Emma Despres 04/10/2024 Emma Despres 04/10/2024

Feeling stuck?

And with the change, sometimes comes the feeling of being stuck.

Wanting change but not sure what to do to create it?

Feeling stuck in the same old rut?

Think you’ve brought in change, only to find you straight back where you started?

Same old narrative still swirling in your head?

Approaching a big birthday and determined not to make the next decade like the last one?

Weary of taking anti-depressants and still feeling low?

Approaching peri-menopause and feeling a bit sad?

At the root of a lot of this, is the continuous denial of your deeper self, which is trying to get your attention, through this feeling of stuck-ness and groundhog day and boredom and frustration and just feeling that something is off.

It usually is. You’ve usually rejected a part of ourself.

Yoga offers tools to help us. So does Reiki. Ayurveda helps enormously too. These are all spiritual practices, and the more we practice them, the more we gain. Not that it’s all about this of course, of getting somewhere, at least not outside of yourself. It is very much about going inside and discovering what is missing from your life (usually our connection to heart and soul) and somehow bringing more of that (back) into life.

We have tendency to throw parts of ourself away during childhood or teenage years, often in a quest to meet the needs of others, to be what they wanted us to be, denying our own truth in the process. So much of our lives are lived pleasing others and meeting their expectations, teachers, parents, care givers, partners, even friends. Sometimes people don’t want us to thrive, to be ourselves, because it shifts the status quo and makes them feel uneasy because they may no longer be able to control us or feel quite so secure and safe.

But meanwhile we suffer, a part of us dying inside until something happens to wake us up - illness, injury, chronic depression, extreme tiredness, relentless sadness, terrible menstrual and/or peri-menopausal symptoms, infertility, and/or deep grief. All of these are signs that something is off, that we are not in alignment with our truth, not thriving and not living our life as was intended when our soul chose to incarnate here on Planet Earth.

We are all here with a purpose. But often we live far removed from it, caught up in the illusion of the material world, selling out to some false idea and notion of success (this is not your fault, we have been deeply conditioned to this 3-D reality) and meanwhile dying inside.

Some of us do die, too young. We forget our impermanence. Think we’re here for ever. Live for tomorrow. Put it off, we’ll deal wit it later. Buying into the ‘one day it will all be OK’ mentality. But maybe that day will never come?

It is never too late.

Never too late to heal the trauma, ditch the negative inner narrative, let go of false identifies and begin again, start afresh, be more of who we are and less of what makes us feel so lost, broken and/or heavy.

Yoga recommends taking action in a positive direction, doing something different, looking at our self honestly and accepting what needs to be accepted and changing what can be changed.

Reiki offers us the opportunity to heal ourselves with our own hands and to raise our vibration supporting our personal and spiritual development - just becoming attuned changes things, we start to shift our perspective, let go of the old, allow the new to trickle in.

Ayurveda is huge too. Changing our diet can make a huge difference to our wellbeing and connection to ourself, let alone adding in a few lifestyle changes to support our positive transformation.

All of this can be experienced by signing up for Spiritual Life Coaching. This has really changed things for some of my clients. They have started to come alive again. They have healed. They have spoken about their dreams for the first time in years. And some of them have even started living them. All of them though have found a deeper connection to self, cultivated a more positive attitude, trust, faith and become increasing grateful for the small things, to make a difference, heck some are even loving themselves now, being kinder, saying no, better boundaries, improved relationships, sleeping well.

It’s quite amazing what happens when we face our fears and take the leap, when we step out of our comfort zone. When we make the choice to unstick ourselves and try and live a better life, a happier life, a more peaceful life, a more contented life, when we decide we are done with our suffering and meeting the needs of others beyond our own, when we are tired of our own self-depreciating crap and realise that we only get one chance at this precious life.

If you are interested, if you want to tap into this major lunar standstill approaching in 2025 and the huge energy of change it is bringing then take a look here, start to value yourself, start to invest in yourself, look at where you are spending money and realise how much is spent needlessly, supporting more of what is out of balance, start to make changes, start to orientate towards your dreams and accepting your beautiful and marvellous YOU.

Love Emma x

Emma Despres 01/10/2024 Emma Despres 01/10/2024

Embracing change!

That was quite some storm which passed through as we head to the solar eclipse tomorrow. Today is so calm in comparison, the dark night, argued as being the most intuitive part of the moon’s cycle, likened to the day before us women may bleed, many an insight can come through if we are quiet and listen.

We are reminded of course that all of life is subject to change. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali talks about this – Sutra 2.15 proposes that our suffering arises from our resistance to change.

We are encouraged to accept changes and not allow our underlying patterns around consistency and control fight against it. We don’t know. And we are never truly in control.

Acceptance then is key. The Sutras has something to say about this too, in 2.1, when Kriyā yoga – the yoga of action - is presented to us and offers us tools to navigate these times of change and the choppy waters that such times can bring. There are three components:

Tapas – meaning to heat/purification. We are encouraged to make a certain effort towards doing things that are positive and constructive and in the right direction such as getting on our yoga mat, eating better, getting more sleep.

Svādhyāya – reflection. This can include reading spiritual texts and reflecting on these as a guide.

Iśvarapranidhānāni – surrender – the idea that we are not ibn control and the world does not revolve around us. This includes our acceptance of our place in things, and recognition that there is something higher than us.

We are reminded – like karma yoga in the Bhagavad Gita – to do the work without attachment to the fruit. We surrender to that – do as an offering for the greater good -most of the time we have a motivation of gain.

We are reminded to let go of things that don’t work out and in the process change our attitude. We are also reminded that change is inevitable but we can learn to make the most of it, reducing our suffering which in turn offers us a more peaceful state of being and indeed living

It does feel that this eclipse season is trying to encourage change. I can certainly feel it and am excited by it, being open to what the universe now wishes to co-create, and letting go in the process.

I find myself dropping deeper into my practice and beginning new yogic studies, eating better, getting more sleep, immersing myself in more of what sets my heart alight, and letting go of ways that cause stress (driving on Guernsey!). It’s a work in process. But I am trying to make certain effort.

Beinspired embarks on its first women’s series this evening, having started its first Opening to Self-Love series which was delightful on Sunday. We have more exciting offerings ahead. We have our last Sark Retreat next weekend, and a provisional booking for a retreat at Chalice Wells in Glastonbury in April 2026, and more ideas for future locations whirling in my head. There is another opportunity to become attuned to Reiki in early December – albeit there is an also an online offering.

Yoga wise, I hope to have some more recordings soon to help those of you practice at home. Albeit we are encouraged to work with a teacher directly, so we don’t fall into bad habits, and my intimate classes have been well received in this regard and of course the Monday evenings and Friday morning drop-ins. There’s another Spiritual Rejuvenation this Sunday. And more Vedic chanting coming soon and a new three-week Breath Well series for those who need to maximise their prana and positively shift their vitality.

Lastly, the Spiritual Life Coaching is really helping people to embrace change. It incorporates Reiki and Ayurveda and various other tools and really makes a difference - we can only stay stuck so long until we fall into sickness and bouts of anxiety and depression. We don’t need to. Every moment of every day we have the choice to set outlives free and life differently, thrive! See the website for all these offerings!

Enjoy the new moon and the solar eclipse and I hope you can flow with the changes it ushers in.

Love Emma

Emma Despres 27/09/2024 Emma Despres 27/09/2024

Ultra Processed foods - we have a choice

I’ve recently finished reading Chris van Tulleken’s book, Ultra Processed People: Why do we eat stuff that isn’t food…and why can’t we stop, link to buy off Amazon here, which is both hugely validating and very scary.

It has concerned me for some time that increasing numbers of people are eating ultra processed food (UPF) to the extent that it has become more of the norm (in our busy lives) and for some people there is little choice as they live in food swamps where access to fresh food is minimal. It is perhaps not surprising that we are becoming increasingly sick as a society, not that the powers that be will acknowledge the connection.

In fact this is what scares me the most - that people are actually producing data to validate the need for UPF. these are people who are prepared to compromise on people’s health and wellbeing simply to make money. You have to be so careful with research - scientist can prove anything in their favour if they so wish and as our society now places them on pedestals, we can fall for their crap.

It’s a no brainer in my world - we are what we eat. Therefore eating UPFs devoid of any actual life force is certainly not going to help us thrive. We have to remember that we are energy first and foremost, as is nature, and nature provides us with all we need to thrive. We have to think in vibrational terms. A strawberry grown at home in the moon and sunlight, with love and care, if likely to taste a whole heap nicer than a strawberry grown on a mass level in depleted soil, covered with pesticides and picked with little love.

Of course it’s even worse with UPFs as they are not even real food.

The problem is that life is busy and many people live their lives in their heads, devoid of connection to their body, and have very little awareness of how much the food they eat negatively affects the way they feel. Furthermore lots of people are poor and cannot afford to eat well because sadly UPFs are often cheaper than proper food.

And of course UPFs are addictive, which means that people easily get hooked - look at Pringles, one of the classic addictive foods, developed with that very notion in mind, there is not one healthy ingredient in Pringles, even the way they have been shaped has been designed purposefully to maximise the taste buds on your tongue and cause you to want more - ““once you pop, you just can’t stop”.

Obviously all this UPFs is leading to changes in our relationship to traditional foods as well as creating chaos in our bodies, with increasingly levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Chris is keen to highlight that this is not our fault. We are sold the idea that UPFs are somehow good for us, affordable, plentiful and making our lives easier because we are spared the time is takes to prepare foods from scratch - sod the fact our body struggles to digest them and our overall wellbeing is negatively impacted, let alone the impact on traditional society and our ecosystem.

Sadly it all boils down to money. We live in a capitalist, patriarchal and consumer society and most people are driven solely by the idea of making money. They don’t care so much about our health and well-being, not really - a hard realisation to accept, I know I struggled, we have this tendency to think that people all think the same way we do -= they don’t!

Even those food stuffs marketed as healthy which you might find in Hansa might be ultra processed, containing ingredients that have been manufactured to take the place of more traditional (and healthier) binds and thickeners. The vegan craze was the worst. Yikes. It certainly isn’t healthy to eat those vegan products, a marketing dream thought, these fads.

I was saddened to read how many animals are bred, tested upon and therefore suffer, in the process of making UPFs.

I was also saddened to read how many people sell out to these big corporations and actually feel that they are doing a positive thing when they introduce indigenous cultures to these products, encouraging obesity and dental issues in numbers never known previously, when traditional foods were eaten. Even the Amazon has not been left untouched.

Mind you we are all contributing in some small way. if we’re not buying these products and therefore creating a market for them, then we might be invested in them, especially thorough pension funds.

And we wonder why the world is in the state it is in.

I was heartened though to read how many people are trying to make a differences who are not selling out to the broken system, who want to see positive change in the world and are prepared to do something about it, be they lawyers, activists, economists, doctors, nutritionist etc, people who actually care about their fellow man and this beautiful planet we live on.

I wa also heartened to read about a study which validated that children know what is best for them to eat. I am not talking about UPFs. I mean proper foods. Left to choose intuitively children knew when they needed to eat more tomatoes or fish or potatoes or whatever it might be, they knew how to make themselves well using food as their medicine. They take about food lags, where children will eat say a tomato at each meal for a few weeks and then suddenly they stop. This is not fussiness. This is them knowing that they have taken all the vitamins and minerals from the tomato that they need and are ready to address another lack instead.

Ayurveda has always recognised this. It is tried an tested, 5,000 years old and it too works on the premis that whole food are best and food can be used not only as a medicine but as a preventative, supporting optimal digestion and immunity. When I was given the choice for a blood transfusion following Elijah’s birth, I turned it down and chose to heal myself through food instead. A staunch vegetarian at that point, I was literally salivating at the idea of red meat and followed my body’s need to eat this until the desire dropped away, putting my morals to the side, realising that I was going to of little use to Elijah sick, especially breast feeding - and my iron levels returned to normal - a few months later and I went back to my staunch vegetarian ways!

I have food lags even now. Times when I want to eat say a ton of pumpkin seeds and then that desire drops away and I crave almonds instead, or whatever it might be. Ultimately our body knows what it needs. But the trouble is, our mind often gets in the way, or our emotions, and we eat for a myriad of reasons, not always healthy - in fact often not healthy, which is what leads to weight and other health issues.

Chris highlights the costs to our health of UPFs which I have summarised here:

The destruction of the food matrix, UPF food is generally softer, which means you eat faster and eat far more calories per minute than say a traditional meal. Potentially this reduces facial bone size and density and leads to bone and dental issues.

2. UPF is high in calories by way of fat and sugar and low in fibre so negatively impacts the body’s digestive system.

3. Whole foods are displaced from the diet, especially among low income households - this because UPF is usually much cheaper than whole foods.

4. Taste is disrupted when consuming UPF, which negatively impacts metabolism and appetite and can lead to over eating.

5. UPFs are often addictive and designed to be so - think of the of Pringles, which might lead to ‘one you pop, you just can’t stop, until you pop’. Inevitably overeating of UPFs leads to obesity and type 2 disabetes.

6. The preservatives, emulsifiers, modified starches and other additives negatively impact the body’s microbiome and can lead to increased suspectibilty to inflammation.

7. UPFs play into our busy lives, because they are marketed as convenient and at an atrcativce cost. No hours spent slaving away in the kitchen cooking from scratch and the time and money spent buy-in the ingredients in the first place.

8. The additives and physical processing affect brain and endocrine function, and of course the plastics used affect fertility.

9. And of course we cannot ignore the fact that the product methods lead to environmental destruction, increased carbon emissions and plastic pollution to say nothing of the harm to us.

It saddens me that not more is done to regulate this industry. Maybe the health services wouldn’t be so over run if people realised the connection between what they eat and their health and wellbeing.

The only way things will change - beyond government intervention and legislation - is for each of us to take responsibility. We have the choice of what we put in our mouths. We have the choice to thrive by remembering that we are what we eat.

I shall be forever grateful to Carol Champion and my Ayurvedic doctor for not only educating me, but inspiring me to make positive changes to my diet, which massively changed the way I felt and created a passion for good food.

But it is my Mum though, who I really have to thank. She is the best cook I have ever known and has always made us food from scratch which not only tastes amazing but oozes love You just cannot put a price on that. It’s her fault really that I struggle to eat out. No one makes food like my Mum and I don’t like not knowing what ingredients and products are being used in kitchens, let alone whether food is microwaved (yuck) or prepared/made by people who are not oozing love. I don’t want to eat that crap!

You see we are not only what we eat, because our digestion is also affected by the way food is prepared and cooked for us. Food made with love tastes very different to food made with anger. I like to eat well. I like to cook from scratch for my family. Some days I might make three different meals meeting everyone’s needs and the shopping and preparation takes time, but it is a form of meditation, and it helps to ground me as much as it helps to nourish my children. It is worth the sacrifice in other areas of my life.

I highly recommend reading Chris’ book, especially if you struggle to let go of UPFs. It’s not your fault by the way, they are designed to catch you and get you addicted to them - they want your money!

Love Emma x

Emma Despres 22/09/2024 Emma Despres 22/09/2024

Happy Equinox from Rousay!

We are on Rousay for the Equinox. This because there are a number of cairns aligned to this solar event. Many of them are ruined however, yet the island retains the energy, we could feel it overnight and into the sunrise this morning.

Rousay is a wild place, the kind of place that this family loves. A hilly island, 3km north-west of the Orkney mainland, Rousay has been dubbed ‘the Egypt of the north’ due to its wealth of archeological sites - the reason we are here!

Untouched pebble beach, over a few fences to get here

Smaller than Guernsey with an area of 18.8 square miles, it is the fifth largest island in the remarkable Orkney archipelago. It is sparsely populated - only 250 inhabitants, which is a draw for us, living amongst 62k of people on busy Guernsey, which I certainly struggle with at times. Even Sark doesn’t always provide quite the same ‘getting away from it all’ experience - but I am grateful to have that magical island on our doorstep (and there’s still one space available on our Sark retreat in 3 weeks).

Inevitably here the wildlife thrives - several parts of the island are designated Sites of Scientific Interest (SSSI) with a RSPB bird reserve too. Eben especially has loved seeing the seals. And has been on constant look out for the otters.

Love a derelict boat or house to investigate

For me Rousay is cairn heaven and I was delighted to find that we are staying - quite by chance - next to Taversoe Tuick Cairn. This two-storey cairn was discovered in 1898 and is the only double decker cairn in Orkney, and only one of two known to have been built in this way. Should you be interested, you can read more here.

We’ve visited the other cairns too of course. One of the most famous is Midhowe, which is huge and now contained within a hangar to help preserve it. Despite it’s modern situ, it still retains the ancient energy, as do others which have also been subjected to cement roofs for preservation reasons such as Blackhammer and Yarso.

Eben trying to perfect his handstand at Taversoe

There’s tons to explore here from the Neolithic stuff to the Iron Age broths, Viking graves and abandoned churches, crofts, farmsteads and even a boat!

Eben’s energy doubles in the cairns - here at Taversoe

We chose to get out on the land, exploring what we could of the coastline and the beautiful heather clad moors, out to visit Yetnasteen, a seven-foot standing stone. I’m going to miss this wild walking back home.

It’s a fascinating place, very much alive, and reminding us of the simplicity of life, and a slower pace, for now at least, no doubt the hectic pace of Guernsey will catch us soon and we’ll be back into it - but these pauses are helpful headspace providers and with that an opportunity to see things differently, look at where change may be helpful, certainly an increasing move towards simplicity and living increasingly lightly, I am astounded how much waste this family creates in a couple of days, and a drive towards greater patience:-)

What was a cairn - looking for the standing stone

Wherever you are, I hope you enjoy the balance that the Equinox encourages, and the insight it gifts.

Love Emma

Emma Despres 18/09/2024 Emma Despres 18/09/2024

Happy full moon eclipse from Orkney!

Sun, moon, sea, stones and family. Orkney is heaven. This after a fantastic few days in Findhorn with some sensational yoga teaching courtesy of Louise - can’t wait to share - and river and sea swimming, and of course Recumbent stone circles in Aberdeenshire (shall spare you the photos) and lots of playgrounds. Hope the moon is blessing you too and let’s see what the eclipse brings - they have a habit of changing things so let’s flow with it and trust.

Ewan and boys exploring Hoy while Mummy is in the Dwarfie Stone!

Not sure boys as excited as Mummy at Dwarfie!

Thank you Orkney. What a memorable full moon eclipse day.

Love Emma x