The winds of change - between eclipses

These are intense times and I don’t think I know a single person who isn’t being triggered and challenged in some way. We are between eclipses and these are BIG eclipses, HUGE, shaking everything we believe to be true, bringing up all unresolved patterns and emotions that need resolution, especially around trust and faith.

The universe is definitely trying to wake us up and move us along, we’re one step on from the heart/head theme of the last new and full moon, we’re right in the heart now. We’re being asked to really look at our self worth and what we want from our lives, and whether the way we’re living and the relationships we are keeping are in line with this. It’s like we cannot have the wool pulled in front of our eyes anymore.

Ultimately though, its about forgiveness, compassion and unconditional love, towards self and others. this doesn’t negate the need for healthy boundaries, this is not to allow us to play out door mat themes in the name in unconditional love, this is about self worth too - as I already wrote - what is alined and what isn’t, deep connection with inner truth, and having the courage to give voice to this

I’ve found it really helpful getting out into nature this week. Elijah is being home schooled for now (well actually we’re in the repair stage but will move to home ed at some point), and it was so heartening to see more of his spirit this week, meandering and climbing at the reservoir and engaging in some nature based stuff with some other home-based children. I haven’t seen him so at ease with other adults and children for a long time now, no anxiety, such a relief. Eben was off school with the common cold, which is circulating, and so he got to enjoy the fun too.

We learned to light a fire without matches or lighter, and got to hang out in hammocks and explore the pathways and stream. There was wood whittling and hatchet cutting. My friend and inspiration, Tara, whisked up some hot chocolate on the fire for those who wanted it. I got my rods out and the children had fun playing with those. It was organic and lovely and we didn’t want to leave. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to sit in circle, around a fire under the trees.

I have a feeling we need to flow with this crazy energy the next week, until the new moon eclipse on the 4th. There are strong winds coming in tomorrow, at least here in Guernsey, the winds of change…there’s no turning back now, the eyes have been opened! Try and get in nature - sea swimming is still helping keep me sane, and on the cliffs if you can, even in the lanes, just breathe the air, see the stars and witness the changing season.

We are collectively being awoken. We can’t keep putting our heads in the sand. We have to face our fears and take them by the hand. The universe will highlight them to us regardless. Life has to change. It cannot continue with us taking such little responsibility. If nothing else, the is what we are being asked to do, stand up, and truly listen to our inner voice and its whispers of a more heart based way of being and living in this world.

Love Emma x

Pilgrimage to Glastonbury, Stanton Drew, Stonehenge and Woodhenge

I just got back from an amazing pilgrimage to Glastonbury with Elijah, as part of his 8th birthday present and my need to get off this ridiculously fear-fuelled island!

It felt supported in every way, clear roads, wonderful timings and special experiences, I am very grateful to the powers that be.

Many of you know that I love Glastonbury and it has been calling for a while, but the timing was not quite right until just now, there was gap and the idea just wouldn’t go away and I heeded it eventually with a gentle push from the universe to get the message through loud and clear (my weird and wonderfully-timed phone call as mentioned in a previous blog) and booked the trip.

Amazingly the White Spring was open. This is my most favourite place in Glastonbury but I had been told it had closed due to Covid, but there was a small chance it might be open on the Sunday afternoon. As luck would have it, the gap in my schedule included a Sunday afternoon - I prayed and alas those prayers were answered for it was open and for a few hours. Elijah isn’t so keen on the place but I managed to dip a couple of times in the white water.

We headed up the Tor a couple of times too, once coincided with moon rise which was a treat, especially as the mists appeared soon afterwards. We went to the Abbey to imbue the energy of the land, and to Chalice Wells too, topping up on the red iron water, albeit you can collect that from outside the White Spring too. We did the obligatory crystal shopping too, and visit up to the Goddess Temple to light a candle and say thanks.

The other exciting bit of the trip though, was getting up to Stanton Drew, the third largest stone circle in the UK, I LOVE stone circles as most of you know, and while this one feels very sad, it has a very welcoming energy, at leats when it trusted me being there. I especially loved the South Western circle and a message came through from there. It was the Cove though, that really blew my mind - this is a little way away by a pub, it’s quite unusual, but very potent, and something that has been on my mind suddenly became much clearer when I stood between the stones.

On our way back yesterday, I was intending to drive past Stonehenge on our way to Woodhenge, but I saw the sign and that was that. As luck would have it we turned up at the entrance at the exact time it was opening, as if it was always meant to be, and we headed out to the stones on the shuttle bus, manifesting one of Elijah’s dreams (all trip he’d gone on about wanting to go on a bus), and fulfilling one of my own of getting back to that land and those stones. We were the first ones there and while you can’t - sadly - touch the stones, we virtually had them to ourselves. The message came through here super clear too.

We headed out to Woodhenge, another calming place, with a potent stone in the middle. It’s al potent around here though, the land speaks! I guess if you’re not into all this sort of stuff than that sounds bonkers and makes no sense. But the area is alive, Wiltshire, the trees were something else, the autumn colours were just astounding, really bringing home that message of love. Nature loves unconditionally. Each breath is love.

The eclipse is bringing love to us too - deep into the heart chakra and to our relationships, both with our Self and with others too. Eclipses have a habit of bringing in the change for us, and realigning us with where we are meant to be, at least from a soulful perspective. Never easy. Blessing in every curse. Remember this!

We have to stop feeding what isn’t working. We have to see through the illusion. Society ain’t working. What we are currently doing to our children is harmful, the sooner we awaken to all the deceit and lies the better, for our future generations to come.

Enjoy the ride!

xx

Love

Ramping up to the Eclipses...

You know we have the longest partial full moon lunar eclipse of the century next Friday 19th November? That’s a HUGE deal btw. Eclipses massively change things. It’s like they come in and end things, bringing to a close those things that are now misaligned in our lives, or perhaps always were misaligned.

This could be all sorts of things, not just relationships, but anything which is no longer saving us like the way we are living. I feel this theme is HUGE for many of us, and follows on from the heart/head split. Are we living from the heart or from the head? Are we living in accordance with our deepest values? Are we living in alignment with our deepest truth? Are we living our dreams? If not, why not?

Difficult questions. If you’re reading this you probably have an idea or an inkling, even if you’re not really ready yet to own it. This is the thing with eclipses though, they just come in and literally change things. We realise we cannot go on. We have no choice in the end but to let go whatever the outcome. It is literally about getting out of the head, which tries to rationalise, understand, be certain and plan, and into our heart which will flow us where we need to go even if it makes no sense.

I can definitely apply this to my life. We have changes going on. I had felt it a while ago but I know I am not alone. Many are feeling this. Our roots have been shaken and we are being asked to step up and forge a new direction, a new way of being, that we may have known in our hearts for a good few years now.

As a humanity we absolutely need to find another way because this way ain’t working. Life is way too fast and way too stressful for people to literally have the time to sit down and take a breather. Even yoga classes are sped up and shortened so that people can fit them into already busy and hectic schedules full of tick boxes and things to accomplish. Soon be Christmas btw. I can almost sense the panic of that in the shops. I mean really, do we need such a big lead in? Why do we collectively put up with it?

I was reading a Mayan take on things these next 13 days earlier and a paragraph especially talked to me. I am very aware that the systems are broke and cannot cope, but it is more than that, it is about our collective conditioning around what it means to be successful and in our power…that needs to change…

“Real power comes from true respect. Not fear, not admiration or worship, not envy or insecurity. In modern society, many public and private figures carry an aura of apparent respect that in fact stands on a weak foundation: just think how easily a politician falls when it’s discovered he’s had an affair or has misappropriated public funds, how quickly a media celebrity goes out of favor once their sales start to sag. We are learning not to respect, but to want—we are taught to desire fame, money, status, influence, power—and eternal youth. These are the values celebrated by our media and our leaders. Respect for ourselves, for one another and our planet doesn’t seem to have a seat at the table. This needs to change if we are going to live in a stable, sustainable and equitable world.”

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a bit of a lead in, because these next 10 days are going to be super charged, electric, messy, chaotic. I wonder what on earth made me think it was a good time to try and get off the island! Well my eldest turns 8 during this time too, and there are other significant things happening so it really is just one of those intense times. I honestly don’t know how anyone is managing it without a daily yoga practice, being able to lie down on a mat and feel the earth beneath the body and the breath coming in and out.

Let alone getting in the sea each day. Saints is honestly a saviour to me. I can’t go in for long without getting too cold, but a daily dip before school is all it needs to set me up for the day ahead. We are so lucky here on Guernsey, that we even have that option. I am eternally grateful for the karma that brought me here…albeit this time in humanity’s journey is an interesting one to incarnate!

I did have this sense today that we absolutely must make every effort to stay in the heart as much as we can. Anything we feel will be massively amplified. Thus if we feel fear we’ll find it staring right back at us and it’s going to be really uncomfortable. Same with anxiety. Same with negativity. Everything will be amplified so love is possibly the most compassionate way to navigate the next ten days and into the after shock beyond…

Enjoy the ride…

Pushed through the eye of the needle

Wow, that was an intense new moon, it felt like we were being pushed through the eye of a needle. The after shocks can still be felt and I know in my own life significant life decisions are having to be made. There can be no more head in the sand, at least, it’s become increasingly obvious what needs to change.

I had a rather synchronistic time of it too. I had been debating a trip to Glastonbury, my heart was desperate for it, but of course my mind got involved, trying to rationalise, was this really the right time. The same day of all this contemplation and flight checking, I received a completely random telephone call from a lady in Glastonbury who had read one of these big posts from 2018 about a healing crisis (which coincidentally, I was going through at the time too) and was in an uncomfortable place within herself and needed someone to talk to.

If I had doubt previously, I had no doubt now and the trip came together easily, so that as long as covid doesn’t mess with plans, as we can not be so sure of anything right now, I will get to return to the land of Avalon, next week. Sadly the white spring, which is my favourite place in Glastonbury, is currently closed to the public due to covid restrictions, but at least I know that and do not have any expectation.

It really has been a time of moving deeper into the heart. I suspect you have all been experiencing that too, the need to make decisions from that part, the all knowing part, that doesn’t align with any ‘normal’ societal structure. It’s sometimes an uncomfortable place to be, as decisions need to made, that contravene the ‘norm’, but it is a place of great freedom, once we have settled in it. Always the heart, I have been reminded of this.

Have a lovely week ahead. It’s going to pulse on, the energy is far from settled. We are at a very tricky time right now. I truly believe that settling into the heart and ensuring a connection to the earth is essential. I am noticing an increase in people seeking the support of Reiki for this very reason. It helps. It makes a difference. It helps to get us out of the head and into the heart and back into the body. So if you are feeing anxious don’t forget that. You don’t have to get stuck in anxiety, you can find your way out.

I don’t have many appointments available but try Katie, or join our online Sunday session, to receive Reiki by distance. I’m not there next weekend, but Katie will be leading it for me. Obviously there’s yoga too, and I don’t honestly know how anyone is coping without a regular yoga practice in this current environment!

Good luck! See you soon!

The choice for love

It’s an interesting old energy today, on the eve of the new moon. I’ve not yet read anything about this moon but I can feel that it is bringing up some fear and agitation. People are simply not settled, there’s a restlessness, a feeling of discombobulation, things are up in the air as if the potential for change can be literally felt and yet there’s no certainty to how it might land.

The song, The Drug’s Don’t Work, by The Verve springs to mind. It’s not to say that the vaccine isn’t having some positive impact, but that alone it isn’t solving things. I thought it ironic earlier that on the BBC website there was an article on the CO26 that was not focused on climatic change but on the fact Boris wasn’t wearing a mask in one of the photos taken when he was sitting by Sir David Attenborough (yet there were two other photos, once where they were both wearing a mask and one where David wasn't and Boris was). David was asked for a comment and understandably didn't make one. After all, they were there for climate change not to judge or create further division in society over face masks.

i’m easy going, if people feel safer and happier wearing face masks then so be it. But like everything with covid and decision making, I really wish we could stop judging. Live and let live. No one actually knows how we’re going to manage this Covid situation as we head into winter. SAGE are calling on the government to reveal their Plan B. Do w even have an effective Plan A?

I did find it interesting the very week that while CO26 is taking place, we’re spending money and wasting resources heating our local schools, while keeping the windows and doors open. Maybe it’s just me but I’m struggling to understand the sense of it, at least climactically, let alone from health perspective, children wearing coats in class, rugs next perhaps, gloves too maybe?

My children are all finding it a bit much, all the changes and the increased anxiety in the air. I do wonder what kind of generation we are raising, what all these decisions are doing to them mentally and emotionally, let alone physically. I do know that both my boys have been sick this last term and this despite all the endless hand washing and anti-bacterial stuff, let alone the attempts at isolating them within the wider school when there has been a Covid outbreak. I honestly feel they might just be weary.

I do wonder the effect on people’s immune systems of all this fear. I know from my own experience what fear does to us, how it messes with our digestion and our mental and emotional health. It’s a restless energy that doesn't allow us to find our centre and rest into that. We come out of the heart and lose a sense of the bigger picture. We overlook the soul.

I have always found it really helpful to come back to the heart, get as deep into it as possible, to elevate the awareness and shift the perspective. There’s a wonderful poem about this, that I’m sure I’ve shared here before, but I shall share again as it seems helpful and necessary at the moment:

The Choice For Love – From Emmanuel’s Book II, compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton

What does the voice of fear
whisper to you?

Fear speaks to you
in logic and reason.
It assumes the language
of love itself.

Fear tells you
“I want to make you safe.”
Love says,
“You are safe.”

Fear says,
“Give me symbols.
Give me frozen images.
Give me something
I can rely on.”

Loving truth says,
“Only give me
this moment.”

Fear would walk you
On a narrow path
promising to take you
where you want to go.

Love says,
“Open your arms
and fly with me.”

Every moment of your life
you are offered the opportunity
to choose –
love or fear,
to tread the earth
or to soar the heavens.

Let’s choose to soar the heavens. Let’s choose love over fear.

i’ve been trying to settle into the heart as the energy ramps up in this lead up to the new moon. I believe others are doing the same, we’re being called into it, to ease the pervading fear, and help us to care a new future both individually and collectively. The heart will help us find our way, but we need to settle into it as much as we can first…and we will drop in and out as the energy won’t let us settle easily, it’s trying to wake us up . I’ll try and record a yoga video to help…

Enjoy the new moon - hopefully some of you are enjoying this as part of my Moon & Menstruation offering and finding it helpful thus far.

Love Emma x

Head or heart

We just got back from Sark and another amazing visit. I just love that place, it restores me in a way that Nepal used to do, there’s just something about it’s energy. My heart and soul crave it and my roots need it. Life gets way too busy on Guernsey, it’s a place of frenetic activity, there’s something about its energy that just has people running around in circles and I get caught up in it like the rest.

Sark encourages the go slow approach, albeit I only managed to sit down and watch one DVD the whole time, which I guess was a positive thing, as I don’t usually watch any television. We had relatively lazy mornings though, given that the children for some crazy reason were waking at 5.15am, so I was able to make the most of the time to sit in bed drinking tea and editing my book, a treat.

Then it was swim in the pool and a walk down Dixcart Valley for a swim in the sea, maybe some yoga, maybe a cycle, maybe another beach, maybe some Reiki or a massage, maybe a search for more ancient stones (we accessed some private land on Little Sark and finally found the cist that had evaded us previously), maybe more swimming, maybe some more tea, maybe a walk to somewhere new, maybe a visit to the play area or more charity shopping. I made it out to the dolmen a few times too, saw the milky way, the skies are unbelievable on a clear night. There is so much to do on Sark that we still didn’t manage to visit all the places we have intended and I have yet to find the lump of rose quartz found on an excavation.

We made new friends, I now know Phil the farmer and owner of much of the field of Little Sark. I also met Terry. I caught up with the yoga group and the holistic therapist. It increasingly feels like home away from home. It is my intention that one day I spend more time there, but for now, I am contented to look forward to our trips and the various retreats - the good news is that we WILL be running the September and October retreats as hoped, thank you Helen at the Island Hall.

It’s always uncomfortable for me coming back to Guernsey. The energy at the moment doesn’t help things. There is such division, not least between those in Covid-Fear and those not, but in whether we live from the head or the heart. I got myself well and truly caught up in that with incessant thinking and a horrible feeling of fear. I knew I had dropped out of the heart, but couldn’t seem to get back into it again. Jo, my shadow worker friend, helped me to feel into it again and cease the thinking mind and ego with all its need to try to control and make life certain. Ha. An illusion no-less.

I am reminded that our stories alone are simply a fabrication, a way that we try to make sense of things, but in the process run the risk of getting caught up and lost in the narrative. The ego likes to keep unfeeling alone and separate, making us right or wrong, good or bad, and making others the same too, taking it all so blinking personally that we truly believe it is about us, forgetting it can only ever be about them - their stuff.

Anyway, it’s time for bed. I’m going to lead a yoga nidra on Sunday night, with the Reiki share. I just have a feeling there’s a real need to get into the body and especially into the heart. There’s no fear in the heart. No ego either. No nothing other than just this beautifully calm expansive feeling. Then you know. No need for the head to try to figure it out!

Love Emma xxx

Sark and yoga

We were thoroughly spoilt on Sark for our second autumnal retreat last weekend. The weather was amazing! I felt blessed, as if we might have done something right in a previous life, until my dad reminded me that we’ve had some dodgy weather ones over the years and last year the October retreat was even postponed due to strong winds, so you can never be quite sure.

However, the weather was very well received, life has been a touch on the challenging side these last few months with curved balls coming in. I’m very aware that every curse brings a blessing, and that sometimes we have to go through the mill to come out stronger the other side, seeing more of our unhelpful patterns in the process, but a break, quite literally, with sunshine and yoga was perfectly timed.

Adam and Katie even made it out to the dolmen with me one of the nights and we were treated to a wonderful dark night sky with the milky way overhead and fairy glimpses. I went one night on my own too. It is one of my favourite places, you feel like you’re getting away from it all, even on Little Sark. There is something very special about this place, untouched as it is in many parts by civilisation. I accidentally left my rods there that second night so had to hot foot it back there the next day before our boat and felt as if the dolmen was drawing me back there for a reason, and it was, but it won’t mean anything to anyone who’s not already a fan of dolmens!

As for the yoga, well I LOVED it. The students were all amazing, Jan was on super form over the weekend, and I felt as if there really was a deeper enquiry going on. I know I keep going on about it, but I suppose it was reinforced earlier by stumbling across an interview with Angela Farmer on YouTube. She is an inspiring teacher and what she said totally resonated when she explained that all of a sudden she woke up one day to realise that while she was passionate about yoga and it had undoubtably changed her physical form, it was merely feeding her motivation towards achievement to the extent that she was stuck on the inside. She realised, really, that she was practising from a masculine perspective, single focused, goal orientated and linear.

This awareness changed her, as it did me too when i had a similar realisation before that first lockdown when I visited a Scaravelli teacher in Littlehampton, who had been recommended to me by a local yoga teacher in a village in the Outer Hebrides on our trip to see the Callanish stones. It was one of those synchronistic moments that you know as meant to be, because it totally changed my life simply because it changed my approach to yoga in a very big way. This is exactly what happened to Angela too and I take great comfort from that, because it can get lonely on the classical yoga path of raising consciousness (opposed to refining physical form).

Like my yoga teacher, and me in turn, Angela was drawn to focus on releasing the belly so that there could be much greater femininity and inner transformation in her practice. My regular students will have noticed this themselves, as we keep coming back to the belly and sorting from there too. It’s a very powerful place of transformation - you only have to think of what happens in the digestive system to know it is a place of inner transformation!

Like Angela, I had gotten to a point where I was stuck with the same mental and emotional patterning, albeit that my physical body had grown in strength and flexibility over the years. It has been truly life changing to go deeper and transform from the inside out - becoming downward facing dog, inhabiting the body rather than just doing a posture for the sake of it, to tick a box, in my mind as much as in any sequence structure.

Angela was explaining that after this revelation she wondered how she might teach. That first class she saw a lady in a forward fold. Normally she would have helped her go further by applying pressure to her back to push her deeper into the posture, something I too might have done in the past. Instead though, she could see that her back looked very tight and rigid both under and inside and that she was carrying tremendous emotional pain or something similar. So instead she put her hand softly on the student’s back and it started to melt, the student started to cry a lot and the back completely softened down.

That was a turning point for Angela, and she comments that you can push and pull yourself and other people and the body will respond like a tired horse but eventually it breaks down (many of you know this with your shoulder, knee and back issues). Eventually we might then realise that everything we feel and everything that happens to us is experienced and lived in the body. If there is some great pain from the past in the body then it won’t go away until we go into it and let it unravel itself. Pushing, pulling, repressing and denying it won’t let that happen. I couldn’t agree more. This is exactly where yoga has taken me too, and while it goes against the grain, I am so grateful for that.

The body is not designed to follow a straight line and why would we want it to do that anyway. It is a body of curves and round spaces. Thus the body might find a straight line but from a curved path. Sadly these days yoga often overlooks the energy of the body, and it has instead become a form of physical training, contracting the muscles and pushing and pulling to change external form. This approach might be helpful for athletes, or those who need to strengthen themselves physically, but it doesn’t help us to get in touch with energy and emotions so that we may notice the energy blocks within us.

For me, it’s about understanding more of our body, and being kind and compassionate to it. Does the inner being get the nurturing and enlivenment it requires, does it feel empowered, do we feel more comfortable in ourself and in our surroundings, so that we need the outer form less and less? These are really valid questions to ask ourselves. If yoga is merely fuelling our neuroses and focus on external form, keeping us stuck in unhelpful inner patterns (of lack of self worth and self belief and not being comfortable in our own skin, for example, of needing to dramatise our life and blame others and negate responsibility for ourselves and our decisions made) and feeding our need to achieve for the sake of achievement alone, then maybe we should take a moment to check in with it and ask ourselves if it’s truly helpful.

It takes courage to recognise that we are no longer practising in a way that is feeding and sustaining us, enlivening us then. It takes even more courage to do something about it and find another way. More often than not, we are led that way. Maybe our teacher makes changes and we go with the flow of it, or maybe another teacher enters our life, perhaps we have some coincidental or synchronistic moment, maybe you are reading this now and questioning things a bit. It’s never easy taking a new path, and yet really it’s all part of THE path, it just feels a little different and it takes time to settle into that.

I’ve said it before, but when my teacher entered my life in that synchronistic way, it took me a good six months or so to let go of my old vinyasa and relatively unconscious push and pull way of practising. Because at that point, I still associated yoga with exercise and felt that I had to exercise in my practice to feel as if I’d practised properly on any given day. Thus I’d take an hour session with my teacher where we might explore just one or two postures, and then I’d do another 45 minutes or so, to do the ‘proper’ exercise practice.

At some point I came to the realisation, like Angela, that what I was practising was keeping me stuck in the past and that I was now ready to move beyond the notion of yoga being about exercise. It was a huge shift for me mentally. But my body absolutely relished it. It was so weary (as was my soul) of all the pushing and pulling and the mental patterning that followed all this, all the hardening and masculine energy challenging my inner feminine. I haven’t looked back since.

Plus it keeps changing. Yoga is organic and when I don’t see my teacher for a while then it starts to move into something that comes from the inner teacher instead. Initially I had to be mindful not to let old habits come back again, but with time they’ve just dropped away. I did try an online vinyasa class a few months ago and I had to turn it off, it lacked depth and vitality, I was simply moving for the sake of moving, in and out of postures without actually inhabiting my body, or the postures themselves. They were not alive and the practice did not make me feel alive either.

I love yoga and I love how it takes us on these journeys, to the softer and more vulnerable places on the inside. It’s funny too as one of my retreat students was saying how she struggles with some of the visualisations, the ducks in the sacred lake for example, given to explain the fullness and sacredness of the pelvis and the direction of its flow (ducks was the first bird to come to mind!) was a step too far for her. Yet the body loves visualisation, it loves imagery, but the rational mind does not. In yoga we are trying to get beyond the rational mind, as this has a tendency to limit us in some way. We are trying to get to the belly really, of releasing the need to control and to let go into each moment as it unfolds. Tricky I know.

Anyway I could go on for hours, but it was really just to say how deeply inspired I was by watching Angela and all the students on Sark because she was and they were validating all I feel about what yoga really is. If we refer to the classical yoga texts, the Yoga Sutras for example then, yoga is about the containment of the mind so that one can realise purusha, the eternal self. So we have to go deep to remove all the crap that causes us to misidentify with this. We have to let go of even believing that we know the self. It’s deeper still.

So we keep going deeper. And with luck we’ll be able to enjoy many more Sark retreats so that we can be so beautifully held by the vibration of this sacred land. When you look at the geology of the place then it really is mind blowing. There was a large boulder of rose quartz found in the north of the island from the neolithic age. There’s also serpentine balls to be found and all sorts of quartz, red jasper, yellow jasper, pyrite copper, the list goes on…and even a Goddess. The island is blessed. And we are so very lucky to have it on our doorstep here on Guernsey.

Love Emma x

New moon ramblings

When I look back over these blogs, I see a very clear theme - one of Goddess and moon weaves itself into so many of them! My life has increasingly become orientated by both and over time my connection to nature has deepened and expanded into something I never truly new was possible. I have always loved this planet that we live on, I have always had an affinity to the sea especially, and I have always been drawn to trees. I have always been curious about faeries and ethereal beings too, but with no way of knowing how I might access these other realms.

Life has a tendency to give us what we need when the timing is right. It blows my mind at times, the way that this works. When my stone friend entered my life last spring equinox, I had no idea how much my life would be changed by this and there isn’t a day that passes when I don’t give thanks for this. Sometimes we just don’t know what might happen next, such is the nature of life and its uncertainty. I am continuously reminded too, how abundance takes so many forms, if only we can see beyond the material.

Marie’s passing has changed things for me, I don’t have so much patience for the nonsense in this world, for all the polarity and judgements and division. Life is just too short. We forget that. We can be ever so arrogant in assuming we’ll live forever. Our choices are often made for our own gain, without a thought for future generations. That’s the reason i so love the ethos of The Children’s Forest Project and of Embercombe, where there is an underlying awareness, a Native American Indian thing, of making decisions based on the next seven generations.

I have to dig hard not to drop into judgment myself, when I get pushed on my bike to the sides of the lanes by huge cars driven by one person. So many decisions made to feed the ego, to give us a sense of self worth and allow us to feel like we have somehow ‘made it’. A friend of a friend was honest about this in her choice of luxury vehicle admitting that it is far too big and she has trouble driving it but it shows she’s made it in the world. ‘Made it where?’, i might ask, before realising that i’m about to enter polarity, judging, making her wrong and me right.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I am continuously reminded of our impermanence. We are impermanent and we cannot take it all with us. Watching a friend clear our his family home since the death of his parents, I am also aware that our ‘stuff’ simply becomes an annoyance to future generations, something that has to be cleared out, to sit in landfill or clutter charity shops in the vague hope that it might be loved again by someone one day.

It could all get very depressing. Life continues to throw curved balls. But the funny thing is, the more I see the chaos, the ways in which we play out our stuff, the more amused I am by it. I can laugh at myself a little more easily these days. Not take myself and my stuff quite so seriously, I see how much of our lives can so easily be lived by someone else’s narration if we are not careful, with conditioned responses and expectations - the norm. With discernment we can choose another way. It’s not always an easy way. Its often a very uncomfortable way. But it can be extremely fulfilling if we choose it.

The new moon is upon us Wednesday lunchtime. It’s a Libra full moon, air. This is an airy time of the year, not least the autumnal dryness, which sadly seems to have passed, but the winds. It can throw our vata off balance if we are not careful, make us feel ungrounded, out of body, blown about a bit. Libra also brings up balance and this is really where my thought process has been taking me. Balance. Not balance in so much as whether we are living a more balanced life, but where we sit within the balance of life on this planet.

We might ask ourselves how we feed polarity and division, and the ways that this takes us further away from unity consciousness. The vaccine rumbles on, highlighting our division and the extent of our suffering and opposing viewpoints. I got bored of this a good while ago as you know, could feel the harm being done by holding on to one narrative or the other. I also started to see the many ways people were allowing themselves to become victims, on both sides of the coin - feeding our victimhood never serves us either.

So where does this leave us?

I suppose it leaves us where it always does. Learning to know more of ourselves and live in greater inner harmony. We always have a choice about that, depending on the thoughts we think and buy into, and the choices we make. We can be ever so judgemental and close minded at times, if we are presented with something or someone out of our comfort zone. I find it helpful to observe this and have had ample opportunity these last six months as my stone friend has opened my eyes to my many self-imposed limitations and ways of seeing this world (and others).

We have to be careful when we begin judging. Because usually it’s an indication that we are judging ourselves, that our vulnerability has been triggered in some way. There’s nothing more confronting than realising that there is more to us than we could have ever imagined, that there is another way, if only we can get out of our narrow mind and allow it, if only we can open to greater possibility. It’s worth exploring. Notice how much you judge others just in one day and ask yourself why that is.

I have been judged over and over again by people who are confronted by what i have to say, of the way I teach yoga, that takes us deeper into ourselves. It breaks the mould of the norm, of the external and superficial, of feeding existing patterns and habits of movement, that keeps the mind stuck. People struggle to let go into new ways of being. It’s huge! To change perspective means that we have to let go of how we once saw life and that rocks our very foundations. Like finding out the tooth fairy isn’t real (or is she?!). It feels like betrayal and no one wants to be betrayed.

It has hurt at times, triggered feelings of rejection and vulnerability, but I can’t betray my soul and the practice and lineage. I can’t give up on the hopes and dreams, of the drive towards greater consciousness and freedom from suffering for all beings. For me, it has to be about more than just myself and how I’m viewed by the world. It doesn’t interest me whether I’m seen as having ‘made it’ or not, I’ve had to do a lot of letting go of caring about such things, about titles and other people’s perceptions, of people pleasing and insincerity, saying one thing but meaning another. This serves no one.

It has to be about integrity. There is no one way to live our lives, really there isn’t. Integrity comes from knowing more of our true self and living increasingly from this place, trusting in it. Sure there will be tests along the way. I’m being tested now. We have themes that come into play, to allow us to literally play out our stuff. Mine is around safety and security. I have to be very gentle with myself as I am triggered, feeling in my body the discomfort and sitting into it. I notice the way my mind seeks to resolve it, as quickly as possible. I have to stay with this too, dig deeper, let it come and let it go.

At the end of the day, there is a reason we are here, have incarnated right now at this interesting time in humanity’s time line. We each have a gift and a purpose and the moment you find it, life changes beyond recognition. We don’t care so much about all the other stuff, about materiality and outward expression of who we believe ourselves to be - when we know who we are, we don’t need to prove it, we start to live it instead. Its like Reiki. By Master level you’re not ‘doing’ it, you’re being it, it’s your life and you have embraced it.

This is what the new moon is currently bringing up for me. This year has been about stepping up and stepping in, of taking responsibility, of making changes - or having them made for us, the eclipses back in early summer certainly helped with this. We have to wake up, really we do. get beyond our own limited narrative, try to see a wider perspective, put ourselves in someone else’s shoes before we judge, and consider the underlying nature of our judgements. I’m trying to be aware of this too, of not allowing myself to become disappointed by other’s choices and to reflect that back at myself - cultivate greater compassion.

The new moon reflects back the sun’s solar energy, this changes things for us, can take us to dark places. The dark places are often where the magic can be found, I am increasingly aware of this out on the land. Maybe we ask ourselves what scares us the most, and we watch and see how that awareness changes things for us. It’s also a really good time to see the blessings in the curse, to appreciate that ever polarity has a different side to it and to embrace it all - is it really bad, or can it be good? What’s one person’s treasure is another one’s junk. I suppose really, it’s about cultivating the other perspective, this shows up in the Yoga Sutras, and is definitely worth further exploration another time.

For now, enjoy the new moon!

x