Happy new moon flow

Happy New Moon! And what a moon cycle it is too. I could literally feel the energy contracting and expanding the last few days, getting quicker and quicker, like the stuff that needed to be released had to be squeezed out of us, and here on Guernsey we descended into the gloom of the fog too on the dark night, which I believe might have been a dark night of the soul for some of you.

I was lucky, my dark night of the soul has already come to pass, and so the energy, while tricky to manage with it’s in and out, up and down nature, having us plummet from feeling all might just be OK to everything feeling terrible again, was bearable because I already had a sense that we were literally being pushed out…depending on what’s taken place these last few months and our degree of honesty with ourselves about the way we are living our life, whether these accord with your values and with our heart, or whether the mind continues to run the show convincing us we’re living from the heart when we’re really not.

It’s not easy connecting with the heart, let alone truly living from it. The heart does not offer certainty and it is unlikely to take us on a known and previously lived path, it won’t be linear either. The mind struggles with all of that as the mind wants certainty, it wants guaranteed outcome, it needs to know that it will be OK. The heart cannot guarantee this, it lives in the moment and this is where it’s power is, because it sets us free from the restriction of the mind and offers us a richer moment to moment experience.

If we haven’t been honest, and are still buying into the illusion then it could be a tricky two weeks as we wax to the full moon. However, if we have seen more of the light and let go go some of our outdated mental and self imposed limitations not least in how we perceive the world, but in our relationship to self, then new beginnings await. But this is not a time to forge forward, still patience is required, we are in the delivery room and discernment is necessary.

Pay attention to everything in your orbit as the signs are returning again. Notice the birds that come into your view, for example, and what’s happening around you. Remember that whatever happens is FOR you, not TO you, at least on a soulful level - we can very easily allow ourselves to drop into victim mentality otherwise and before we know it the ego has us caught in old patterns around goodness and worth (and lack of both).

I’m feeling really positive about this shift. The Piscean new moon may well be a watery one, bringing up emotions, but it is a moon of flow, if we are aligned to it. This really is a time to delve deeper in, notice where we are feeding drama in our lives and agitating our minds, and let go, let go, and enter more of the inner flow. Try not to control outcome. It’s very much about being in this moment and leaning deeper into faith and trust.

This is where the practice is essential now and I have no idea how anyone is navigating life without it. This is about actually putting the practice into practice too btw, not just talking about it. Too many people do the talk and not the walk, talking about a world of light and love and yet not appreciating the many ways they sabotage this in their own lives, always externalising and dramatising, rather than just looking inwards at their own landscape and choices and action. Plus we have to remember not to deny what we perceive as our dark spots, they’re as much a part of us as the bits we like. Embrace them all, this is the only way to bring greater authenticity into our lives.

Some of you are interested in Ayurveda following my previous blog post. Don’t forget that I am a qualified Ayurvedic Lifestyle and Diet consultant, having studied with my doctor for a year and now almost 14 years into experimenting on and learning from myself. I can consult with you to figure out your fault (dosh), where you are out of balance, and I can prescribe Ayurvedic medicine to help restore balance, as well as offering dietary and lifestyle advice too.

Please note Ayurveda is very different to the Western approach to nutrition. This is all about establishing optimal digestive fire, to calm your mind, stabilise your emotions, balance your energy, nourish your soul and help to expand your consciousness, so that your whole life is positively affected, healing and helping to awaken you to more of your own true nature. Like yoga, Ayurveda is a way of life that is over 5,000 years old and ends to be practiced to really experience the benefits - this involves a degree of personal responsibility. I love Ayurveda as it makes a huge difference the more that you bring it into your life.

Happy New Moon!

Love Emma x

Riding the storm

Most people I talk to are currently going through this mill in some way, facing various challenges that are squeezing them and making life a touch interesting. The ‘up in the air’ theme continues on. I can’t be sure the new moon on Wednesday is going to make any difference. i feel we are just going to have to ride this storm until at least after the Equinox, which should shift things, but even then…well we’re having to learn to live with uncertainty and the unknown. To do otherwise is to wish our lives away waiting for things to settle.

The only moment we have is this one and while it might be difficult, there is still much joy to experience, lessons to learn and hope to be found; we’re simply being encouraged to open up to new levels of being and seeing and relating. Let’s hope there might be greater peace as a result - in Ukraine, as much as in our own lives. Although we have to remember that ultimately the peace has to come from within, regardless of what is happening outside of ourselves.

It was with this in mind that I saw my Ayurvedic doctor on Friday because I am aware that all the events of the last six months have thrown my vata and she can prescribe stronger Ayurvedic medicine than I am able to access personally! Plus it’s always good to speak to her, as she helps me to see more clearly what is happening, and reminds me always that it comes back to energy.

I live with two vata (air and ether) beings, and I have another who is mainly fire, earth and water (pitta kapha) but feeds off the air. I’m fire, earth and water too (pitta kapha) and should really be able to calm them down, but there has been so much air, the recent winds certainly didn’t help, that I haven’t been able to maintain as much of my own earth, let alone theirs too!

Elijah’s excess vata has manifested in his separation anxiety. He’s also being assessed for autism too, another indication of vata constitution. I never thought I’d end up a label parent but I have realised that labels help us to make sense of what our children might be going through and helps them to understand themselves better too. It’s understandable that, despite the inclusivity, he didn’t fit into school. His sensitivities are a gift, but might be better nurtured in a different, more nature-based setting.

It’s perhaps not surprising that since we have flowed with him, rather than against him, that he has been the happiest we have known him for years.He’s much more grounded now he spends the majority of his days outside, and often up trees. He has become obsessed with tree climbing, we caught him up the Norfolk island pine in our garden the other morning, he had the firs stuck in his hair as evidence, tricky in that hair!

There is always a sacrifice to make and Elijah being at home probably means we won’t be taking quite so many trips to Sark this year, or farther afield, but it is a small price to pay. I really do feel that we have to orientate away from the patriarchal paradigm of it being all about money anyway, but of course money means power and we live in a time of power, you have only to look at Putin and how the Ukraine situation is unfolding.

It’s not an easy mind set to shift though, we’re all conditioned to it, and we do need money to survive in this world currently, but there still remains the mind-set that the richer we are economically, the more secure, successful and happier we are as human beings. I know that this isn’t true, and that one cannot put a price on happiness and contentment, nor on a way of living that allows flow and space. But nonetheless, the conditioning runs deep and I have had to do some digging deep to let that go over the last couple of years, Covid and the lockdowns helping enormously.

Because I have written about Elijah, other mothers have contacted me recently, concerned about their children who are anxious or showing signs of autism. I don’t yet have any regrets about the decision we have made and like I say, it comes at a price, but it is one we are currently happy to pay. But our way is not THE way and no doubt our way will have to shift and shape to accommodate his needs as they change too.

Many, however, are under the misguided notion that having your child at home has to look like home-schooling during lock down. It doesn’t. There is no curriculum to follow, you do what you want to do in a way that best suits you and your children. This too is a huge mind-set shift, because we are always so concerned about children losing out, or not keeping up and all this other rubbish. There was no rule book as best I know when we arrived on Planet Earth about how life should be lived, and certainly not one about how the mind might be trained and therefore educated.

I was taught lots of information that has been of no use or value to me in actually living my life. Much of it was really boring too, and all those endless exams to check that I had retained the information, nonsense too! And this from someone who thrived on academic success. But really now I see how unhelpful it all was. I couldn’t look after myself when I went to university because I hadn’t been taught life skills. So if there is one thing we focus on with Elijah it is that, how he might work with money, how he might make a fire, how he might prepare food, how he might interact with other people, how he might fix things etc.

At the end of the day, concerns about curriculum and whether you have to give up holidays, whether you can get by on a lesser wage and whether you will have as much time for yourself and all the activities that are currently carried out becomes irrelevant when you see your child suffering. Because then, really you have no choice and it should never matter what anyone else thinks. And locally, there is a Home Ed group that can provide support and more structure if needed, and help and guidance and a friendly face too.

So while Elijah is more contented and stable now, enjoying regular massages from me as recommended by my Ayurvedic doctor to help ease the excess vata, the focus moves to my youngest, Eben, our fighter! He’s been like that all the way, the embryo frozen for two years, a constant kicker in my tummy, breech and kicking his way out six weeks early on a super full moon while I was leading a yoga retreat on Herm. He hasn’t stopped since. He’s like me in many respects, I don’t stop much either, my Dad’s the same. We’re pitta doers, always on the go. I know now why my parents always found me so exhausting!

The difference being that I wasn’t a fighter. Well I mean I am, in so much as I might fight for what I believe in, spiritually certainly, and I’m pretty sure I used to fight my brother when we were younger, but Eben is different. His name chose itself and it means ‘grounded warrior’ so we shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m pretty sure that he has a past life or two as a fighter as one of the first words he uttered was gun, and we had not exposed him to them (that we know about) so it was a bit of a surprise. His fighting though, also comes because he likes the reaction and poor Elijah tends to be on the receiving end.

I do feel that his entrance to Planet Earth has not helped and possibly set this all in motion. He was whisked away from his mummy within minutes of being born, had a cannula inserted into his little hand, had a needle inserted into the bones between his spine, curling him into a ball in the process (they chose not to tell me too much about it as they said I would be too upset by the idea of it), fed formula and antibiotics, popped on his own in a little plastic box, and administered oxygen. It would be hours before I saw him, let alone held him.

It’s possible, that as a consequence of all this, he suffered some trauma. It’s possible that this has caused issues around the way his brain fires connections, especially in terms of dopamine. It’s possible he has lower levels than other children and has to do certain things to get more of it, like hit his brother repeatedly, eat sweet things (dried mango is his go-to), and generally act out, not because he’s naughty, but because he is seeking a reaction to obtain his dopamine hit and experience feelings of satiety.

The easiest way I find to understand the brain and how this all works, is to think of it as a very complex and intricate computer. Instead of electrical circuits, the brain consists of billions of cells called neurons. These neurons are organised into circuits and networks. Each neuron acts as a switch controlling the flow of information and if a neuron receives enough signals from other connected neurons, it fires, sending its own signal on to other neurons in the same circuit.

The brain itself is made up of many parts with interconnected circuits that - in theory - work together as a team. Different ‘circuits’ are responsible for coordinating and carrying out specific and various functions. The networks of neurons send signals back and forth to each other and throughout different parts of the brain, spinal cord and nerves in the rest of the body.

To send a message, a neuron releases a neurotransmitter into the gap (a synapse) between it and the next cell. The neurotransmitter crosses the synapse and attaches to the receptors on the receiving neuron, a little bit like putting a key in the lock, and this causes a change in the receiving cell. There are other molecules (transporters) that recycle neurotransmitters and bring them back into the neuron that released them, which limits or shuts off the signals between neurons.

Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter that your body makes and your nervous system uses to send messages between nerve cells. It’s often referred to as a chemical messenger and it plays a key role in how we feel pleasure. If people have lower levels of dopamine, they will seek it out in alternative ways, which gives a rush of dopamine in the brain - it motivates drug taking for example, such as cocaine and amphetamines, and as with my son, it can motivate the need for sugar and carbohydrates and just acting up and fighting to get a reaction. There is a label for this but we’re not quite there just yet. But regardless, it is taking us on another journey individually and as a family.

Life tends to gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want, at least from a soulful perspective, and I find my life taking on new direction, led by the children. I’m learning lots about the effect of trauma on babies and children and the manner in which this affects them as they grow and the various ways that this can be healed and managed, and this from experience as much as from written text. I’m becoming increasingly aware that the more I surrender to the needs of my children, the richer my world becomes, not financially necessarily, but certainly from a heart and soul perspective.

And this brings me back to Ayurveda and energy and the notion that we see in you and Reiki, that the more we transform and change and balance ourselves and access greater levels of authenticity, the more positive the effect on those around us - our vibration shifts positively, theirs is more likely to shift positively too. So always, it has to come back to us and how we are relating to the world. If I’d like a calmer life then it’s no good looking at my children and simply trying to make them calmer and more balanced, I have to make myself calmer and more balanced first.

I’m very aware from my conversations with a child psychologist and from my friend who is a family counsellor, that regulation is key, regulation of the parents and caregivers mainly. My friend has been telling me this for years. Sleep deprivation is therefore not idea, because it creates patterns of disregulation simply because one is living on an edge. But really, regulation in my world means being energetically balanced.

And life generally has a way of throwing us off balance, especially when the energy is all up in the air and strong winds come in to further challenge us energetically. So the key is to try to maintain energetic balance as a parent. If we’re out of balance, all over the place and floundering, then the chances are our children will be too. And this is one of the greatest travesties of government reaction to Covid-19 the last few years, is the way it has impacted on adults and their mental health and how this has further impacted on their children.

We are continuously told that children are resilient, that they can better weather the storm than adults, but this is simply not true. Ask any child psychologist who works with traumatised children. They are no more resilient than adults, and the trauma they experience can have a far reaching effect on their ability to be in this world, and in their relationship not only to themselves but to others too. One of the things I really struggle with is this misconception and the way it has been played on during Covid. Only now are we really seeing the effects.

I was talking to a friend in the UK who works with dyslexic children and she was saying how there are more children than ever being tested, not because they are dyslexic, but simply because they’re far behind where they’d normally be because of all the disruption to education the last few years, let alone the anxiety, which makes it more difficult for children to learn anyway.

This is the crazy thing, children who are not regulated stand very little chance of learning anything because they are stuck in fight/flight, the lower part of the brain and they can’t access other parts so the information doesn’t go in. This is what was happening to Elijah. He just couldn’t understand what was being taught to him in class because he was too anxious, let alone because of dyslexia.

For me Ayurveda is always extremely helpful because it helps me to see the energetic changes that need to be made. The process itself can be informative, transformative and potentially enlightening too and I always relish the opportunity to go deeper as I never know quite what I might find and how this might shape my outer world. This is a time of great potential, we have to find our way to tap into this individually too, for the collective.

Not to say that I’m not also encouraging energetic changes within the boys too. Eben, is slightly easier to get Ayurvedic medicine into, and especially now we’ve set him up with a crystal reward system which I never thought I’d do, but needs must, and he LOVES it, such is the nature of an achiever! He’s difficult to massage though became he is ticklish and laughs instead. He’s very strong willed too, so I have to negotiate, but the reward system certainly helps with this. We’re also working on sleep, he’s a kicker and I get kicked half the night he joins me, but we have a plan…just got to put it into place!

There are many ways generally that we might reduce excess vata and ease the groundless and airy feeling, which can feed restless and anxiety and just make us feel depleted. So if you too are feeling like this, then I can highly recommend massage, eating warm, nourishing and easily digestible foods, like vegetable curry and rice, swimming and walking, guided relaxations, early nights and lots of rest, lying on the earth to literally ground, and being very gentle with the self. Preparing food mindfully helps, so too getting our hands in the earth and I am all set to start planting medical seeds next week, after the new moon.

I do find it so interesting how the changes that are coming in, however uncomfortable, are opening up new ways of being for us, that we might never have previously considered, or thought possible. I have always loved being with children, but I had no idea that my own children would change my life to this extent. I can see how these changes feed my soul, if I can only get myself and my conditioning out of the way and keep allowing myself to go with the flow even if I don’t know where the river is headed. As Ralph Blum writes, “relinquishing control is the ultimate challenge for the spiritual warrior”.

The message really, is to continuously settle into the unknown, to wait for the right time and then take an empty-handed leap into the void, and allow the self-change. This is where we’re at. A time of self-change, if we are up for it. Now is not the time to take action but to sit tight, like a new seed settling into the earth, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the time to sprout. I’m going to let the children lead the way and see where it takes us and all the while focus on the energetic balance and riding any storm and getting more sleep (hopefully!).

Enjoy this wane to the dark night.

Love Emma x

Up in the air

Well that was intense full moon my end, phew. I was pleased when that passed and thought it might bring gentler times but alas life still feels very much all up in the air and this reflected beautifully by this intense wind that we have been experiencing at least here on Guernsey.

Wowsers, I’ve not known anything like it and it my vata (air and ether) is definitely all over the place. My youngest has been wild. He’s wild anyway, has an enormous amount of energy that needs some harnessing in a more constructive manner, and the wind has simply whipped him into an energetic frenzy. Ewan has been away so it’s been full on these last few days!

Not helped because I had a book deadline to meet and so I have been desperately trying to find some quiet space within the chaos. I had it in mind that it had to be finished by the 21st. Other than being a friend’s birthday I’m not aware of it being a particularly significant day, but it just felt it somehow, a month before the Equinox. Maybe it’s because it was the day before 22.02.22, not that I’ve read anything about what that means, but all the ‘2’s would indicate something shifting.

We really are in that space between worlds, neither here nor there, everything still, like I said, up in the air, endings and new beginnings and still not 100% clear which direction the wind will take us next. It’s a very uncomfortable time. I keep hoping it might shift, but at the same time I’m very aware that this is how it is meant to be, the confusion and disorientation, because the process of birth is not easy, it can be long and arduous as any of those who have carried child know only too well.

There’s a tendency to do what we have always done and reach for something concrete to make it safe and known. My tendency has always been to reach towards work and try and make my diary known, add in a course here or a course there, push for things to happen, give my future life some orientation, distract myself in some way. But this time feels different. This time there needs to be space. This time I need to wait.

I finished my manuscript finally. The birth of a book is not an easy one either. I’ve been working on that, on and off for over 3.5 years. There comes a time though, when we just have to let go and let it go, whatever it is we have created. One thing I have learned along the way is the need to do it for the love of the creative process, not for the end result. There can be no attachment to outcome. So I have set it free now, returned it to my editor and it will now enter the final stages of proof reading.

I’m done. Not least with the manuscript, but with that time of my life that I detail within it, the one of depression. Each time I have edited it, it has taken me on a deeper inner journey to really feel into the threads of the story and to seek out any unresolved aspects of self lurking in the shadows. It’s been intense at times. I’ll be going through something in my life and then I’ll go back to the manuscript and lo and behold I find myself next reading about what I have just gone through, but from a different perspective now.

I’m finished with the processing, it is time to move on. I have no doubt that blips of depression will continue to show up in my life, because that is the pattern of my deepening into heart. Depression shows up when my heart feels suppressed, repressed, restricted in some way. There has to be a break down to break through the other side, to allow it more expression in the world. It has always been a path of heart for me, and this is just a way of accessing deeper love, however tricky that may feel as the casing breaks away that has kept the heart limited.

The casing is generally of my own making, a layer I popped there to protect the heart, because to feel is sometimes very intense, especially for those sensitive souls amongst us. Being gentle is key and being outside too. I’m doing a lot of that, to those ethereal areas of this beautiful island, of which there are many. We are lucky, we have ancient valleys and wells, areas where we can be calmed by gentle sound of water and its soothing energy. I’m a water being really so this works well for me and especially in countering the pitta (fire) and vata (air).

It always comes back to love. The universe is love. The universe loves nothing more than showering us in love, if we’ll let it, get out of our mind and into our bodies, overcome our vulnerability and be open to it. But first we have to let go of our defences, break down, be intimate. As above, so below. As we are gifted so we gift back. Our every act can become one of love, if we can shift our perspective to it. The sacred infuses all of life.

It’s perhaps no surprise that an hour after submitting my manuscript, of letting go, my body did its own letting go, not when it was due, but a creative letting go fro the womb space, confirming that we’re done, we’re ready to move on. That holding can drop away - I certainly slept better last night than I have done all week.

The winds are due to ease at some point this week…we’re picking up sped towards the Spring Equinox, life will be clearer after then, but still there is every reason to delight in each moment, it’s a perspective shift, a recognition of the sacred in everything. Not easy but possible. That’s where the work is.

So with love, enjoy this day, whatever it brings.

x

The new paradigm of being

I’ve been grappling to explain what it is that we do with Elijah now he is no longer at school. It’s all been part of this processing that I, like you, have been going through, the pushed through the mill, or the eye of the needle. It has been desperately uncomfortable, a real dark night of the soul.

I battled through it yesterday and felt the fury and anger that comes with the break down of some ego construct that I had been battling, as the ego does not want to be annihilated, but it has to happen, on the path to greater self-awareness and consciousness. Once I had surrendered, seen through more of the illusion within myself, the way I had kidded myself, the relief was incredible.

Today things are a little clearer. I realised that even using the term ‘unschooling’ isn’t right. It plays into the old paradigm and if there is one thing this moon energy is bringing, is the realisation that the new world has to be different. You will know if you read this blog regularly that we took Elijah out of school as he was extremely anxious and deeply unhappy. He was a star shaped being that we were trying to fit into a square box and he was using his light and his sparkle.

He would spend hours given the chance lost in Minecraft as a way of entering a different reality, one which brought gave him relief from the torturous one he was living at the time. Since then we’ve essentially let him be and spent as much time as we can outdoors. He has thrived. I have seen his star-like quality come back to life, he sparkles and glows with renewed confidence and self assurance. He climbs trees, he jumps rocks, he puts leaves downs streams and he imaginatively plays with other children who are not schooled.

He hasn’t needed to see a counsellor or a psychiatrist, he hasn’t needed medication or a special diet. We’ve just left him be himself as a child. he has seen a lady for private one-to-one dyslexia and dyscalculia lessons once a week and there is no doubt this has also helped his confidence. But that’s actually the most formal education he has, aside from the maths that my parents do with him. I don’t do anything formal. He learns about life as he lives it.

And this is my thing. He learns through life experience. So I am not even unschooling him. I’m just letting him be and providing opportunities to experience life differently. We meet a mum and her three children every Monday for outdoor play, this week we spent 3.5 hours walking from Portlet carpark to the fairy ring and back, with various stops for snacks and imaginative play, not least at the fort and the swings, but also at the fairy ring where Steph’s beautiful dog, Sunny, entertained us all!

Tuesdays and we meet up at WildGuernsey for fun around the fire with my beautiful friend Tara and two other amazing mums and their children. I have loved seeing Elijah learn to light a fire with a striker and whittle wood, as well as play with other children who are as sensitive as he is, and shy too. I have thoroughly enjoyed the connections made and the opportunity for all of to just be and switch off from the stresses of the world.

Wednesdays he’s with my folks at their small holding, last week it building a wall and making cement, another week it might be helping out in the greenhouse, or going off to see the boats. There is some maths in there usually, but even that he become less stressful than if he was at school, he gets flusters under pressure, but he knows how to count money and pay for things and he’s brilliant at understanding weight and speed, such is his obsession with vehicles and boats and all things that move.

Thursdays he’s with Ewan and sometimes Grandma too, swimming, park, boats, they don’t stop. Friday he’s with my parents while I teach and then we meet a friend and one her boys for more outdoor activity, rock pooling this week. In between all this, there is play with older school friends, we even managed a fire on the beach last Saturday.

So I concluded that I don’t really do any schooling, not really. I’m a huge fan of knowing and understanding through life experience for the joy this brings. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge seems rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. I learn best when I am interested in what I’m learning and then it is totally self motivated and a relatively joyful experience!

The wonderful thing throughout all this and as Elijah pointed out to me this morning, is that he no longer plays Minecraft. He’s done with it, finds it boring now he’s experiencing all these amazing imaginative play opportunities instead. Now in the morning the boys play together, this morning they were creating a truck on Elijah’s bed filled with all their cuddly toys, yesterday it was guns and protecting each other from the baddies. I feel to hold a ritualised bonfire of all the Minecraft clothing he’s collected over the last few years, were that not such a waste of material and money!.

Here too in my own life, on this fragile morning as the dust is settling, I know that it now has to move away from attachment to outcome and structure to one of greater experience, of just being - this the new paradigm, never lived previously, at least not for me. It has to be less defined and less certain, less known and less based on everything that has happened before - totally new therefore. This demands trust and faith, but it also demands a deeper connection to heart and soul and the Leo courage, bravery and fire to make the leap when the time is right - to let go of how we want it to be and allow it to be what it needs to be instead.

But for now, the energies out there are still buffeting us and I don’t expect there to be any calming until the winds ease on Monday and the light comes back in again. So enjoy the ride, for it is a ride, and pay attention to all that needs to be forgiven and drop away and all that is taking seed, and be gentle with those seed as they are truly in their fragile infancy.

Happy full moon!

Weary soul

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am exhausted and drained by this chop and changing energy. Everything feels so up in the air. There’s a lack of grounding and consistency to life at the moment, as if we are being flung about, one day thinking this and one day thinking that.

It might just be me. I am inherently sleep deprived, my children aren’t sleeping well and there is a certain craziness that comes with continuously disturbed nights. But that aside, it feels almost like we are pushed through the eye of a needle, and at times it’s all beautifully clear, and at others it’s really messy and awfully tiring in trying to navigate the current speed of life and all the various chopping and changing.

For example we have never known as many changes to our upcoming Sark retreat as we have to this one. And I can never be certain that people will keep their appointments or bookings for our various offerings. We have become a culture of last minute changes, accustomed to doing this during Covid. Even I find myself doing it, booking people in and then realising I already have a commitment so having to change their appointment or cancel, which I never used to do, pre-Covid.

There is hope and then this is hopelessness. We are all tired on some level. Tired of the lies and the battle over power and money, albeit the one of money is about power. I am weary of being told how the 50 richest alumni are trying to control the world. I am tired of reading about impending wars. I am tired of reading of the ongoing discrimination around vaccination. I am tired of the many ways in which we are being controlled, our minds slowly conditioned towards a world where we should fear a virus, where we should deny the intelligence of our immune system.

I am weary of a world that puts science on a pedestal, to the extent that people think science will make life certain and keep them safe. There is no certainty! There is no safety! The old structures and systems may have you believe so, but they come with cost to our soul and they have to drop away. We are becoming a very stupid humanity who can’t think for ourselves, who don’t question what is happening in this world, who blindly follow like sheep all that our politicians tell us.

I am weary of all the development so that there’ll be no green spaces left on this beautiful island. I am weary of developers thinking it’s OK to cram housing into small spaces in already over-crowded areas of this island, and working the system so that that housing doesn’t even have a social element to it. I am weary of the way we are selling out on our generations to come for our greed and financial gain in this lifetime. I am weary that we keep repeating all that we’ve done previously, yet we call it something different to make it appear new - constantly reinventing the wheel.

I’m weary of new age spiritualism with all its promises of evolving and unity consciousness, only to find that people of course come up against their deeply ingrained conditioning towards patriarchy and the world having to be lived in a certain way, let alone their limiting beliefs that stop them from truly settling into a new world of possibility that demands a settling into uncertainty and the unknown, because it is a new way and therefore has not been lived before - there is nothing to hold onto for security.

I’m weary that the world is now held to ransom by sorting prices, that choices become increasingly limited and we become more easily controlled. I’m weary that so much of this is just accepted, not questioned, as if we are just innocent pawns in a bigger game. And we are in many respects, that’s the problem. But if we all made a stand, if we each individually tried to live differently, out of mainstream, then mainstream would have to change. if we all came off social media then this would not longer hold the influence that it does. If we all threw away our TVs then we wouldn’t be so easily brainwashed by news channels and general media.

There are things we can do but we keep doing what we keep doing because that’s what we do. This is how it is. This is life in the 21st century. It saddens me beyond belief that we have separated ourselves so much from nature and our inherent nature in the process. It saddens me that a rocket launched by Elon Musk is set to collide with the moon and no one seems to care, there is no accountability or responsibility. It saddens me that space is littered with human debris. It saddens me that I watched sunrise on Saturday and the sky was littered with airplane streams making it all messy. It saddens me that people drive huge vehicles on this small island and think that’s OK, that that is what our life here on Planet Earth is all about.

It saddens me that we put a whole heap of crap into our bodies and minds on a daily basis and yet take no responsibility when we get unwell - there was a letter in the GP this week that suggested those of us unvaccinated should take a good look at ourselves for taking up beds in hospitals (untrue) that could be used by those who, through no fault of their own need the space because they are genuinely unwell. THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN - we have somehow lost our sense of responsibility for self, many truly believe that they are simply the victim of circumstance, that they got sick without any input from themselves. I know I’m treading on thin ice here, but I see things from a metaphysical and karmic perspective and our diet alone can have grave effects on our body, let alone our emotional repression, mental conditioning and our spiritual undernourishment.

Today I despair. Tomorrow I’ll hopefully be filled with hope again. I have a feeing the full moon on Wednesday will lighten the load considerably, help to shift the perspective to something more fun and less serious. I feel better just for getting that all off my chest.

There is change afoot. Many more are waking up to the reality of this world and seeing through more of the illusion. But there is still some way to go. I always come back to Gandhi and his quote about being the change you would like to see in the world. I believe the power for change is in each of us and if we can turn to that and cultivate it, make changes in our own individual lives and the way we see the world, opening our hearts to greater love and compassion (because despite my ranting, I do have compassion, that’s the problem) and living more lightly on this earth, then we will forge a new way that evades the systems that try to keep us in our limited place.

For me, it’s about healing our relationship with nature, and that has to start within ourselves, our own nature. The more we embrace this, the more we see that it is all nature, not something we have to do, but just something to be. Easier said than done. Being in nature certainly helps, and I am increasingly drawn to the power of fire to cut through the crap and remind me of my inherent inner fire that at times diminishes and at times burns too strongly! And the sea too, that sings a beautiful soothing song for a weary soul.

Have a lovely week.

Love Emma x

Dreaming a new dream

Change is a funny old thing. There has been a lot of change these last two years, more than I’ve ever known in my life time, in terms of how we are living and the questioning of that on a personal and collective basis.

Here my life has been turned upside down as I know it has for so many. When I reflect back to then person I was two years ago, when Covid was only just being talked about, I was a very different person to the one I am now. I remember Rebecca Shaman writing about this ‘corona’ virus and how it was coming in to shift things and spiritually transform us, corona representing the ‘crown’ and this of course the top chakra, opening us up to greater faith and unity and now I can see more clearly that this is exactly the process that has taken place.

But it’s not just the crown that has been affected, it’s our whole being. For example, our roots have been well and truly shaken as we have been forced to look at the supposed structures in our personal life and in society that have been put in place to try to create a sense of security and safety in our lives. Many of us already know that there can be no certainty in life despite our attempts to make it so, but it is one thing intellectualising it and quite another living it.

My roots were definitely uprooted and I have been forced to look at the myriad of ways that I have tried to create feelings of safety in my life to counter the feeling of loss of safety that I, like everyone, experienced at some point during childhood - incarnation itself is enough! Just going to school and being separated from our mother’s for the first time can create an emotional response and set in motion a pattern around safety. For me a huge trigger was going to university and out into the big and bad old world on my own.

It was here I lay patterns around numbing out to not have to feel the intensity of separation and loss of safety, disappearing into a world of wine and cannabis smoking, anything to reduce the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d already been exploring this when Covid hit but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to dig deeper and see the many ways in which I created and responded to stress in my life which was more often than not triggered around feelings of being out of control, which is what Covid triggered in all of us…life was no longer in our control. Not that it ever was, this of course the illusion.

Control is huge though and it was an uncomfortable exploration at times, noticing the many ways I try to control myself and my environment, let alone outcome. In many respects this was the hugest shift, moving away from the emphasis on outcome, achievement and results (power and money as a representation of success), which underpins our patriarchal approach to life and our need to prove our worth in the world, and strip away the layers that I was unconsciously conforming to this. I am sure there are many more layers to go, such is the nature of consciousness!

The real work though in the root was one of trust, never easy if our roots have been shaken, because we have to dig deeper still and we have to cultivate greater faith, taking us up to the crown again. The chakras can not really be looked at in isolation, they weave together to form the bigger picture that is our life here on Planet Earth, albeit our soul incarnate, the subtle body travels with us through life times.

The root work took me straight to the solar plexus though and the will and power and control that resides here. It’s been a rough ride in there at times but I am aware that things have changed considerably just by tightening boundaries, let alone the re-orientation to centre over and over again, and noticing the many ways we give power away and take it from others. We all have the capacity to manipulate and control, some use more subtle tactics than others but essentially it’s about getting our needs met - if we’re meeting our own needs, we don’t need to play the games to get them met in crafty and sneaky ways.

Physically this has freed more of the diaphragm so I can breathe more easily and taken me - wham - into a deeper relationship to heart. At some point, maybe back in 2004 I decided to follow a path of heart. It’s not been easy and I have questioned this lately. I am always surprised the depth of our feeling in heart if we can access it. I’ve said it before but one of Marie’s greatest gifts to me on her passing was the way it ripped into my heart and opened it up so I’ve felt like never before and this without my old numbing techniques (cannabis dropped away a long time ago, alcohol and disordered and emotional eating have also slowly dropped away) and with an awareness of self destructive tendencies of old. The last five months have been some of the toughest I have had to navigate for some time and there has been a need for deeper honesty with self.

This has taken me into my throat and to my voice and greater authenticity. This has made me look at the many ways I restrict what I say or write, or express myself in the world through fear of being censored and judged by others, and how much I then limit myself because of this, because I care of what others think of me. What I have learned is that everyone thinks differently. We have our perception of who we are, just as we had a perception of other people, but it is merely that, a myriad of thoughts that can change over time depending on our perspective, where we are in our life and where we are in relation to that other person.

We can never truly know what another is thinking, even thought we assume that they must be thinking the same way as us, but of course they never can be, their experience of life will be unique to them and this will cloud how they see the world, and us in it. But it takes a certain courage to not care what others think and yet there is so much freedom that comes with this. I noticed how much I clung to my titles and academic qualifications to define me almost like something to hide behind and keep me safe while simultaneously proving my worth to the world.

I began to notice how much of my life was lived based on what was expected of me and not in accordance to my heart, how there were all these compromises, convincing myself I was living from the heart where really the ego was running the show, making choices based on fear around loss of safety, or like I said, what others thought of me, let alone my need to feel in control of things and essentially not truly trust, always a mental back up plan, just in case.

This took me deeper into my womb and sacral chakra, the seat of the self, and my relationship to my menstrual cycle has deepened as I have tried to listen in, not only finally clearing some long-held-onto more obvious wounding but also to notice more of the subtleties too, the way my body has been treated by the medical profession with various testing and procedures over the years, let alone the way I’ve treated my body with extended periods of self harm in all its many ways, some more subtle than others, and much of this due to societal perspective on say intimacy, relationship, image, sex and birth, and the loss of the sacred in all this.

Again I am brought back to crown and the faith and sanity of living more aligned to heart. The biggest change though has been the deepening into the third eye, to intuition, which has surprised me and delighted me too. On some level it makes sense, once we have a stronger sense of self worth and are not trying to control all outcome, when we are trusting in the earth, then this allows more of who we truly are to filter through and release us from karmic stuff around fear of our gifts, for we each have many, and the ability to ‘see’ may well be one of these. There are realms beyond the one we ordinarily see and I’m grateful to remember as I did a child and now know this to be true.

All of these changes on whichever level they are made, physical, mental, psychological, emotional and/or spiritual, will impact on all others in turn. We are whole. The greatest lesson really is to allow ALL of who we are, including those bits we have turned away from and shoved in the shadows, those parts of ourself we have labelled as bad such as our shame, guilt, anger and rage etc. I have realised how important it is to allow these feelings and to notice also how much they are created by our perception of things, by the way we think and that our holding onto them is the greatest harm we can do to ourselves really.

This brings us all the way around to judgment. I have also become increasingly aware that the more we judge ourselves the more we judge others and the more we judge others, the more we will be faced with those judgements so that we are encouraged to see that there is always another side to how we perceive things in any one moment. In many respects THIS has been the greatest healing. I am grateful to one of my soul friends who has highlighted this to me, by being everything I once judged and is a wonderful mirror for me.

As we change internally and let go of our stories and narrative and begin to allow more of our authentic self to be seen in the world, the more our outer life changes to reflect this. I mean you can change the outer world, but really the change has to come from within - we’ve probably all changed jobs at some point, for example, or relationships, as another example, hoping that things might be better this time, only to find that we end up in the same position all over again, simply because we haven’t shifted our internal patterns around say worth or control or whatever it might be.

So my outer world continues to change and will no doubt continue in this vain the more I deepen into practice and into trust and faith. The changes at Beinspired reflect this, let alone in my personal life. In both areas there have been some huge changes, maybe not visible to everyone else, but certainly in my relationship to them and the way that I live and be in the world. I am grateful for these changes however challenging they have been to navigate. But the reality is that at times we outgrow the life we have been living and we can continue living it, stifled, or we can find the strength of heart and the courage to make the necessary changes.

Once we start putting a foot in our new direction, tentatively at first, just a rumbling in the mind, and a deepening into the heart, then the universe undoubtably picks us up and carries us along, gives us a nod here and a sign there, and we slowly navigate our way, holding the wall for support at times, breaking down at others, being gentle at times and scared at others. It’s all OK. The universe has our back whichever way we look at it, we just have to rest deeper into trust and Self.

The pain comes though in letting go of the dreams now lived, and those that may never come to fruition But this is fine too, because there are always new dreams to be dreamt and always new ways to see the world and our place within it. We just have to let go, let go, let go and flow flow, flow and drop deeper into the heart and to love, which will always guide the way. It’s a cliche I know, but it is true. We get to put into practice all we have read and learned, and truly embody this time of big change, for the greater good (hopefully) of all of humanity.

Because this is one last thing. The dream we’re dreaming now, is the earth’s dream. We have to dream bigger than we’ve ever dreamt previously, for harmony, love and peace, for respect and reverence for the sacred both inside ourselves and within the world as a whole - we have to do this now, move away from our petty ego-concerns and dream into being a better world for our children and our children’s children. It’s time to turn scared into sacred, fear into love, hope into reality - we ALL have a role to play in this.

I hope at Beinspired we can help to support this process, the healing, the personal development and the return to increased simplicity. We don’t need much in this world and the path of heart highlights this. Spirituality is a constant letting go, and return to the things that really matter in this world, that cannot be bought or sold, cannot be stripped of its sacredness, and that is love.

Happy dreaming!

Happy Imbolc and new moon!

Happy Imbolc and new moon! It really is an auspicious day, Imbolc is all about the stirrings of spring and new beginnings and so is the new moon. It was Chinese new year too, so really we are entering a new phase and it really does feel that, at least in my life.

Like many others, I have begun to see the wood through the trees and been honest with myself about the changes that need to be made to lift the heaviness from my heart, and lighten myself in the process. The heart always knows the way but the head tends to take over and convince us to maintain the status quo, generally because we have taken on some belief system about how our life should be lived, or about some aspect of our identity.

I went through a process not long ago of letting go of identity. I decided that I didn’t want to be limited by these titles, such as yoga teacher, Reiki teacher, company secretary etc. The company secretary one should have gone a long time ago but I held on because it was a bit like a security blanket, a what if it all goes wrong attempting to live more in alignment with the heart. Well it’s gone now.

I do believe that it was letting go of titles the helped me to see more clearly where changes needed to be made around teaching. My heart had been telling me for a while but because I have always done what i have always done and because I had this narrative around being in service and offering my self for the greater good, well that was an outdated concept too, a belief that was actually holding me back. In reality - and the Bhagavad Gita talks about this - you can be in service to a multitude of things, to the divine, but also to your children, to your partner, to your community. Approaching life from a spiritual perspective shouldn’t limit us to one thing.

This also came up for me this last moon cycle, the notion of spirituality and the manner in which it has become such a buzzword and a trendy thing to be. People can go on a plethora of courses to ‘train’ to be spiritual, or so I hear, but really, true spirituality is embodied to the extent that one doesn’t separate it from themselves, or from their life, it is lived and doesn't therefore need defining or any attempt at “I am being spiritual” because you just are.

For me it is about honouring the sacred and I became aware recently how previous wounding from the destruction of the sacred, still plays out in this lifetime. While it may pain me, I can’t stop anyone else selling out on the sacred, but I can stop myself doing this. I am very aware that this also means that I cannot sell out on myself. All of this has brought me deeper towards motivation, and the motivation for our actions and of course our attachment to outcome. Becoming more honest with myself about this has been an absolutely liberating process and helped to highlight strands of patterns that had still been playing out but don’t need to anymore.

This has all created a shift in perspective and this alone feels like a fresh start. It was an amazing day actually filled with my favourite things, fires, the great outdoors and hanging out under trees with Elijah, a dip in the sea, dolmens, a yoga practice with my teacher, spending time with wonderfully nourishing friends and even a bit of baking and craft making and a visit to the Goddess. Iff this is the new start then I’m very grateful for it, thank you powers that be.

Let’s see where this seasonal shift takes us, we’re half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and I have a feeling the light will really soon flood in. And let’s not forget we have 2.2.22 tomorrow and all the major planets go forwards this weekend. If your heart is till feeling heavy then be really honest, separate head from heart and go deeper in.

Love Emma xx

Perioral dermatitis

I saw someone yesterday with perioral dermatitis and it reminded me that I am overdue a blog on this, because when I was trying to research it, I found it extremely helpful to read what others had written about their experience.

My skin started showing my stress a month after I returned to work when Elijah was just four months old. I was involved in the set up of a new peer-to-peer channel Island based company as well as on catch up from my three months maternity from a wealth management company, plus teaching yoga and Reiki and managing a four month old and all the demands of expressing and breastfeeding and adjusting to the relationships changes that motherhood brings. I was stressed and this manifested in sore red skin either side of my mouth, that sometimes improved, and sometimes got worse.

It carried on for a few years, until I went through IVF for Eben. I thought that maybe it was hormonal, because of the drugs I was having to take, but I finally realised that it was due to the fact I prioritised reducing my stress levels and basically retreated from the world for a few months. This highlighted to me the effect of stress on the body.

Needless to say the skin condition returned again, a few months after having Eben and gradually got worse to the extent that when Elijah was four months into reception at school and Eben was by then one, it covered the skin around my mouth and nose. It was red and angry, which fairly much reflected how I felt at the time. Elijah was not enjoying school and every drop off was heart-wrenching. I was angry about the constant rushing, of attempting to find parking for the school run, of putting my child into a system that he clearly didn’t fit into and managing all the other demands that a working life with young children required.

Everything I read on the subject suggested that red skin conditions (at that time undiagnosed) were very difficult to heal, that they were generally aggravated by stress and diet and often highlighted a lack of love for self. I wasn’t sure what to do with this, it’s not like taking a tablet and applying a cream and it’ll all be better soon. I realise now though, that it was all part of the journey to greater self-love and another opportunity to do the deeper work that needed to be done to align me more fully with my truth and with Self, which is of course an ongoing process even now.

Initially I leaned into Ayurveda. I knew the skin condition by its very nature was indicative of a pitta disorder and that this would be aggravated by stress and certain heating foods, and while I could certainly make changes to how I was living and eating (albeit I was following an Ayurvedic diet as much as I could), there was little I felt I could do to ease the emotional stress in my life. If I could have whipped Elijah out of school then and there, perhaps it would have improved quicker. But it wasn’t just that, I had a lot of unresolved emotional stress eating away inside me, experiences I hadn’t properly digested from my past and parts of myself that I was continuously rejecting, and his experience at school and my feelings around loss of safety and helplessness were merely triggered that.

I went to the UK for a pancha karma at the Ayurvedic Clinic where my Ayurvedic doctor is based. This began a process that caused me to return home and basically write every night for a month, all that had been sat undigested in my solar plexus, causing inner stress. These writings have since become From Darkness Comes Light, my current manuscript that is in its final stages of edit and which helped me to make sense of various patterns in my life and therefore the underlying themes that I allowed to play out because of fear around safety and helplessness essentially. These patterns fed stress and depressions especially and the manuscript focuses on the moments that led to depression and the ways I found my way back to the light again.

However, when my mum read an initial draft of the manuscript she commented as kindly as she could, that she didn’t believe I had really dealt with some of the issues I talked about in the book such as eating disorder. This caused me to deepen my healing and I ended up doing EMDR with a local eating disorder specialist, which was life changing, and I have been a big fan of EMDR ever since. I also set the manuscript aside feeling that i might not return to it, but of course it was all part of the experience and I did return to it, it was literally calling to me, however difficult it was to re-write!

I also signed up to study Ayurveda and while this probably promoted my stress levels in the end, highlighting how much I stress myself out with my need to further myself and achieve, it was also life changing and enabled me to practice as an Ayurvedic nutrition and lifestyle consultant, sharing my love for Ayurveda. It’s a conscious approach to healing and it became increasingly apparent that my skin condition was not only about unresolved emotional issues, but about self-love too. Those blog posts were right!

It’s difficult to say what came first, but the universe certainly supported the journey. There was a shift in yoga, to a deeper approach to practice, one of true embodiment and coming to know more of the self and the Self. This was a huge shift for me and I realised how much my old vinyasa practice was keeping me stuck, helping me to avoid those dark and uncomfortable places where I didn’t like myself very much. It was very easy to get on my mat and move my body attached to the outcome and shape of poses and not go deeper.

Thus while it made my body more flexible and stronger, it merely reinforced existing movement patterns, which fed my conditioned mental patterns. I realised too how much I was harming my body with all the pushing and pulling, of all the forcing into postures for the sake of the glory of the pose and how little I was truly respecting its sacredness. I also realised how much I was able to bypass the body at times. And while my mind was always steadied by a practice, it was not long-lasting and my same neurosis and patterns soon returned.

I became increasingly aware how much I was trained. My body was trained to be a certain way. It wasn’t allowed its own essence. My feet were either pointed or flexed, there was no softness or wisdom that was allowed expression in this. I realised too how much my mind had been trained to think and see life a certain way. We are all victim of this, taught by our parents, educators, society how to think and feel, how to be in the world, whether this suits our constitution and soul or not. We are all trained to be uniform.

This practice allowed me to break free. It centred on freeing the spine, the energy system and in the process it freed the mind in an eternal way. It wasn’t that it gave my mind more space, although it did do this so that I might more easily settle into meditation, but it freed my mind from all its conditioning and so I started to relate to myself and the world differently. This wasn’t always easy, I had to face my ego and it’s fear of being annihilated and so there was a battle of sorts where I had to find the strength to surrender that which was no longer helpful in my life to allow more self-love and soul expression in the process.

There were other things. i explored western nutrition with the wonderful Carol Champion and while the nutritional side was interesting, I am an Ayurvedic devotee and as it turned out, Carol became more of a life coach for me, and a really amazing educator on boundaries and working with other people privately in a way that does not drain, which was my pattern previously. I learned a lot from Carol, she has been instrumental on my journey to allowing more of my Self in this world in a healthier way.

I’ve been seeing Jo de Diepold Braham for shadow work for about 7 years now, I always say that it is CPD for the soul, but I threw myself into nine months of SHEN with Jo Henton, to get even deeper into the emotional body and release the fragments that still remained, supported of course by Reiki. This I did while returning to my manuscript that I had set aside for a few years - this is how long this process took! It was interesting process, because whatever I was editing in my manuscript that was unresolved, popped up in the sessions with Jo and I would go through a few weeks of processing. I felt truly supported by the universe, books, people and other material entered my life at just the right time.

It’s tough though, all this inner work and there have been times when I have questioned whether I can continue. But I know that there really is no choice, for me at least. That I have never wanted to live a life half lived, or a life without heart and soul at the centre of it. It is not enough to talk about these things either, it has to be embodied. If there is one thing I have noticed over recent years is the number of people doing the talk and not the walk, spirituality, like yoga, has become trendy, but whether people are really embodying the teachings is another matter entirely.

My skin condition also found me getting my hands in the earth. The first lockdown and Fiona offering medicinal herb seeds she had collected for free on Facebook led to me throwing myself into growing medicinal herbs and I have not looked back since. Inevitably, in my usual over-enthusiastic way - I ended up growing herbs on a scale that was indeed stressful, at least when it came to cultivating and processing into teas and tinctures etc. but I am someone that has a tendency towards putting myself under pressure - a very pitta trait, putting myself under pressure and pitta affecting the skin.

But this led me back to nature in a way I had not anticipated and this particular part of my journey is still unfolding and taking me into a new stage in my life, of being outside and working with the earth. It allowed me to bring together my love of dowsing, the moon, sacred landscape and the way in which we can create magic in our lives. My love of standing stones and dolmens has escalated and this in itself helped my healing and changed my life in immeasurable ways.

I immersed myself deeper in my menstrual cycle in the process and the wisdom of my womb and am so excited to be slowly sharing more of this with some of you through our various womb offerings. This of course took me deeper into heart, there is a connection between the two - are we living the life that our soul came here to experience? Are we in alignment with our truth? This isn’t about achieving, that I have realised, it is about just being more of who we are without caring what anyone else thinks and/or without worrying about whether that is acceptable within society. The soul is beyond all the limitations of our mind and the collective mind of society.

I looked more honestly at my numbing techniques and how I might distract myself from the moment. I started Transcendental meditation just before the first lockdown and try to do 30 minutes of this each day even now. I went sober for six months as an enquiry into alcohol. I knew that it aggravated my skin but there were times when I still indulged in a couple of glasses of sparkling wine. It was a really helpful experiment as it helped me to see my triggers and the way that I associated drinking wine with say, going on holiday, or on Fridays after an especially busy week. Gradually my interest in alcohol has waned and I don’t drink nowadays, I do still eat dark chocolate though, another pitta tendency (pitta people have a tendency towards red wine, not that I have drunk red wine for an awfully long time).

Throughout all this my skin became my way of measuring where I was at. There is a pitta element related to stress (the fire) and if life is especially stressful then my skin will play up and I’ll know that I need to reign things in a little (cool the fire). My skin will always get worse if I eat certain foods that aggravate my digestive system so I have learned to be more conscious of what I am eating and the reason for it, avoiding trigger foods if I can. I am aware that my skin is likely to be a little red in the pre-menstrual stage, a few days before my period as pitta levels raise. If there is stuff that I have not resolved within the month than it may be worse than in other cycles.

Elijah leaving school calmed things enormously. I was very aware that the skin condition was partly about the rage I felt at going against my inherent wisdom as a mother and putting my child into an environment in which he was not thriving. This was emotionally destabilising and the relief I felt when my other family members finally recognised what I had been trying to say all those years, was indescribable. Not that having him at home is not without stress, but this is more one of trying to ft everything into a day and really I thrive on my time spent with him and the other children out in nature especially.

Throughout all this I have learned to love myself more. To realise how much I was measuring myself against my ridiculous ideas of perfection fed by society and the various messages constantly brain washing me from media and systems of authority. Coming off Facebook and stepping away from other forms of media, especially the BBC online news page has been helpful. I haven’t watched TV for many years but have noticed how I have even stepped away from watching films, partly because I can’t sit down for long enough but also because I’d rather be watching a documentary on standing stones, something that doesn’t feed patterns of comparison.

I did go to the doctor at one point, in despair one day, which was a defining moment for me, because it reminded me that the allopathic approach to healing, while helpful to others, simply disempowers me. My doctor is very kind though, she offered me a pharmaceutical cream but she knew I wouldn't use it, and I took from the appointment confirmation of diagnosis. I researched the condition at length. There was no one cure. It was terribly depressing at the time. But I see now how much it has been helpful and continues to be helpful because there are still moments when it returns, when I’ve overdone it, eaten unhelpful foods and am not processing some emotional trigger in my life.

It’s a journey. If you are navigating perioral dermititis too, or any other skin condion for that matter, then you have my sympathy. It is not easy! It’s the latest organ of the body, our barrier between our inner world an outer world, and with a link to the heart. If you can, see it as an opportunity to deepen your connection to Self and to love in a deeper way, not least yourself but others too - that’s the thing with the heart, the more we open to it, the more love we have to give, and the more we open to receive, however difficult this may be.

We also learn better boundaries, because this is inherently tied into how we value ourselves and how much we are prepared to give of ourselves. This in itself is an empowering experience. We also let go of the conditioned need to achieve as proof of our worth, of letting go of titles and the various other ways that we both limit and define ourselves, making ourselves ‘known’ in the world, again often playing out a pattern about needing to be recognised for worth external to us. When we have found our centre and value our self then we don’t need that validation from others, we are quite literally enough.

Really it’s about becoming more conscious, of clearing all that needs to be let go, that keeps us tied to the past, that stresses us because of the emotional resonance that gets triggered in our day to day life - once those experiences are properly processed and digested, accepted, so that we stop rejecting parts of ourself, then we will no longer be triggered and the inner stress drops away.

It takes us to more intimate levels of being and will strengthen our trust in the support of spirit and in the sacredness of life and ourselves too - it will help us to reveal more of our own true nature and take us back to nature too. That’s the greatest gift it gives and if it can reframed into a blessing rather than a burden then this helps enormously too.

If I can help in any way then do let me know, but really we know what to do. And that might involve yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda and it may not. It helps though if we can commit to one path for some time, adopting a more dedicated approach to healing, allowing space for integration too. The cherry pick approach is unlikely to work, simply because it means we never truly allow ourselves to go deeper down one path. But at the end of the day, the more we open to soul, the more we find our way that truly transforms us and changes things and makes life infinitely richer, albeit not without its challenges!