There is always two sides to every coin

These are interesting times as cosmic forces usher in more change. We are being asked to go deeper still, to seek out the wounding and harm done, to heal and set ourselves free so that our future is not based on what has happened previously and all the various conditioning and limited beliefs, which arose because of this.

I have been deep diving with Brandon Bay’s The Journey, a technique I used many, many years ago now to heal ovarian cysts, which turned out to be the result of internal angst towards another pupil in my year at school who ended up with the boy of my dreams. Or so I thought at the tender age of 15. It was heart breaking, truly, because I have always had a tendency to fantasise about life, one of those dreamers, which inevitably leads to repeated heartache because reality and my fantastic dream world rarely match up!

The recent ‘journeys’ with a Brandon Bay’s facilitator have been intense; the first one caused me to have a healing crisis which found me in bed for 24 hours as all my cells went through a significant releasing. The second was kinder. But both served to remind me that the body keeps score and that we are our own worst enemy in the narrative and stories we tell ourselves and the limiting beliefs that we make so in our lives, limiting our potential for love, truth, peace and trust.

The first journey with its significant healing crisis, took me back to university days and the intense homesickness and loneliness I felt. It is so easy to dismiss these experiences, but I missed my family enormously and felt anxious for a lot of it with a deep lingering fear of not getting a degree at the end of it. I have no doubt that the anxiety and fear promoted the eating disorder which I had developed during Sixth From as a way of coping with the pressure of A-Levels and the fear of going to university in the first place, which you can read more about in my book From Darkness Comes Light.

I knew something was amiss as I kept getting the same repeated dream and waking up in a minor panic that I had failed my degree. I never did of course, I got a 2.1, but the fear was still there, all these years on. It never ceases to amaze me how much our dreaming points the direction to whatever lays unresolved within us.

Furthermore, it was helpful healing this wounding in my body, which had settled into my stomach with this increasingly frequent feeling of emptiness, and the pain in my heart around any form of separation, since gone. The emotions which needed processing were intense; sadness, grief, rage, confusion, and enmeshed within all of this were unhelpful limiting beliefs and fear around separation in its many guises and it was such a relief to finally get to the root, which has made life infinitely easier since as the previous triggers are no longer triggering.

The second journey also took me back to university, which had quite a profound effect on me in so many ways, not least the intensity of eating disorder but using alcohol, cigarettes and cannabis to overcome my shyness, which was so not me, but became so simply to cope and feel as if I fitted in. The wounding this time though was around unrequited love and the deep heart pain this caused, as I watched my best male friend since age 4 (who had also chosen Swansea for his degree, albeit at the college rather than the university), fall in love with a beautiful Spanish student who later became his wife.

My dreaming of our life together was shattered, and I internalised this in unhealthy ways around my lack of lovability and my non-deserving of joy, because clearly I wasn’t worthy, given that he had chosen another woman. Inherent within all this was a confusion around the nature of our friendship and a feeling of betrayal.

To uncover all of this was uncomfortable, the heart pain felt very real, like a literal stabbing (or how I imagine a stabbing to feel), let alone the range of emotions which accompanied it, from sadness to anger, to frustration, to rage, to more sadness, to betrayal, to grief, and finally to recognition of our innocence and from there to forgiveness and release. There is a lightness that has arisen since.

Again, I am amazed how much the body remembers all that has happened and lays unresolved inside us, pushing to be heard and seen, so that it can let go of its unnecessary carrying. I am also amazed how we have these life experiences and depending on our nature, we either process them or we don’t. More often than not we don’t give ourselves the space, or we simply don’t know how to go about it so they lay unprocessed. I wrote about this in my book From Darkness Comes Light, but I prided myself back then in never showing emotion, because I thought that was the way.

With a sun in Cancer and a moon in Pisces, I am primarily water, a pool of emotion at times, so to hold onto it all and pretend I was OK was a huge wounding, which of course led to intense bouts of depression, suicidal at times, let alone the PMS, which plagued me for years. I can see that so clearly now that my whole being was saturated in unprocessed negative emotions and negative self talk - it was quite inevitable that my heart armoured up and my spirit flagged.

It’s not just the holding of emotions that is the problem, albeit it is, because emotions are energy in motion and if we don’t allow them their movement and expression then they create energetic blocks in the body which can lead to dis-ease if not released. And this to the extent that stuck emotions cause more disease that any virus or bacteria, simply because of the negative impact on our energy field (which leads to tiredness and lack of vitality) and weakens our immune system, which then makes us more susceptible to foreign bodies.

The other problem is that every emotional holding also brings with it a negative thought and unhelpful limiting belief. It is this which often blows my mind simply because we really do create our reality by the thoughts we think. Not that we can necessarily change these thoughts. Those who meditate and try and watch their thoughts will know how they arise spontaneously, endlessly and randomly so that we have little choice but to think them. The difference comes though, when we notice them and stop giving them energy. So if our thought is “I am not good enough”, then we start to cultivate the awareness (become conscious) of this thought as it arises and challenge it, so that over time it stops arising, or if it does arise, we merely laugh at it without buying into it as a truth and making it so.

This isn’t easy of course, because many of these thoughts and the limiting beliefs that have arisen are deep in our psyche, unconscious then, and our behaviours surrounding them are normalised. I was having this conversation with a client yesterday, about how our lack of kindness to self is often very subtle, to the extent that we don’t even realise that we are being unkind to ourselves, not least in terms of the internal voice and the way we might criticise ourselves for our perceived imperfections (because of our false belief that there is a perfect), but also in the decisions and choices we make in our life.

I had thought my internal voice was kind, until this latest journey, when I realised the subtly of the negativity and the unhealthy limiting beliefs that had been laid down almost thirty years ago now still, on some level, play out in my life. These are not uncommon beliefs, most of us have them embedded in our psyche from our religious indoctrination let alone societal conditioning and our educational and cultural systems. We have been fed the idea that there is a good/bad, right/wrong, worth/worthless, perfect/imperfect, pass/fail without appreciating that there are always two sides to every coin, which means we are no more good than we are bad.

Yet it has been helpful for society to allow us to believe that there is a good and a bad, for example, because then we self-police, which makes it easier for us to be controlled. Furthermore, it keeps us trapped in this idea that there is something wrong with us, that we are never enough, that we are somehow flawed and all these beliefs therefore keep us disempowered and more controllable, it’s a clever and vicious cycle.

At the end of the day an experience is just an experience, life is as it is, some of it wonderful, some of it funny, some of it sad, some of it challenging and some of it just plain boring. It is how we relate to it, how we define it, how we narrate it and make it into a story, how we create beliefs based on it, which creates the harm. This is where we have choice. Always we have choice about how we respond and judge a certain situation and how we then experience our life.

We have to be mindful of our judgement system too as we often only hear one side of a story and we forget that there are various ways of looking at a situation - there are always two sides to every coin. To be OK with whatever is arising knowing that there is always more to it than we realise can help enormously.

This was highlighted to me in a book I was reading recently, where a man was caught sexually assaulting a child. Everyone thought he was very bad and reacted very negatively towards him, full of judgement. Then they learned that he had been sexually assaulted as a child and they saw another side to him, they felt sorry for him and had more compassion. this story is a helpful reminder that we have to be careful how we judge our experiences and the experiences of others because without doubt the universe will draw in opportunities for us to opinion differently.

There is this wonderful parable which highlights beautifully the benefit of holding the middle ground:

There once was an old farmer. Every day, the farmer used his horse to help work his fields and keep his farm healthy.

But one day, the horse ran away. All the villagers came by and said, “We're so sorry to hear this. This is such bad luck.”

But the farmer responded, “Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?”

The villagers were confused, but decided to ignore him. A few weeks went by and then one afternoon, while the farmer was working outside, he looked up and saw his horse running toward him. But the horse was not alone. The horse was returning to him with a whole herd of horses. So now the farmer had 10 horses to help work his fields.

All the villagers came by to congratulate the farmer and said, “Wow! This is such good luck!”

But the farmer responded, “Good luck. Bad luck. Who knows?

A few weeks later, the farmer's son came over to visit and help his father work on the farm. While trying to tame one of the horses, the farmer’s son fell and broke his leg.

The villagers came by to commiserate and said, “How awful. This is such bad luck.”

Just as he did the first time, the farmer responded, “Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?”

A month later, the farmer’s son was still recovering. He wasn’t able to walk or do any manual labor to help his father around the farm.

A regiment of the army came marching through town conscripting every able-bodied young man to join them. When the regiment came to the farmer’s house and saw the young boy's broken leg, they marched past and left him where he lay.

Of course, all the villagers came by and said, “Amazing! This is such good luck. You're so fortunate.”

And you know the farmer’s response by now…

"Bad luck. Good luck. Who knows?"

One of my beautifully wise students, who wishes to remain nameless, sent me this poem that she had written for her children, which further highlights the idea that there are two sides to everything:

When darkness falls and your light has dimmed

Remember life requires darkness and light

Remember good things grow in the dark, just as you did

Without distractions you have time to focus and reflect

Know darkness as your friend and not your enemy

Don’t fear it, as it is necessary to grow your heart and soul

Know the greatest compassion is fashioned in the darkest of corners.

Your life is rich with different hues, shades and colours and by making friends with the dark your truest self will become known to you.

Rest easy in the dark and know this too shall pass and a life worth living is yours…!

Personally, I have found that the dark times are actually the most fruitful. Those times where we feel lost and empty, those times when we don’t know which way to turn, when the world we knew is dropping away and we haven’t yet found a hand hold for the new life to be lived, when the stepping stones have disappeared, these are often the most fruitful times of our life.

Many are being asked to let go as we flow into spring. The moon and cosmic forces are really encouraging change as we move towards the major lunar standstill in June. We can expect the unexpected. Currently we are being cleared out, made empty, so that there is space for the new to enter into our lives. This is uncomfortable for reasons explained in the previous paragraph but essentially because we have a really hard time setting into the unknown and the uncertain.

But there is no going back! If you are reading this then you are in process and on this path, knowing that life cannot continue as it has been, with negative self-relating and limited core beliefs leading to much of the same - I am reminded of that marvellous quote from Einstein, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Our soul seeks freedom and our heart seeks greater expression. Joy is our birthright, if only we could open to it and get beyond our guilt and shame and other lower vibrational emotions that prevent us being all of who we are in this lifetime.

It is worth remembering that we have choice - we always have choice. But sometimes we don’t realise we have choice and this is where spiritual practice is so helpful as it often shines a light into the shadows, helping us to become conscious of that which lays unconscious, to realise the many ways that we restrict our choice and buy into the illusion, and to do something about it - to set ourselves free so that we can truly realise our potential.

It is this - this drive for greater consciousness and the freedom it gifts, to truly know my own truth and the truth of this universe, which inspires me in my sharing of yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda. If it wasn’t for these practices then I am sure I would be dead by now, or living a mundane life. Instead, as I heard towards my 50th birthday in June, I feel truly grateful for my life, for all the dark and challenging times and the lessons learned. I hope that I get to enjoy many more years of living life to its fullest and diving deeper into love and truth with all the various obstacles and challenges this presents.

I am eternally grateful to all of you who trust in this process and show up time and time again, courageously delving deeper into your shadows so that you can live a truer and more heart-felt and soul led life, shinning increasingly brightly and lightening up those around you too.

This is how we will create positive change in the world. Not by changing the outer, but by going deeper inwards. All spiritual philosophies acknowledge this. It is only be changing the inner that we affect and therefore change the outer. And the moon and the cosmic forces are supporting this - asking us to go deeper still, heal, forgive, let go, and show that there is always another way.

We are also being asked to heal our relationship with the universe to - to appreciate and embody, to rest into the fact that it is a kind and fair universe if only we could let go of our conditioning which tells us otherwise. Most of us have been taught to distrust it, to confuse it with humanity’s idea of right/wrong and good/bad, which keeps us trapped in the cycle of judgement and fear. Remember, on this too we have choice.

It is safe to trust in the universe. It never lets us down. We can never get it wrong or fail. All of our challenging experiences offer a lesson and a blessing, to give ourselves a hard time is pointless, and yet we do it, because of our conditioning. We have a choice of the beliefs we believe, of the words we use to communicate to ourselves and others, of the actions we take and the manner in which the effect of this ripples through the universe. It is a benevolent universe, it is only your mind that judges and makes it one way or the other, good or bad.

For those of you between worlds, stay centred in the not knowing and the uncertain. This is not a time to try to force things to happen. It might feel uncomfortable but it will pass. My advice is to dig deeper to practice, hug a tree, get on your mat, enjoy some Reiki, eat well, sleep well and get outside as much as you can.

Until next time, enjoy the wane.

Love Emma x

Happy full moon from Glastonbury

I LOVE Glastonbury, it always feels like I am coming home, not dissimilar to the feeling I get when I arrive back on Guernsey. There is a certain vibrational quality that resonates on every level of my being and a friendliness and kindness that you just don’t get elsewhere.

In fact it was a relief to get here after the testing of Devon with this Leo full moon energy mixing things up in quite a profound and uncomfortable way. I spoke with one of the ladies in a crystal shop I also visit and she had experienced exactly the same thing. She got me thinking about my moon and rising signs, which I haven’t paid too much attention to previously and of course, that has helped me hugely make sense of things - I would encourage you to explore this, there are a plethora of free sites you can use like this one https://www.astrosofa.com/uk/horoscope/ascendant

That’s the thing with Glastonbury, there is always wisdom to be gained and something new to discover, not only in the town, but within oneself too.

I’ve had a run of being tested from a big Corporation perspective recently, learning how easily children can change settings on iPads and spend your money without you realising it - and how ironic that when Apple email you about it, you have to go through a plethora of security checks, yet your child can escape all this and ring up bills on your behalf, but that’s another story. Anyway, this all created a little shakiness to my being and a loss of sense of stability, not helped with our initial experiences in Dartmoor which were merely reflecting my inner state.

And while Dartmoor helped to heal this, restoring my faith in humanity and in the magic that pervades this planet, Glastonbury has further confirmed this. It is a magical place here. We have been showered in kindness. A local factory, Drapers, replaced some woollen boots which had started falling apart, without charge and gifted free parking. The lady referred to above was so taken with the boys she offered them 50% off any of the crystals in her shop. She also gifted me a crystal. A man who was selling his wooden hand-made spoons gifted a magic coin, and the lady in the bakery gave Elijah a pastry for free.

I am reminded that not everyone on this planet is obsessed with making money from us at whatever cost - I cannot tell you the relief. It is easy on Guernsey to forget this, with the emphasis placed on the finance industry and the growing divide between rich and poor and then manner in which the island is being sold out to corporations because of the fear of what might happen if the finance industry left the island. But that’s also another story.

The moon is shaking things quite profoundly and asking us to look at sustainability - what sustains us and what needs to drop away?

Our conditioning around money and safety is deeply ingrained, so too the need to accumulate assets for the sake of it and for some notion of ‘success’.

But really we need so little.

What truly sustains us?

This moon has been showing me how we need to keep getting out of our own way. How our ego identity likes to feel it is in control because then it feels safe, and how it will try to control and manipulate through will. And yet how ultimately we have to surrender this to the higher self, which truly knows and will always show us the way, at least from a soul expression/evolutionary perspective, which might not be how we wanted things to be, but will offer us something far richer if only we can expand the perspective and see the bigger picture and TRUST.

The process is not always easy as we have to be increasingly honest with ourselves about our life and the way we are living it, let alone the way we are relating to self. But I am conscious that if we can increasingly sit with the uncomfortable feelings as they arise, and keep letting go of our idea of how things should be, and be patient, then the path ahead clears and in the process we might deepen into faith and trust and learn to be more compassionate and gentle with others and ourselves.

I am grateful to have this time here at Glastonbury with the boys. For them too they love this place, the playgrounds and the Tor which they can jump and run down, and even the White Spring, which was freezing but always re-orientates and grounds me, and the various shops and cafes in town. It struck me that I brought both of them here when they were only 3 months old and they have visited many times since so it is a second home of sorts to them too.

I am grateful to the moon and to the spirit of Glastonbury and Dartmoor for all this trip has taught me and my two boys. And I am grateful to all of you who have supported our journey in ways you might not even imagine. I can’t wait for the Glastonbury retreat at Chalice Wells in April 2026, details on that to follow…

Happy full moon!

Love Emma

Dartmoor!

Down Tor

My parents used to run Duke of Edinburgh groups on Dartmoor when I was probably a bit older than my boys are now (Elijah 11 and Eben 8), and my younger brother, Ross, and I would accompany them. This instilled in me a love of Dartmoor and of the wilds, even though it took me many years to realise this. It was always lots of fun playing in the rivers and around the clapper bridges, and I have visited a few times since.

Dartmoor is 368 square miles - it’s about 20 miles from North to South and 20 miles from East to West. It is one of ten National Parks in England covering 10% of the land area. National Parks were created by The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and Dartmoor National Park is created from land owned by a range of people including lots of farmers and The Duchy of Cornwall (Prince William).

There are over 365 tors on Dartmoor. Tors are where the granite rock that is underneath Dartmoor shows through. 65% of Dartmoor is made of granite and this is no doubt the reason there are so many Neolithic sites here as the quartz is an energy conductor, albeit so many of them have been destroyed, which is a real shame - but I am grateful to those whose efforts helped to restore many of them.

Down Tor and Burrator Reservoir in the background

It was my love of Neolithic stones which caused me to visit Dartmoor last May with a Neolithic friend. My friend had visited that previous February when he had been tested by the freezing temperatures and the relentless wind and rain as he tried to access some of the more inaccessible sites. But this is the thing with Dartmoor, it tests! And its spirit, for it most definitely has a spirit, encourages us to look at our deepest fears.

It did the same to me that trip last May when I was left stranded in the UK by Condor for an extra two days with no available flights, due to bank holidays and me having to face my fear of being separated from my children beyond my control, highlighting my separation anxiety and also my caring too much what others think and judging myself based on this. So it was helpful and set in motion a healing, despite it being an uncomfortable process to look at those fears.

Brothers - Eben dressed more appropriately now!

Dartmoor tested this time too. I had been tested before even leaving Guernsey and arrived in the UK a little on edge. The spirit knew this! Our first day on the Moors we attempted to access Down Tor stone circle, where I had found comfort after the Condor meltdown referred above, and felt I needed to thank it by showing up and taking the boys there too. This was not their first trip to Dartmoor, but their first trip with me on my own and with some proper walking, with a map and a compass.

Elijah in the circle

Trouble is, despite having a degree in Geography, my map reading skills are fairly poor and while I prefer to use my intuition, this was tested by the poor conditions, which I had not anticipated. You see had I checked a local weather report I might have known that fog was forecast, but the report I looked at suggested only heavy cloud.

My parents have quite rightly put fear in me about Dartmoor and mist. Looking after groups of teenagers on the Moors inevitably made them very conscious of the risks that this beautiful wild place brings. It didn’t help that the temperatures were hovering around -1 degrees and Eben was still wearing his football kit and hoody, not ideally equipped for these conditions. And while I had packed water and food supplies, I had not thought to pack extra clothing...

Anyway, we found the carpark and I had a sense of the direction we needed to go, and we were on the path, and being guided in many respects because a couple were also walking the same way, he a new Neolithic stone enthusiast and phone in hand guiding him (I am afraid I am still with the dumb phone). We did really well actually, and made it all the way up to Down Tor before the mist properly started rolling in.

Going up to Down Tor

We had a sense of the direction of the stone circle and the couple were trekking ahead of us at the time, so all we had to do was keep an eye on them. But then Eben got very cold and I had to strip off my leggings to give to him (I did also have hiking trousers) and wrap my scarf around him, but even then the cold was seeping through and the mist was getting thicker and we couldn’t see the Tor we had just left behind and the couple disappeared, as if they had never been there in the first place.

The mist rolling in

I knew we were probably only 100m away, up over the ridge ahead, but when it is misty it all looks the same and I was concerned about Eben, so we had to call it and descend. To say I was frustrated was an understatement. I hate giving up on finding Neolithic stones and clearly I still have some work to do on letting go - of remembering that ultimately we are never in control and we have to trust the process, because perhaps there is another way which better serves us with lessons to learn through the tests we are gifted. This was very much the theme leaving Guernsey and Dartmoor was merely highlighting this.

Elijah is my mountain goat and he remembered the way to get back down, such is his intuitive capacity. I was so grateful for his calmness because I was too irritated at myself at that point, highlighting the ways we give ourselves a hard time unnecessarily, by labelling something good or bad. Good that we were alive and well. Bad that mummy hadn’t thought to dress Eben more appropriately. But actually when it came down to it and I calmed down and realised ALL of this, I recognised that the biggest trigger was around things not working out as planned - just like the last time I had visited Dartmoor and Condor cancelling our crossing. The weather was beyond my control, but I still personalised it and gave myself a hard time for it.

Clapper bridge

So again, Dartmoor’s testing was helpful. Because on some level I did know all of this, that life re-routes us. We spent the afternoon at Plymouth Aquarium, which is not something I feel entirely comfortable about (living beings held in captivity) but this was a big deal to Elijah who just loves all things of the sea, and got to see sharks etc. The day before Eben had indulged in his love of otters at the Otter sanctuary in Buckfastleigh, which had prompted this whole trip, cute little things, but again, held in captivity.

Needless to say the next day the weather was glorious and we attempted Down Tor from another direction. But first we did something we had committed to do the previous day and on entering Dartmoor, we all spoke and prayed to the spirit of the land to grant us safe passage, something I usually always do when entering sacred land and Neolithic sites.

We were lucky again to chance on people who set our path and with bright sunshine and clear visibility and a remembering of the route from my May trip where we had accessed the stones this same way. There were signs too, the birds who enlighten the path and the intuitive nudges and we found the circle and it’s row, which is quite amazing, and lifted all our spirits, to be out in the wild and to finally make it! We would not have had such amazing views the day before or felt so proud of ourselves for finally making it so I am grateful to Dartmoor and its testing reminding me that there is a timing to everything.

The bridge and Kizzy!

We met a man at the stones who told us of another way to access a stone circle - Scorhill - that we have visited previously. So we set out to the other side of Dartmoor through the most skinny of lanes, 7 foot wide in some places, which was hair raising in a hire car and one of those times that you pray you don’t meet someone coming in the opposite direction, and on the whole we were lucky. We found Batworthy corner by some miracle and even found a spot to park, and set out in the general direction of Scorhill, but it is always challenging on the moors as you can’t see the stones until you get really close to them, so a compass is handy.

Scorhill

But we were blessed with another guide in the form of a lady called Claire and her dog, Kizzy, Claire reminding me of a good friend and there was this strange familiarity. She was on her way to Scorhill so while Eben threw the ball and played with Kizzy (no moaning!), Claire and I chatted as we walked the mile or so to the stone circle. We got to visit a clapper bridge which my Mum loves and Claire also told us about the holy stone, which we took turns sliding through because it is meant to create a positive transformation, a bit like Men-an-Tol in Cornwall.

Claire left us at the circle, and Elijah was quite stuck by her being an earth angel who was sent to guide us safely. This spun Eben out who couldn’t quite get his head around what Elijah was saying and was questioning if he meant she was a ghost. I knew what Elijah meant, sometimes in life, these earth angels come at just the right time to guide you and help keep you safe - they appear from nowhere and leave as quickly. They are encounters which often stay with you and I have a fond memory of being ‘saved’ by a businessman who just appeared in front of me from the busyness of the crowds on a Tokyo train platform and basically saved me because I had absolutely no idea where I was going and no way of reading Japanese!

The holy stone

Dartmoor is an amazing place and the boys certainly enjoyed the opportunity to get away from it all too, and immerse in the elements in this way. Eben loved the wild ponies, albeit they are all owned by farmer - about 90% of the land on Dartmoor is used for farming and there is said to be approximately 50,000 cows, sheep and ponies on Dartmoor. I loved showing them the rivers and the bridges and we got to see the prison at Princetown too, which is always a good point of reference!

Dartmoor does test - it is a sacred land and it brings up our fears - but I am grateful for this and the awareness this brings, not comfortable of course, and something now to work with. Always there is a surrendering and the journey continues, here we are now in Glastonbury for the waxing moon and the messages are getting louder still as I am sure they are for you too. This is another moon of change, of surrendering any idea we have of where we are heading and to remember that it is never really about us in the first place - spirit has a say!

Love Emma x

Happy Imbolc!

It’s Imbolc! I cannot tell you the relief to notice the shifting light and the change in the bird song as the sun rises earlier and farther north each morning, goes higher in the sky each midday and sets later and more northerly every evening, gifting us increasing light and with that, new beginnings.

It’s gentle new beginnings though, like the just-pregnant-bump and the slightest of crescent moons appearing after the new moon has passed. It’s the time to give thought to the seeds we are planting but being aware that a frost could still come. Gentle, gentle, beginning to notice how nature is waking up!

I love this time of year. The energy is so new. There is copious potential.

Enjoy the more settled weather that Imbolc is ushering and keep opening to your greater potential and doing what you can to feel increasingly ALIVE. This is the year for ALIVENESS and I am certainly embracing every opportunity to be deep in the earth (we are born from the earth), deep in my body so I can increasingly free my spine and my breath, and deep in the joy of being alive. What a miracle we all are!

Love Emma x

Waking up to our health and wellbeing

I cannot tell you how delighted I am that RFK Jnr is giving voice to the detrimental impact of eating processed foods, let alone the dangers of over vaccination and the power held by Big Pharma to maintain the status quo of a sick society.

I am fortunate that I learned over 20 years now that we are what we eat. Quite literally. And how we can help ourselves from PMS and depression through good nutrition, let alone a myriad of other disorders and ailments.

I am eternally grateful to Carol Champion for inspiring in me a love of nutritional therapy and an awareness that food can be used as medicine as much as it can be used as a killer too. And I am always grateful to my Ayurvedic doctor for teaching me about the Ayurvedic approach to diet, which has become my norm now.

I am passionate about good nutrition and wellness. It blows my mind that many people do not realise the connection between what they put in their mouth and their mental, physical, emotional and energetic well-being.

I recently read Fast Food Genocide by Joel Fuhrman and Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken and both really highlight have far we have fallen in terms of connection with food, nutrition, farming, environment and health and wellbeing.

It saddens me that so much of it is - as always - is about money at the cost of people’s lives. Mainly it is about companies profiteering, with very little ethics or heart, just to increase their own personal wealth and notion of success. I find it difficult to understand how people can live with such little integrity or care for their fellow man, but this is rife throughout our society these days, where it is literally always, it seems, about the bottom line and profit, profit, profit.

It feels important that RFK Jnr is given this opportunity to raise awareness of the manner in which the food industry and Big Pharma have been conning people of their health and wellbeing and allowing their approach to artificial foods and unnecessary drugs to become normalised.

However, I really feel it is time that we all start taking more responsibility for our wellness and look at what we are not only putting into our body but the environment in which we live. It is important that we educate ourselves beyond what we are told by these companies and the scientists who are paid by these companies, and see through their advertising and marketing scams.

It is important that we question what we are told by the mainstream news and the powers that be, who are keen to maintain their financial status at whatever cost and might give the idea that they have our best interests at heart, but don’t, not really. Even doctors are held ransom by Big Pharma and those who do speak out are vilified and made out to be wrong.

We have to move away from science being seen as God. Science can show anything in its research if it needs to promote a certain product. We have to be very careful in believing all that we read, just because science says so.

What fascinates me is how much wiser we used to be. And yet we consider ourselves wiser than any other generation because of science. I disagree. The ancient yogis knew what we might do to thrive and I am certain they wouldn’t be living as we do now.

I was reminded of this in a Yoga Sutras class yesterday, that we need to consider ourselves like an apple seed. For that seed to grow and thrive we need to create certain conditions such as access to water, good soil and light and how there is a timing.

Now is the time.

We are a sick society and we need to be asking questions. Is the for we put in our body clean or is it processed or covered in pesticides? How about the water we drink, is it clean or does it contain various chemicals which compromise our immune system? Is our environment healthy for us, is it decluttered, can the energy flow? Are we able to protect ourselves from the detrimental impact of EMF?

If we are not thriving we have to ask ourselves the reason. What can we change?

Looking at our stress levels is often key, but this will be impacted by what we put in our body and the environment we live in, let alone any unresolved emotions or traumas and our poor boundaries.

This is the reason I love sharing Spiritual Life Coaching with clients as we look at all of this. This isn’t a plug for that incidentally but it just means that I have observed all this in practice - not just from the direct experience of my own life, but from witnessing others reclaim their health, wellbeing and vitality by looking honestly at how they are living and what they are eating and making different choices.

It’s the same with Reiki too. When clients become attuned, things change. their vibration changes and then they don’t want to be eating crappy food or hanging out with negative people, or numbing themselves from their reality. They find the courage to make changes, to look after themselves better and consider the impact their choices have on the wider world.

There is always a bigger picture in terms of the wider world and the manner in which we feed more of the same by whatever it is we are or are not doing. It gets to a point where we begin to realise that one of the ways we can create positive change, is not just about what we put in our body, but how we spend our money - do we spend it on big industry who have little interest in your thriving, or do you spend it on those trying to make a positive difference, the smaller companies offering organic alternatives, the ones who don’t want to compromise on you or animals or the environment just to make money.

We try to live clean here and I try to support businesses which are trying to do something positive. We don’t always get it right, but its empowering to even be aware that we have this choice and that we can make a difference through our spending power as well as trying to optimise our health and well being and question and progressively step away from the mainstream lies and illusion.

I highly recommend reading those two aforementioned books and also having a listen to these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFFfd9-t1Lo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO04-EnRU-o

This could be quite some year, I am grateful to the moon for encouraging this transformation, let’s hope that the positive changes in America will filter through the rest of the world.

Love Emma x

Scaravelli yoga

I discovered the Scaravelli-inspired approach to practice quite by chance back in 2019. I had felt called to the Isle of Lewis to visit the Callanish stones and while there attended a yoga class at the Uig village hall where the teacher suggested I might like the teachings of a Scaravelli-inspired teacher called Sophie down in Littlehampton.

So I went and visited Sophie and was blown away by this approach to practice which was so very different from the vinayasa practice that had shaped my life for many years. I couldn’t quite understand what had happened but I left that first session feeling a sense of mind-body connection, peace and aliveness that I had never experienced previously. I read and watched all I could of this approach to practice and in this way connected with Diane Long, who was primary student of Vanda Scaravelli herself. I saw that Diane was teaching a workshop in Findhorn with another teacher called Louise Simmons, so I made contact, knowing that I couldn’t afford the time away from my boys, but desperate to feed my immense curiosity in this practice. Fortunately Louise offered online lessons and was happy to teach me. 

In those earlier days I would practice with Louise and then do my real yoga practice afterwards, this because I was still very much caught up in the need to exercise and perform postures in a way that had been conditioned into me after years of attending trainings and workshops in the Vinyasa, dynamic, Anusara, Ashtanga and Iyengar traditions. 

It was during the pandemic that I finally let go of my need to practice in such a rigid,  masculine and disconnected way, and that I adopted the Scaravelli-approach to practice and started sharing this approach in my classes, which sent my students into quite a spin. Many of them dropped away as it was too big a shift, although fortunately many did stay and have benefitted by committing to the practice and others have been attracted back again, seeking deeper connection and freedom. 

It wasn’t until I visited Louise in Findhorn in early 2024 that I committed to her as my teacher – I’m inn this for the long run! I have visited her many times since and always return to Guernsey inspired and passionate to deepen into this practice and become a better teacher because of it. What appeals to me the most about this approach to practice is that it has gifted me increased freedom, not only in the body but in my mind too. There is a feeling of aliveness, quietness and calmness that arises and abides for some time after the practice. I love its complexity and yet its simplicity, its demand for attention and yet its softness, its sacred connections between resting and lightness and that it is always changing – there are no rules, no training, no authority outside the practice.

I also love its artistic, poetic and paradoxical nature. I also love that it can free us from the rigidity of ingrained and often unconscious habits, conditionings and programming’s which limit our deeper connection and get in the way of our alignment to truth. I like that it is counter-cultural and encourages our vibrancy and ability to rest more easily into uncertainty let alone the manner in which is heals on a very deep level. Every day I am amazed by this practice and by the profound intelligence of my body and potentiality of my breath , which asks only that I keep getting out of my own way and let go of over and fixing and making myself right. 

Scaravelli-inspired practice

Scaravelli-inspired yoga is suitable for everybody from those new to yoga to those who are in their eighties and beyond. This radical practice works deeply with gravity, breath and awareness to re-awaken the potential of our spine and allow a new harmony, freedom, and fluidity in our body, mind and life generally. In time our body reveals a whole new language of movement, born from the spine, and expressing itself in a whole-body approach, healing and releasing deep tension and allowing us to truly be in each moment as it arises. 

Everyone can benefit, from those who experience physical discomfort and ailments, to those who wish to increase vitality and wellbeing, to those who need to heal, to those who wish to deepen their existing practices and experience of yoga. 

This is a hands-on session in which I work intuitively and compassionately to support and guide your body in discovering new ways of being, relating and connecting, working from the inside out

General classes, intimate classes and private sessions are available. Please contact Emma at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk for more information. 

“Is it possible to have a different attitude in which a new intelligence, not imposed by authority but born from interest, attentions and sensitivity, will emerge and in which body and mind, fused in one single action, are collaborating together? It is just this revolutionary attitude that we are going to discover through a new discipline in the practice of yoga”, 

Vanda Scaravelli

Conscious uncoupling

*Warning - rather long!*

The term ‘conscious uncoupling’ was coined and created by a so-called relationship expert, Katherine Woodward Thomas, and popularised by actress, Gwyneth Paltrow, when she and her husband at the time, musician, Chris Martin, split.

The term has since become synonymous with divorce or separation where both partners accept responsibility, appreciating that they both played a role in the breakup and, in particular, are seeking to co-parent (and often co-habit) in a functional and healthy way in the future.

It is of course a modern term, which many have called New Age spiritualism, ‘woo woo’ but in essence all it is really doing is honouring the two people involved in the relationship, and their children, and breaking free from tradition, showing that it doesn’t have to be the conventional ‘split, divide, fight, hate, animosity’ trend, which many choose – often unconsciously - instead.

In essence, this process of consciously uncoupling allows couples a healing as they release a lot of very difficult feelings including anger, rage, guilt, regret, sadness, grief and unfairness, all of which could lead to the desire to seek revenge or cause harm if not addressed, and might lead to a breakdown in communication and effective relating, which has a knock on effect on the children.

It is a path which Ewan and I found ourselves treading three years ago now, not consciously initially, but because our lives are so tightly woven together into the fabric of what makes us a family, and our relationship has always been based on friendliness and cooperation. We knew that there had to be a way that allowed our romantic separation, but maintained a steadiness for the children, and for ourselves too.

Of course we didn’t intend for it to be this way, no one enters a relationship expecting it to breakdown, but alas sometimes our perspective shifts and we stumble up against our unresolved traumas and emotions and life throws curved balls and it just reaches an ending, or at least an ending in that particular way of relating. In short life changes and we change and that’s OK.

The problems arise when we resist our reality and get stuck in our often limited conditioning and programming, let alone come from a place of victimhood because of our unresolved emotional trauma. So too, when we buy into other people’s opinions and judgements, which might cause us to create imaginary stories and take a course of action which is out of alignment with our own truth.

I hadn’t realised when this journey began, how much my perspective on relationships and love was skewed by the Disney ideal, let alone societal, traditional, cultural and religious conditioning and belief systems. I also hadn’t realised how many unresolved and undigested emotions I still held, from past events and experiences in my life, samskaras then (afflictions), which created various patterns of behaviour and thinking, that didn’t always support healthy relating.

It never crossed my mind that in our quest to avoid being triggered – where those painful unresolved emotions from the past are remembered and re-felt, at least until we have digested, healed and released them - that we might enable certain behaviours and patterns of control in ourselves and others (such as co-dependency), in our quest to avoid having to go to those uncomfortable places in ourselves.

It is all too easy to blame others without taking responsibility and this was one of the many lessons I have learned on this journey. Every time that we find ourselves criticising or judging another, we can be sure that they are mirroring something unresolved within ourselves. Never is this more true than in our closest relationships, and we need to be mindful of laying into the other person without first looking honestly at ourselves and ensuring we are taking responsibility for dealing with our own emotions.

After all, emotions are energy in motion (e-motion) and need their expression. If the energy gets stuck because we have not managed to digest the emotion – perhaps we have repressed or supressed it – then we may well find ourselves suffering from physical ailments or mental disorders or have a hard time effectively relating. Emotions needs to be allowed to move through us if we are to optimise our wellbeing and experience greater harmony in our relationships.

From an Ayurvedic perspective we can take all the pro-biotics we like, but it is only when we shift our emotional state that our gut flora will positively change. Of the diet is blamed for loss of wellbeing, and while a good diet supports our wellbeing, if we digested our emotions and life experiences better, then we would digest our food better too. This will lead to improved immune function, mental stability and increased vitality.

Needless to say the body makes us aware when it is holding something that needs releasing; perhaps a skin condition or a restless leg, perhaps a twitch or a sore stomach, perhaps a headache or a dullness to mind, perhaps acid reflux or constipation, maybe a bout of anxiety or insomnia. All of these complaints are a way of the body trying to communicate with us, telling us that something is unresolved on the inside.

Whatever lays unresolved seeks expression and we will attract situations into our everyday lives which ‘trigger’ whatever it is that we are holding onto. This is the reason we experience various patterns in our lives and find ourselves stumbling up against the same old problem, whether that be falling out with the same family member, always choosing toxic partners, suffering anxiety each time we have to travel, feeling insecure at work etc.

The trouble is, when a samskara, an old experience then, is triggered, we don’t often take the time to really feel into it and process it. We might notice we’ve been triggered (and sometimes we are in it before we even notice it) but the more we begin taking time to be with the discomfort of whatever is coming up for us, and realising the value in taking this time to be by ourselves, the more we will create space and the opportunity for solitude in our lives.

This process has certainly helped Ewan and I to both value our space and the need to allow each other opportunities for solitude. This highlighted to me especially that we often need to fight for space in our lives because it doesn’t always come easily and healthy boundaries are needed to protect any space and opportunity for solitude that we might carve out in our daily lives.

Furthermore, we have to be conscious of misguided feelings of guilt and perceived selfishness that may arise when we take time for ourselves, this because our society celebrates selflessness – it seems odd to me that we are encouraged to give ourselves away to others. It is important that we give time to just be, on our own, following our joy, otherwise we can end up frustrated and resentful, blaming our partner unnecessarily.

This pattern certainly showed up in mine and Ewan’s relationship and it took a good while to put better boundaries in place in my life and I am sure they could be tighter still. This highlighted our threads of co-dependency, which fascinated me, simply because our way of being in a relationship can be normalised to the extent that we do not appreciate that these patterns of unhealthy relating exist in the first place.

And it was only as we began to release those threads that the fabric of our relationship began to change, a loosening here, a letting go there. Of course this breathed air into spaces that were held tight, which were creating so much of the friction, frustration, resentment and discomfort in the first place. In many ways our friendship has deepened through all this, just by letting go of our grip and being a little more respectful.

What I also didn’t appreciate was how much we buy into the illusion of good/bad, right/wrong and how this perspective causes so much of our suffering. It was all too easy in those earlier days especially – but again there are layers - to consider that Ewan and I had somehow failed, or that we should have chosen differently.

I beat myself up for a good while as I fell into feelings of regret and blame – if only I had seen those supposed red flags and made different choices way back then. I was angry and rageful not only at myself but at Ewan too – why had he not realised, why had he let us walk this path, why had he done what he had done etc.?

These feelings led to a momentary depression, as I got stuck into thinking I should have known better and struggled to appreciate that it was always meant to be this way. This state, albeit painful at the time, helped to re-highlight that we are the creator of our own suffering in the way we give value to certain thoughts, forgetting that there is always a different perspective if only we can let go of our egoic mind’s obsession with making things concrete and ‘right’.

The idea of having failed or being a failure is just a thought. It is up to us to choose whether to buy into it or not. This isn’t to say the thought won’t be there, it will. But that we can take a moment to notice it and challenge it and shift the perspective into something more positive.

Because it is all too easy to tell ourselves that we are free agents who could have chosen path B instead of path A (or indeed path C), that we should have seen those red flags and known better somehow, but there really is no evidence to support this belief. It is just a thought we want to believe. At the end of the day, we chose A because of all the causes and conditions leading up to that point, and we couldn’t have chosen otherwise. 

None of us could possibly choose anything but what seems like the best option available to us at the time that we made the choice Plus we have to remember that that decision was made based on all the various causes and conditions in the background; psychological, physical, emotional and otherwise.

In short, Ewan and I were always meant to tread this path together. This realisation was huge for me, So too reframing ‘failing’ by remembering that there is no perfect, no happy ever after, that this is just the Disney conditioning, which so many compare their lives against. Being human is painful and life is full of suffering. To believe otherwise just sets us up for more pain and suffering.

Letting go of the idea of perfection is one of the hardest things for so many of us as our programming (educational, religious etc) encourages it, and yet it can be one of the most positive things we can do for ourselves, setting ourselves free from our negative emotions, especially around failing, shame and disappointment.

So too letting go of the notion that there is something wrong with us that needs fixing or changing. It doesn’t. We are perfectly imperfect in our essence and all we need to do is let go of anything which tells us otherwise. This is the path of yoga and healing – there is nothing to fix or add, just a whole heap of false beliefs and negative thinking to let go of for us to recognise our inherent innocence.

I was reminded again how easily we project and judge in others the stuff we need to look at in ourselves. Which brought me straight back to the illusion of free will. This being the fact that we cannot choose anything but what looks like the best option available to us at any one moment in time, based on the various causes and conditions at that time, our psychology, mental/emotional state, and our samskaras again.

Thus, if we truly see through the illusion of free will, then we stop judging ourself and others for our/their choices. Admittedly we might still grieve various choices we have made – and grieve I most certainly did – but we are free from the belief that we or they could have chosen to do anything differently in the past.

And we also stop believing that we could make the wrong choice in the future. We begin to realise that we can only make what looks like the best choice from the options that appear to us. And it will always be this way for everyone, because it couldn’t be otherwise, and that is OK. What we might call failings, mistakes or wrong choices could then simply be called learning.

Which leads me to another learning, or understanding. That while we live in a highly structured and ordered universe, there is what we might call a little bit of wiggle room. This wiggle room is what we call consciousness and it is consciousness which sets us free – and this of course is the path of yoga in its quest to reduce our suffering by creating clarity and Reiki too, in raising our vibration and increasing consciousness – Ayurveda also is a path to greater consciousness.

Thus, while all our thoughts and behaviours arise based on what’s happened to us previously – the causes and conditions of our lives – when consciousness becomes aware of itself (when we become conscious then, in that wiggle room, the space that sometimes arises between cause and effect), it can transform thoughts and behaviours which otherwise wouldn’t occur.

I suppose what I am saying is that in this wiggle room, we have the opportunity to become conscious of our thoughts and behaviours and to change them. Thus our consciousness is not just a witness to the unfolding of our conditioned thoughts and behaviours, it actually becomes a source for transformation of old and often unhelpful patterns (samskaras), by reflecting itself to itself.

Conscious uncoupling by its very nature has gifted Ewan and I this opportunity. Being self-reflective, we have tried to become increasingly conscious of our actions and behaviours, which have led to disharmony in our relating, and do something about them – not only by attempting to trace them back to source, but by catching ourselves before we run down the same old road and then inevitably hit up against the same old blocks. It is this process that has allowed us to positively change things.

Thus – and as I wrote earlier - while we might not be able to choose our reactions in any given moment, when we notice ourselves being emotionally triggered (because we have hit a samskara), we can try to remember to pause, breathe and reflect before we act or speak. Over time, this helps us to choose whether to believe our thoughts and feelings and challenge them so we can choose differently if necessary.

And in this way, we are more likely to allow forgiveness and compassion to arise spontaneously, because we are ‘seeing’ (perceiving) differently. We are also more likely to relax and open to reality as it is, rather than resisting it. Realising all of this was helpful, especially the recognition of the way in which we exhaust ourselves and create yet more unnecessary suffering because of our resistance to forgiveness.

Yet forgiveness is key. It is what truly sets us free. When we are stuck, then we can be sure that there is some stubborn unforgiveness lurking in there somewhere; some unresolved emotional stuff that prevents our expansion. By its very nature, if conscious uncoupling is to set us free, then forgiveness and letting go are both needed. Otherwise we stay trapped In our victimhood, which serves no one, least of all ourself. 

As Carolyn Myss writes in her book Anatomy of Spirit:

 “Forgiveness is not the same as telling the person who harmed you, “it’s okay”, which is more of less the way that most people view it. Rather, forgiveness if a complex act of consciousness…that liberates the psyche and soul from the need for personal vengeance and the perception of oneself as a victim. More than releasing from blame the people who caused our wounds, it means releasing the control that the perception of victimhood has over our psyche”.

But really one of the most valuable lessons I have learned from this journey, is not to care about other people’s opinions or judgements because then we may try to follow a path that isn’t right for us, which ultimately creates conflict between head and heart.

For example, there are people in Ewan and my life who were keen to see us separate. It would appease their understanding of how life should be lived when two people romantically split and they couldn’t understand our hesitation in doing so. But what they haven’t realised is that in their quest to be ‘right’, their interference created more disharmony for Ewan and I.

I suddenly realised how poorly placed these people were to judge, because for the most part they didn’t have children and had no real understanding of the woven nature of our lives, both of us self-employed and working around home schooling our children, admittedly with much valued support from grandparents. We are not living conventionally and for those individuals to apply their conventional perspective was unhelpful and limiting.

The last time that this happened, which created quite a schism and a questioning of our approach, and a hardness to arise between Ewan and I, we really had to dig deep into all of the above. And I was reminded how sometimes we have to be taken to our very edge before we can let go of the way we are told life has to be lived. It is in this letting go that freedom arises, but it is not always an easy process and generally involves a forgiveness first.

There is usually no forgiveness without rage, and we may have a tendency to look outside ourselves for change. I fell into this trap, of thinking I needed to make an external change to appease what I was being told by others. This caused a deep dive to practice and a sense that I needed to let go of some old stubborn unforgiveness that was creating mental rigidity and disharmony.

As often happens an external event happened which caused me to soften and to shift my perspective and as a result I was able to truly let go of my stubborn unforgiveness. I had held onto it for quite some time and the letting go that accompanied it brought with it a wonderful wave of compassion and gratitude, quite unlike anything I had experienced previously.

This internal shift to greater vulnerability in its open heartedness positively changed things, not least internally, but externally too. Mine and Ewan’s relationship found greater cohesion, independence, love and freedom. It was a blessed relief after a period of inner turmoil, like a part of us had died and we had been gifted a new beginning.

Throughout all of this communication has been key. I cannot stress this enough. We have both been encouraged to communicate honestly and openly. We have both learned – and no doubt will continue learning - that without effective communication we can easily fall victim to confusion or imaginings, both of which can lead to toxic and unhealthy relating.

I am reminded time and again that there are many different perspectives, that we do not all see the world similarly, that in the most part we are all living in different realities simultaneously. We have to remember that we are all seeing through different lenses based on what has happened previously, let alone our conditionings and level of consciousness in any one moment.

I share in the hope that it might help you if you are stuck in your relating, to offer you the possibility that there is always another way, which doesn’t have to be based on what you may have experienced previously or what others may tell you.

Not to say that it is easy, but no path is easy and no doubt Ewan and I will encounter more obstacles along the way. But it is an approach that does what it says – encourages greater consciousness in our uncoupling, which gifts the opportunity for healing and increased self-awareness, and ultimately greater stability and indeed love for the family.

I am eternally grateful to my extended family for their unwavering love and support as Ewan and I have trodden this unconventional path. I am also extremely grateful to Ewan for his love and support and indeed courage in walking this path with me, and to our boys who ask us to go deeper still and remind us that there is always a more harmonious and loving way.

 Love Emma x

Feeling at home - Findhorn!

I am fortunate to find myself up in Findhorn with the sun and the moon and the ice and the snow colliding to create the most wintry and magical of conditions for going deeper still.

There is something about the combined energy of Findhorn and the approach to practice of my teacher, Louise, which creates a certain aliveness. It is a feeling which cannot be bought or contained, or boxed or sold to anyone.

In this material work where everything seems to have a commercial value (including people - have look at the film ‘Sound of Freedom’) it is a relief to be reminded that there is richness in the simple art of being and in allowing one’s greater freedom.

Louise never stops inspiring me. Her knowledge of the human body and its song is one which encapsulates me and encourages me to keep slowing down and turning deeper inwards. The intelligence of the body is mind blowing so too the depth of what it might reveal to us if only we can keep getting out of our own way.

I am lucky that the powers that be connected us through my neolithic wanderings, and that those same powers being me here now, where I can continue those wanderings, to the beautiful snowy scene of Clava Cairns today. The peace I feel sitting in solitude at these places is met by the peace I feel when I have finished a practice with Louise.

And this peace has continued with my ramblings and walking around Findhorn, which has held me beautifully and encouraged me to find even more joy in simplicity. This is a stunning and unspoilt part of the world which reminds me a little of of the wilds of Vancouver Island; there is something about it that gets right into my heart.

So a huge thank you to Louise and her partner, John, and to this beautiful land and all the most lovely ladies who have shared the yoga space with me in front of the log burning stove with the smell of cinnamon and wood permeating the air and the sound of the birds tweeting in the bushes outside and the most glorious light that a wintery northern day allows.

Now I am looking forward to truly embodying what I have learned so that I can share with my students who have committed to this path of going deeper still, of working with breath and awareness to re-awaken the potential of the spine and encourage a new freedom and fluid strength in the body.

This is a practice that works from the inside out and was inspired by Vanda Scaravelli, whose primary student was Diane Long who is mentor of my own teacher, Louise. I am grateful to all of these ladies for all of their practice and teachings of this whole-body approach which releases blocks and increasingly allows us to truly ‘be’ in each moment.

It is quite in contrast to modern day yoga which often creates more rigidity in the body in its quest to fix the body into certain shapes and with certain breathing techniques, all focused on the external. We have to remember that yoga is an internal practice, that is attempting to set us free - to liberate us - from our suffering, not be the cause of it. It requires deep honesty and trust, and a teacher who has trodden the path ahead of us.

As Louise says, “all can benefit—to ease discomforts from ailments, to increase well being and vitality, or to deepen existing practices”. And she is right, this is a practice that is available to all ages and levels of ability, from those who are just beginning to those who are carrying much tension, all can benefit.

And thank you to my students too, who encourage me to keep finding new ways of engaging and helping to (try) to set them free from their tensions and conditionings, through traditional yogic practices. We are in this together and there is much joy that comes from our connection!

This moon is very much about the home. And this trip has reminded me of the joy of the home - feeling at home not only within our own skin and our body then, but within ourselves generally and within our environment. Ultimately our positive experience of home comes from our effective relating - more on this next time as I delve into conscious uncoupling!

Happy full moon!

With love Emma