal grids during lockdown, and I charged a crystal with, amongst other things, abundance. I do feel as if my life is infinitely abundant in many ways, but especially with plants this year.

The medicinal plants I grew last year during our first lockdown are in their element this year, truly vibrant in their moon garden. This year I have sown more seeds and am lucky that a couple of batches of lavender have grown, as it’s not always easy to grow this from seed. I also have an abundance of evening primrose oil, chamomile, thyme, mint, oregano and basil. Unfortunately the sage and rosemary were not as abundant, but this is often the way - these were the ones I really wanted, and so I tend with great care those few plants that have grown.

I didn’t realise when I took possession of the medicinal plant seeds from Earth angel, Fi, last year, quite how much the seeds would change my life. All I really want to do now, aside from exploring stones with the boys, getting in the sea and writing, is being with the plants. They have a consciousness and they communicate. I find being in nature extremely calming and nourishing for the soul. A true tonic.

I really long for us to come back to nature, it’s all we need. There’s a wonderful video that highlights this, you can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvzZ56ZbWy8

Life is infinitely enriched by being in nature, communing with plants and stones, even if people think that makes me very weird! There’s a whole heap of other realms than the mundane 3D we live in most of the time. We just need to get outside and be quiet and let nature reveal more of itself to us, and reveal more of our own nature in the process.

Happy Thursday!

Love Emma x

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Vegan nettle soup

Nettles are everywhere at the moment so I thought I’d make the most of their highly nutritious nature and make soup. Nettles are particularly high in iron, silica and potassium and have been used for centuries as a nourishing tonic for weakness and debility, convalescence and anaemia.

I drank a lot of nettle tea during both pregnancies as I was always low in iron, the same afterwards in the post-natal period, albeit I’d lost my taste for it by then - it is an acquired taste! I have some nettle leaves drying to be able to add to teas, but thought it was time to take the plunge to nettle soup, which I have only made once previously. It was surprisingly yummy! Even E enjoyed it, despite his earlier reservations about the potential lack of taste of it.

Nettles are amazing and they’re free and abundant, at least here on Guernsey. Through their stimulating action on the bladder and kidneys, nettles help to cleanse the body of toxins and wastes. Nettles relive fluid retention, bladder infections, and are an excellent remedy for arthritis and skin problems.

They have bene used to stem heavy periods, and can also bring on delayed periods. They are also used as a good restorative remedy during menopause. They can stimulate milk production during the post-natal period too.

In the respiratory systems, nettles can clear congestion, and relieve hay fever and asthma. In the digestive system, they help ease diarrhoea, wind, inflammation and ulceration.

Here’s an easy vegan nettle soup recipe:

Ingredients

2 cups (50g) of nettle leaves

olive oil

1 leek or onion

1-3 cloves of garlic

2 cups (300g) of potatoes

2tsp stock powder

2 cups (500ml) water

1 tbsp lime juice

Sprinkle of pumpkin seed

Method

Wear gloves to prepare your nettles, remove any thick stalks and wash the leaves well.

In a medium saucepan heat the olive oil and then add the chopped leek/onion and garlic.

Fry for a few minutes until translucent.

Then add the diced potato, water and stock powder and stir.

Cover the pan with a lid and simmer for 10 minutes or until the potato is soft.

When the potato is washed, add the nettle leaves and cook for a further minute util the leaves are wilted down.

Add the lime juice and blend the soup until smooth using a blender.

Serve with salt and pepper and a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds.

Enjoy!

x

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Cleavers for Spring cleansing - a cold infusion

Cleavers are a common hedgerow weed that seems to be everywhere at the moment, at least in our garden! The children love to pick it to stick on each other, but actually it can be used to create a wonderful cleansing remedy, cleaning toxins from the system and reducing heat and inflammation.

It also has a diuretic effect, aiding elimination of wastes and it also acts to enhance the lymphatic system, promoting the lymphatic draining of toxins and waste via the urinary system. Cleavers are therefore excellent for fluid retention, skin problems (including eczema, psoriasis, acne, boils and abscesses), urinary infections, arthritis and gout.

Cleavers cool heat and inflammation in the body, hence the benefit for arthritis, but also inflammatory skin problems and digestive problems. It’s bitter properties stimulate liver function and enhance digestion and absorption - a miracle plant really!

A cooling drink make of cleavers was traditionally given every spring to “clear the blood” and is something I have tried this last few days, and it feels good!

IMG_4397.jpg

Here’s what you do you to make an infusion:

  • Collect the cleavers and wash them. Pop in a good processor and finely chop.

  • Place one or two tablespoons of the finely chopped and fresh leaves in a glass/jar of room temperature water.

  • Allow the cleavers to infuse the water for 8-12 hours. Perhaps place in the fridge.

  • Drain the cleavers and drink the water, enjoy!

xx

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15 years of Beinspired!

We celebrated 15 years of Beinspired last night with a Kirtan session courtesy of Katie and Adam. It has been my dream since 2007 to have a Kirtan leader on the island and the wait has been worthwhile. I love Kirtan and I am very grateful to Katie and Adam for fulfilling this dream.

I discovered Kirtan while helping out on a yoga teacher training course at Govinda Valley, a Hare Krishna retreat centre near Sydney in Australia. I had never chanted previously and I couldn’t believe the heart opening and energetically uplifting effect of the practice. It was without doubt one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I felt as if I had discovered a direct path to the divine and experienced a level of bliss and ecstasy that I hadn’t known was missing from my life, or accessible too, just by using my voice!

I’ve sought out Kirtan ever since, and have tried to share what I can of it on yoga retreats, by using background music and encouraging people to sing along. It’s not ever been quite as powerful, although there have been some memorable experiences both in Glastonbury, where there was definitely a Goddess attendance and on Herm, the Gayatri Mantra being the instigator - this is my favourite mantra, the oldest known to man, that really illuminates and changes things for those who chant or even listen to it.

When I knew Katie was travelling the East coast of Australia I recommended she visit a Hare Krishna retreat centre at Murwillumbah, which I have never visited but have a friend who was based there for a time. Katie duly visited and here she met her partner Adam, who is now based with her in Guernsey, and she also experienced Kirtan, which she loved to the extent that she began facilitating sessions. When she returned to Guernsey she invested in a harmonium and began leading Kirtan sessions on our Sark retreats.

Last night though was a whole difference experience because we chanted for 90 minutes and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one buzzing with the energy at the end of the session, let alone feeling a deep connection to heart. It was a really uplifting and heart opening way to celebrate 15 years of Beinspired and especially with the added bonus of Sing’s homemade chocolate and the various gifts received, adding to the general energy - thank you everyone!

Beinspired has come a long way over the last 15 years, born one evening while talking with my Reiki Master about setting up yoga classes and offering Reiki treatments on the island and up popped the name and logo. I couldn’t have have appreciated in my wildest dreams that Beinspired would have taken me on the journey that it has over the years. At my first yoga class, no one turned up and I returned home despondent, crying on my dad’s shoulder and questioning my decision to teach.

It soon became apparent that I was not going to be able to survive on a holistic income and I returned part-time to the finance industry to help support me and afford me the opportunity to continue my travels and the endless trainings that I have undertaken off island over the years. I have not stopped studying and practising in all the time that I have been teaching - it is true that practice is everything.

While I was always resentful of my company secretarial qualification and the continuous draw to the finance industry, over the years I have become grateful for this. It has not only afforded the travel and training but has allowed me to develop the website and offer a plethora of free content - this all funded by my time attending board meetings and taking minutes, to say nothing of administering a wealth management company. I tried to leave it 3 times but each time I was called back, and each time my contract became increasingly flexible to the extent that I didn’t have a contract in the end.

I realise now that the powers that be were supporting me, and kept me engaged with the company to the point that it was, after 14 years, finally the right time for me to go it alone in the holistic world. It took that much time! Perhaps that’s helpful to know for those attempting to carve a life in the holistic world - it’s not always quite as straightforward as you might believe, there is often the need for compromise. Furthermore, this whole experience has helped me to finally appreciate that the spiritual resides in everything, that life is not black and white and that we need to get our prejudices out of the way if we are to see the bigger picture.

I do get asked from time to time for business advice. I don’t really have any! I did speak with Start-up Guernsey as it was known in the day, but I basically wrote a list of business intentions and personal intentions too, to which I channelled Reiki, before popping away in a drawer. I’ve gone back to it annually, because things change, including me, and Beinspired has taken on more of its own energy over that time, plus dreams have been realised so new dreams come in. I’m not sure I’d win a business award for that, because to be honest, I’ve just tried to keep aligning with heart and spirit, nothing else.

It’s taken a lot of hard work too, I’m not sure people appreciate that. Beinspired is my life, and I am continuously giving it energy, I don’t switch off, I thrive on working and practising, and trying to be in nature and of course with family as much as I can. I don’t sleep as much as I should, because I like to write in the quieter hours of the morning (I’m currently editing a manuscript I’ve written about my journey with depression), and I read in the evening, or explore nature and standing stones when the evenings are lighter.

I’m grateful for all the support that comes my way and especially for Katie, and before her, her sister Steph, who have transformed Beinspired in ways I couldn’t have done myself. I’m also eternally grateful to my parents who might not ‘get’ the whole spiritual/healing thing, or at least the extent to which I embrace it in my life, but have supported me nonetheless with all my endeavours. My dad even swept out the huge greenhouse for me once when rain put pay to an outdoor class on the grass! My mum even now prepares lunch for all the Reiki attunement sessions and then joins us while we eat.

There’s been lots of other support too. My brother Ross was instrumental in ensuring I got to my first yoga class, let alone helping with Beinspired in earlier years, teaching classes when he was on Guernsey. Vicki too, who has been a faithful friend throughout, helping me on the Herm retreats and covering classes for me, sometimes at the last minute, picking up when I went on unexpected and early maternity leave with Eben (and maternity leave with Elijah), she even had to finish off the retreat for me as I ended up being collected by the lifeboat with my waters breaking 6 weeks early during the middle of the retreat on a super full moon, typical huh!

Ewan of course has been unwavering in his support, he’s had little choice really, but I know there have been times when it has been tough, especially our first trip to India, running a retreat when the boys were only 1 and 3 years old - that was har work, because he was often having to entertain them for 5 hours or so a day on his own and I was still breastfeeding Eben (and still am!) which didn’t help. I dragged him back to India two years later when the boys were then 3 and 5, and that was still tricky because Eben kept running away from him and appearing in the yoga shala!

He’s managed on the many retreats in Glastonbury too, being the man on hand to help with students and ensuring they had logs in the yurts for their evening fires. Plus of course the endless hours of childcare while I’ve been teaching and attuning, often when the boys were babies, maintaining my sanity but probably at the expense of his own - Elijah cluster fed which made Monday evenings a traumatic event for Ewan as he awaited my return home to feed a screaming baby! Let alone the endless hours of my writing and turning often mad ideas into reality. I haven’t always gotten it right, putting other people’s needs ahead of my family’s needs, but he’s been supportive regardless. We’ve laughed and cried (well I’ve cried, Ewan’s mainly drunk more wine!).

My cousin Nick has provided amazing photography, so too his daughter Rosemary and of course Steph. Steph recorded many of the videos, no doubt bored to tears but she kept smiling regardless! There’s been so many others, teachers who have helped, friends who have given their endless support and spread the word, especially in the earlier days, those who run the retreat centres such as Emma in Goa with whom I am still friends, Devika in Nepal and her friend Cherry, and all the many students, wow!

There’s that saying isn’t there, about people coming into our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime and this is so true! There are some students who come and go, some who merely email for advice and then I never hear from again, sometimes not even a thank you (one learns detachment and being in service!) and those who have been with me from the very beginning. Our lives are all touched by one another in some way, especially when we usher Reiki into it. I’m grateful to everyone and to Her who collects us all together.

Who knows what the next 15 years will bring. Beinspired has its own energy and directs me, often challenging me to get out of my comfort zone. I have a few ideas too, so let’s see. For now, there’s definitely a calling to Sark and to share Reiki with the world. Yoga is going through its own transformation, the market saturated and sadly it has been reduced in many cases to nothing more than an exercise class. I live in hope that its philosophical and spiritual roots will find their way back through and yoga will no longer be seen as a middle class trendy thing to do.

I’m hoping that more will find their way to Ayurveda, simply because Ayurveda has helped me so much in my own life and continues to inform me in the way I attempt to eat and live. It demands a certain level of consciousness to begin but we are all getting there, the world is awakening, the term ‘chakra’ was unfamiliar to students when I first taught Reiki all those years ago but now it’s understood without any need for definition. With luck we’ll return to nature too, our own nature, as much as connecting with nature and all that this beautiful planet has to offer us, especially when we start respecting it.

I’m excited about the new baby, courtesy of Vicki, and about the other teachers who have started offering their heart and healing hands through Beinspired, both Jo and Katie. I’m also excited about the many Reiki practitioners starting to find their way, helping to spread more light to Planet Earth. This is what it’s always been about for me - reducing suffering, realising our potential (knowing the Self), raising consciousness and helping to heal humanity and Planet Earth in the process. Also trying to have some fun - sometimes we just need to lighten up and get out of our own way!

A huge big thank you to all of you who have supported me and Beinspired over the years - without you none of this would have been possible. A special thank you to Katie and Adam for facilitating the Kirtan yesterday evening -i t felt like the perfect way to celebrate these 15 years reminding me of the need for patience and that there is a timing to everything.

Love Emma x

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We're on the wane!

Well that was one intense super full moon! I was giving Reiki when it peaked this lunchtime and I could literally feel the release. I lay on my mat an hour or so later and I could feel all the agitation and restlessness that the moon brought with it dropping away - it felt like I’d imagine it would feel coming out of a washing machine! Phew!

The moon brought some important messages with her. Family as a priority, is definitely a message worth remembering in this crazy busy world we currently live in. Letting go of all the stuff that we don’t need to hold onto, that also came through - open your hands and your heart to release. Tied into this was also the need to forgive.

I spent yesterday evening visiting the Goddess, sea swimming and hanging out at three ancient sacred sites. In one I felt very held and comforted and here gained the clarity for forgiveness and release of a pattern. The second had some amazing energy going on and if I can work out how to upload a video I will share. The third was both clearing and agitating all at the same time. It interested me how they all worked their magic in their own ways and all I had to do was honour the intuitive nudge and make an effort to turn up.

So let’s see what happens now. Eclipses have a habit of changing the things that need changing to orientate and re-orientate us to where we are meant to be, from the heart, not the will. In many respects they help us to let go of our need to control and just go with the flow, often the hardest thing of all.

So happy waning moon now. Hopefully your crystals are beautifully cleansed and your seeds planted. A new is awaiting once the dust settles!

xx

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