Happy Lammas

Happy Lammas! This is the cross quarter festival, essentially making the beginning of Autumn and while the sun is indeed shining and the temperature is currently warm here on Guernsey, when I went to watch sunset this morning, I was aware of the shifting light and the slight smell of autumn in the air.

This feast day celebrates the first harvest, this of the grains. The second harvest is at the Autumnal Equinox for fruit and the third and final harvest at Samhain for the remaining nuts and berries. Interestingly, the word 'Lammas' comes from 'loaf mass' and is indicative of how much the first grain and the first loaf of the harvesting cycle is honoured and indeed central to our ancestors.

As it happened I found myself making bread this last week. I’ve been meaning to make it for ages, my home school mums are really good at making bread and one of them passed on her no kneed recipe, which suits me perfectly. The amazing thing is, it worked! I actually made bread. Not that the children would eat it and there’s only so much that E can eat. But nonetheless it was a rewarding experience, I didn’t realise how therapeutic it can be to make bread and will continue on, the boys will love it one day perhaps!

Lammas brings with it the knowledge that the bounty and energy of the sun is now beginning to wane, and this is therefore a time of change and shifting energy…active growth is slowing down and the darker evenings will increase as we continue ur descent to the winter solstice. This darkness brings with it the opportunity for greater reflection…

This is also a time to acknowledge the various blessings in our life, expressing gratitude for all that we have, the abundance then, shifting our perspective to something increasingly positive, especially if we have a tendency to focus on all that we don’t have in our life and our continuous wants and desires and manifesting something other than what we do have!

It easily happens, our society is all about wanting more…we are conditioned to always want what we don’t have, so pausing to celebrate what we do have can actually be powerful experience. The more we work with this, the less we actually desire anything different and the more settled our mind becomes. We recognise the joy of true presence!

We celebrated Lammas at a Yoni Yoga class yesterday, which was so lovely to bring together a room full of women, in circle, to practice yoga together, it has been a few weeks now and I forgot how blessed an experience this is, and we continued on with Kirtan which I love too. So there is indeed much to be grateful for, let alone this beautiful weather, long may it continue.

Signs of autumn are here though, I’ve already eaten my first blackberry and my medicinal plants are definitely on the wane. I have a clearer idea of what to grow next year, the milk thistle was super sharp and took up a lot of room, the arnica is just stunning with its gentle flowers, the blue vervain too, and I will grow more of those, and more Tulsi, which I have enjoyed drinking. The echinacea take a year or so to truly take root, but I hope that they flower next year as they are beautiful.

Anyhow enjoy the shifting season and making the most of the sun while we can.

Love Emma x

New moon!

Happy New moon!

I hope you are feeling OK as we touch the new moon. There is a big push to release old patterns and emotions and many of my clients have found themselves in tears the last few days, up against it, and yet knowing that it is all part of their ongoing personal and spiritual development.

So just to say if you are feeling weepy, emotional, all over the place and just not yourself, then don’t worry, blame it on the moon! Try to go into whatever feeling is coming up for you, and try to own it and be with it without giving yourself a hard time or rejecting some aspect of you. It’s all good! Also try to see any situation from an elevated perspective, there will be a lesson in it and an opportunity to clear an old pattern now no longer needed.

We start again today, a clean slate, and it does feel like that in many respects. Take note of where a door is closing and be patient for the new one opening…and remember to follow your joy…

It’s Lammas on Monday, the cross-quarter festival of grain, the beginning of the grain harvest (time to make bread) and the start of autumn too believe it or not…we are celebrating with a Yoni Yoga class on Sunday 9.30-10.45am, followed by Kirtan 10.45-11.30am with Katie (optional) outside (if weather holds) at St Martin’s Community Centre (or in the Parish Hall if not). Please come and join us ladies - here and the details and online booking https://www.beinspiredby.co.uk/events-calendar/2022/7/31/yoni-yoga

Love Emma x

Insecurity and caring too much

A theme that keeps coming up these last few weeks is one of insecurity and caring too much about what others think. I’ve found myself regularly settling a hand on a client’s solar plexus and letting the Reiki bring up a whole heap of tension and knotting of feelings of insecurity, anxiety, fear and sadness too, around this.

The solar plexus holds a lot of stuff, especially the unresolved stuff that we haven’t been able to process and that eats away at us, quite literally in some cases, and causes us to adopt all sorts of behaviour patterns to attempt to numb ourselves from this uncomfortable sensation, especially the restlessness and yuckiness of the anxiety that accompanies our poor relationship with self - our inherent insecurity about who we are and how we live in this world and our imaginings about the future, or our fear of loss of safety, and out caring too much about what others think, which can feed our inherent insecurity if we let it.

What strikes me the most about this ‘caring what others think’ is how much it prevents us from living a life of true authenticity, how we might keep ourselves small and limited simply to fit in and feel accepted by others, frequently compromising our own values and way of seeing things, believing we have to act, behave and be a certain way to maintain a status quo, people please and protect our fragile self-esteem through fear of being confronted or challenged by others for the way we see things or for the gifts we have been given, and the way we feel about ourself, caring more about them and their thoughts than we do about ourselves and our inner truth.

This caring about what others think weaves its way through so many lives, almost like an external validation system; we often need others to validate us in some way and to obtain that validation we need to ensure that we accord to a certain way of being in this world, to ensure our feelings of safety and security. The opposite of this is to not care and to then be up against any feelings of insecurity and be OK regardless of the feedback we receive to the choices we make and the way we live in this world from the clothes we choose to wear, the career we choose to follow, to the way we behave around others and the feelings and opinions we share.

Often though, these choices are dictated to a certain extent not least by our conditioning and the way we have been trained to see the world (which will likely change the more we expand consciously and let go of the conditioning that prevents us from seeing through the illusion in the first place) but by our own feelings of security or lack of security, and the extent to which we can hold our centre and stand our ground regardless of what is happening around us and anyone else’s input into our lives, however well meaning they may be.

I’ve written about it before, but the pandemic really changed things for so many of us and asked us to look more deeply at the way in which we validated our worth in this world, as jobs, titles, earning potential and ways of being dropped away for so many of us. This all certainly brought me face to face with my feeling of inner security and I noticed the many ways that I lent into the external to obtain much of this, seeking external validation for my worth in this world, as I have said previously, from social media feedback to the number of students attending my classes, from my earning potential as a company secretary and the security that the title alone gave me, even if this was illusionary and meant nothing to anyone else.

The vaccination debate also highlighted to me the fear about compromising one’s reputation, simply because of holding a certain opinion that differed to the mainstream, and this because of seeing things so differently and operating from a place of intuition. Opinions are just thoughts and thoughts come and go like the wind, anyone who watches their mind for ten minutes knows this only too well, the thoughts will just keep on coming, we can literally ask ourselves, “what thought am I going to think next” and along comes another one, taking our mind in a different direction. thoughts can become tortuous though when we give them too much energy and buy into them as if they are a concrete truth. It’s the same with opinions, we can take them far too seriously, overlooking the fact that these are subject to change too.

I am frequently changing my mind, because life is frequently giving me opportunities to see things differently. I might hold a strong opinion about one thing, and then I’ll meet someone who will challenge this, or something will happen which will help me to see the other side of the coin so to speak, so that I realise that there is always another way of seeing things. This awareness stops us getting too self righteous and judgmental, too pious and stuck in our ways, although I can be all of that at times too, because I forget and consider that it’s my way or the high way so to speak. Albeit with compassion for self, I have gotten better over time at appreciating that there are may different ways and mine is only one of those, and as I’ve said, even that is constantly subject to change!

But nonetheless the whole vaccine debate did highlight to me the way in which we can be vindicated for our choices about what we put in our body, let alone our choices about a myriad of other things, such as the way we choose to live, or the way we choose to raise and/or educate our children, the clothes we choose to wear, the body art we choose to adopt, the food we choose to eat, the places we choose to holiday, the way we spend our time from resting to playing, from exercising to relaxing, we have opinions and judgements on everything and sometimes we care far too much about what other think to the extent that our choices are motivated by others, not from our inner guidance system.

Sometimes we’re the other side, the ones doing the caring too much about what others are doing. We’re the ones judging and evaluating and giving opinions, trying to control others, knowing how to manipulate and coerce them, wanting to see them live their life the way that we imagine for them, the way that we feel will best suit and work for them - we think we know what’s best for them and while we might say we come from a place of love, really we’re coming from a place of fear, fearing for their safety and so we try to direct them down a certain path that we think will keep them safe and at the same time bring out the best in them.

We should never confuse control for love. If we are trying to control someone then this is not love. This is fear - and we are fearing for our and their safety. We have no trust in the universe or in that other person’s intuition and inner guidance system. We’d be better helping them connect with this and deepen into their own truth, making decisions for themselves, allowing them to learn from their experiences, without having to label them good or bad, passing or failing. The soul is here to experience itself simple as that, it’s only us humans that have decided if something is positive or negative.

This whole security or insecurity theme sent me on a bit of an exploration to further understand the extent of it, to look more clearly at my motivation for doing certain things. This started last summer with an attempt at re-wilding myself by just letting things be, physically that is, to see how my motivation towards various things was due to conditioning and external validation of my worth in this world and how this impacted on my feelings of security. So I set off on a mission of growing all body hair and stepping away from make-up.

This was an interesting experiment. I was OK with the body hair until I found myself teaching yoga and then I became really self conscious of my hairy legs and arm pits and imagined how others may judge me for them, as I judged myself. I realised I was up against my conditioning around what is acceptable and what is not. Admittedly it has become more common place to wild the body in this way, and I had always been very happy about having hairy legs until it became socially unacceptable to have them, at school I recall boys commenting on them when I was around 15, and that was that, I started shaving so as not to stand out and be ridiculed for hairy legs.

Avoiding make-up was much easier, and didn’t concern me in the slightest, it was easier in many respects, I’ve never been someone for plastering on make-up, I’ve never been too concerned about how my face looks, and never felt the need to change it, my concern has always been more so about the size of my body, which initiated an eating disorder at the age of 17 and has caused lots of inner work over the year to try to accept myself regardless of this - so in comparison, not applying eye liner was really no big deal!

Still, towards the middle of summer I was done with the not-shaving, not because of what others thought as I had worked through this by then, but because it felt hot and uncomfortable and I longed for silky smooth legs, so I delighted in shaving and have fairly much continued ever since. The difference now is that I do it for myself, not for anyone else. It’s the same with make-up. The Tantra course changed things for me and my perspective in how I relate to my body and what I do or don’t do to it and all of a sudden I longed to adorn it in feminine clothes and make-up too, I wanted more colour, painted nails, and a bit of eye shadow. But again, I was doing it for me, not for anyone else, it wasn’t coming from a place of insecurity about my looks, for example.

This experiment highlighted to me how unconscious some of our decisions and how we do certain things to ease our feelings of insecurity and because we care more about what is expected of us by society and/or others, than how we care about ourselves. I started noticing those times when I did things I didn’t want to do simply for these reasons - caring too much about others may think if I said no or turned down an invite or whatever it might be. On the opposite side, I started to really appreciate those special friends who were truly honest about how they felt, so even if we’d arranged to meet and they felt tired maybe they were hormonal or in overwhelm, then they told me so and we made an arrangement to meet another time instead, which usually suited me better too, just I hadn’t felt to tell them so.

Mainly though, I started to notice how much my caring about what others think prevented me from living authentically, how I might hold back from saying certain things, how I might agree to certain things, how I might avoid certain situations, how I might behave around certain people, how I might make decisions about how I’m spending my time, how I might avoid writing a certain thing, how I might change what I was wearing, how I might tone myself down a bit, how I might limit myself in some way, simply because I cared what others might think and how they might judge me.

I reflected wider on it and I realised how much we might compromise on our dreams, or give up on them all together, simply because of caring what others think and considering that our creations - the book we want to write, the picture we want to paint, the remedy we want to make, the business we’d like to set up, the room we’d like to decorate - how all of this we can give up or never get going simply because we’re too concerned about what others think and how we might be judged or the options and feedback we might receive. It’s incredible really, how many lives go unlived simply because of caring about what others think!

It was a really helpful exploration. Because underneath the caring I came face to face with insecurity. This caused me to dig deep. I realised that the only person who can make us feel secure is ourself. We can spend our whole life seeking external validation for our feeling of inner security but this is extremely fragile and is dependent on constant feedback from others and the continuation of whatever it is that is giving us this false sense of security. Furthermore, I realised how much we compromise our authenticity in our quest to appease others and their expectations, opinions and judgements.

I also realised that if we are judging others then we are usually judging ourselves, because of our inherent insecurity. And if others are judging us then it is because of their inherent insecurity. At times we are simply up against ourselves, in that no one is really judging us, that too is an illusion, what’s really happening is we are simply judging ourselves based on our conditioning and the contracts we bought into and signed up to in terms of the way we see the world. When we start breaking those contracts and seeing through the illusion then we can be on rocky ground for a while because we might well judge ourselves based on what’s been, until we’ve settled into the transformed version of self.

I noticed my inherent fear of rejection, of being rejected for being myself, and my fear of confrontation, of having to stand my ground and stay in my centre when being challenged by others. I noticed the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach that this all created, an anxiety that I hadn’t realised was there, that had been there for an awfully long time, but which I had avoided feeling through various tactics over the year from starving myself to binging, to smoking cigarettes and joints, to drinking too much wine, to keeping myself very busy, to obsessional cleaning, to overwork and even to too much yoga at times.

In short there were a whole heap of choices made and behaviour patterns created that helped me to avoid feeling my inherent insecurity that caused me to live my life caring too much about what others thought, and negating my own inner wisdom and knowing instead. At times, I couldn’t even hear this, simply because I was so used to looking to others to inform me about what I should be doing, how I should be behaving, and how I should present myself to the world. And even when I did start hearing it, my inner voice, my inner knowing, my intuition and gut instinct, I doubted all of it, because I was still so used to listening externally.

Gradually I started going deeper within, and being more honest with myself about how I might feel in any given situation, about what works for me and what doesn’t and I discovered all these lovely things, like self worth and self appreciation, healthier boundaries and the ability to say no. Over the years the unhealthy behaviour patterns have dropped away, I mean not all of them, I still have a tendency towards busyness, and I don’t like mess, but I am no where near as controlling of myself, my environment or others as I may once have been.

I care less now too about what others think of me. I’m more honest, more authentic then, more true to my essence. I can now say ‘no’ to offers of coffee and big parties and leave it at that, rather than dancing around it, saying yes but meaning no and somehow having to extricate myself from any arrangement made, rather than just being honest from the outset. I loathe small talk and am fortunate now to have a group of soul friends who talk the deep stuff, that keeps my soul nourished, I can’t be doing with situations which drain me otherwise.

I care less about whether people think me mad for the choices I make, for the way I chose to live my life, for the clothes I chose to wear, for the way my children look with their wild and unkempt hair (actually it’’s very well kept, it’s just crazy hair!), for the way I chose to raise them with less consideration of academic achievement and more focus on learning from wild living, for the way our family is finding its own way of being that doesn’t necessarily accord to societal expectations of what a ‘happy family’ is meant to look like, for my sensitivity and emotional volatility, for the opinions I have, which changes like the wind as the universe always brings in an opportunity for me to see things differently and see more of the wider perspective to things.

I have realised that the only thing which truly brings us security, is not the amount of money in our bank account, or the kind of house we own, nor the number of likes we receive on social media, let alone the feedback we receive from others about the work we do, or the make-up and plastic surgery, nor the expensive clothes and jewellery and definitely not the relationship or love we seek from others. All of these can be taken away from us and then there we are again - right bang centre in our insecurity. Security can not be bought, nor can it be given, it has to be cultivated, because our inherent feeling of security comes from deep within us, deep in our centre, in our solar plexus.

This is where we must come back to time and time again and sit deep into it, as deep as we can, and feel whatever is moving through us, really feel it, not turn away from it, or avoid it or numb from it, but truly feel the uncomfortableness of being right in it and allow it to ease, noticing what is behind it and facing it rather than running away from it. We cannot avoid it, not really, all the other stuff, the external stuff is just part of the patriarchal and commercial illusion. I repeat, we cannot buy security, we really can’t, and no amount of job title or likes on social media will give it either, not really.

When we start to pay attention, we’ll notice where we are people pleasing, where we have energetic imbalances with others and compromise our boundaries, where we are being manipulated, controlled and/or influenced by others (and therefore compromising our boundaries), where we are being inauthentic, when we are saying one thing and meaning another, when we are giving our power away, entering into victimhood and blame hood (we know then, WE have given our power away, no one can take it from us) and when we are caring far too much about what others think because some part of ourselves has not been properly owned and accepted, where we are, therefore, not yet whole.

We’ll also notice that at its core, at its very core, is the mind and the games it plays with us, the mind games as I call them. We’ll notice that it is our mind that creates our feelings of insecurity, just as it is our mind which tells us that we are not worthy enough, beautiful enough, good enough, perfect enough, that we are not enough, and never will be. It is our mind that tortures us and creates our suffering, that causes us to care too much about what others think simply because we’ve gotten very good at projecting and looking outside of ourselves for the very thing our own mind denies us - feelings of security.

I have a feeling this moon cycle has been bringing this all in and will ramp up now until the new moon, so do pay attention, do get into your centre, lay a hand, especially if you are Reiki attuned, and keep coming back to centre. Remind yourself where you are and when - ‘in your centre now, in the present’. This is the gift that the centre brings, the ability to be in the centre, not sent off balance by what has happened previously, or with imaginings of what might happen in the future, but by being truly present to what is happening in any one minute, in this secure and centred moment. This, lovely beings, is the gift of true presence.

Maintaining it is the work though. It is a moment by moment awareness. I have to stay vigilant. You will have to stay vigilant, or maybe you are already. We will all have to stay vigilant. The mind is super powerful and will easily follow tracks and pathways laid. We cannot fill these in, but we can start again. We can form more positive tracks and pathways that tell us that we are enough, that recognise that there is no such thing as perfect so just let go of that and just be all that we are, authentically, even if that means we’re totally different to everyone else, in fact celebrate that, we should all celebrate all our differences for this is what makes us us and not someone else.

We need to catch ourselves time and time again when we feel those old patterns coming in and like a mantra, we repeat “its just my mind, “it’s just my mind and it’s mind games”, “it’s just my mind”, “it’s just my mind games” over and over again until we re-programme ourselves and reclaim all those bits we keep rejecting because of our insecurity around being our true beautiful selves in this crazy world we live in. It’s the path to freedom. And its in each of us. Never outside. Never in someone else’s way or someone’s else’s words. It’s deep within each of us and freedom is our birthright…we just got to own it.

What I will add, is that if we want to go deeper into our centre and free the knots and tension and old patterns of insecurity, anxiety, paranoia and depression then we would do well to release our knees and shoulders first. It is my experience from my practice and from working with others, that the shoulders and knees take us to our centre, because these also hold our insecurity, as we shoulder too much responsibility and carry the weight of our over thinking mind, and struggle to firmly place our feet on the earth and allow movement, becoming rigid and stuck in the knees through fear of the earth dropping away or not being able to stand on our own two feet.

This is where yoga, with deep awareness, can help enormously, going into our knees and shoulders and listening to them, while simultaneously releasing tension from them, not from changing them, but from allowing more of them, more of the roundness of the joint of the knee, and the roundness of the shoulder joint, and allowing their greater freedom. You will feel how this starts to unstick you in the centre, but be aware, because the old feelings will come up to come out, this is the nature of true healing. Obviously Reiki helps with this hugely, each of these modalities worked together, yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, compliment each other, loosening the soil and pulling out the weed, getting to the root of whatever now needs to be lifted and released.

Enjoy the waning moon!

Love Emma x

The magic of Sark

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no place on this earth quite as magical as Sark. For me it is absolutely the sacred isle and I’ve been really fortunate to have spent the last three nights there, and over the heat wave too!

I went over with the two boys and my brother, Ross, sister-in-law, Star, and their daughter, Willow, who are visiting from Byronshire in Australia. We stayed in wooden pods at La Valette Campsite out on the East coast, some distance away from my favourite spot of Little Sark, but glorious nonetheless.

Three nights of no WIFI was amazing in itself, let alone the switch off from emails and technology generally. Not to say the boys didn’t watch their iPads, the thought of no WIFI for three nights was enough to send Elijah into a spin, but he survived nonetheless, and iPad watching usually meant a much needed rest from all the activity, well deserved, both boys excelled in their walking and cycling efforts.

The hotter weather didn’t deter us, and we made the most of all Sark has to offer, but of course barely scratched the surface, this is the island that gives, gives, gives. Not having a phone means I don’t take photos, so I’m grateful to Ross for taking his phone and taking photos for us all, this when we remembered that there was such a provision on his phone.

This means there are no photos of our first night or our first day when we visited Port du Moulin for a high tide morning swim. I’ve swum here many times previously but never on such a high tide and we were lucky to have the beach to ourselves allowing for a naturist swim, nothing quite so freeing. The children thoroughly enjoyed rock jumping and I kept going in the sea for as long as I could, before swimming them back in.

The tide was too high to get around to the pyrite caves but the children had fun finding pyrite stones on the beach, Eben has this knack of finding good crystals and we did return home with one - we asked permission, and will take it back one day soon.

That afternoon, I took the boys down to Port a la Jument, the bay along from port du Moulin. It was hot, but well worth the traipse down the cliff and the rock leaping to access the beach at low tide. We had fun the three of us, more swimming and rock jumping and enjoying the views afforded towards Herm. There were three other people on the beach when we arrived but we were soon on our own and this on a busy Sunday in July, another reason i love Sark, is you can get away from people, and while I can be very sociable, I thrive on quite space.

The second day was heatwave day and it was intense, but we kept going in it! We spent the morning out north at L’Epequerie, which again we had to ourselves and what a treat it was. We walked down an ancient path in a valley and along part of the cliff path to get there, catching sight of a seal along the way. The tide was high again and with no one around we were able to swim freely, more rock jumping for the kiddos and neolithic stone noticing for me.

This island is awash with neolithic stones, hardly surprising though when one considers the geology of the island. Sark is made up of a collection of metamorphic and igneous rocks, some of which are so beautiful that its not surprising they attracted the attention of people back in Neolithic times who no doubt found the island as special as I do. There’s some stones around here and a beautiful oak tree up above the bay, which the children like to climb and hang from!

That lunchtime the boys and I traipsed down to the harbour to meet E who was going us for our final night. Here we were lucky to see a huge pod of dolphins in the distance. I was hoping we’d see them later at Dixcart but alas not! It was super, super hot by then and being Monday a couple of the restaurants were closed, which can complicate Monday lunchtime choices, especially as Stocks was fully booked weeks ago - book early if you are intending to lunch there this summer, we missed out.

We ended up at Nova Bistro in the high street, we did attempt to sit outside but it was far to hot so moved inside. The staff were super lovely and everyone was pleased with their meal and the shade! Our favourite place to eat, where we ate every other lunchtime is the Fleur du Jardin, which is family run and very friendly and affordable, at least compared to many places these days. Hathways, which is under new management this year, was recommended to us but we never quite made it there, their menu looks yummy though. Sark does tend to include a good few chips - my boys are showing off theirs in the group photo!

That afternoon we headed down through the valley to Dixcart, enjoying the shade and that magical and ethereal landscape. We sought shade on the beach and managed to get a good swim and a bit of a rock jump in. It’s a busy beach though, which always puts me off, but the forest is just amazing and no trip to Sark is complete without time spent in that valley, it just makes you feel alive.

That evening I traipsed one to Little Sark as dusk was setting. There’s a Goddess stone along the way I like to visit and various other stones that mark the path out to the dolmen. It is another magical spot that I always have to myself, bar a couple of sheep who usually scarper as soon as they see me! The moon wasn’t up until the early hours, so I got to cycle back under the stars. The clear night sky from Sark is incredible and I cannot help cycling with my head mainly up looking for shooting stars.

There were a couple of magical moments that evening, and I felt very held by the land as I was basically blown back to the campsite without having to put too much effort into cycling, managing it on trust, in the dark, I don’t like to use light at night as you can’t see so much. It might well be almost the middle of July but it was really quiet that evening and it wasn’t until I was almost back at the campsite that I passed someone walking. After a shower I stood outside the pod in awe at the stars, the milky way now visible.

Our last day and we all headed over to Little Sark past Grand Greve, which is a beautiful sandy beach but quite a trek up and down the steps! Regardless, I was super impressed with the children (admittedly Eben was on a tag along on the back of my bike and by all accounts didn’t do much peddling!) and their cycling, it’s along way over to Little Sark and all of our legs were feeling it, Sark can be hard on the body, well if you get out and about. It was well worth the effort. We headed out to La Fontaine, which has been on my ‘to do’ list for a while now as I have never managed a high tide swim here, but can tick that now, and I can understand why it is a favourite of my Sark friend.

Again we were on our own and could make the most of this, protected from the rougher seas in the channel and the sound of thunder towards Guernsey, what a treat, the children doing some final rock jumping into the sea, more wetsuits on and off, an art in itself and I have been grateful of the break from that now we are back on Guernsey and I am working the next few days! This bay has a special feel about it and it didn’t surprise me when Ross, our geologist, spotted a quartz seam.

After lunch we headed down to the harbour and hung out in Le Creux searching for more crystals, there is a quartz cave here and the children loved searching for quality bits to take home with them (we asked permission and no doubt will return, like all the other stones we end up bringing home from the beach). The energy in Le Creux is amazing and I love swimming here at high tide, this day it was low and still got us all in, for our final Sark swim.

I’m always a bit miserable when I return from Sark, it’s like a shock turning up in St Peter Port to all the traffic and general busyness, let alone the crazy Guernsey energy, at least in compassion to the higher vibration and sanctity of Sark, largely unspoilt by modern crappiness. However I can’t really complain, the boys and I headed down to Saints for a swim this morning, the moon still up in the sky, and I spent the day quietly and peacefully in my healing space sharing reiki with others.

Furthermore, I’m headed back to Sark again for our autumnal retreats in a few months time, and might even fit in another trip to Sark with the family between then. It’s the kind of place that just calls and I’m pretty rubbish at resisting it…and there is something special about camping out on the land and just getting away from it all, back to basics, and forgetting that the chaos of the rest of the world carries on anon.

For any of you fancying a trip to Sark then amazingly we do still have some spaces left for our soulful Sark weekend Friday 16th to Sunday 18th September. It’s a really amazing opportunity to stay at Stocks at a group rate and enjoy a weekend of yoga and Sark too, it’s the kind of retreat that absolutely transforms you and attracts students time and time again - you can find out more here - https://www.beinspiredby.co.uk/events-calendar/sark-retreat-sept-22

Always there is a sacrifice - happy full moon!

It’s full moon day! It’s the largest of the full moon’s this year, in so much as it’s the closest one to the earth and it certainly looked huge last night as it was rising into the sky.

I have been feeling rather upbeat on this waxing moon, but have also noticed some themes popping through which Rebekah Shaman mentions in her lunascope, where she writes:

“Feeling sleepless, a bit more anxious, and your inner critic is suddenly becoming a whole lot bitchier, blame it on this Capricorn Full Supermoon...But the biggest reverberations in the night sky, during this moon cycle, is Pluto conjunct the Capricorn moon, Sun conjunct Mercury, and Uranus trining the Moon…These Planetary clashes are going to illuminate a whole load of issues that have been hidden in our personal and collective psyche, especially around family, work balance, and life purpose. Be prepared to have your boat rocked with some home truths, and how best to communicate them.”

I have seen others facing these same issues and while you could argue that that could happen anytime, it does seem as if the moon is trying to make us consider how our lives might otherwise be lived, reflecting a little my previous big around dreaming a new dream. Also, what I have witnessed in others is this theme around wanting our cake and eating it and the consequences of this. The way in which our desires might determine our choices, so that we sell out on our soul, for example, because we want the bigger car or house, or whatever it might be.

There is also a time around perfectionism, how many still buy into this idea that if so and so happens, if they own so and so, or go on holiday to so and so, or whatever it might be, then they will feel better about life and themselves, rather than simply accepting where they are at in this moment and all they have in their lives. Still there is this drive towards more, more, more and this notion that there is a perfect world/perfect state of mind/perfect body/perfect life.

This is of course utter nonsense and the sooner we individually and collectively let go of this the better for everyone, especially the Planet. This idea of perfect has people giving themselves a really hard time and I have seen this with friends recently, how much they can suffer because of their judgements about themselves and their parenting, or their lifestyle or how they earn money, or their performance, and how easily it can feed patterning around failure.

It is this pattern that I have witnessed the most on this wax, with friends and family who hold onto this notion of “I am a failure” due to something that possibly happened in their past that they bought into as a truth and which can get triggered from time to time. This of course linked with the idea of perfect. If people could just let go of perfect, the there would be nothing too fail. There is nothing to fail. You can’t fail at life any more than you can fail at being a parent.

On the whole everyone is doing their best and the best they can do for themselves is shift any negative mindset to something much more positive, so that the collective psyche is positively changed into something that is empowered and hopeful rather than disempowered and hopeless.

Life is as it is and we always have a choice. This awareness around choice is not to give ourselves a hard time, but just to consider the nature of the way we make our choices, what motivates them? Do we make choices through fear or through desire, or through combination of both? The Yoga Sutras will infer that both are an obstacle to our self-realisation.

I noticed myself reaching out for a potential change in my life that was based on fear and not heart, a wobble I might have called it. The fear of the increasing cost of living made me consider whether I should go back to living a life already lived. When I dug deeper I was aware that my rumination came as a result of a deep fear around loss of security and were not of the heart which speaks of trust and faith and staying true to self. We easily flip flop between the two and can make choices in a speedy fashion, not considering the potential consequences, which catch up with us later.

But even then, even if the consequences are not favourable, this doesn’t mean we have failed. Only that we made a choice and that choice created a particular result and every moment provides us with the opportunity to choose again, to shift the perspective, come from a deeper place of trust and faith, of heart and also of reality, in so much as we haven’t disappeared into unrealistic fantasy. Sometimes we want things that are not for us. Sometimes we convince ourselves we can have those things regardless. Always there is a sacrifice.

This for me actually is the message of this waxing moon - always there is a sacrifice and we need to find a way to be OK with that and to accept the sacrifice. It’s taken me over nine months, but I finally see the sacrifice I have had to make and am finally accepting this and letting of of my conditioning that tells me it should be different and of the guilt that has arisen with it. Once change has come in, life can never be lived the same and sometimes our mind has to catch up with our reality and the physical body in this moment.

It is always about being in the moment, body, mind and soul, unified. And it is about being OK with where we’re at, because this is the result of what came before, and that came about because of the choices we made in that moment. It is pointless looking back with regret, as much as it is pointless drifting off into an imagined future when you consider that then, then, all will be OK. We really do only have this moment and this moment is utterly beautiful - perfect in its imperfections! Being gracious for that is key, and accepting the sacrifices that came to enable this, and letting go of anything which stands in the way of this (usually a mental imprinting about it having to be different)…I’m grateful to the moon for illuminating and reminding me of this.

So enjoy the full moon and all the lessons and blessings she brings and see you on the wane.

Love Emma x

Dreaming a new dream

I was sorry to hear about yet more mass shootings in America earlier this week, and reference made to this becoming an ‘American tradition’ quite in contrast to the notion of the American dream.

Strangely I was reading about that the American dream the same night I heard about the shootings, but in the context of drugs and poverty and how this notion of the ‘American dream’ leads to disharmony for so many because there is this notion of this ideal that people are fed as a reality, and yet many never attain it due to a combination of factors including  socio-economic conditions and cultural/ethic and racial discrimination.

This then leads to feelings of discontentment and frustration, of never being able to make it, which feeds all sorts of neurosis and can, in theory, lead to numbing out in all its many vices from illegal and legal drugs to excess food and other destructive activities/tendencies, let alone the anxiety, depression, resentment and hopelessness it creates. And of course the need to go and shoot people.

But let’s face it, how real is the American dream anyway. Sure, there is this notion of it, and people try their hardest to manifest it, but even they appear to be living the dream – thinking celebs here – it comes at a cost to their mental wellbeing or relationships status, highlighting that you can’t always have it all. Yet in the West we are continuously fed the notion by media that you can, that it is a reality if only this or that happens.

As a humanity we really do need to change the narrative, to shift the collective consciousness around this concept of ‘reality’. Reality is what we make it, it is a projection of the way we think. The more we buy into the conditioned idea of what life is about, the more we feed the illusion of what is reality. But it’s no easy feat to change the way we think and to open our mind to greater possibilities because we are always up against the depths of our conditioning.

I have been stumbling up against my own conditioning these last nine months as my heart has demanded that I make changes, that cause my life to be lived less traditionally or main stream, les goal orientated and achievement based. It’s not easy! Not because of anyone else and their opinions and judgements (although that did used to concern me a lot, which is silly, to limit ourselves because of our fear of what others think about us, when we know that thoughts and opinions change like the wind), but because of my own mind that says, “hang on a minute what about this or that, about the way you’re supposed to be living to feel secure, fulfilled and like there is a point to your existence”.

This because my mind’s been taught to see the world a certain way and to open it to other options can, at times, be frankly terrifying. But I’m also aware that there is no choice, not really, not if we are attempting to live consciously and with awareness of the heart and bigger picture. I mean we always have choice, but it becomes uncomfortable when we ignore that part of ourself that knows that life has be to be lived differently, that there are other ways that may be different to the way that we have been trained and taught to see and live within this world necessarily.

We can bumble along convincing ourself that all is fine, that we are happy toeing the line, but there comes a tipping point, the squish then, a moment when we just know that the nudges from our body and heart are trying to tell us something that requires our deeper listening. The deeper listening generally reveals a knowing that’s been bubbling away but we have been ignoring, a deeper knowing of another way, which offers no certainty beyond the moment by moment unfolding, which by its very nature can be both - paradoxically - contained and yet freeing at the very same time.

We’re not taught or encouraged to live moment to moment, always there is a future orientation towards some form of achievement; education, exams, career, professional qualifications, certainty, security, mortgage, organising, children, planning, pensions, making things certain. And that’s all good and well. I know how it is to have children and the need to organise, but we can plan our life to the extent that we’re not necessarily even conscious of what we’re doing, of the choices available to us and the decisions we’re making because we do what we do because there is an expectation and a belief about how it should be, based not only on how we’ve been taught to see the world but also how we’ve been taught to think.

Essentially we’re taught that we can have it all if we work hard enough and do what is expected of us. It’s not the American dream per se, but it’s an illusion nonetheless. New age spiritualism doesn’t help with its focus on ‘love and light’ and ‘the dream’ and I’ve had to dig deep into my conditioning around these, because I did buy into new age spiritualism for a good while, and allowed it to shape my mind. What I’ve realised though, is that we cannot have love and light without the shadow and to deny that will only create greater inner disharmony, war then, which will be reflected to us in the outside world, which of course is what we are seeing now.

Furthermore, we prevent our true authenticity being expressed and seen by the world, which has implications, not least in our relationship with ourselves but also with others - people like authenticity, they like knowing the truth of a person. This point was highlighted to me recently when a student mentioned how shocked she was when her spiritual teacher, who promotes herself as love and light, showed anger around something that had happened in the class. The student was struggling to come to terms with the humanness of her spiritual teacher, because she had put her on a spiritual pedestal, fed by the spiritual teacher herself, who usually only let her students see the love and light, not her darkness and shadows!

There are many lessons in there of course, it’s a common pattern, we pop our spiritual teachers up on spiritual pedestals, falsely thinking that they’re more evolved and have made greater peace with themselves than we have done, and are lucky to experience a constant state of peace and harmony. Then we realise that these teachers are as human as we are, and are still working through their karma and patterns and we can feel disappointment to the extent that we might reject them.

Later, we will come to realise that the spiritual path is not what we thought it was, that it’s a constant process of letting go and surrendering everything which isn’t our essential self – and that this can be messy and challenging. That it’s not about the external and the image we choose to present to the world, but about the internal and about being our self regardless of the company we keep and the situations we find ourselves in.  Essentially it’s about deeper love and compassion and freedom.

The mindset around the dream has been tricky to shift too. I do believe in dreams and our ability to realise them, but I have expanded a huge amount of energy over the years in trying to control the process and turning them into goals, something to achieve, which leads to a constant orientation towards the future and a lack of ability to be truly present to the moment, impatient for the dream to manifest and for life to finally settle and make sense. I realise how I had merely continued feeding my old patterns but under a spiritual guise, still buying into the illusion that life will be better in the future somehow.

Furthermore, in focusing solely on achieving the goal (the dream) I neglected to pay attention to the present moment and frequently overlooked the abundance in it, not being grateful for what I had, simply because of my emphasis on what I didn’t have - my mind had been trained to always want more, accomplish more, experience more, achieve me, be more, desire more, more, more, more, more!

I remember clearly after having Elijah, which had been a dream for so long, feeling almost empty because I didn't know what my dream was now. It was much the same after publishing my first book, while I was jubilant in making that dream come true, but the feeling quickly passed, my life carried on as it had done previously, and I tried to work out what my next dream might be, so that I could shift my focus to that instead rather than face the emptiness of just being OK with the moment and its emptiness.

I realise now how much I have used ‘dreams’ as a way to distract myself from  my current reality because of the lack of alignment and balance in it. It took me an awfully long time to realise my patterning – that when life got tough and desperately uncomfortable, that I would throw myself into my work and into manifesting the dream so I could pretend that whatever was happening wasn’t happening. In the process I kind of numbed myself from the actual reality, rather than facing it head on and doing something about it, or even just acknowledging it.

Over time I have come to realise that we don’t need to force our dreams to come true, that we just have to follow our heart and all that this reveals to us moment to moment. Furthermore, the dream is never as we imagine it to be and always there is a sacrifice that needs to be made. These have been difficult decisions for me to learn as there is a certain trust and faith that is demanded and a continuous letting go of trying to control outcome and making things the way we think they should look like.

I have also noticed that sometimes things just happen, those moments that we could never imagine, that change the course of our life and its future direction. They don’t look like the dream as we imagined it, but they will likely lead us there in a convoluted and strange way that doesn’t follow a path that has been lived previously, that is unknown and uncertain and likely turns our world completely upside down. We need to be aware of what we are wishing for and the dream we would like to live!

For example, a chance encounter in a dolmen at sunrise back on the spring equinox in 2021 changed my life in immeasurable ways, it wasn’t something I could ever have imagined and while I had no idea at the time, it fed a dream that I had previously given up on in my quest to control things, that has become clearer since then so I am now aware how much the universe was prodding me and providing the opportunity, even though it didn’t make any sense for a good year or so, and brought with it many lessons including one of sacrifice, trust, faith, cosmic joke and going with the flow.

All of this helped me to re-orientate to the present moment in a way that I hadn’t previously. It is a constant awareness and work in progress however, because living in the present is not easy when society is conditioned towards a future orientation. As a company secretary much of my professional life was about organising future events and my mind easily falls into this patterning as it is comfortable and known, and I notice how I do this when I am particularly stressed or feeling insecure about how life is unfolding, and want some certainty - I’ll plan something!

I also started playing around with the idea of not having a dream or a future orientation and found it initially uncomfortable, as if my life was then purposeless, and my big thing has always been about living a life of purpose. I started realising how much that idea too is also an illusion, a mind game. Is it not enough to simply be alive? Is that not purposeful in itself? Just by playing a role in the balance of things, of breathing oxygen in and carbon dioxide out?

It was a helpful enquiry and shifted my perspective and awareness and there was greater recognition of all I have and gratitude for the abundance and joy in my life NOW. This was brought home to me one morning recently, when I was walking back up the cliffs after swimming at the naturist beach below, and just realising that I have everything in my life that I ever wanted or needed and that the moment itself is the dream in reality and while it demanded a sacrifice, the sacrifice was worth it for the shift in perspective that allowed me to see the joy of the moment.

This helped me to realise that the dream is often about a state of being, of what is happening on the inside, rather than how it looks externally. Ultimately it is about harmony; living in harmony with ourselves and living in harmony with others. When we set up a false notion of reality, like the whole idea of ‘the American dream’ then we can easily fall out of harmony with our heart and soul – our essence then - because we try to live in a way that has been sold to us as being ‘the way’ but isn’t necessarily the way for us individually.

We all have our different ways and they certainly don’t look the same. Yet often we end up following the trend, believing it will give us all we seek, as it has been sold to us as the way that we all need, just look at the way the trend has moved from say smoothies and yoga to cacao and shamanism. Somewhere along the way we have to accept our reality and the chaos and messiness within it and do our best with the choices available to us.

Over time the need for props drops away too, we realise we all the crystals in the world won’t make us happy, any more than the most expensive all singing and all dancing yoga mat (still flummoxes me how there can be so many yoga mat choices on the market and so many that are so ridiculously expensive, you don’t even need a mat to practice yoga!). That really all that is important, is inside of us. And all the props and trends, while helpful at times, become even more of a distraction, certainly when we come attached to them.

Collectively we need to shift the narrative of ‘the dream’. We might not be party to the American dream living here in the UK, but we are party to this notion of having it all, come what may – feeding the power/control/money patriarchal paradigm. We need to realise that this approach to living on planet earth is not sustainable and doesn’t provide us with the peace and harmony that we seek, that all is does is keep us trapped in an illusion of always needing more and this being about the outside, not what is within.

It seems to me that the universe is prodding us to make changes, that the escalating food and fuel prices are asking us to evaluate our priorities and reflect on the way that we are living and indeed thinking, and taking note of what is essential and what is not - what actually fills us up and what doesn’t, what helps us to experience greater harmony and what doesn’t, what allows us to feel more positive and what doesn’t, what helps us be a better version of ourselves and what doesn’t, what allows us to be in true presence, and what distracts us from this, from our being.

Furthermore, it feels as if we are being encouraged to live a simpler life, the kind of life that so many enjoyed during the pandemic lock-downs that talks of greater freedom despite the containment (again the paradox). Much of this is mental, in so much as

Ultimately though I have a sense that it is time that we started dreaming the dream for the entire planet, that talks of love and freedom and contentment. That encourages us to live lightly and respectfully on this earth, with greater harmony and settling more fully into the reality of being – and being our true selves beyond the mind games that keep us feeding into more of the illusion. Once again this asks that we make a sacrifice, but hopefully the sacrifice is worth making, the cost of not making it will only lead to more disharmony and war and more people suffering.

Happy end of week.

Love Emma x

New moon ramblings

It’s the new moon in cancer tomorrow, my star sign as it happens and so I know only too well how sensitive the cancer moon can make us feel, emotional too with all that water element.

However after a rather turbulent previous moon cycle, I feel strangely calm on this dark moon day and I know others feel the same. Many of us have been particularly emotional as we have been forced to see (or perhaps better to write, we haven’t been able to ignore!) more of the shadows, often mirrored to us in others, since the full moon, and as uncomfortable as this has been, majorly testing many of us, I know that in some strange way i actually feel better for it.

In fact there’s this quote from Rebecca Campbell that sums it up perfectly from my side at least:

“Be open to being cracked open. Wide open. It is the difficult times that help us grow in leaps and bounds, and in ways we could only dream possible. But first they have to crack us open. And sometimes it hurts like hell. It’s nature’s way. And, whether you let it happen or not, it is going to happen. So surrender to the process and let life do its thang. It’ll be worth it. It’s how the light gets in”.

These last few weeks have reinforced in me how much our thinking patterns and core beliefs create so much disharmony and suffering in our lives because we think our reality should be different to how it is. This causes us to excessively ruminate about the past or to obsessively stress and imagine a future, all of which takes us further away from the present and this moment with all its messiness and humanness that allows us to know what it feels like to be truly alive.

I’m always surprised though when this pattern reveals itself to me, and I realise how much I have been buying into an illusion of life being a certain way and measuring myself up against it, as if that ‘certain way’ is an absolute truth; that love should look a certain way, for example. I mean on one level I know that there is no one way, but that doesn't stop me buying into it from time to time as the conditioning is subtle and runs deep. I’m a romantic at heart and us romantics sometimes have a hard time of it because we have a tendency to romanticise life, we believe in the fairy tale and of course the fairy tale looks a certain way an involves endless happiness!

But in truth it is never about what it looks like on the outside, and when you are trying to live consciously, then it can get really bloody messy. It also ends up being very different to how you thought it might be, because of course thoughts are based on the past and on conditioning and this is now and this present moment and like I said, it is never as we imagined it might be! Sometimes it’s surprisingly joyful in its unexpectedness and spontaneity, when we let go of our control and just go with the flow of things, from an intuitive nudging.

This happened yesterday when the boys and I joined Ross, Star and Willow on Portlet for a BBQ and one of my friend’s came along with her son and then another joined us and another came down with her daughter by chance and friendships were formed and the sun came out and the high tide collected us all in for a swim and I certainly left feeling joyful in my present moment experience of an unexpected Monday evening on Guernsey.

In fact I’ve also become aware how serious we can get on this path of heart, and how much we sometimes need to literally lighten up and allow more heart - the irony! I’ve come increasingly aware how much I value family and friends and a soulful community. I’ve been blessed this last six months to make some really deep friendships with some lovely real women, the ones who don’t pretend to be anyone than who they are with all their rawness and edginess and earthiness and to also have my beautiful soul sister swim friends.

In these changing and shifting times when the light dims these friendships can make a huge difference, holding space for all that is felt, for then tears and anger and the moments of intense vulnerability when all seems so shaky that you wonder how you might make it through the day. But you do, not only because you have to, but because there are those souls holding you, maybe not literally, but a message here, a flower there, a moment of being present to your anguish as you work through whatever needs to be worked through, as the darkness ushers in the light but takes you on an inner journey to do so.

I mean these times are needed. I relish the discomfort of them because I know that they are bringing gifts. They always cause me to deepen into practice, to shift the practice, make changes on my mat, step up the chanting, carve out more time for meditation or at least for silence, get out walking, feel stones, be quiet and still. And after a time, when the storm has passed and the emotional intensity has eased, then the light returns and with it a rush of inspiration, creativity and passion for what now needs to become more of a reality.

This moon cycle has especially made me eqnuireinto the notion of stability because of the shakiness of life this year with all the many changes happening in my personal life as much as out there in the bigger world and vice versa - we are the micro of the macro of course - and my concluding that it has to come from within. This was confirmed to me today on this dark moon as I practiced with my teacher and felt the joy of being truly in the presence of the breath in the moment in the body, and it was there that I found my stability, not somewhere external to me, not in my external reality, in the usual places we might seek stability such as bank balances and homes, but in the very centre of my being.

I realise again that so much of our experience of life is about our perception, and how we interpret what is happening to us and the thoughts that we allow ourselves to think and buy into as if they are a very real truth. And how we also assume that other people think the same way when they really don’t, how we all have different backgrounds and experiences that shape our impression of reality and the way that we then interpret what happens to us.

Elijah reminded me of this only yesterday as he ruminated over a throw away comment someone said about him being as bad as his brother, and as he already, at the tender age of 8, developed a fear of being perceived as bad, thus already orientating his behaviour in a way that he feels will be perceived as good (sigh), he got upset, because he thought the person’s comment confirmed that he was indeed bad. The relief he felt when I confirmed that there really is no such thing as good and bad and that he’s the most wonderful little soul I know (well and his brother), was palpable, i even heard him telling E at bed time that he was relieved he could let go of worrying about being bad.

Obviously he’s not bad. No one’s truly bad. I mean Eben’s behaviour isn’t always easy, but he’s not a bad child, but can easily get labelled so, because we are so conditioned to think this way - that we should be good, and therefore if we’re not good and our goodness is not frequently validated, then we met be bad. But it’s more than that, it’s the fact that we can convince ourselves of something, simply because of the way we have interpreted what has been said, simply because of our sensitivity to a particular subject or our inherent vulnerability and shaky self worth.

Somewhere along the line, not only do we have to learn to not care, but we also have to learn to catch ourselves with the story we tell ourselves, about our unlovability, our lack of worthiness, our unattractiveness, our loneliness etc., because essentially, it's not what happens to us that defines us, but how we interpret it - it's a choice! Furthermore, it’s so important to let the unexpected open us up to being fully present in our lives so that we can be embodied and immersed in all our feelings (those we define good and bad for example!), rather than shielding ourselves from them and trying to seek/control a particular outcome.

So here’s to another fruitful and enlightening moon cycle, albeit a gentler one would be most welcomed! Thank you to all you beautiful souls who read this blog, because without you there would be little point writing it and this brings me much joy as I process and try to make sense of my experience of the world - and let’s not forget that this always changes, so please take everything I write with a pinch of salt as I might feel differently by the next cycle!

Happy new moon!

Love Emma x

Please let's end this war on cannabis!

I’m really sorry to hear about fellow Reiki teacher, lady of the moon and healer, Lucia Faith’s sentencing, highlighting the patriarchal world we are still living in. Us healers and witches may no longer be burnt at the stake but we are still being silenced for trying to heal with plants from the earth.

I get it, that there is a law in place and the law was broken, but what’s really broken is the law itself and our attitude towards cannabis usage, which is frankly archaic. It’s also nonsensical, because here on Guernsey we can obtain cannabis on prescription for medicinal purposes but if we are caught in possession without a prescription then we face a criminal and potential prison sentence, this because we’re using cannabis ‘recreationally’.

Yet let’s be honest the line between medicinal and recreational purpose is super thin. I know this from my own experience of being an ex-cannabis user back in the day when I used to travel regularly spending months at a time in Nepal and India where cannabis was readily available. While I may have told myself it made me more spiritual and creative, opening me up to expanded states of consciousness and creative potential, this wasn’t really true, and actually it was only when I stopped smoking cannabis that I truly started deepening my spiritual practise and finally wrote something worthy of reading.

Over the years I have reflected on my cannabis usage and I am aware that while I may have labelled it ‘recreational’ as I did enjoy smoking with friends from time to time, really I was self medicating because life was tough, I still suffered bouts of depression and I was carrying a lot of emotional ‘stuff’ that I still hadn’t worked through. It didn’t help that I’m sensitive and sometimes the sensitivity would just get too much, I’d feel too much and I’d be keen to do anything I could to numb myself from my feelings and temporarily ease me from my perceived suffering.

Immersing myself in yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda I threw myself into my healing journey. All of these healing modalities focus on the root cause of any loss of wellness so seek causative factors - this much like pulling out the root of a weed rather than just removing its leaves. I began to notice how cannabis was just another way of creating symptomatic relief, it wasn’t helping me to get to the root cause of what was out of balance in me and, actually, it was keeping me stuck in old patterns that were not longer serving me.

Over time, as I healed and came back to myself and to my true nature, easing energetic imbalances, connecting more with my heart and soul and letting go of some of the unhelpful mental conditioning and core beliefs, my need for cannabis dropped away and I haven’t touched it ever since. I just simply lost my taste for it, a bit like alcohol and junk food over the years.

However I am still grateful for the role cannabis played in helping me on my healing journey because it served a purpose beyond just being used recreationally. But even then, what’s the big deal? Yes, I know that in excess cannabis can create health concerns; it certainly didn’t do my mental state any favours if I smoked too much of it, the paranoia at times could be severely anxiety inducing and I did sometimes live for days in a fog, let alone the implications of smoking. Plus I have seen people lose themselves to it to the extent that they cannot function in the ‘real’ world and can suffer mental disorder as a result of this.

But the thing is, anything used to excess can create issues, just look at the legal recreational activities of alcohol drinking and food eating. Excessive alcohol drinking is hardly healthy and can lead to increased rates of violence both in the home and in public, causing huge harm for those involved, let alone all the health implications, liver damage, heart disease and depression. Over here in Guernsey we are currently experiencing higher rates of drink driving, a hangover (no pun intended) from the trauma of the pandemic and the squeeze of life generally perhaps, but putting other people’s lives at risk let alone the driver. We just don’t think so clearly when we’ve been drinking.

Excessive recreational eating has also become more common place in recent years with increasing rates of obesity to prove it. While this is normalised to a certain extent, the motivation is still very similar to the reason people take cannabis - a form of self-medication to numb their inner pain. Many people eat recreationally to fill that big black hole within them, easing the intensity of their emotional pain and numbing themselves from the world and from their mental suffering. This excessive eating not only harms the individual but places additional pressure on over-pressured health services.

The truth is, most people are self medicating from the pain of life in some way. Life is hard and sometimes we need something to numb ourselves from the intensity of it. I don’t see why alcohol and junk foods should be classed legal and cannabis not. Cannabis is a plant after all and is used medicinally, so why not decriminalise it and let people access it for themselves without the need for a prescription. One thing is for certain, less lives would be destroyed and the States of Guernsey wouldn’t have to waste money policing cannabis importation, usage or resulting incarceration.

And good try Deputy Prow, writing in today’s Guernsey Press, page 15, with a bunch of reasons why cannabis shouldn’t be legalised, including the perceived negative impact to the island’s finance centre and the impact on the island’s reputation. Really Deputy Prow, I think its time we all let go of our outdated perception of cannabis and expand the awareness a little. Imagine how much more tourism we would receive here in Guernsey if we did indeed become the Amsterdam of the British Isles - at least then we wouldn’t be so reliant on finance and there would be more career options!

Furthermore, Deputy Prow’s listing the impacts of cannabis usage as detailed on the NHS website just seems lame when we’re talking about plant medicine - drinking alcohol can make you feel demotivated, confused, anxious and paranoid. Eating too much food and doing no exercise increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Smoking cigarettes can be harmful to your lungs. Stress can affect your fertility, so too mobile telephones. Really, in the grand scheme of things, the pace of modern day life can all have an effect on our health in more ways than cannabis usage, if used moderately.

We really need to wake up here in Guernsey and do something to shift this nonsense. There is absolutely no benefit in my mind from incarcerating individuals for cannabis growing, possession, usage and selling. It achieves nothing other than further destroying lives. It certainly doesn’t help the community, nor the family members left behind, especially those children separated from their parents, and particularly when their parents were simply trying to ease their pain and suffering and/or the pain and suffering of others.

At the end of the day we should be free to choose our own form of healing. I’m not a fan of the drug industry, or of drugs that harm people, pharmaceutical as much as recreational. As a holistic practitioner of Reiki, Ayurveda and Yoga, I wholeheartedly suppoort an approach to healing that helps people get to the root cause so that symptomatic relief is not required, and people can live without the need for numbing out.

But nonetheless I do appreciate that at times medicine is required, to help with the healing, and to ease ongoing pain and certainly this has been my experience with cannabis - it can help medicinally, but as with everything, we have to be careful not to abuse it, otherwise we merely become a victim of it and it does more harm than good (I have experienced this too). But ultimately we should be free to choose and to work with plant medicine in a respectful way, with thanks to the plant entity, and in a moderate and intuitive way, not as crutch but as a true medicine. And heck if its used moderately for recreational purposes then why not? if alcohol is legal, why not pot.

I really hope Lucia that you are not silenced by this state. I really hope that you are able to use this as a platform to truly bring about change here on Guernsey, and move us into the 21st century from a drug legality perspective. Every cause brings with it a sacrifice and I am sorry that your sacrifice has been so great, but take comfort that the moon and the stars and Mother Earth are holding you strong, and to keep trusting in your inherent knowing and wisdom. All good will come.

Love Emma x