Full moon eclipse!

That was a pretty intense moon cycle and I was pleased when the weather changed with the eclipse and ushered in the wind to blow away the stagnant energy.  Phew!

I didn’t actually get to see the eclipse.  Elijah had stayed up intentionally to see it with me, but when we went outside to look at the moon and try and see the local owl and the bats, it was cloudy, so I kind of just gave up and drank some champagne instead! I’m grateful then that Steph Bisson (who is my most amazingly gifted friend) took this photo of the moon, incredible!

We did however do our first family own ritual.  Ordinarily if the mood (or moon!) takes me, then I do this on my own.  But last night, I just felt it was time to involve the family, as this is where this recent moon cycle has encouraged more – more firmly centred with my family.

The full moon is a really good time to forgive and let go, so I wrote down a list of things that I wanted to forgive and let go, earlier in the day after my practice. Ewan lit a fire and I cleansed us all with salt and moon resin (oh how we laughed at the craziness of Mummy), then setting up an altar and doing my thing, before burning the note shortly after the moon peaked. 

What I loved the most about all this was Elijah who went and got his things to put on the altar.  It was incredibly sweet and made me feel very warm on the inside!

We managed to complete the ritual without anyone burning themselves, shrieking, or crying.  It was quite amazing because it has been one of those weeks – I have moon boys and they become rather excitable, Eben especially, around the full moon.

Mind you this whole moon cycle has been a touch testing, but also absolutely necessary.

Around the time of the last new moon I had this strong sense that we needed to cut the cr@p and stop messing around with this whole spirituality malarkey. This became increasingly clear to me over the two weeks, and I feel now that I can articulate this a bit better!

I have a feeling that this “light and love” spiritual approach is not doing us any favours. I mean I’m all up for the love and the light, but I think we easily hide behind it and in the process deny and repress our darkness into the shadows. What we deny on the inside will show up on the outside.  So the more we focus solely on the light, the more the darkness will show up in the world to try and get our attention.

We need to genuinely do the work to reclaim the shadow.  No more spiritual bypassing.  No more denial and pretence about who we are. We need to do what needs to be done to love and accept all aspects of ourselves, including the demon (in the shadows). We need to truly recognise that we are not our thoughts and that this duality does no one any favours.

We are pure being at heart and we need to do what we can to keep connecting with this and let all the other stuff drop away.

It sounds so easy but heck it’s really very tough. Much easier to focus on the light and love with all its hearts and loveliness and wonderful Instagram pictures and spiritual materialism and bypass the real work.

But nope, that isn’t going to cut it anymore. I’m not sure yoga with its commercialism and false advertising around the whole “peaceful, slim, dressed in lululemon, eating healthy gluten, wheat, diary and refined sugar free snacks, drinking freshly squeezed juice, floating on her lotus” yogini is going to cut it anymore either. It shouldn’t have cut it in the first place because it isn’t real!

I went for a Reiki treatment recently and the very lovely lady was surprised to hear that I was stressed. Stress and yoga teacher are not too words you expect to hear together.  But really us yoga teachers are masters of stress, and depression and anxiety and all those sorts of things because it was these conditions that brought us to yoga in the first place. I know how to ease other people’s stress through yoga, because I have first hand experience!

It’s like one of my friends said when I was talking to her about this, “but you yoga teachers are all nutty!”  She’s right because all of us are a bit nutty, but we spend our lives trying to pretend otherwise.

Embrace the nuttiness I say. Learn to love it and keep it real. Maybe then the world will be a more peaceful and happier place as we won’t be working so hard to repress the supposed bad stuff.

So that’s where I’m at. That’s what I’m working on. But there’s more because it was an eclipse, which means that change is very much in the air and will need now to settle…and we will all no doubt have our journeys to follow with that one to bring greater meaning and better alignment into our lives...of course the old will also need to drop away...so love your family, do the work and be at ease within yourself. And get on with doing what you've put off doing if it keeps calling.

Love and light and nuttiness!