Endings and beginnings: Dreaming a new dream

We are fast approaching the end of 2021 and what a year it’s been! Another year of learning to live with Covid, and another year of significant change for many.

I always had a sense that 2021 was about stepping up and i certainly felt that in my own life. As a friend, I had to step up as my good friend, Marie, died from cancer and try to be there for her and later for her husband and boys. As a Mum, I had to step up when Elijah’s separation anxiety got critical and I fought for his exit from the school system, something that should have happened a long time ago. I had to step up in letting go as my youngest, Eben, settled into the school system and I realised I was holding him back.

Professionally I had to step up too, making some ruthless edits to my new book, From Darkness Comes Light, as well as letting go of The Family Yoga Book (now available on Amazon!), so it could find it’s own way. I aligned with Guernsey Mind too and had to step up my healing work. I stepped up my medicinal plant growing too and have added tinctures to my repertoire. I have also stepped up my Reiki practice and have qualified recently as a Karuna Ki Reiki Master Teacher.

But really none of that matters, not in the grand scheme. Maybe that’s the greatest stepping up of 2021, has been the shift in my perspective of how I see the world and my place in it. I realise that no amount of achieving will ever give me the inner fulfilment that I seek, just as no amount of money will ever replace the gift that is time with my children. In a round about way Covid has been a blessing, not only bringing me back to basics, but back to myself, beyond all the external stuff that seems so important two years ago. This is a changed world and I feel positively changed by it.

I also realise that we are at the end of a big chapter in each of our lives. I knew my chapter was coming to an end with the final proper edit on my book and this ushered in a big heavy heart and a period of grieving for that life now lived. It was time to let it go. Its weight was beginning to exhaust me. But I have never been good at letting go - this is the tendency of those of us who have experienced depression, we lug our past around with us and wonder why its gotten heavy. Those who suffer anxiety and fear are more likely to be future orientated, stressing about some unknown moment ahead.

I knew it was time to let go, that there was no need to keep holding on. I’m grateful for all that I have learned, for all the experiences lived, but it is time now to dream a new dream, whatever that may be. I know I am not alone, many others are also experiencing this dying to what has been and opening up to the possibility of the new coming in. Life is like this, it is one of cycles. As difficult as it has been to witness friends and family members dying this year, I am aware that it is all part of our individual journey as a soul incarnate but also part of the cycle of life, each passing brings new beginnings, whether we like it or not.

This in-between time is always difficult, caught between two worlds. I feel adrift without a future orientation, living now the life I once dreamed and without another one yet clear to me. I have a feeling though, that is is about the Earth. Maybe we will start dreaming the Earths dream of greater harmony and alignment, of co-creation and respect for nature’s inherent wisdom - our own inherent wisdom if only we could access it beyond the noise of the thinking mind and demands of the ego.

The ancient yogis, the ancients themselves, they all knew how to live in harmony with nature and with their own nature too. They saw the sacred in everything, and this was reflected back at them. It’s such a shame that our ways of control and manipulation, of greed and materialism have taken us so far away from our very essence. But times are changing. We are awakening and realising how far we have fallen. We are even beginning to realise that while it is about us individually, it is actually about us collectively. Deep within us, we know there’s another way, a far more heart based and sacred way and we are being called to connect with it.

I have found myself increasingly drawn to spiritual communities, such as Embercombe and Findhorn. Findhorn especially excites me, not least because of it’s amazing growing capacity (the soil is said to be spiritual and ethereal beings assist…) but because it is guided by three simple practices, inner listening to the sacred, co-creation with the intelligence of nature and work as love in action. Their vision is of a radically transformed world embodying the sacred, honouring each other and co-creating wisely and lovingly.

I have a feeling this will underpin my approach to 2022 - embodying more of the sacred, co-creating with others wisely and lovingly and within all this, opening to greater love. I have another feeling that this in turn may lead to a radically transformed way of seeing the world, which will literally change the world, simply because of the changed perspective - if there’s one thing I have learned this year, it is that in freeing our mind from more of its conditioning, the more our perspective shifts and the more we see everything differently, we actually start Seeing!

Thus it’s clear to me that the more we can embody the sacred, the more it guides us and the more we enter into greater harmony with it and the more everything changes. It’s a radical approach in itself. Nothing to do but undo, and nowhere else to be but here now. There’s nothing to achieve. Only a life to be fully embraced, experienced and lived. Easier said than done. Being HERE now is not always easy. I hear myself often wanting to be somewhere else. So this is where the practice is needed. In being in the discomfort of the NOW moment.

On another level I’m grateful to the changes that Elijah’s schooling situation has ushered in as we take a more nature based approach to learning. I’m blessed with some wonderful unschooling friends and their children who see life similarly. This has opened up a whole new way for me, which i am keen to embrace in 2022. Children have screwed over by Covid. It saddens me the manner in which Eben has had to settle into Reception Year at School, let alone the way he had to manage the changes at pre-school. We have let our fear override our compassion at times and I do believe it is time to put children’s wellbeing at the forefront of our hearts and minds. I’m keen to do what I can to support children’s spiritual growth as the year unfolds…I have a few ideas in mind.

But for now, we did our bit, my boys and I today, enjoying more of a NOW experience as nature tends to encourage. We headed out west for sunset and managed a fire in the process, using their new fire strikers (thank you Leo!). Elijah tried to whittle a wand and we had great fun with the stormy seas and casting spells towards it. There was the inevitable fighting as there always is, but there is something about letting boys be boys in nature that is hugely heartening. We were much more present moment. Time lost meaning, just as it usually does at spiritual sites. It certainly lifted our spirits before we turned home to a poorly daddy.

I hope the end of the year is kind to you and you are kind to yourself too. Do away with the new year’s resolutions that set you up for a fall and embrace more of who you are and give yourself a great big hug in the process. 2022 is truly a year for loving more of the Self and letting this energy of acceptance and love, of inner harmony, ripple through the planet and help us to love more of each other in the process. Here’s hoping anyhow!

Love Emma x

Karuna - compassion

I hope you all had a good Christmas. Here ours was as manic as usual, our youngest is hyper at the best of times and was on another level the last few days, rather exhausting at times, especially the ‘opening present obsession’, but we survived!

As much as I love the build up to Christmas, as soon as Christmas is done I am done with it too and fortunately Ewan feels the same so our decorations were taken down yesterday and the cottage sighed with the relief of the clutter gone. I sighed too, I love clear space!

I spent the last few evenings studying to be a Karuna Ki Reiki Master Teacher with a lady with whom I studied an advanced Reiki course during the last lockdown. It’s one of those things that just kind of happened. I was looking at some of her other courses and then decided just to go for it. I was always resistant to online Reiki courses until undertaking the one during lockdown and deriving great benefit from it. It really changed things for me, drawing in a new Reiki friend and spiritual teacher, who shares a mutual love of ancient stones and landscape.

It was this experience that made me change my mind about running my own online Reiki attunement sessions. I suddenly saw it differently, had a shift in perspective, and recognised the benefit and the way I had been limiting myself previously by holding into a particular opinion. In fairness 2021 has been all about that for me - shifting perspective. Well that and cultivating greater compassion for self as much as for others. Not easy at times, the universe has certainly thrown in some challenges to test, but I feel better for it.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, 1.33, we are introduced to the notion that a peaceful mind results from:

1. A mental attitude of friendship towards those who are content (i.e. not being jealous of them or threatened by them for it!);

2. Compassion towards those who suffer (and let’s face it we all suffer in some way, accepting this is one of the foundation’s in Buddhism)

3. Joy towards virtuous individuals (good actions);

4. Indifference/do not be disturbed/drawn into judgment or contempt by/for those who act poorly (don’t let your peaceful mind be disturbed by others and their poor actions, just let them go).

Essentially Patanjali is encouraging us to cultivate the four great attitudes of the heart, friendliness or loving kindness (maitri), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy for others (mudito) and equanimity (upekshanam).

It seems appropriate then, to end the year studying Karuna Ki Reiki, Reiki of compassion, essentially. Not to say that Usui Reiki isn’t also about compassion, by its very nature Reiki does encourage greater compassion for all sentient beings, including ourself, but this approach is simply more focused on that.

It’s been an interesting enquiry, because I have found that it is always easier to cultivate compassion for others, than it is for those whom I love dearly. Its nonsensical in many ways, but when the heart is involved and our inherent vulnerability, it is sometimes easier to reject those who have the potential to hurt us the most, and switch off our compassion towards them and their suffering, than it is to be open hearted to those who are less likely to break out heart if that love is not reciprocated. The mind is a tricky old thing, the heart trickier still!

But we have to go deeper into that place of vulnerability, the spiritual path demands it of us, especially if we have welcomed Reiki and yoga into it. It is ALL about the heart. The Yoga Sutras send us to the heart in 1,36, where we are encouraged to focus on the light in the heart, this as a way of calming and centering the mind. It’s true. I have found that if we can re-orientate our awareness to the heart when we have dropped into anxiety or fear, or somehow lost our centre, then this can be extremely comforting.

It’s about compassion though really. All these practices encourage us to cultivate greater compassion, yoga, Buddhism, Reiki, Ayurveda, it’s underpinning all of these practices. But it’s not easy, the path is not straight, it’s not clear, we have to come face to face with all the many ways we deceive ourselves, all the ways we blame others and victimise ourselves, the many ways that we -ironically - protect our heart. The trouble is the greater our defence, the less compassion we have for others, let alone ourselves.

The more, too, we retain the idea of separation, them and us, needing to protect ourselves in the first place. We’re kind of doing this with the whole covid drama. It’s offering us a wonderful opportunity to shift our perspective and let go of our fixed mind, cultivating greater compassion for ourselves and others in the process…if only we can get out of our fear and see the bigger picture, stop taking it all so personally, viewing life from a soulful perspective, the continuous cycle…

I’m only grateful that I did shift my perspective on the online Reiki courses and embraced the offering that came to me form the universe. I do feel greater compassion for having gone through the mill with it, never easy, one has to break down to break through and there’s been a lot of this this year, of having to go deeper into the heart, death and illness of friends and family encouraging this, the eclipses, the covid changes, all of it has played it’s own beautiful role. So here’s to ending 2021 in the heart, with greater compassion - karuna, Sanskrit word worth remembering.

You can access the online Reiki Level One course through this website. For those based in Guernsey, the attunement can be in person or by distance. Having experienced distant attunements myself, I know that these do the job perfectly - in fact I’m amazed by the potency of them, mind blowing in itself, that Reiki can be sent by distance like this. It might be the best decision you make, to bring more Reiki into your life.

Love Emma

Yule blessings

Wishing you all joy and much magic at Yule. Today the sun is at standstill - its reached its most southerly sunrise, and its lowest height during noontime, making it the shortest day of the year. The winter solstice sunrise was celebrated at new grange this morning, and the winter solstice sunset was celebrated at Stonehenge. I’d love to have been at both, regardless of the lack of sun!

Here on Guernsey, i was lucky to see the sunrise (with the moon still in the sky) and set in a special way, avoiding the crowds at one of our local dolmens, which has a winter solstice alignment. We’re spoilt on Guernsey, it was once awash with dolmens and menhirs and the sites still hold some of the frequency, just got to answer the call of the Goddess in aligning us to them. We were lucky with a beautiful fire at my folks’ stone circle yesterday and the sun today and I was lucky that I also got to hang out in numerous dolmens and spiritual sites with the children’s playdates, burning our home made organic beeswax filled walnuts (more on them another time!).

I keep saying it, but these are difficult times, and if ever there was a time to dig deep into nature and into our practice then it is now. I have no idea how people are faring without! So if it is all getting too much for you, especially after Christmas has passed and the dark winter evenings drag on, then please don’t forget to roll out your mat, even if you just lie on it and put on one of my free guided relaxations. but of course the website is packed with free content to help you to help yourself.

This is my greatest wish this solstice, that we all start taking greater responsibility for our health and wellbeing, and our healing and transformation and our consciousness. No one can do it for us. No amount of reading or thinking about yoga and Reiki will change things. These are both spiritual practices and we need to therefore practice. The website has been focused on helping you do exactly that, on your own, when you can.

I hope to have some more free yoga video content for you soon, mindful and grounding practices to see us through the media storm that is currently upon us with yet more fear of Covid variances. This is a reality we must continuously face. I have found switching off from all media, including all news channels, incredibly helpful. So too, getting on my mat and out in nature with the boys every day. The fear will likely kill us before the virus!

If you’re reading this and feeling the overwhelm and anxiety, then do just get close to the ground and listen to your breathing, before popping on something from the website. Don’t forget that there’s online training now too, learning more about the menstrual cycle and the moon which comes with various free yoga and meditation practices and also the new online Reiki Level One attunement, with attunements taking place in person or by distance. There’s also live workshops and trainings and of course the free online Reiki each week (albeit not staring back now until 9 January).

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this descent into the darkness and can embrace the uncertainty as we approach the end of the year. Who knows what 2022 will bring, but I do know that there will be more light coming in!

Solstice blessings!

Love Emma xx

The impending darkness of the solstice

I LOVE the winter solstice, and while I’d really love to be at Stonehenge celebrating, I am happy to be celebrating here too. There are various alignments locally, and I was lucky to be on Sark this weekend where I was curious to find some alignments there too.

I was lucky actually, a full moon traipsing the land at night alone, always a blessing, especially on little Sark, which is simply alive with energy; the capstone at the Sark southern dolmen was literally glowing in the moon light, to say nothing of the menhir a little up the road.

The next morning I was fortunate to see the moon set to the north of Guernsey/Herm and I even managed to make it out to the southern dolmen to catch sunrise on my yoga mat, a few sun salutations, trying to avoid all the sheep poo littering the place! We found more special stones later, and the Buddhist carving.

I love Sark as you know and it was magical this weekend, with the light’s being turned on in the high street on Friday evening, which look absolutely magical. It was well worth the rather challenging boat journey on Friday, with the aborted harbour drop-off and into le creux instead! And there I was naively assuming it would be calm simply because the sun was out. Well you know what they say about obstacles along the way, and tests too. We passed that one, just!

I took my dad with me this time, and the two boys, we had fun, managed to meet my Sark soul friend and her daughter and explored more parts of Sark previously not seen. Sark never fails to amaze me, it just keeps giving. Even the walk back to the boat was a new one for me, along the cliffs, a new perspective and way of seeing things.

I’m still stuck on that in the yoga sutras, the idea of cultivating a different perspective, especially when one is in a state of confusion. This full moon being in gemini, an air sign, has highlighted confusion. I feel confused too. Not sure the future direction, everything still up in the air, in between one way of being and another. It’s lovely to have a few days off with the boys, back here on Guernsey, to truly celebrate the solstice and immerse ourselves in fires and the land, and of course some sun-orientated worshipping!

Yesterday I led the annual yoni yoga candlelit class to celebrate the solstice and go deep within to see what the darkness is trying to reveal. I love these sessions and the group energy, and I am grateful for the opportunity too keep going with these, despite the fear permeating so much of our community.

I was listening to one of my Ayurvedic Buddhist offerings last night and the Buddhist monk was saying how fear underpins anger and I see this playing out all around me, people acting out of fear with anger, especially when it comes to the whole boring vaccine debate. One time on Sark someone spoke with anger about the unvaccinated making the virus worse. Fear underpinned his comments. Fear of not knowing how it’s all going to turn out and needing someone to blame.

We always need to blame. No one talks of taking greater responsibility for our own health and wellbeing, or seeing the bigger picture, about the way we are living and our attitude to nature, our own especially. Everything has a right to be here, including a virus. It’s a shame we can’t find a way to live in greater harmony. The more we resist something, the more it grows. We resist and repress our anger and it’ll one day catch us out, exploding out of us. I wonder how long we’ll keep resisting a virus. Maybe when we accept it, things will change, who knows, I’m certainly no expert.

But I do know that it is fear that motivates so much of our response to covid. Fear of death ultimately. I’ve said it before but even the wisest are scared of this, the Yoga Sutras talks about it. But it’s not just fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of not working, fear of losing something. And the response is often from a place of anger, whichever side of the fence you sit. I find it easier not to have an opinion. Opinions change anyway, depending on the perspective. I’d rather just make a choice based on how I feel in any moment and maybe that’ll change as the moment too changes. Being fixed is not helpful, allows little flexibility, or opportunity to see a different perspective. Creates fear and anger too as we hold on tightly…

With luck we can all put our differences aside and enjoy time with loved ones and remember what it’s all about as we descend into the darkness tomorrow. Love. It’s always about love. And loving compassion. A work in progress! Often our vulnerability is our greatest obstacle. We will do all we can sometimes to defend this. but if we can enter into vulnerability, be OK with it, allow it, well it changes everything, it opens our heart to the world, and the world definitely needs more hearts opening.

So on that note, happy solstice tomorrow, enjoy the magic of the darkness!

Love Emma xxx

The light's coming back soon!

The gemini full moon is upon us on Saturday. Exciting times! Maybe because I’ve spent the last two mornings with Elijah out and about at Saints and Petit Bot and out to the fairy ring, seeing seals and making wishes, but it feels as if we are really are offered an opportunity for new beginnings, at least if we made an ego sacrifice over this year of eclipses.

The spring eclipses set the stage, asked us to did deep into unresolved trauma that is clouding our perception and creating a reality that is out of alignment with our truth simply because of our outdated and limited thinking patterns because of holding on to said trauma!

Certainly I’ve been doing a lot of work with clients on unresolved trauma and limited core beliefs and thinking patterns these last four months especially, which has been an honour and privilege. I am forever grateful to Guernsey Mind for providing the opportunity to work so deeply with people - they offer clients eight free sessions with me, and that is quite a gift for everyone concerned, for the world as a whole because of the potential for shifting and transforming.

Its been tough time for everyone, with lots of change and grieving for ways of old, and also for the relationships dead on their knees, people forced to live through these increasingly stressful times, it’s amazing anyone’s made it through without a spiritual practice - albeit I know a few who have found solace in wine instead! And sea swimming. Thankfully we have the sea surrounding us here on Guernsey, another true gift, I couldn’t survive quite so easily without a daily dip either!

This latest eclipse cycle was really pushing us through to the other side, at least if we’ve done the work. We really needed to let go to create some space. It’s been a turbulent time, I mentioned it before that sort of in-between stage of the caterpillar and butterfly, of not knowing where you’re going to or even what you’re letting go of, but you know something is changing. The change is of course you, your mind, but you need to let go of ego along the way, some false belief or thinking pattern, some aspect of ego that ego clung to to keep you safe, but which begins to suffocate you over time, at least spiritually and certainly the heart.

Many of you will have felt your heart more lately, a big stuck wedge of pain urging you to keep moving through it, “let it go”, it’s probably screaming and even if you don’t know what to do with it, just being aware of it and turning into it rather than away from it is enough. It won’t kill you! It might kill you if you try to avoid it or numb yourself form it though. At least a part of your soul will feel dead to you. Its easy to project the pain to someone else, especially partners, so be gentle, take ownership and remember we are all mirrors, they’re mirroring you…uncomfortable I know!

As usual the key is compassion. Holding yourself gently and them too - everyone, now I think about it. Especially the children for reasons explained in my precious blog. if you still haven’t done your forgiving, to yourself for getting yourself in the mess of the trauma in the first place (again at a soulful level if not at a physical level), then also to everyone else involved. We’re all doing our best. And remember we can only work with our level of consciousness in any one moment and that changes. Maybe now, in this moment we’d make different choices if we had our time again.

For me it’s a super exciting time. The weather has settled, I love this calm winter weather. There’s Friday on Sark for the Christmas light turn on, Saturday to visits Sark dolmens and see my Sark soul friend, with the boys and my dad too, then back to Guernsey for the full moon, woo hoo, and then a solstice yoni yoga class on Sunday (still some places available if you’d like to join me, see the website events section, women only I’m afraid:-)) followed by Kirtan with Katie, then Monday and Tuesday outdoor fun with the boys and the SOLSTICE. I LOVE the winter solstice, only sad I can’t be in Stonehenge this year.

There’s much to celebrate! Life generally is worth celebrating. It’s been a tough time but the lights coming again and we can take comfort in that. Oh and personally, I am only delighted that the Family Yoga Book is days away from being available on Amazon and my online Reiki Level One attunement course is now LIVE…woo hoo, see, lots of seeds finally sprouting…

Love Emma x

Lest we not forget

And breathe. To me calmness has returned and a while heap of clarity has flooded in. I’m sure I’m not alone. I did feel now that the last few months of turmoil is coming to an end, like the butterfly is readying itself to come out of the cocoon and a new chapter begins.

For me personally a huge chapter has recently ended. The Family Yoga Book is hours away from finally being published after 4 years of hard work. My latest book From Darkness Comes Light is in its final edit stage and that’s been 3 years of inner processing and hard blinking work at times. There’s been a grieving that comes with letting go of all this and of settling into an unknown and empty space of nothingness and not knowing what’s next, of great confusion and chaos, as is often the case between one way of being and another.

But since the eclipse the clarity has come in and some of the signs that have been around the last few months especially, but probably the last year really, are beginning to make more sense. I can see the possibility of a new chapter that didn’t seem like a possibility, not even a pipe dream, just a thought that would come and go, but now it’s becoming more of a reality, more of something that might indeed shape the next chapter and take my life into another direction that I hadn’t previously foreseen.

But this is the nature of Reiki certainly. I heard myself talking a bout it in then attunement session last Sunday, how when we get attuned we never know which direction our life will take, because Reiki opens us up to other parts of ourself that were previously hidden, that we may have had a little inkling, but never took seriously. or thought it as a possibility. That happened to me when I discovered Reiki, or at leats not long afterwards, I write about it in Namaste, how life changed and I found this while new chapter opening up as I sold my house, left my job, went off travelling to immerse myself in yoga and focus on writing. and hoped that one day I might meet my life partner and have children.

Now here I am, 18 years on from that time and life looks incredibly different. I managed to create the life I could only dream about then, the children, the life partner, writing books, and I ended up teaching yoga and Reiki too, which I never imagined back then. Was it destiny or did I use my will to create it? Who knows. All I know, is that I felt it in my heart,.

I have been feeling my heart a lot these last few months. My friend dying opened my heart in ways never previously experienced, it felt like it cracked open and I could feel enormous pain I hadn’t processed, from this lifetime and others perhaps. It’s been a tough time, trying to make sense of it all. My heart is still carrying a deep wounding and I feel it in some of my clients too. It’s an old wounding, many lifetimes ago now, a collective wounding, about separation and discrimination.

We were watching a documentary on Stonehenge last night and Ewan said something about the division starting when we began to divide and own land, when we tried to make it something that could be owned, rather than appreciating it as the gift it is for all to enjoy and live in harmony with nature and the land in its wholeness and us in our wholeness as humanity too. It struck me how much this theme continues to play out, the collective wounding and pattern around discrimination and separation and how Covid has come in, like the Second World War did too, as a wounded pattern, highlighting to us this discrimination and giving us as a humanity the opportunity to heal it.

Maybe we did heal it or attempt to post war, look at the hippie movement of the 60s and the emphasis on love and peace. But then was not the time, the energy was not strong enough and we descended into darkness again, this relentless need to control nature and move further away from her, to reap her resources to feed our need for greed and power. We really have fallen as a humanity. Maybe Covid has come in to highlight this to us, and of course it plays into our wounded patterning around separation and discrimination and highlights once more our move away from nature (trying to control it, even a virus!) and our own nature too (pop another booster in and hope for the best).

if we can adopt the premise of verse 33 of chapter 2 of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras then maybe we cultivate a different perspective. See Covid not as an enemy to eradicate, and in the process buy into more separation and discrimination, the us and them approach that our history as a humanity is awash with examples of, but as an opportunity truly heal this collective wounding. To come into the heart! Soften the heart to everyone and everything. Appreciate our diversity and our free will, to make decisions for ourselves, freely. This is the gift of being human, we have free will. To take that away from each of us? I don’t know that it can ever be taken away.

This gives me hope. but only if we can keep coming back to the heart and awakening and remembering. Some of us remember. We feel the wounding deep in the heart. Of how life was once lived on planet earth, of the vibration and the magic and the mystery. Of the sheer joy of being alive in this magnificent mystical environment. But the mystical was driven away, the vibration changed, it became heavier and a lot of the ethereal beings could not survive, or chose to hide away. We lost our way. We stopped leaning into nature and pulled away from its and we pulled away from our own nature too, lost sight of the bigger picture, of the purpose, which is simply to BE our true, authentic Self with a purposeful capital S.

There are pockets of vibration on the land. We’re drawn to certain places for a reason. Sark draws me because it isn’t so tainted with the heavier vibration of modern life with cars and buses and all sorts of vehicles, of the tarmac and the degradation of nature that modern life with its ownership, division and human desire and pleasure demands. It is difficult to imagine a landscape that wasn't sculpted by human hands, of nature, even on Sark, before land division and hedging and fencing. We are so conditioned to it, to seeing the land as it is, that we can scarcely imagine that it could be and has been so different.

So we’re still in the heart. We still have lessons to learn. This is one of forgiveness and compassion. Or trying to see all different perspectives and appreciating everyone’s free will and choices made for them individually. There’s also an orientation towards children. They’ve been neglected by our response to Covid and it’s time they were given their voice back again. They’re our next generation. Lest we not forget.

That’s the mantra that keeps playing out in my head, I saw it on my visit to Stanton Drew, at the side of the road and while it was in reference to remembrance day and there were images of poppies, I did think it rather appropriate in reference to the ancient stones too as these carry an ancient vibration - lest we forget. You can’t forget when you touch those stones, and that’s probably why so many of us are increasingly drawn to them these days, because they help us to feel into an ancient energy that resonates with a very deep part of us, from ancient times and previous lives, lest we not forget how the planet once was, of its magical lighter vibration, of ethereal beings, unicorns, mermaids and faeries, there’s a reason we seek them out now as children, we remember on some level…and then we become adults and our left brain logic cultivated so wonderfully by our education system blocks us to it.

Let us remember then, the reason people have fought and lost their lives in the past for the next generation, for the children. Where did we lose our way on even this? How is it that children now need to make the sacrifices for the older generation. It’s all gone back to front somehow. We’ve stopped caring about the world we’re creating and are trying to hold on tightly to the old one that actually wants to change. It makes no sense. But then nothing about our response to Covid makes any sense, not really, not when you approach it from the heart rather than fear. Heart.

I have hope and I have love. I’m hopeful that love will show us the way and that our hearts will guide us there if we can listen and hear them. Keep practising yoga and Reiki because I know with out doubt that these ancient practices lead us there, back to the heart. The heart will heal itself if we allow it and in allowing it, we (being the micro of the macro) will heal the heart of the world too. We need to do this for our children and for the future generations to come, for their hearts to thrive on planet earth and for planet earth to thrive too.

Love Emma x

Peace within the eclipse chaos

Phew, this squeeze solar eclipse and new moon energy is intense to say the least! It’s throwing up all sorts of unresolved stuff, especially around judgement, the way others judge us and how we judge others and ourselves. This alone is enough to test our self worth, but we are also being asked to cultivate greater discernment about what works in our life and what doesn’t, about the people with whom we keep company and the energy of all this.

I have become acutely aware of all of this in own life and have found it very uncomfortable at times. i see how I react to criticism and the way I harden my heart to it, and the manner in which I may then lash out to others, taking my stuff out on them, as a defence mechanism. I see how much it pains me when others reject me for who I am and how easily it then is to consider that there’s something wrong or flawed with me, without appreciating that that’s merely their perception of me, their judgement then, because of me triggering something in them, and on it goes.

None of us are flawed or in need of fixing, we just need to hang on to that fragile aspect of self that tells us it’s so. The more we buy into this as a possibility - that we are flawed and in need of fixing - the more we will attract in experiences, which will l validate this to us. So we need to be aware of this, and catch ourselves as we drift down that patterning, as it will not serve us to give ourselves a hard time and judge ourselves so. Our poor heart and soul will suffer and if we have a tendency to depression, we will find ourselves in that dark space again.

Mind you the dark space is enlightening, because it gives us an opportunity to literally find our light again. At such times I personally find it very helpful to dig deeper into my yoga practice, get outside into nature, switch off from media, take a break from seeing anyone other than very close and trusted friends, doing things that fill me up, eating as well as I can, hydrating and allowing myself time and space to both grieve out the old and allow in the new. Depression has always been a process of transformation for me. The key is to not get lost in it however and try and numb from it.

I’ve just finished editing my book From Darkness Comes Light, about my journey with depression, and the irony is not lost on me that I now find myself plunged into new moon darkness! It’s the end of a cycle, and there is a grieving that comes with that, also a recognition of needing to let go of certain situations/people that are no longer resonating, and the stepping up that this process entails.

I took comfort the other day in a paragraph of a book I am reading by Ethan Nichtern called The Dharma of the Princess Bride, which reads:

“Ironically, the more nonjudgmental you become, the ore discerning you get about whether to cultivate a closer friendship with a given person. “Nonjudgment” is the clarity you need to see that some relationships just don’t work. The difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship is not whether you love each other; it’s whether you help each other wake up. And if two people want to help each other awaken, they need to do something that the greatest action movies of our time understand. To help each other wake up, you have to help each other beat the bad guys”.

It’s interesting to see the word “bad” used by a Buddhist teacher, but me even saying that shows my judgments! But talking of the bad guys, there is a sense of that in my world at the moment. I’m struggling to understand the current media and political reaction to Omicron and the desperate measures taken to further infringe on personal rights about what happens to our body and to our face and our health generally.

It’s a tricky world to navigate. Unless you toe the fear based line then you are vilified for not being united, even though the supposed united front makes no sense to so many of us (and when you get beyond the media spin you see there really is no united front!). There is no control of nature, no getting out of here alive, I do struggle with all our attempts to make it otherwise. Always we’re pushing the us and them, the right, wrong, the good, bad, rather than just appreciating that we’re all different, we all have different needs and why can’t we just live and let live.

Mind you this is the theme right. Even amongst those who might have similar views on nature or health, there is division and betrayal. So we come back to discernment and retreating from the world, discovering more of our own truth, what we feel in our heart, our truth and staying true to that regardless of the judgements and criticism hurled our way. This is the work of humanity, of the collective, the ability to live in peace together. But first we have to make peace with ourself. That is really what’s coming up this eclipse. Peace.

Everything is up in the air and I felt that very much i everyone’s energy this week. We don’t know where it’s headed next. But really if we remember to breathe, to get our feet on the earth, to listen into our heart, then we will find a certain grounding. It’s staying true to us that will help us through all this, not someone else’s version of the truth.

I’m going to spend as much of the next 22 hours in as much peace as possible, switching off, hibernating and letting the eclipse energy work its magic and change us, as a humanity towards greater peace by helping us find greater peace within each of us individually an collectively. Well, here’s hoping anyway!

Love Emma

Moronic times

Well that was some storm, blowing things through. I was lucky to see Jo de Diepold Braham in the midst of it early Saturday morning and the clarity was much appreciated.

As I have said before, this eclipse is bringing up unresolved issues around the heart and trust. We are being asked to get into the heart and allow any past heart breaks to help us now to break down and break on through to a more heart-expanded way of being.

We have to feel the pain and digest those previously undigested life experiences, to truly make the change. This isn’t a time for spiritual bypassing, of pretending to do the work, saying all the right things, but not making the shift psychologically and in our very body.

The spiritual ego will always attempt to maintain the stars quo, it fears nothing more than its annihilation as it is trying to keep us safe, so it fools us into thinking we’re doing the work, when we’re not really. We’ll know we’ve slipped out of flow and alignment when we project our crap onto others and put ourselves on a superiority pedestal.

Humility should help to keep us grounded, but a good dose of nature may well be helpful this week. I lay down on the earth at the Guet today staring up into the trees, it’s called ‘grounding’ nowadays, and really it is very simple and very easy. An older lady waling her dog did look at me rather strangely, probably relived that I moved, fearing that she was finding me early Sunday morning dead!

The sunsets are stunning at the moment and right around to the south. You could be excused for assuming the land had been shaped to accommodate the sun’s descent…it happens.

BTW, I love how ‘Omicron’ can be turned into ‘moronic’. Ha.

Sending love for the week ahead

Emma