An enquiry into tiredness...Happy full moon!

It’s full moon day and I already bashed the car first thing this morning, a moment of total lack of spatial awareness as I tried to access Silbie nature reserve. This is an absolutely stunning little spot on Guernsey btw and Planet Earth generally, and well worth a venture, but alas, I advise paying much more attention to all the granite around there!

I take it as a wake up call actually, to get more sleep, especially as it’s happened on full moon day, and first thing. I have been thinking a lot about sleep recently as it is something that I have never felt too strongly about, I’ve never been one for early nights and lay ins. I love the stillness of the later night and it was only having children and the endless wake-ups that then ensued (not helped by 6.5 years of breastfeeding, which seems like utter names now!) which encouraged me to get to bed earlier than I might have otherwise done.

Before then, I’d frequently stay up to midnight and beyond, enjoying the silence and the stillness, and the clarity of the air without the general hum drum of evening life with all the TVs and online activity, and the traffic, not that we can hear too much of that here, but nonetheless, there’s an energetic shift, and the energy begins to clear about 10pm. It’s funny the cut off, it’s something I’ve noticed on my late night ramblings, that there’s little point in going out before 10, or 11pm really, if you hope to access other realms, which are otherwise disturbed by our human activity, and traffic especially.

I also have the issue though, that I like the stillness and quietness of the early morning too, before the chaos of the energetic shift of alarm clocks and the sighing and the heaviness of the general populace getting up and ready for work, let alone off to school, there’s an energy shift that happens then too, I’m sure we’ve all felt it this week with the schools returning. It’s a bit like we can tell the difference between a Monday morning and a Friday morning, the energy is completely different, the way you’re treated on the roads changes, people actually smile first thing on a Friday, less so on a Monday, this is the nature of the slave world we live in.

Anyway, from a sleep perspective, it’s a quandary, not helped because my children are not sleepers either, never have been and I have let go of the notion that they ever will be. People talk about their teenagers being in bed half the day, but I just can’t see that happening with mine, because it never happened with me. I mean yes, sure, I loved lying in bed, reading books, writing letters (this in the day before email!) and, on occasion, watching something on the marvellous red TV I was lucky enough to have in my bedroom at that time - I wouldn’t dream of such things now!

But now it’s different. No TV for a start, but also limited opportunity for lying about of a morning with two boys raring to go and my priorities are different, I like to get on my mat and in the sea and there is always something outdoors to be doing. In the evening too, there’s not much sitting around, as the boys are not sleepers, they certainly don’t make bed time easy, and when they finally sleep, well, I like to make the most of the opportunity for quietness and space to connect inwards, before a read in the bath and bed.

However, this week has been a little crazy, full moon energy and autumnal shifting, and the resulting busyness, plus this feeling of just wanting things in some semblance of order, focus then, after a summer of scattered energy and dissipation. Thus, I’ve found myself going to bed much later than usual, simply because of all the administration that has needed to be done, let alone the back to school stuff and on and on. Thus, sleep has not been a priority and I’m sleep-deprived-tired and my little bash was indicative of the momentary loss of consciousness that clearly results from this!

I believe that tiredness might be another theme coming through with the moon, as it’s been on my mind and clients have talked to me about it too. I did decide that sleep would be my next enquiry, to see what happens if I actually prioritise this and get to bed earlier than usual. I was always in awe of my friend, Marie, for her 9.30pm bed times, and I had a client see me this week who hates being tired to the extent that she goes to bed 9pm most nights. This blew my mind, not least that she could go to bed that early, but that she loathes being tired to the extent that she prioritises sleep above all us.

It made me realise how little I have prioritised it. It’s something that needs to be done, a little bit like eating, but I don’t get excited about either. I am always surprised how passionate people can be about food and what they’re eating, and so too, it seems about early nights. In many respects I am in awe of my client for knowing herself to the extent that she knows that tiredness doesn’t work for her and actually does something about it. I know that tiredness isn’t great for me either, it causes me to bash my car for example, but that still doesn’t stop me burning the candle at both ends from time to time.

Mind you, there are different forms of tiredness, just as there are different levels of sleep deprivation-tiredness. I’m fortunate, and accredit yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda to this, but I rarely feel energetically and physically tired. Sure there are times when I am emotionally drained, or mentally weary, but I can still keep on going, I’m one of those people who doesn’t have an obvious off button, just ask my family, it drives them all mad at times. When I do start to feel energetically and/or physically tired then I know that I have pushed it and need to prioritise early nights and resting and yoga nidra.

The sleep-deprived tiredness though, that I can maintain on a level. But even then there are times, like this last week, when I am aware that I am pushing my edge on it and need to reign it back in. Which is perfectly timed really for the full moon, because we will be on the wane tomorrow and I am intended to begin my enquiry into sleep…prioritising it, seeing how that might change things, getting to bed a little bit earlier, easier now the evenings are increasingly darkening, flowing I guess with the changes in season, because now it is all about letting go and beginning the process of deeper rest as nature too prepares for the big winter sleep…

I have a feeling that the more we sleep, the more we prioritise sleep because we begin to notice the differences. It’s like anything though isn’t it, the more we care about ourselves, the more we want to care about ourselves, and the more we shift the way we’re living to re-prioritise. What we begin to notice - usually - with these changes, is how much more alive we feel. And perhaps this is the theme that also comes up on this full moon - how alive do we feel/ If not very, well we have another moon cycle, wane and wax, to see if we can find a way to culture a greater feeling of aliveness.

I suppose what i mean by that reframe is that it is all too easy to complain of our tiredness and just get used to it without digging deeper and ascertaining the nature of our tiredness - is it because we’ve been burning the candle at both ends, not getting enough sleep, or is it an indication that something is draining us and weighing heavily on us, making us feel tired? Sometimes we don’t realise the extent to which the way we’re living, the thoughts we’re thinking, the mental conditioning we keep buying into and the emotional baggage we cart around with us are draining us and tying up our energy, so that not only can we not move positively forward in our lives, but we don’t feel that we have the energy to do anything about it either.

Of course there is always something we can do about it. I’m biased but certainly the modalities of yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda work a treat in their own ways, of not only helping to restore energy levels but helping us to understand what is depleting us in the first place, simply because these modalities continuously lead us back to ourselves, “knowing thyself” is key, if we are to make positive changes in our life for our own wellbeing.

I’m pretty sure that I need more sleep, but it’s full moon tonight and I like getting out in the moonlight so I shall begin my new enquiry tomorrow and let you know how that goes. As for the plastic-free enquiry, so far so good. My shopping habits have had to change, and the shops I visit have changed too. What we’re eating has shifted a little bit too, more seasonal perhaps, mainly as I am making the most of the hedge veg over here - one of my students was selling an array or produce last week, pears, strawberries, grapes, courgettes, limes, garlic, celery, we stocked up and have been relishing all this fresh goodness much more than we would have done previously. Still, it is early days…

Happy full moon!

Love Emma x

Having our space and not caring

Our attempts at conscious uncoupling (opposed to unconscious coupling as I keep saying by mistake) has led to me having my own bedroom again, the first time in over 12 years now and it’s amazing!

I have always been a fan of bedrooms and like many others my age, spent much of my teenage years in my bedroom, if I wasn’t at school or out surfing. At university I was also a fan of my bedroom and was often huddled away, I loved staying up late while everyone else had gone to sleep, enjoying the stillness of the evening, listening to music, smoking joints and writing poetry. Back home post-university, my bedroom was my refuge, struggling as I did in those days with the reality of office work and a life that didn’t quite feel right - more of which you can read about in my new book (we ALMOST have a launch date, hoorah!).

When travelling, I loved nothing more than the safety and sanctitude of my room. On my many trips to Pokhara in Nepal, I would often choose the same room in the same hotel and on one trip I spent a couple of months living in it to the extent that it felt like my second home. I loved living so simply and with very few possessions, it felt light and spacious, at time there wasn’t even electricity, and this was before the dreaded WIFI, when the air was still and quiet.

Then there was a memorable month spent in a room in a YMCA in Vancouver - the first two weeks I was studying Yoga Therapy with Phoenix Rising, and then a further two weeks spent mainly in silence, popping out only to shop, attend yoga classes and go swimming. I reminisce about those last two weeks regularly, there’s nothing I find more uplifting and nourishing for my spirit than silence and my own space to just be.

In fairness I have had my own space since living at the cottage, and in the last few years especially, since having Eben, my sanctuary has been our main bedroom, where I tend to spend my evenings if not out wandering or swimming or whatever else may be happening. I don’t like TV, or noise generally, so I have made the most of the peace of our room and the bath, always I like to read in the bath as a way of winding down. But all that aside, I hadn’t realised that having my very own room would make such a difference, and a room that is far away from the dreaded TV!

Yes, the TV is really a bother for me and when I have lived on my own I haven’t had one. I always remember a fellow yoga teacher coming to our cottage for a private yoga session and judging me because of the TV screen in our living room, which you have to pass to get into the healing space. She commented on it, surprised, expecting me not to have a TV because I guess she had in her head a perception of how other yoga teachers might live. The reality is, I live with a family and while the boys watch their iPads and not the TV (yes, I’m totally OK with iPads), E loves watching films, the TV is his thing, who am I to dictate he shouldn’t have one because I don’t like it - does it make me more or less spiritual in any event?

Which brings me to the ‘judgment’ theme coming up with this full moon. It was really obvious to me yesterday working with clients as they too face their judgements, not least of self but of others. The main theme is about caring too much about what others think about us and the way this limits us in the choices we make. More often than not we have been trained to care, to the extent that we don’t always make the choices we’d like to make because we make them through this fear of how we are perceived by others, which means we’re judging ourselves and trying to see ourselves through their eyes, which off course we can never get ‘right; because we can never truly know what’s happening in someone else’s mind.

The spiritual world is rife with judgement, the spiritual ego is ever so tricky. We judge ourselves for not being spiritual enough, or for others not behaving the way we expect them to, because of the position they hold, or the way we perceive them and how we think they should live based on level of consciousness at that time. As I said in my last post, until we have lived in their shoes, how can we possibly know what it is like to live in their life so why do we think we should judge or criticise them for what we believe to be their short comings or their arrogance or whatever it is.

Being a yoga teacher, for example, does not mean you have to live a certain way. Being a human being doesn’t mean you have to I’ve a certain way either for that matter. Yet we are trained to live a certain way, maybe we call it convention or mainstream, ether way it’s a drag on the soul for so many, because our Way is not necessarily the way society has become, yet we are shoe horned at school to fit into the norm, and on it goes, to the extent that so many suffer with depression and anxiety trying to live a way that isn’t in alignment with their truth and who they truly are on a soulful level.

It takes courage though to live our way. We have to let go of our conditioning and be OK with living differently to others. We have to stop caring what other’s think. And to be honest, as tricky as it might feel initially, once we’ve stopped caring what others think about us, then it can be ever so liberating, because we stop judging ourselves too, for not living the way expected of us, or wanted for us, or imagined for us, or trained into us.

There is no right way, or wrong way, only the way that works for us. Obviously there’s the path of heart and the path of ego/fear, but who are we to judge which path we or someone else takes. And when it comes to parenting, we really have to let go. I know I felt a pressure for a long time, almost apologising for my perceived short comings in comprising on my high values pre-children.

For example, I wasn't going to let my children eat all sorts of things that they now eat, I also wasn’t going to let them have screens, but they adore their iPads. A client was surprised recently to hear that I let my children have iPads. It caught me for a minute, because I felt judged and I felt an old habit of judging myself kick in and I responded in a defensive way, justifying their iPad usage. Then i noticed what I’d done and almost chuckled to myself. Who cares. My boys love the iPads, whatever my justification and really I don’t care too much what anyone thinks about that.

Its the same with all sorts of things. Who cares which school children go to, whether they’re home schooled or not, whether they go to bed at 7pm or 9m, how they’re achieving, whether they’re dairy free or gluten free. What does it really matter to anyone else, or more to the point, why should it matter to anyone else. The minute we let go of caring, well the easier our lives become, the more we can live and let live, and truly own the choices that we make for ourselves and our family and not live in fear of being judged or criticised for them.

Which brings me back to our current reality. We’re finding out way. I always remember as children, going to stay at my parent’s friends house in the UK and being shocked that the couple had their own rooms with their own single beds. This was quite in contrast to the life I knew, where there was a family of four, with three bedrooms, one for the parents and one each for each child. Now I see it very differently, but it has taken time to unpick that conditioning and allow myself our own unique family way, that doesn’t fit a norm or convention and that is fluid (as my niece would say). The boys choose to share a room together, which is just as well for now.

The move itself was amazing. Well not the dismantling and re-assembling of three beds, albeit E and I managed to do all that without getting annoyed once, but the opportunity it presented for a big clear out of clothes and stuff, clearing out the energy. This felt very needed, not least with the seasonal change, but because of the new beginnings this move has created. I don’t think people realise the energetic drain of holding on to unnecessary stuff and the manner in which clutter messes with our energy.

Our boys are loving their new bigger bedroom together, E is enjoying his own space too and I am definitely enjoying the solitude of my smaller room, all to myself, well in theory, because obviously it doesn’t quite work out like that. The boys were rolling round on my bed last night before their bath. Then cat came in and fell asleep in my basket of scarves. And then later, I hadn’t actually tuned off my light to go to sleep when Eben joined me, kicking his way through the night beside me in bed. But hey, it’s a work in progress!

So this post is a big thumbs up to having one’s own space. It’s also a reminder that we’re in a period of change. The theme of ‘judgement’, whether that be being judged by others and/or judging ourselves (usually both) has been coming up today, along with the theme of caring too much about what others think about us and giving our power away accordingly, and/or being open to manipulation. So be aware of that and try to find the peace where you can - not caring is a really good place to start, oh and carving out your own space just to be.

Love Emma x

Comparing, criticising and judging...

The full moon is approaching bringing with it some pretty high and low tides with the equinox only a few weeks away, all of this supporting change for those who want to make the most of the opportunity.

When we think of change, we often think about changing the outside, moving jobs, changing career entirely, moving house, starting a new sport, something that is seen in the external, but actually the change really needs to happen on the inside, and it is a change that helps to make us whole, more of who we are beyond the various masks we put out to the world.

It is this change that is in the air, one of inner change and transformation, seeing more of our shadows and working with them to bring them increasingly into the light so there can be greater harmony between body, mind and soul.

I have noticed a few themes coming up, the three limitations of judgment, criticism and comparison. The moment we notice ourselves doing this, we might catch ourselves (we have to be quick) and remember that we have no idea what it is like to live in that other person’s shoes. We are trained from a young age to judge, criticise and compare and it is a game that we get caught up in with others, judging, complaining and criticising about someone else, it makes us feel safe, or validated, or superior. All of it, of curse, is just a mind game courtesy of the ego, a conditioning that keeps us limited.

Our thoughts create our reality. The more we are comparing, criticising and judging others the more we are likely doing all this to ourselves - again another training of the mind, to give ourselves a hard time and keep us disempowered and well, limited. The other side of this of course is to big ourselves up, we can be very good at doing this when working on ourselves, with a spiritual practice to boot, feeling ourselves superior to others because we see the mind game, but still we get caught up in it, regardless. The mind and the spiritual ego especially is ever so tricky!

The funny thing is, those we judge, criticise and compare ourselves against are the very people who are our greatest teachers, for they bring us the gift of the opportunity of seeing our shadow and bringing it to the light and learning from it. This will not only free us up mentally, reducing ours limitations, but it will free us up energetically, it will also help to change our external reality simply because we have stopped judging, criticising and comparing ourselves to others and holding ourself up to our own judgements, criticism and comparison. It’s an ongoing process, but one that can really change things the more we become aware of it.

So my advice is to notice who is currently triggering you and to reframe them into your teacher rather than your irritant and /or persecutor. Then use it as an opportunity to dig deeper into yourself and see what old and limited story you have been telling yourself. Remind yourself of your humanness and of their humanness too, and how we can never truly know what another is thinking or feeling and that we all have our stuff that we carry around with us. We might even cultivate some compassion here too.

if nothing else, it’s worth remembering that it’s always about us. As written on the temple of Delphi, “know thyself”. This the thyself without all the stories, narrative, falsehoods, limitations and faces that we hide behind. The moment we stop caring about what others think about us, is the moment we know we’ve brought a whole heap more light into our life and can drop a lot of the crap.

I’m looking forward to dropping deeper with some of you this week at Yoni Yoga and the Hatha Yoga class on Friday and also those of you coming to see me privately, ideally timed to optimise this moon’s energy of shifting things on and letting go and letting go and letting go again….

Oh and did I mention my book is almost ready for release…it’s in holding on Amazon…but will soon be let go of into the world…

Happy waxing moon!

Love Emma x

Living more lightly

It all started when we stayed in the yurt off-grid at Sarah’s place near Glastonbury (where I used to run retreats) before the summer solstice. She has been progressively moving towards sustainable living and it was so lovely to get one’s feet on the earth and switch off for 24 hours, living simply. The experience and my chat with Sarah really helped to begin a shift in mindset in the way I am living.

Then we went to Lihou and the lack of WIFI and the simple living resonated all over again. I was also astounded at the amount of waste we accumulated in such a short period of time. Our trip to Jersey was really the turning point though, or at least it got my attention to actually make some changes.

Here, the hostel had a strict recycling policy, and I was astounded to find that there was no facility for recycling plastics. From what I could gather plastic (other than plastic bottles, these could be recycled) would be sent off island to China, passing the problem elsewhere, or at least this was the story I was told. I noticed how much plastic packaging I was popping in the general waste bin and it alarmed me. It didn’t help that we were on holiday and thus our plastic wastage was more than it would be ordinarily.

I had already been having conversations with a friend who lives as lightly as possible here on Guernsey. It helps that he lives alone, but I am in awe of his lack of wastage, re-using where he can and avoiding buying food products that are packaged in plastic. He doesn’t have WIFI which is a dream for me, I would love to live without WIFI and a TV, let alone the morning sound of iPads, but life has become what it has become and I am not the only person living in this household, so if nothing else it enables me to practice tolerance, ha ha!

Then we had a friend come visit us from France, where he lives with his family on 50 acres of farmland where they farm sheep. He was telling me how they virtually live from their veggie patch and own eggs during the summer months, with their own frozen lamb and turkeys when required. I felt quite uncomfortable preparing lunch for him that first day, emptying plastic packaged after plastic packaged products from M&S, my shop of choice simply because it is close to where we live and I was short on time that day, the easiest option it therefore seemed.

But easy isn’t always a positive thing and I became very aware of my impact on the planet with all the plastic crap from the seemingly endless trays of soft fruits I buy each week for the boys. It started all sorts of conversations with all sorts of people about seasonal eating and how our children are so used to getting the same fruit all year around so that it isn’t a novelty or a treat anymore to eat strawberries, for example, as it was in my day - how old I feel, ha ha!

Then I had a chance encounter with a fellow healer and ex-Guern in the sea at Saints who was visiting the island. She now lives off grid in Brittany and we had a good chat about healing, her simple way of living and the demise of the sacred encountering with this planet. I left inspired and knowing that I really had to do something, make changes. .

I also finally got around to watching a documentary filmed by the States of Guernsey about what happens to our household waste here on Guernsey, which was part of Elijah’s home learning. It was interesting. Not least because it confirmed my concerns about pet food wrappings, that the pouches cannot be recycled. We make a point of buying tins for Bazza but I know that most of the food is only available in pouches (a mix of plastic and foil) and therefore in general waste, and while this is processed to produce RDF (refuge derived fuel) it’s still not ideal.

Did you know that the States collects approximately 350 tonnes of black bag waste each month? That’s the equivalent of the weight of almost two blue whales! Quite astounding that we produce so much waste. What is even more astounding, or not when one considers our inherent laziness, is the fact that people put stuff in the recycling bags that can’t be recycled, such as pet food pouches and Hello Fresh products (it might be fresh, but it has a carbon footprint) which means that someone or something has to sift through and separate, adding to work loads and processing. If only we could all pay a little bit more attention!

With a new month looming I thought I might put it to best use by making changes. As you know one of my mantras is “be the change you want to see in the world” and I do have a sense that if we all lived a bit more respectfully and lightly, and indeed consciously (how I wish everyone was Reiki attuned too, for example, to bring more love and harmony to self, which would then be reflected back in the world), we might create a world like the one the ancients lived in, where they built megalithic temples to honour and harness the earth’s energy, where they lived with deep respect for nature and this wonderful planet we live on.

But alas, still we have these influential individuals running the show; Elon Musk continues to send satellites into space, Marc Zuckenberg, quoted as saying “You can be unethical and still be legal; that’s the way I live my life.”, continues feeding misinformation and political bias on social media, controlling what people see on Facebook and how they may therefore see life, and don’t even get me started on Bill Gates. Yes, sadly our world is influenced by some big influencers who all have a whole heap of money and who say they’re trying to help the planet, but I don’t see that playing out in reality.

But really, it doesn’t matter about them, it matters about us, and doing what we can do, individually, to make the changes that we’d like to see in the world! I’m a fan of enquiries. I did an enquiry once into a life of sobriety which, well, led to sobriety, I did an enquiry into life without social media, which led to a life without social media in it, I did an enquiry into life without a smart phone and this has thus far led to a life without a smart phone (I’ll be honest though, the Nokia is a pain in the arse, easier just not to have a phone, please don’t text me on it if you expect more than a one word answer!).

So this enquiry is about living more lightly, buying from hedges as much as I can, avoiding buying anything in plastic packaging and reducing all waste. I already make my own deodorant, perfume and bath oils, while a friend kindly makes me face cream, so i just need to expand now to hair products. I am hopeful all of this will positively affect my bank balance too, but let’s see, I don’t expect it to be as easy as I might want it to be and I have a busy month coming up…I’ll let you now how it goes.

In the interim, take a look outside, one late, dark and clear night and notice the number of satellites in the sky. It’s really quite scary what we’re doing, and we don’t even know about about or have a choice in it…so I guess a reminder to make the choices we can make to help support nature and this beautiful planet we live on.

Love Emma x

Wait until you know

I didn’t really think too much of it, this wave of energy I suddenly have for getting things sorted, clearing out, catching up and re-organising, until someone mentioned that this new moon is in the sign of virgo, which is all about being, well, organised!

But there’s more going on with this moon then just organising or maybe it’s all related, as we head towards the new school term and all that this brings. This seasonal shift is one of huge change, a big letting go into the flow of the darkness and trusting that this takes us where we need to next be.

On a practical level, the new term does involve some effort, at least for those of us kitting out and preparing children. But it’s more than that, there’s an emotional upheaval too. On the one hand many will be desperate for the new term to begin so they can have some quieter times without the frenzy of children, and for others, there will be a sadness about seeing less of their children, let alone the panic about the new timetable and all that this brings in terms of juggling and organising school drops offs/pick ups, lunches, activities, home work and everything else that needs to be remembered and achieved.

Dichotomy is the word that keeps coming up for me, mainly as I am going to be putting one son into the school system while another stays at home with me. So on the one hand everything changes again because we’re back into the rather testing school routine of having to be somewhere at a particular time and having to toe a certain line, and on the other, I can continue anon meeting with other home school friends and their children for our alternative and unconventional way of being and learning.

I know that others are feeling the same. Maybe not about education, but generally about being pulled in two opposing directions, the material and the need for money and security and cash to pay the bills, and the heart, which speaks in an entirely different language to mainstream and conventional living. For many, therefore, it is a confusing time and things are up in the air - which is interesting, as autumn ushers in more Vata, the elements of air and ether, drying us out and causing more airiness and airheadedness too, you have been warned!

In many respects I can’t help thinking that life is even more confusing now then it was during the pandemic itself. The pandemic shook things up and forced us to live differently and whether we liked it or not, accepted it or not, it did change things on a very fundamental level and only now are some people feeling the effects of that. Many have tried to carry on life as it was, but after the initial joy of freedom of travel, they’re left knowing that there’s more to life than work and holidays and that there was something they tasted during the pandemic that has made them question things and the way they see life whether they wanted to or not.

I guess what I mean by that is that people woke up. They might have already been awake, but they woke up more and the wake up is around systems and institutions and the various and many ways we have been taught to see the world and view our leaders and politicians and live according to their decision making. Many are questioning the state of the world and their place in it. Many are realising that as far as we know it, we only have one life in this lifetime and maybe there’s a way to live it that is different to how we might once have considered it.

That there is this voice within us, that catches our attention from time to time. A voice that has been getting slowly louder over the last few years. A voice that speaks of another way, perhaps a more gentle, sustainable and community based way that speaks of love and change, or one that speaks of simplicity and peace. A voice that questions things which were never questioned previously. A voice that is wondering what kind of life we’re creating for the next generation. A voice that questions whether it truly is sustainable for the human specie to live at such a pace with all the noise and expectation, to say nothing of all the information buzzing around our energy field day and night, day and night.

In my work, the same energetic pattern keeps presenting itself over and over again. A crown chakra craving more attention, wanting to open to deeper spirit and faith, and a root desperate for change, to re-root in a different way, to tread a different path. And in between all this a solar plexus that is struggling to digest all of what has happened and move beyond the fear of what might happen if the third eye and heart are to be believed with all their knowing and longing and dreaming, and a sacral chakra that whispers of the divine feminine and passion and pleasure and creating a life that is truly worth living, of being able to say, “I love my life and I am genuinely and eternally grateful for it, thank you”.

And this is a life that is not dependant on external validation, that is not about how much money is being earned or the title that accompanies that earning potential. Because let’s face it, at some point that drops away and what then? I was talking to a client about this earlier, about the 2 years it took me to unravel my life and identity post-finance career and accept the changes that this brought with it, to find a truer version of me beyond the external feedback of worth I had been receiving based on a job title and place within an organisational hierarchy, without the regular pay check that gave me a false sense of security and without the ‘conventional’ identity that fed my need at that time to care more about what others thought of me than I cared about myself and being true.

The trouble is we all care too much at times, about what other people think about us and our compliance with what is expected of us; we’ve been trained from a young age, makes it tricky to make changes, at least make them without feeling guilty about it, vulnerable, self-conscious, or self-critical. We hold ourselves up to our conditioning, we hear the voice in our head, the voice of our mum, or our dad, maybe both, of our teachers, of our care takers, of those who have influenced the way we think and see the world. We are limited and controlled by these voices that are not our own.

It takes work to hear beyond these voices and access our own intuition…and believe…and trust…in it. Then it takes courage to act on it, a lot of courage and standing in our power, staying true, not losing our centre, and being strong enough to stay there too, not to waver and go back and suffer on and on and on, wondering how it might have been different if only we could just let go of those voices in our mind that control us day in and day out, the mind has a lot to answer for, our mind, our collective minds, creating a world that keeps us limited and controlled. We have to wake up and stay awake. We have to be bold enough to do it differently, to do it OUR way.

Sometimes though we just don’t know. We know changes are required, we know that a new way needs to be forged, but we don’t know enough yet to make a decision that might truly change things. We play around with ideas, some more radical than others, but its all a confusion in our mind. We just can’t make a decision, nothing is clear yet. My advice then, is to just keep on keeping on. Until you know, you don’t know and best to wait until it’s clear. It does become clear, it just takes time sometimes to filter through the craziness of our minds.

I share in my new book, From Darkness Comes Light, which should be published in the next few weeks, about making a pivotal decision in my life, when I was approaching 30 and changes needed to be made because I wanted to write and get out of the finance industry, and of playing around with ideas of returning to university to study magazine journalism, and how when it came down to it, and I sat on my friend, Vicki’s, sofa watching her paint her living room walls, she heard me say how all I wanted to do was travel, practice yoga and write about it, and hey presto there it was, just I didn’t hear it, as I didn’t think it was an option, for various reasons, which you can read about in the book itself, but alas that is what I ended up doing.

And here I am, 18 years later, reminded of this, because it hasn’t really changed, not really, just i hasn’t been possible the last eight years with a younger family, but that urge is still there and it is coming back again now the boys are a little older, and still the obstacles in my mind appear, but I have learned now to trust that if the heart has a sense of what is needed, and I can surrender to that and trust in it, then the universe will create the necessary opportunity. We live in a universe that knows only love, we ask, it gives, we just need to be aware what it is we are asking for…and whether it is truly in the interests of all levels of our being.

Reiki helps enormously to find our way through the confusion and I am eternally grateful to Reiki for this very reason, I don’t like to think where my life would be now without Reiki in it, still smoking and drinking my ay into oblivion each night with the pain of living a life out of alignment, or dead for that very reason. It was my closeness to death that initiated all of this, all that has come since that fateful night back then, all of which you can read about in my new book soon;-)

This isn’t a plug for my book, or for Reiki, albeit I am super keen that every person on this planet has the opportunity to be attuned to Reiki because it really positively changes things and we are going to make that easier in September by reducing the cost of our online Reiki Level One learning (please note those of you on Guernsey can come and see me in person for the actual attunement, or you can do by distance too, especially if you are off island, distance is no limitation in Reiki!), this is to reassure those of you feeling this moon energy and going through some changes that it will become clearer in time.

Often the confusion is part of the process as it asks us to dig deeper, do things we might not do, get a Reiki treatment, look at our diet, try some yoga, take an art class, swim in the sea, anything with might just shift our awareness even just a little bit, because sometimes that shift in awareness, and a clearing out of the old, is all that is needed. And this is a time for letting go, and of establishing new routines and timetables, look at nature, it’s letting go into a new season, leaves falling, colours changing, such beauty in its ability to surrender all that’s been.

So embrace it all, get quiet and still and let it all go and wait and wait some more until you know, and when you know, go for it, make the decision and commit to it.

Happy new moon - enjoy today’s dark moon!

Love Emma x

Fun on Jersey!

We’ve just returned from a fab family three day trip to Jersey, I had no idea our sister isle could provide so much fun for the children and megalithic joy for me!

We stayed in the hostel at Durrell’s, part of the Zoo complex, which meant that we also got free entry to the zoo. I can really recommend this place, quiet, incredibly clean, and just really easy with the children. It helped enormously that we were staying at the same time as a bunch of lovely ladies from the UK, one of whom was there to swim between Jersey and France, it took her just over 7 hours, amazing! One of the ladies is a yoga teacher so each morning they practiced together outside in the beautiful garden, me practicing on my own under a tree, all six of us enjoying the peace and tranquility.

As chance would have it, we were staying at the hostel at the exact same time as another home school mum and her two children. Eben especially was delighted for the play friends and the three of them ran feral, Elijah joining in from time to time, when he could be encouraged away from his iPad! Breakfast is also included in the cost of the accommodation and you do have the option to use the kitchen to prepare food as long as Durre'll’s don’t have a function on, I do highly recommend it for a family, as long as you don’t mind bunking it and sharing facilities (there’s plenty of communal toilets and showers).

As luck would have it, by staying at Durrell’s I was super close to two main dolmens, one of which, La Faldouet, I visited a couple of times as it is abolutely amazing, especially at night with the stars overhead and the enormous capstone glowing in the night air. Le Courperon is pretty potent too perched on the cliffs. I was lucky to get a whole hour to myself inside La Hougue Bie, which is said to be one of the ten oldest buildings in the world, built long before the Pyramids built to align perfectly with the equinox. It’s rather amazing!

We were visiting Jersey with our friend, Stu, and his two boys, their wife/mummy being my friend Marie-Noelle who died from cancer last September, Stu is from Jersey and was staying elsewhere, but we met up during the says and the boys had a lot of fun our first day at the zoo (the butterflies and pigs were a surprising hit, and the orang-utans too of course, oh and gorillas) and lunch and a swim at Rozel Bay and then fun was had at the water slides down at the Merton, albeit I made the most of that opportunity to leave the men and boys to it and head off to explore La Hougue Bie on my own, the joy of having the car!

The next day we headed to aMaizin Adventure Park, which was a real hit and we spent most of the day here in the end bar a trip to St opens for lunch, and I left them to it for a bit to find Monts Grantez dolmen on some National Trust land above St Ouens, which is an incredible dolmen, there is a side chamber that is phenomenal energetically. I was also lucky to get a swim in disorientating to be able to see Sark in the distance, because usually I’m on Sark seeing Jersey instead!

Back to the maze, well there is a maze, a maize one funnily enough, which is really impressive, albeit I admit to getting a bit bored by the end! The adventure park though has lots of other things, go-karts, bouncy things, tractor rides, mole hill, crazy golf, outdoor play and indoor play equipment, aerial runways etc etc, lots of things to keep them busily entertained, a definite highlight!

Our last day we spent just the four of us and visited the amazing (there was definitely an amazing theme to the trip!) charity shop at Durrell’s. I do love a charity shop and this one is spacious and filled with some cool stuff, well worth a visit if you are into them and all for a good cause too, for as much as I don’t like seeing animals in captivity, I do appreciate the work that Durrell’s do and just wish we lived in a world where a zoo is not required to protect endangered species in the first place and they could all live in the wild naturally.

I took the boys to see some of the dolmens and we went for a swim at high tide down at Bouley Bay. We did have a bit of a wasp drama was the only thing. Here on Guernsey, at least in St Andrews we have had a real fly problem this summer, which is being investigated by the authorities - those of you who have come here for a private session will be well aware of my efforts to keep the flies out of the healing space. Jersey has a wasp problem though, tons of wasps, and unfortunately Elijah got stung on the beach, and this sent the boys into quite a spin, so the whole beach were definitely aware of their fear of wasps and daddy was instructed to walk behind us with the food bag, which was funny at the time!

We also chanced upon an arboretum, up near the airport, established as a memorial to someone who died back in 1975. There are various trees from various parts of the world and with E as a tree man, he was keen to explore it more. It is a beautiful walk, we ended up doing all of it, around the reservoir, which probably ended up taking 1.5 hours in the end, if not a bit more, as we explored paths that took us off the main path, and we stopped at times to take in the trees, the Australian eucalyptus and the American red woods are especially amazing.

We found a really good place to eat, at least to cater to our needs, up in Trinity at the Trinity Arms, which offers some vegan options for those who avoid dairy. It has a play area too, which is always helpful! This all before our boat journey back to Guernsey, which was inevitably delayed, so we didn’t get home until 11.30pm, a little late, but all part of the adventure nonetheless and I’m sure we’ll eventually catch up on sleep but this summer is full on, non-stop activity, and while autumn is in the air, we should still have a few more weeks of being able to make the most of the sunshine.

Jersey is fab for the children though and for adults too actually, I saw it in a different light this time. I used to have to go to Jersey for work, and prior to that for studying, and prior to that for inter-island netball and volleyball games and partying, and prior to that for surfing so I have seen it from different perspectives, not all of them necessarily uplifting, I loathed the ICSA studying weekends especially! So it was really lovely to connect more with the land and its megalithic history, and to make positive memories with the various families.

More on the changing energy and things being up in the air to follow as we wane to the new moon on Saturday.

Love Emma x

Moon time on Lihou

We’ve just had an amazing time on Lihou island with a mix of family and friends. It wasn’t planned to be this way, we were just lucky with the dates, and the extra night offered to us due to a cancellation, which found us able to watch sun set and then turn around and see the moon literally rise the other way, our first night, and then another sun set and moon rise, a little later, the next night.

The weather was sublime, a much welcomed north easterly wind keeping things cooler than they might otherwise have been, and lots of walking the land, swimming in the sea and the Venus Pool (what a treat to have this all to ourselves) and opportunity to connect with the island and its magic at night too.

Needless to say after two nights of slowing down and connecting with nature on this deep level, following the ebb and flow of the tides, the movement of the sun and the moon in the sky, the chatter of the birds, the rush of the wind and the general back to basics experience with children able to be free, wild and feral, returning to Guernsey was its usual challenging self, and I’m pretty sure others would have also like to stay for longer, but alas Lihou is a popular place to holiday.

I was back here in time for the full moon itself, an Aquarius super full moon, the last super moon of the year and it was stunning, a bright orange glow as it rose, but I have to admit to being too tired to stay up too late with it this month, albeit I did manage a moonlit walk, always good for reducing pitta in the body, so a bonus in the middle of a heat wave when our pitta is especially challenged!

The full moon brought clarity with it about the direction that life might now flow, of where there has been imbalance and how one might balance that out. It’s all about the balance though, isn’t it, I was talking to a friend about that yesterday, how we find our way, how our hormones and menstrual cycle can help us to become more aware of imbalance in our lives and do something about it if necessary.

I have found it really fascinating observing the changes in my menstrual cycle this last 11 months since Marie died and my life took on an unravelling, with copious changes, some rather significant ones too, since then, and how the premenstrual symptoms have eased as my life has taken on greater authenticity and alignment to my truth - how those symptoms were merely highlighting my frustration at life being so misaligned in the first place.

It’s on an ongoing awareness. and while life has taken on a more gentle flow, of a settling into this new way of being, of a lifestyle that supports our eldest’s need for home education, while earning money to support a growing family, and a longest son who has manic energy levels at times, and an attempt at consciously uncoupling whilst co-habiting and co-parenting, well it’s as moment by moment experience and one that might find me in moments of despair seeking solace on my mat and at other times marvelling at the wonder of all of this and how we have the capacity to find this way, differently and lovingly, reminding me that there is always a way and until we know that way, we just have to hang on in there and keep listening.

What has become apparent is the relentless nature of the summer holidays and especially with the weather being so amazing that every day brings with it beach and sea swimming adventures, and the most challenging aspect of that, is the constant taking on and off the blasted wetsuits! An amazing investment fo our boys this year as they delight in the sea but my gosh, I am looking forward to a break from the putting on and off of these tricky things! Still, high tides at Fort Grey or dawn at Vazon have just been utterly amazing and I am eternally grateful to live on Guernsey, even if it does feel so stupidly busy at times.

I’m slowing things right down (she says) these next few weeks the summer. We’re off to Jersey anyway and hopefully have more opportunities for back to basics land experience, looking forward to that, and more memories made while this glorious weather lasts, before the turning of the wheel and another cycle begins, but for now I am contented to just flow with things. The blackberries are already here and we really could do with a big dollop of rain, the land is dry, dry, dry and all my plants are dying back already, but this too reminds us to take better care, and the rain will come, so let us rejoice in the sun for now. On that note, it’s time for a high tide swim!

Happy summer holidays!

Love Emma

Staying centred

So here we are on the waxing moon, and another heat wave, despite the smell of autumn in the air in the mornings last week - we are lucky with this summer’s weather, but certainly the evenings are now drawing in. Many of my clients are in their own pattern of shifting too and there have been themes, no doubt reflecting the collective shifting, and the stars and planetary alignments.

The theme of ‘not being good enough’ has reared its head again and people are being asked to dig deeper into this, to see that it is just a mind game, just the mind telling us that we’re not good enough, a core belief we took on at one time or another because of the way we interpreted our world and the feedback we sought from others.

In fairness we are trained from a young age to consider ourselves not good enough. It’s a very good way of controlling us and helping to dumb us down, keeping us stuck in a state of disempowerment, where we feel powerless. It is this feeling that often feeds our anxiety and depression, because we easily lose our centre, our grounding and our faith. I see this energetic patterning time and time again.

Powers that be don’t want us standing in our power, or standing on our own two feet. They want to keep us feeling a little bit all over the place because we are easier to control then. I am not a conspiracy theorist by the way, I just see it clearly. We are literally trained not to like ourselves, criticised from a young age if we try to be different to others, there is an encouragement towards uniformity from teachers, care givers, culture and society as a whole. It can be a real battle to step outside of this AND feel empowered.

But essentially it’s all just a training and we are able to untrain as much as we are able to train. My yoga studies are all about the untraining, removing the layers of training, not least from my previous yoga studies but from my life generally, so that I am not restricted mentally, or indeed physically and emotionally, by how I have been trained to be, so that I might literally see things differently and view life from a shifted and new perspective, and accept and love myself in a way that I was never able to do previously simply because I was trained not to, and all this from constantly changing movement patterns in the body.

Thus much of my yoga practice is about moving in a myriad of ways that bring me to my centre, unsticking it in the process. Many will argue that the centre is where you find the soul, it’s like a gateway. Furthermore, it’s where we find our power, to be centred is to be empowered, or at least this is how it feels to me energetically. When we are in our centre, it is very difficult to be thrown away from it, we are more likely able to then retain our grounding and our openness to spirit and faith too.

More often than not, I see clients when they have lost their centre and are feeling disempowered. This is not always true in so much as there are many reasons that people might find their way to me, but I do notice patterns. Life has a habit of challenging us and we have a way of reacting to that and often that way of reacting is not necessarily helpful and is based on what has happened previously so we end up repeating previous patterns. In many situations, the key to our empowerment is in noticing our patterns and then taking action to change them.

I see a common energetic patterning that arises when people are challenged and triggered. Something will happen, another person will say something or a situation arises that makes that individual feel uncomfortable, maybe they are manipulated or verbally confronted or attacked in some way, or maybe they felt guilty about something, or out of control about how their life is unfolding, maybe they are scared of losing something or someone, or worried about paying a bill, maybe they’re in a new relationships and it is all unknown and uncertain, and immediately they will be thrown off centre to the extent that they might feel anxious or angry, fearful or teary. Either way they will have lost their centre and will likely start stressing about the past or the future.

Generally they will lose their grounding too, as if their roots have been loosened and they have lost the support of the earth, Their mind will take over and can get relentless in its need to analyse, figure out and control things. As a result of this their shoulders may well tighten and their body may prepare for fight or flight. They will close to spirit too, faith dropping away because they figure that they, and they alone must figure this one out. With the grounding gone and the crown closed down, trust also goes out the window and any words that comes from their mouth might will likely come from a place of fear rather than from a place of love.

This is actually another theme which has coming up this last week, one of communication. Communication is tricky because so often we have a whole heap of words and thoughts running around in our head that we want to get out, but we don’t always manage it for fear of how those words may be received. This feeds beautifully into the theme of ‘not good enough’ because simply put we don’t always feel good enough to say what we want to say, because of our fear of having our ‘not being good enough’ validated by others either because they don’t hear us or they criticise us or confront us for what is said. In effect we judge ourselves before anyone else has a chance to do the same.

This feeds into the other theme coming up of self-sabotage, where we create more of our own suffering by basically destroying and sabotaging all goodness in our lives. I saw this played out last week simply because someone reached out for help and was gifted the opportunity to receive that help but when it came down to it, the person sabotaged the possibility by not turning up and laying the blame outside of herself. Quite likely she didn’t feel good enough, quite likely she also didn’t feel she could give voice to the real reason she wasn't able to make it, and quite likely all of this is a pattern - she wants to make changes but lacks the courage to take that step of actually doing the work that will make the difference.

It's tricky, because even when we do take that step and make the most of the help given to us we can be up against ourselves and the depths of our conditioning. We can also be totally blindsided by our patterning to the extent that we don’t understand why we keep doing what we are doing, however harmful and damaging it may be to us, because we are so rigid in our thinking and the way that we see ourselves. More often than not, unless we are truly conscious and attentive, then we will make choices based on fear rather than intuitive choices that come from the heart.

Paying attention to what drives our decision making can be really fascinating and we can be very surprised, because often our decision making is based on alleviating our fears rather than truly based on the guidance of the heart. First though we have to identify our fears, whether those be fears of financial insecurity, fears of not being liked, fears of not being seen, fears of not being heard, fears of new relationships, fears of uncertain origin! There are all sorts of fears that we will have adopted over the years that we will do our very best to avoid looking at because it is uncomfortable to us and yet when a fear is triggered it can cause us to lose our centre.

This then causes us to lose our power, and when we’ve lost our power then we lose ourselves and the pattern repeats itself. True power comes from being centred regardless of external circumstances. This means maintaining our centre regardless of what is going on around us – can we stay centred whether contented or sad, whether life appears to be going our way or not, can we stay true to ourselves in a relationship, can we speak our truth without fear of vindication, can we be in our centre when we lose someone we love or a relationship comes to an end or a child leaves home, can we stay centred when we start a new job?

Staying centred is a constant practice and one that is absolutely supported by yoga, Reiki and other holistic practices that will help us to look more honestly at ourselves and notice our patterning, so that we can do something about it, get to the root of it, so that we stop feeding the pattern and  can rest more easily in our centre whenever challenged. We have to work at it though, be curious to know ourselves on that deeper level, to take responsibility and be with the discomfort of it.

There’s a wonderful centring exercise that we can do too, which I have found really helpful in my own life, working with my solar plexus. Basically, when waking, rather than rushing out of bed or reaching for your phone, just pause for a minute and take your hands to your solar plexus, just above your navel centre. If you are Reiki attuned then you have the advantage that you can channel Reiki to yourself at the same time (don’t forget you can now get attuned to Reiki Level One online now, we have a package available on the website, at a mere £49.99, which might be the greatest gift you give yourself https://www.beinspiredby.co.uk/shop/online-courses/reiki-level-one-online).

Then ask yourself “Where am I?” and “When am I?”. In theory the answers are “In my centre, NOW”. Keep repeating this to yourself until you are sure that your awareness really is in your centre now! Then you could ask yourself what kind of day you’d like, and notice any resistance you have to whatever comes up. Maybe you don’t feel you deserve a lovely empowered day full of goodness, for example, and that can be an interesting awareness because then you can dig deeper into that, why is that?

Once you have established the kind of day you’d like, the you let it all go and literally go about your day. if you get a chance during the day, maybe you roll out your yoga mat or you take a moment to sit under a tree or out in the garden, then you can come back to your centre, gather it in. Even better, if you notice that you are losing your centre is to consciously gather your awareness back to your centre and notice resistance to doing this - it is incredible how much we feed our dramas and victimhood, giving our centre away simply because that’s what we’ve always done and therefore it is known and there is certain comfort that comes in the knowing, even if it is suffocating our soul and disempowering us.

This is actually what I find the most fascinating - the way we give our own power away simply because we are fearful of our power (our light) and of the uncertain and the unknown. Yet I find this so ironic, because life is uncertain and unknown. And actually the more we can sit into the uncertain and unknown, be with the moment to moment awareness of this, the less we get thrown off balance and lose our centre in the first place.

Orientating back to centre re-sets everything. In the evening, lying in bed, just before you go to sleep, come back to this exercise and re-orientate to the centre in the NOW and reflect on the day you actually had and whether it is in alignment with your earlier intention.

Keep doing this daily for an awfully long time and gradually you will notice that you orientate increasingly in the here and now in your centre and you are less likely to be thrown off centre. Or, if you are thrown off centre, you’ll start noticing that you’re being thrown off centre and you can bring yourself back to centre and change whatever patterning is causing you to go off centre in the first place – more often than not it is because the mind is playing games and sent you spinning back to the past or into the future.

And whichever way you look at it, past or future orientation isn’t allowing us to live in the nitty gritty of the present, so a constant re-orientation to the present is required because this is the present, the gift, true presence is being OK with whatever is happening and not wanting to make it different. This is where we find our grounding in the unknown and uncertain, standing on our own two feet regardless and trusting, so important, in the support of the earth and the universe, cultivating greater faith and staying in our centre.

Enjoy the waxing moon and all it reveals to you, keep remembering to orientate back to centre and to know that you are good enough just as you are and it is OK to voice how you truly feel with love and compassion!

Love Emma x