That annoying thing called imposter syndrome

I have many talented clients who are keen to offer Reiki or other holistic and trauma-based therapies, teach yoga and/or write books, but let the imposter syndrome get in the way.

This is a syndrome which essentially tells you that you are not good enough to offer whatever it is that you are wanting to offer, that you don’t know enough, aren’t clever enough, expert enough, knowledgeable enough, that you don’t have the right qualifications, that you won’t be able to do a good job, that compares you to others and concludes that there’s too much competition anyway and that you will never be able to make a go of it etc.

But really when it boils down to it, it shows that you just care too much what others think of you and that you don’t recognise your own magnificence.

It also shows that you don’t trust spirit and/or have faith in whatever it was that gifted the idea in the first place.

And that you are Ok about selling out on your heart.

It might also indicate that you have forgotten that we co-create in this life and it is about so much more than you.

We let our ego get involved.

This is the self-depreciating ego which tells us that we are not loveable, or good enough, or enough of this and that, or too much, or whatever other negative self-depreciating inner narrative we repeat over and over again and make manifest in our lives simply because we are always seeking validation of this negativity and embedding it deeper into our psyche and belief system.

If we look for trouble, we will see only trouble.

If we look for love, we will see only love.

If we look for validation of our uselessness, we will see it everywhere.

It is all about perspective.

And we have a choice.

We can keep limiting ourselves with all this negative crap, or we can choose to shift our mentality to something far more positive and expansive and live our best life.

It’s not our fault. We have been conditioned since birth to question ourselves, to doubt ourselves and to be down on ourselves.

We are constantly criticised for not being intelligent enough, or quick enough on the sports field, or arty enough, or musical, or thoughtful enough, or kind enough or polite enough, or not wearing the right clothes, or saying the right thing, or walking down the corridor correctly, or sitting still, or any of the other many, many ways that we are told how to be and judged for behaving differently.

No wonder so many are so tired.

This trying to be what others want us to be and this caring what others think and the hyper vigilance this requires, is really rather exhausting. It creates so much insecurity, anxiety and depression. It causes us to lose our centre, close our hearts and, at times, think we are negatively losing our mind.

Consumerism thrives on this insecurity. It thrives on our externalising of our worth. Of caring too much what others think. People make millions selling products that we are told will help us feel better about ourselves. Even in yoga, it has become all about the building or the mat or the clothes we wear, and this when yoga is absolutely an internal practice.

But that aside, it is crazy isn’t it, to base our self-esteem and sense of self on other people’s fleeting thoughts. Watch your own mind and ask yourself, “what thought will I think next?”, and watch the constant stream of thoughts that appear from the ether in all their randomness. Thoughts come and go. The trouble is we give them far too much energy and believe that they are a concrete representation of reality. They aren’t. So why on earth we care what other people are thinking about us or the opinions they hold one us (which are just thoughts) is quite beyond me.

If we don’t care about our own thoughts - and we really shouldn’t, especially those self depreciating ones, then why on earth should we care about other people’s thoughts? And this to the detriment of our experience and quality of life.

Because when we care too much, it stops us fulfilling our potential, it limits us and it keeps us stuck. And slowly a part of us begins to die, to give up, to feel hopeless, to accept our miserable lot. We close down to excitement and joy, we let our head drop, we drink more wine, eat more junk food, watch more TV, spend more time meaninglessly scrolling through social media, we might manifest illness and we tell ourselves all sorts of stories to justify why we won’t bother trying to move our life forwards and step into our power, share our gifts with the world, just yet.

Sometimes we are scared of failing. Or scared of our potential success.

Somewhere though, we have forgotten that there is a bigger picture.

You see spirit works through us. It wants to co-create with us. It needs us to be the channel and vehicle to bring more heart and soul onto this planet. The trouble is we block this flow by getting in our own way.

We make it all about us, rather than the people who may benefit.

We forget our place in the cosmos.

Maybe I am lucky. I didn’t intend to teach yoga or Reiki or offer Ayurveda. I only signed up for my yoga teacher training course because I wanted to immerse myself in yoga. Together with Reiki it had quite literally saved my life and I wanted to learn all I could about it. I also wanted everyone else on the planet to practice yoga because I knew how much it might help to ease our individual and collective suffering.

It was the same with Reiki. My Reiki Master had to really encourage me along to the first attunement session as I didn’t feel good enough. I was quite sure that the Reiki wouldn't work for me and when I was the only one in the room who didn’t feel a thing during the attunement itself and certainly didn’t see colours or have a sense of energy beings, i concluded that I definitely wasn’t good enough.

But alas a seed was sown and I found myself attending the Level Two training. It was the pendulum dowsing that got me really. I just couldn't believe that it actually worked for me. It was life changing. I slowly started to connect with, and trust, my intuition. It helped that I had by then started receiving spiritual life coaching using Reiki and the Reiki had been working its magic in my life, this to the extent that I wanted everyone else on this planet to benefit.

It was the same with Ayurveda. It felt like magic. I couldn’t quite believe how changing my diet in such an ancient way and taking some medicinal herbs could create such a profound difference in my energy levels and my relationship with myself. The pre-menstrual symptoms which had plagued me for years dissipated. The cysts on my ovaries healed. My disordered eating eased. The overwhelm and accompanying depressive moments abated. I was sleeping better. My digestive system was consistent. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I wanted everyone to try Ayurveda.

And so I ended up teaching yoga and Reiki and becoming an Ayurvedic lifestyle and nutrition consultant simply because I wanted others to experience the benefits for themselves.

I felt as if I had been given these incredibly sacred gifts and the only way I can truly thank the powers that be, is to share these gifts with others. My teachings and sharing then come from a place of deep gratitude.

Not only that, but I realise spirit is just moving through me. I don’t own any of it. Even Beinspired is not mine. It came in at just the right time and it has shaped itself.

The moments when I take myself too seriously, make it all about me, or try in some way to control things, especially Beinspired, is the time it all goes to pot. That I have learned the hard way.

And yes of course, I too have suffered imposter syndrome. Every time I offer something new, I can feel a creeping of anxiety and start questioning my ability and hear myself saying something like, “who do you think you are offering spiritual life coaching, do you really feel you have the qualifications/training/knowledge to help coach others spiritually, and can you honestly charge people for what you are offering?”

I hear those thoughts.

But then I also know that the idea to offer spiritual life coaching was not about me, it was about the people who may benefit from my sharing my passion for yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, and all the many spiritual practices I have explored these last 20 off years. That is not supposed to sound arrogant, as if I am better than anyone else, I am not. But with all that I offer, it just suddenly comes in as a possibility, I haven’t gone searching for it.

The yoga teacher training course was the first of its kind and arrived on my penultimate day in Byron Bay when I was wondering what to do next with my life, but knowing that I wanted to continue immersing myself in yoga (you can read more about this in Namaste and From Darkness Comes Light). The Reiki came in by encouragement from my Reiki Master. The Ayurvedic training was encouraged by my Ayurvedic doctor. A part of me was cynical - they just want my money. But I know now, as I do this to others, that it is never about the money, it's an intuitive nudge, because you know that other person will benefit - if I have been badgering you to come to class, or do a Reiki attunement or consult with me for Ayurveda, this is the reason, something is telling me that you will benefit!

In many respects I have felt that I have had little choice. My yoga teacher told me to go back to Guernsey and start teaching yoga. My Reiki Master encouraged me to establish Beinspired and start offering Reiki. My Ayurvedic doctor was super keen for me to offer Ayurveda and did all she could to help me. These people are conscious, they have benefitted themselves from these spiritual practices and they also see the bigger picture - that we are co-creating with the divine, we are playing our role in positively shifting the vibration on this planet. We have incarnated at this time in history for this very reason.

So each time I come up against imposter syndrome, I acknowledge it and sit with it. Where is it coming from? What is the fear? And how is my heart feeling?

And as long as it still feels aligned, my heart sings, my intuition is nodding, then I’ll go for it anyway.

I’ll put on my big girl leggings and I’ll face my inner demon.

I’ll trust in whatever it was that gifted me the idea or the nudge in the first place.

I have learned a ton of lessons along the way.

At my first yoga class no one turned up. I went home and cried on my Dad’s shoulder. But I didn’t give up because something was telling me that I just needed to be patient, that Rome was not built in a day, that we all have to start somewhere, that it takes time for people to find their way to you.

And they do.

I have learned to trust in that.

That the right people will find you. That the universe will connect you.

Sure, it helps to advertise, to make people aware you exist. But people will come when the time is right - and for both of you, because it’s a two way process - I learn something from every single client and students who has entered my life.

I have also learned that you can advertise as much as you like, but if you have some resistance within you because you are letting imposter syndrome get in the way then people will not find you because on some level you are blocking them, you are also manifesting the validation you need that you are not good enough so let’s back out now while you can. I have sene this happen lots of times, people make it all about them again.

We have to be careful with our thoughts as they do create our reality. So shift your thoughts. And pray. Pray for assistance. For the most perfect situation for all parties.

I have also learned that we are not in control.

And that we should never base our self worth on external validation such as the number of students in our class or our busy schedule.

Just like we should never look to someone else to make us feel whole.

Or look to love to save us.

Or someone else to make us feel safe.

Or assume we need a community or tribe to feel as if we belong.

Our primary relationship in this lifetime is with ourselves. That much I have learned.

We come in on our own and we will leave on our own. This is the journey of OUR soul.

I know this with absolute certainty.

We can hear the powers that be if we are still enough, quiet enough, gentle enough.

We just need to learn to trust in what we hear, and cultivate greater faith in ourselves and in spirit in the process.

We need to cultivate self-belief. We have to learn to love and accept ourselves. This takes hard work. No one else can do it for us. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, you cannot buy this. Sure others can help you, but only you can really make the inner changes.

We need to switch off and switch in. People love eating energy. Protect your energy. Don’t give it away or let others steal it.

Faith is our protection.

Discernment is our weapon.

I have also learned that we should never have an attachment to outcome. If we do, we will never write that book, or run that course, or offer that treatment.

We do what we do for the love of it, for the sheer joy of the creative process.

We leave others to receive our offering in their own way. We are not responsible for this.

We have to let go of our idea of success or healing or whatever it may be.

We cannot control outcome.

We cannot make someone better if they don’t want to be better.

And we need to remember that we don’t all think and feel the same. So just because we might feel a certain way after say a yoga class or a Reiki treatment, doesn't mean that others will feel similarly. Some may like it, some may not.

And the other lesson I have learned is not to personalise everything. Someone doesn’t come back to yoga. Big deal. That’s their choice. Maybe that one session was all they needed to move them forwards in their life, maybe they can’t get a baby sitter, maybe they have to work late, maybe yoga is just not for them. We don’t need to make up stories that revolve around us, “oh I don’t think they like my style of teaching, oh I am such a rubbish yoga teacher blah blah blah.

Who cares!

Do what you do, offer what you offer, for the sheer love of it.

Stop caring what others think.

And put your energy to loving yourself more instead. Of being your greatest friend.

I have spent thousands of pounds on various trainings, workshops, courses and treatments over the years, but one of my best friend’s gave me the greatest advice for free. He told me to stop caring what others think. No one had ever told me that. Not one single person. or if they did, I didn’t hear them. I started putting this into practice and I couldn’t believe how deep the conditioning around caring what others think. Every time I was triggered, when I traced it back to source, I realised it was always about caring what others thought. I cannot tell you how liberating it has been to work with this and stop caring. It automatically tightens boundaries and helps you value yourself - and - it increases interestingly your compassion not least for self, but for others, because you see how much they suffer by caring too much what others think.

To the extent they don’t live their best life.

And this, to me, is a real tragedy.

So too the fact that they are denying others the benefit of their gifts by not sharing them - it’s like a form of stealing.

If you are reading this, then the chances are that you too have something to share. That you have a passion for yoga or writing or holistic therapies or whatever it may be and that your life has been touched positively to the extent that you would like others to benefit from what you have to share, be that your healing hands, your story or just your ability to listen.

So my advice is to share it. Notice the self-depreciating and limiting thoughts and do it anyway. Dig deep. Find the courage. Trust in whatever it was that gave you the idea. Cultivate faith. Pray for assistance along the way. Please don’t deny others the benefit of whatever gift you are here to share.

If it helps then I am happy to work with you to move you forwards, but remember that I cannot do it for you. You have to do it for yourself.

To help others.

To liberate yourself. Fly free.

To raise the vibration on this planet.

And boy do we need it!

Love Emma x

Healing the witch wound

I’ve been wanting to try to heal the witch wound for a while now. Many of my clients tell me how much they struggle to find their voice, or be authentically seen by others, or put themselves out there in the world, playing it small instead, diminishing their emotions and intuition, all of this because of an inherent fear around being seen and heard, which in many cases is a hang over from the witch trials.

Furthermore, many find it challenging to truly believe in their healing capacity. They might be drawn to earth energies, plants and nature, but don’t have the confidence to work with them. Others are told they are “too much” or “not enough”, all of which lays heavily on them and prevents them feeling they can be themselves in the world.

So a group of us ladies, 18 in total, joined together at the stone circle on my folks’ land near Vazon. Dad and I established the stone circle many years ago now but I haven’t really used it much as the energy hasn’t been quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it and my sister in law in Australia has used it much more on her visits to the island - some of you may well have sat in circle with her there.

It is a lovely space nestled within the trees and quite by chance my Dad decided to move the stones around and add a few more without realising that he was shifting the energy and making it into something I had wanted all those years ago, but hadn’t realised until now - there is a timing to everything!

So now the circle has 19 stones, like the stone circles in Cornwall. This because the ancients had an interest in understanding nature’s cycles and harmonising earth and the cosmos.

Thus the placing, design, mathematics and orientation of ancient sites were all carefully calculated to embody the eclipse cycle, the anomalistic year, the solstices and cross-quarters of the year, lunar phases and probably longer-term cycles such as the sidereal and synodic cycles of the planets.

Furthermore, the ancients had a double calendar - solar and lunar. The solar calendar was based on the solstices and equinoxes while the lunar calendar was anchored in the lunar phases, of which there are around 12.5 cycles per solar year. The lunar and solar cycles synchronise once every 19 years and this synchronisation is called the Metonic Cycle.

The solar calendar relates to the seasons of the year and the lunar calendar to cycles of tides, water levels, rainfall, light at night and natural fertility. The coming of spring or autumn is determined by the sun's cycle, yet the visible changes, when flowers come out or the leaves fall, birds migrate or the weather turns, are timed by the moon - particularly at new and full moons. A 19-stone circle thus embodies the integration of solar and lunar calendars, also indicating an interest in eclipse cycles.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines this as:

...in chronology, a period of 19 years in which there are 235 lunations or synodic months, after which the Moon's phases recur on the same days of the solar year. The cycle was discovered by Meton (floriat 432 BC), an Athenian astronomer.

The Metonic period of 6,939.6 days, almost exactly 19 years, is equivalent to:

• 19 solar years,

• 20 eclipse years (cycles of eclipse positions),

• 235 synodic months (cycles of lunar phases),

• 254 sidereal months (lunar orbits),

• and 255 draconic months (lunar conjunctions with its north node - eclipse-related).

Our stone circle is as circular as possible (some stone circles are flattened and egg shaped as this creates a certain energy), like Merry Maidens, and now contains 19 stones to celebrate the meteoric cycle. It feels right. I cleansed it, called in the guardians and felt held by the ancestors. It is a beautiful space.

We left a stone free for the witch yet to come…and sat around the fire together, enjoying its warmth and indeed energy. We threw rosemary onto the fire to remember our ancestors and those who were burned alive. Then we breathed and used our voice to chant, sitting silently before writing down our fears and burning these on the fire.

We came together with intent and it is intent which changes things. We worked with intent to make our own manifestation and/or healing spell, which we each took home to hide amongst draws and allow the magic to enter in, not trying to control it. We finished by holding hands around the fire, oracles cards and some treats.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who felt a deep connection to our ancestors and left the session with a lightness in my heart and a determination to reclaim the feminine - the true feminine, not the women’s empowerment masculine equivalent, which sees women more exhausted than ever before, trying to be all things in the name of empowerment and feminism.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to all the crusaders before me who have tried to change things, but I feel it is time now to honour our divinity and our goddess nature and let go of all our crappy patriarchal, religious and political conditioning, and honour our truth and essence - be our true selves.

I will be holding more fires at some point this season so do look out. There might be some wand making at some point too.

What is the Witch Wound?

The Witch Wound is an inherited, collective trauma that is rooted in the dark history of the witch trials and manifests as a fear of being seen, speaking up, and stepping into your full magic and power.

This was all thanks to a famous book called Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches written in 1468 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church and was first published in Germany in 1487 where it circulated Europe before making its way to Britain. Its purpose was to find and essentially flush out women and men who were believed to practice witchcraft and therefore ‘dance with the devil’.

It fuelled a frenzy of fear and suspicion that overwhelmed society for three centuries. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, tortured and executed. Those who knew them were forced to testify against them including children, family members and friends - or be tortured themselves. 

During this time, tens of thousands of innocent women and men across Europe were imprisoned, tortured, and executed in the most inhuman and brutal of ways: burning, beheading, drowning, hanging.

Some of these victims were healers, midwives, wise women and men, and diviners who served their communities. Others were just people who were too outspoken, too old, too rich, too poor, too beautiful, or too ugly, or in some way a threat to the establishment.

It is fair to say that of them were victims of patriarchy, capitalism and religious tyranny.

Our ancestors who survived these dark times carried the memory of these events not just in their minds, but also in their bodies. Their fear, their grief, their shame, their survival instincts have been passed down through the ages, and now live on in our blood and bones.

This is the legacy of the Witch Wound, which exists on a soul and cellular level. Of course it also exists on a societal and cultural level too. Even today, the toxicity of patriarchy, capitalism and religious tyranny lives on, restricting our self-expression – those of us Reiki attuned are not allowed to practice in St Martin’s Community Centre, for example, as the land is owned by St Martin’s Church.

Here on Guernsey, anyone convicted of being a witch was burnt alive at the bottom of Tower Hill in St Peter Port. In an 80 year period from 1560 to 1640, 44 people were burnt at the stake and 35 were banished from the island for life. It is said these methods drove many of the witches even further underground and meant the island's sorciers stopped writing down their art.

Is it any wonder that those who were witches in previous lives might stay small and quiet to stay safe? That they might have a fear of speaking their truth and denying the innate healing qualities that they possess?

The trauma lies deep in our DNA, passed down through our ancestors. Even now our children are taught to fear the ‘wicked’ witch, that witches are evil.

But witches are not evil. Witches are those who claim their Earth-blessed birthrights of spirituality and magic, who connect with the cycles of nature, worship the planet, who use herbal remedies for healing and believe in the power of positive energy and intent to create positive change.  They are generally intuitive, creative and work with the forces of good, the elements, the moon and the stars to help others and the planet. 

Witches are not the ones we should fear. Instead, it might well be the men wielding the torches.

Love Emma x

Samskāras - those tricky habits and afflictions that keep us stuck

Let’s talk about samskāras, those tricky habits and afflictions that prevent us from making permanent positive change in our lives.

It is difficult isn’t it. You have seen the pattern. You know the changes you need to make. You have the intention. And it starts off really well. You try and make different choices, avoid the pitfalls. But before you know it, you’re back where you started all over again.

Life is sometimes like a game of snakes and ladders.

But, equally, we can make changes, so that the choices we make result in a different outcome and we experience greater inner freedom, less bound by what has happened previously - we take more ladders, less snakes.

It is important to remember though, that there are no mistakes. Often we give ourselves a really hard time for thinking we have messed up and/or failed, and we live with regret, wishing we had made different choices. But the realty is, we chose as we did, because of our level of consciousness and discernment at that time.

So we need to let ourselves off the hook and appreciate that - at least from a Tantric perspective - our perceived mistakes and failures become advantages when regarded as growth opportunities. However this is not to say that the process isn’t painful and it is understandable that we may wish to try and refine and improve our ability to make more beneficial choices from the outset and move more easily along our path.

So why is this so difficult?

Well our intellect and discernment (known as buddhi in yogic philosophy) - our ability to make more empowering and aligned choices - is impaired by samskarās, otherwise known as the subliminal impressions of past experiences.

Put simply, a samskāra is an impression, like a well worn track on a dirt road, where the wheels of the vehicles have made a very clear indentation from repeated use. Or a deep footprint in the sand at the beach.

With the first example, when it rains, the water will follow the same path and collect in the indentations along the path, it doesn’t drain off consistently along the track. In the second example, when the tide comes in and the water flows over the footprints, it will flow differently than if the sand was perfectly smooth.

And so it is that when the energy of the world flows through your mind - when life happens - it is affected by the deep impressions of past experiences (the tracks and footprints) that are lodged there, and this will have an effect on your experience of life in any one moment.

This is the reason we each experience the same situation differently, because it all depends on what has happened to us previously and the nature of our dirt tracks or footprints.

Caution is therefore required, because based on our past experiences, we formulate projections and make assumptions that are more often than not misaligned with the reality of the present moment. That is to say, we don’t see reality clearly because it is tainted by what has happened to us previously - we add bias and create stories that are not actually based on what is really and truly happening. In fact we can create such crazy stories that we can send ourselves quite mad in our misperception of reality.

You see, our brains are really good at pattern matching, too good at times, because even a very superficial resemblance of the current situation to a past situation will cause us to unconsciously assume that the present is like the past in most of its details.

This act of unconsciously projecting the past onto the present is the main reason that we taint our perspective of reality, that we don’t see clearly the present moment, and are unable then of making good choices - we slide down the snake rather than climbing up the ladder.

Thus, the presence of samskāras impairs the natural ability of the buddhi (capacity of intellect and discernment) to discern what is beneficial for is and what is not.

And just to make it clear, this is the reason that we don’t always make choices which are in our best interests. Because we don’t see the situation clearly and accurately, we often react, based on past experience and the trauma and discomfort we have felt previously, and are keen to avoid again.

And the trouble is, the more we keep on making the same unhelpful choices, the deeper the track or footprints become, and the more we keep getting stuck.

As Christopher Wallis writes, “The spiritual path is very much about developing clear vision and cultivating the ability to see things as they really are. In classical yoga philosophy, the practices of yoga (especially meditation) have the primary purpose of dissolving the samskāras, these impressions, in order to bring about this clear vision, and the clear discernment that results from it”.

Imagine a dirty mirror. When, through yoga, the mirror of the mind becomes clear - our buddhi is clear, our ability to see things actually as they are, without being tainted by past experiences and impressions (samskāras) - it can perfectly reflect the light of our divine self.

Thus, the more we practice yoga, the more accurate our intuition and discernment becomes.

This is because when we come up against our patterns, we might find a tiny pause, and start to notice them for what they are, before we get caught up in them. We might call this ‘being triggered’.

We all get triggered at times. Something happens and suddenly you don’t feel so good. Your mind has recognised a pattern. This is what the mind does. It tries to keep us safe. So it is constantly scanning for signs of unsafely. It is keen to avoid what has happened previously.

Some have lived in households where communication and emotional intelligence has been poor and life has been lived through volatility and attempting to read people’s moods and emotional states, to avoid confrontation and aggressive outbursts. This can lead to hyper vigilance. It can also cause us to see things which don’t exist.

Furthermore, some have suffered trauma to the extent that the mind can be hyper vigilant, and cause an underlying feeling of anxious fairly much all the time. The mind is constantly scanning for trouble, for a repetition of the causative factor to the trauma whether that be violence, injury, accident, bullying the loss of someone loved and/or betrayal etc.

Then life happens and we get triggered. The water collects in the track or turns murky over the footprint. Then we don’t feel so good. So we do what we always do. It is a path well travelled, a track and foot print well trodden. We react to the situation based on our usual patterning.

It is this that we need to change. But it takes work. And life will keep triggering us until we get it. This is the reason we sometimes feel like we are playing a game of snakes and ladders. We feel we are making good progress, then something happens and we react the way we have always done and we are back where we started all over again. Or just as worse - we feel stuck.

This is the reason that we keep ending up in the same dissatisfying jobs and relationships, that we keep stumbling up against the same old mindset of not liking ourselves and feeling insecure, and the reason we keep eating all the foods we know we shouldn’t, or drinking too much wine, or whatever it is that we do, have always done, that we keep repeating our old patterns in all different situations over and over again.

Until we don’t. Until we work with our samskāras to positively change them. But before we can do that we have to know what they are = to understand the foundation of our triggers - to be able to recognise them and choose differently.

Incidentally, we cannot fill in the tracks or the footprints, but we can make new tracks and new footprints that take us in a more conscious and positive direction. This is the bit that requires effort.

Sometimes people think great yoga masters can read minds and have other psychic abilities, but the reality is that they just see life much more clearly than most - they have less obstructions in their ability to see reality as it actually is, untainted by past impressions.

Thus someone with a purified buddhi free of samskāras, can always see the most beneficial course of action in any given situation, giving s/he power to change situations.

So the key, other than getting on our mat and practising yoga, is to figure out our samskāras, our patterns, and to work with them.

For example, many of us have a fear around rejection and abandonment, and thus any time we feel even slightly rejected, we get triggered, and this might cause us to close down, retreat, or the opposite, get loud, shout out and defend ourselves in some way. This behaviour isn’t always helpful. It can close our hearts and create suffering - causing us to ironically reject a part of ourselves.

Furthermore, many have suffered the break down of a relationship because of betrayal, so in each relationship that follows we are constantly seeking signs of betrayal and seeing it even when it doesn’t exist, to the extent that we drive our partner away with our need to control and our hyper vigilance because of not wanting to feel the pain of betrayal again - but we create pain for ourselves anyway.

Others are constantly worried about what others think about them and over personalise everything, so that they are hyper vigilant to other people’s facial expressions, moods and communication, assuming that because someone looks at them ‘funny’ or doesn’t return a smile, then there is an issue - their inherent insecurity causes them to feel anxious and on edge, worried if they have offended the other person or even worse, being aggressive towards them, when the reality is, the other person is just busy getting on with their day and didn’t notice that anyone else.

In another example, someone doesn’t respond to an email in a timely fashion and we immediately personalise this and create a story about the other person’s rudeness or become anxious, worried we have done something to upset them, or we may even feel rejected/abandonned by them. This, when the message has gone to the person’s junk box and they have no idea we emailed them in the first place!

Yet another example might be that we are due to join an online session and our WIFI goes down. It is beyond our control and this triggers a feeling of helplessness and also a concern about what the other people might think of us. We get stressed and angry and lash out at our nearest and dearest and become even angrier at ourself. In reality there is literally nothing we can do to change the situation but this feeling of helplessness and reputational concern causes us to create our own suffering as our imagination runs wild - the irony is, we judge ourself more than anyone else is judging us, about something quite beyond our control!

All these examples hopefully highlight how brilliant us humans are at projecting and creating situations in our head that are not real, and creating all these false stories about reality. It is this that creates our suffering and it is this that we can change through our spiritual practice and by working with our pattens and tendencies.

So next time you get triggered, try not to react as you have done previously, creating the same old story in your head. Instead take a few deep breaths and thank your mind for trying to keep you safe. Then tap into buddhi (intellect and discernment), and make a different choice of how to be, rather than just reacting unconsciously as you have done a million times previously.

It may well take you to a place of vulnerability, but it is a place worth visiting - this is how we open to greater love in our life and deeper connection to our true Self beyond the ego. You can work with the sankalpa (resolve or intention), such as “I open to greater love and intimacy” , in your Yoga Nidra practice and see what happens, see how it begins to change things, when you open up to vulnerability and allowing things to be different.

I’m running a series called Opening to Self Love, which will include a Yoga Nidra and various other Tantric practices to try to positively change some of the samskāras, which are not helpful in your life. To find out more, click here.

But otherwise just keep working with the samskāras, to free yourself from them, unsticking yourself in the process, seeing reality more clearly and enjoying more love, energy and freedom.

Love Emma x

Setting ourselves free of false ego identity

The moon has gifted many insights this cycle, but the one that has struck me the most is the reminder that we are not broken and don’t need fixing and that we need to shift this mindset if we truly want to thrive and appreciate our true divinity.

I have also been reminded that our mind is our worst enemy and creates our suffering through our forgetfulness that we are neither our thoughts nor our feelings. However, we have this self-depreciating tendency to allow both to run riot, getting caught up in, and stuck, the same mental and emotional patterns over an dover again, and creating our reality from this limited perspective.

We are not our thoughts and we are not our feelings. They come and go. You only have to ask your mind, “what thought is coming next”, to realise that you are not your thoughts. And you are not your feelings, because emotions are simply energy in motion. When we stop their motion and cling onto them, then we stop their flow and mis-identify with them as who we are - “I am sad”, I am depressed”. Not, you’re not! You are merely feeling sadness and depression. But they are not you. It is important to realise this.

Same with your thoughts. Did you know that ego simply means , “What you think you are”. So it’s just your ego that says, “I am fat”, “I am thin”, “I am a victim”, “I am clever’, “I am stupid”, “I am unloveable”, “I am ugly” and every other “I” statement. The collection of these thoughts creates our ego identity, so the ego is nothing more than a raft of self images bound together by your belief in them. Thus the way you identify with yourself is nothing more than fictitious construct, consisting primarily of self-images that exist because of your belief in them and attachment to them.

What is crazy is that each self image is based on a particle moment or moments of past experience that created a mental construct, “a story”, that was taken as static reality. For example, the moment you were praised or punished for something, told you are this or that, you believed it to be so, you bought into the story and by buying into the story, you acquired a self image to add to your forming ego that became a static reality - you believed it so and in believing it so, you made it so.

I have lost count of the number of clients who are stuck in mis-identification, believing they are this or that, usually something negative because of what has happened in their past. Not only does this keep them locked in the past, but it prevents them from expanding because they have limited themselves to the thought, “I am unloveable”, “I am unattractive”, “I am fat”, or whatever it is. The more we keep buying into these false identifications the more we make them so. We believe them into reality and create our own prison bars in the process.

It doesn’t have to be like this! Every moment of every day offers us the opportunity to remove the prison bars and set ourselves free. We choose how we relate to ourselves. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to bat those thoughts away, like they are tennis balls, to challenge every single idea we have about who we are, and to let our feelings flow, see them quite literally as the energy in motion that they are.

Yesterday we had an incidence at the beach where a very important person got annoyed at us for dumping our bags near to her shoes and towel. We’ve spent hours at Fort Grey this summer, hours an hours, and everyone has been really friendly, it’s one of the reason we love it there so much, let alone the opportunity for jumping, kayaking, paddle boarding, rock pooling and just absorbing it’s sacred energy, so it ws quite a surprise. It wasn’t until we got home, E told me that the lady in question, who actually accused us of intentionally leaving our stuff near her stuff to annoy her, is a reputable lawyer on the island, recently returned.

I realised then the reason for her reaction - she has over identified with her job title and believes herself better than everyone else, she has that entitlement that certain occupations encourage. This is not to say she isn’t divine, she is. We are all divine. But her ego has made her believe herself to be better than everyone else. But one day she will retire and what then? What identity will she take on. The lawyer that was? This is the reason so many company directors have heart attacks following retirement - they lose their job title and with that their identity and they no longer wield the same level of power that they did in the organisation.

So we have to be careful. One day we will die and we will become nothing more than dust or compost. There’s this lovely bit in Hamlet, in scene 3 of Act IV, when the King asks Hamlet where the late Polonius is, Hamlet replies, “At supper”. The king, knowing that Polonius is dead, asks Hamlet what he means, to which he curtly gives this riposte:

“Not where he eats, but where ‘a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end…A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm.”

Hamlet is very clever as he skilfully catches the audience off guard with his initial reply, “At supper”. This because we tend to think of the phrase, ‘at supper’ as, as meaning a person eating a meal. However Hamelt is referring to the person being eaten and emphasis with force the upheaval of hierarchies - the fat kind (and the lean beggar) serve the appetites of the imperial worms, “two dishes” end up on “one table”.

I’ve always thoughts this quote really interesting, reminding us that we are essentially all the same, and all part of the whole - of the continual cycle of life and indeed death on planet earth. Also a reminder that we are no better than each other. In death and indeed in life, we are essentially all equal. Admittedly some are more evolved than others, born with different karma and special qualities, but in terms of our treatment of each other, it is only our ego that says we are better, or indeed worse.

Anyway my point in all this, is to remember that we are not the stories we create about ourselves. Which is the reason I have some concerns about our over identification with labels, because we then make it so and again limit ourselves in the process. We over identify with our states of being too and continue to perpetuate the story, buying into victimhood at times, and keeping ourselves stuck.

At some point we have to realise that we are more than our thoughts and feelings and the stories we tell ourselves - or the stories others tell us. We have to remember that other people’s opinions of us - which they share readily with us, especially when we are children - are just thoughts. They are just someone else’s perspective. They are not true. They are not based on a divine reality but on someone’s judgement which is based to their conditioning and way of seeing the world and our place in it.

I have lost track of the number of people who suffer simply because of being told they were lazy at school, or sloppy, or whatever it may be, that they have taken with them into adulthood and believed it to be a truth. Who cares what other people think?!

It’s our conditioning actually that needs shifting. We have layers and layers of it and much of it patriarchal and christianised. This is something else that has really struck me lately. As women especially we talk of being empowered, yet we are still subjected to our conditioning that tells us we can only be empowered if we dig into our masculine energy and do it like the men. We still buy into the idea of power and money equalling success. We still pedestal masculine traits of achievement, outcome, rationality and consistent and linear ways of being in this world over the feminine qualities of empathy, intuition and cyclical ways of being.

We still pedestal science as if this is King. Nothing is believed if it hasn’t been proven by science. Yet science in itself is so limiting. The ancient Rishis knew the workings of this universe and the teachings have been shared for thousands of years. But unless science proves it so then we are not to believe it. Of course science has its place, but our intuition cannot be proven, nor our empathic feelings, but that doesn’t make them any less meaningful or important. We also have this annoying habit of reinventing the wheel and then commodifying it.

We strip the sacred out of everything. We are hell bent on externalising our view of the world. It doesn’t become about your meditation, it becomes about the cushion you are sitting on and the room you are sitting in. Even yoga has become less about recognising our divinity and more about how your body looks in a certain pose. We have to be careful what we buy into. In my day you didn’t need a particular water bottle to remind you to drink water. You drank water from a water fountain when you felt thirsty and I am still here to tell the tale. I’m actually honoured by the many ways we buy into commercialism.

Furthermore, so many women I see are still beholden to feelings of guilt and shame for wanting to step into their sexual energy. This because the christianised concept of purity runs deep in our DNA. We hold ourselves up against values which were forced upon our ancestors. They didn’t have a choice. But were do. We don’t need to keep perpetuating the story that we are good or bad, pure or dirty, virginal or whore, pretty or ugly, success or failure. All this duality kills the soul and keeps us trapped in our ego identity.

We are EVERYTHING. Our spiritual practicer can be anything because everything is essentially a manifestation of the Goddess. One of my friend’s loves playing AirSoft. He takes his spiritual practice seriously. Seeing an AirSoft gun hanging on his wall, someone made the comment, “well that’s not very spiritual is it!”. but actually why is yoga spiritual and playing AirSoft not? What differentiates the two. If they both serve to take us deeper to the truth, and into this present moment where we realise our divinity, then why is one good and the other bad?

It is from this understanding that the Tantric tradition arose. Tantra teaches that even the most mundane actions like washing the dishes and hanging out the washing are opportunities for experiencing the joy which flows from being truly present - of being in full Presence. We don’t limit ourselves then to our spiritual evolution, our recognition of our divinity, arising only on say our yoga mat or meditation cushion. For me this is incredibly liberating, to realise my deeper Self by being immersed in the world, rather than separate from it, of being deeply in the body, not denying it, of feeling pleasure and pain and not making one good and one bad.

The other point here is around evolution. My use of that word is perhaps not helpful as it implies moving outside ourselves and leaning into our existing conditioning that we need to do more/acquire more/fix more/future orientation “to be ……”. We have to remember that we are already perfect in our divinity and that all our spiritual practice is doing, is helping to remove the layers which prevent us from seeing this clearly. Our suffering arises because we have forgotten our own true nature and we buy into our thoughts and feelings as real.

This moon is gifting us the opportunity fort greater freedom by acknowledging all that has been and letting it pass into the ether, loosening our attachment to it. What is done is done. We have all suffered trauma - the trauma of incarnation is felt widely, for example. We have all made senseless decisions at one time or another. We have all held false views and perspective which we have shared with others. We have harmed and been harmed. But at some point we have to let it all go. We have to wipe the slate clean and realise our inherent divinity and allow more of this to shone forth in the world. We are EVERYTHING. Our playing it small, our not loving ourselves, our giving ourselves a hard time is really pointless. We have one life. Let’s live it well - kindly, loving and compassionately.

I could continue, there’s a theme around pain and suffering bubbling through but I will leave you with a quote by Christopher Wallis, a Tantric scholar, which is food for thought on this full moon:

“The great master Abhinava Gupta suggests to us that if you practice from the perspective that you are not good enough as you are, or that there is something wrong with you that needs fixing, then your yoga cannot fulfil its ultimate purpose because it is a practice founded in wrong understanding. It can only go as far as fulfilling the limited purpose that has been conceived by your limited ego-mind. However, if you undertake the practice of Yoga with the right View of yourself, that you are doing yoga to realise and then fully express what is already true, then you have empowered your practice to take you all the way”.

Happy full moon!

Love Emma x

But it is more than that. We have to stop believing all we have been told about ourselves and buying into it as if this is a truth. Our teachers, caregivers, friends, family members, general public, all will have had an opinion about us at one time or another, but it doesn’t make them real or concrete, they are just someone else’s thoughts. Yet our whole life can be based on these thoughts, because we ignorantly take them on as a truth and then make them so - creating our own reality in the process.

My other concern is our over identiifcation with

The joy of Reiki

There is no doubt that Reiki saved my life. I had been suffering depression, PMS, disordered eating and anxiety for a good while by then and had run the London Marathon in an attempt to change things.

The running had certainly helped, but now my body was a mess and so I sought yoga, on the recommendation of a friend. The yoga was life changing in many ways, so too the nutritional therapy I also undertook with Carol Champion in an attempt to shift my perspective on food and appreciate that ‘we are what we eat’.

But it was Reiki that really changed things. I had started attending an ‘escape from stress’ meditation group, led by a lady called Ali from the yoga group and it turned out that she was a Reiki Master and used Reiki to help lead intuitive life coaching sessions. I didn’t put the two together until I came across a flyer in the kitchen at work advertising her services. Whether I saw it as a sign or not I can’t remember, but there was something about it which caught my attention so I took the leap and booked in.

As Carol has already told me, people spend more on their cars than on their health and this has always stuck with me – we undervalue our health and wellbeing and I wasn’t prepared to do that anymore, after all we only have one chance at life as we know it and I didn’t want to live an unlived life.

The session involved lying down fully clothed on a treatment bed while Ali laid her hands on me. My mind was very restless at the time, I had a tendency to over-think to the extent that the unrelentless nature of my thoughts were tortuous at times. As with yoga, the Reiki offered me a momentary break from my thoughts and I disappeared into what I now call a liminal space of neither being here nor there, which is a very healing state and restores the mind as much as the body.

Reiki also helped to lift my spirits and it was this especially, which I have found so helpful with Reiki as it offered me a shift in perspective and I started to feel hopeful for the first time in years. The Reiki also connected me to a part of myself that I had neglected and with Ali’s help I started to make positive changes in my life as she fed back to me her findings and helped to validate how I felt, also helping me to see that there is more than one way to view a situation.

Following a course of regular Reiki intuitive life coaching sessions with Ali, and becoming attuned to Reiki myself, life changed. I finally gave up the permanent finance job, which had caused so much of my angst, and I started to believe in my dreams again – even recognising that I had dreams changed things. This to the extent that I sold my house, left my boyfriend and went travelling on and off for a few years immersing myself in yoga around the world, and training as a yoga teacher in the process – this before the explosion of yoga in the West.

I set up Beinspired in 2006 to help share my passion for yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, which I had also now discovered and adopted as a lifestyle choice. I was keen to share all I had experienced so that others may benefit. I finally managed to publish a couple of books too, my latest book, From Darkness Comes Lightshares my journey with depression, while the earlier one, Dancing with the Moon, shares my IVF journey and Namaste, my experience of trekking to Everest Base Camp. I also published The Family Yoga Book, to help families practice yoga at home.

During this time I have also attuned hundreds of people to Reiki, many of my students going on to set up in practice and offering Reiki to others, helping to spread the light and hope.

One such student, Natasha, who now offers her Reiki through Beinspired, said, “Reiki came into my life due to curiosity, not because I was in pain, and that's how my journey through spirituality has started, however it became an amazing support during the dark times, where I've expanded my knowledge and studies on it. Having this tool to support my body through stress, burn out and grief became paramount to my self-care. It gave me the opportunity to meet my Self and to learn about love and care to self, which eventually I was ready to share from a secure and loving place in my heart. Meeting Emma has been a gift and it's a treasure to be a student and a friend.”

Another student, Grace, who also offers her services through Beinspired and manages this very website (thank you Grace!) said, “Reiki has enabled me to live a more conscious, loving and authentic existence. This has supported me through life’s challenges, providing clarity and comfort when needed most. It’s like a warm hug!”.

It is incredible how life can change if we open to healing and other ways of perceiving our reality. I am keen to do all I can to help others in this regard and as well as offering Reiki treatments and attunements, I also offer Spiritual Life Coaching to help people as Ali once helped me.

To learn more please see here.

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