15 years of Beinspired!
We celebrated 15 years of Beinspired last night with a Kirtan session courtesy of Katie and Adam. It has been my dream since 2007 to have a Kirtan leader on the island and the wait has been worthwhile. I love Kirtan and I am very grateful to Katie and Adam for fulfilling this dream.
I discovered Kirtan while helping out on a yoga teacher training course at Govinda Valley, a Hare Krishna retreat centre near Sydney in Australia. I had never chanted previously and I couldn’t believe the heart opening and energetically uplifting effect of the practice. It was without doubt one of the most memorable experiences of my life, I felt as if I had discovered a direct path to the divine and experienced a level of bliss and ecstasy that I hadn’t known was missing from my life, or accessible too, just by using my voice!
I’ve sought out Kirtan ever since, and have tried to share what I can of it on yoga retreats, by using background music and encouraging people to sing along. It’s not ever been quite as powerful, although there have been some memorable experiences both in Glastonbury, where there was definitely a Goddess attendance and on Herm, the Gayatri Mantra being the instigator - this is my favourite mantra, the oldest known to man, that really illuminates and changes things for those who chant or even listen to it.
When I knew Katie was travelling the East coast of Australia I recommended she visit a Hare Krishna retreat centre at Murwillumbah, which I have never visited but have a friend who was based there for a time. Katie duly visited and here she met her partner Adam, who is now based with her in Guernsey, and she also experienced Kirtan, which she loved to the extent that she began facilitating sessions. When she returned to Guernsey she invested in a harmonium and began leading Kirtan sessions on our Sark retreats.
Last night though was a whole difference experience because we chanted for 90 minutes and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one buzzing with the energy at the end of the session, let alone feeling a deep connection to heart. It was a really uplifting and heart opening way to celebrate 15 years of Beinspired and especially with the added bonus of Sing’s homemade chocolate and the various gifts received, adding to the general energy - thank you everyone!
Beinspired has come a long way over the last 15 years, born one evening while talking with my Reiki Master about setting up yoga classes and offering Reiki treatments on the island and up popped the name and logo. I couldn’t have have appreciated in my wildest dreams that Beinspired would have taken me on the journey that it has over the years. At my first yoga class, no one turned up and I returned home despondent, crying on my dad’s shoulder and questioning my decision to teach.
It soon became apparent that I was not going to be able to survive on a holistic income and I returned part-time to the finance industry to help support me and afford me the opportunity to continue my travels and the endless trainings that I have undertaken off island over the years. I have not stopped studying and practising in all the time that I have been teaching - it is true that practice is everything.
While I was always resentful of my company secretarial qualification and the continuous draw to the finance industry, over the years I have become grateful for this. It has not only afforded the travel and training but has allowed me to develop the website and offer a plethora of free content - this all funded by my time attending board meetings and taking minutes, to say nothing of administering a wealth management company. I tried to leave it 3 times but each time I was called back, and each time my contract became increasingly flexible to the extent that I didn’t have a contract in the end.
I realise now that the powers that be were supporting me, and kept me engaged with the company to the point that it was, after 14 years, finally the right time for me to go it alone in the holistic world. It took that much time! Perhaps that’s helpful to know for those attempting to carve a life in the holistic world - it’s not always quite as straightforward as you might believe, there is often the need for compromise. Furthermore, this whole experience has helped me to finally appreciate that the spiritual resides in everything, that life is not black and white and that we need to get our prejudices out of the way if we are to see the bigger picture.
I do get asked from time to time for business advice. I don’t really have any! I did speak with Start-up Guernsey as it was known in the day, but I basically wrote a list of business intentions and personal intentions too, to which I channelled Reiki, before popping away in a drawer. I’ve gone back to it annually, because things change, including me, and Beinspired has taken on more of its own energy over that time, plus dreams have been realised so new dreams come in. I’m not sure I’d win a business award for that, because to be honest, I’ve just tried to keep aligning with heart and spirit, nothing else.
It’s taken a lot of hard work too, I’m not sure people appreciate that. Beinspired is my life, and I am continuously giving it energy, I don’t switch off, I thrive on working and practising, and trying to be in nature and of course with family as much as I can. I don’t sleep as much as I should, because I like to write in the quieter hours of the morning (I’m currently editing a manuscript I’ve written about my journey with depression), and I read in the evening, or explore nature and standing stones when the evenings are lighter.
I’m grateful for all the support that comes my way and especially for Katie, and before her, her sister Steph, who have transformed Beinspired in ways I couldn’t have done myself. I’m also eternally grateful to my parents who might not ‘get’ the whole spiritual/healing thing, or at least the extent to which I embrace it in my life, but have supported me nonetheless with all my endeavours. My dad even swept out the huge greenhouse for me once when rain put pay to an outdoor class on the grass! My mum even now prepares lunch for all the Reiki attunement sessions and then joins us while we eat.
There’s been lots of other support too. My brother Ross was instrumental in ensuring I got to my first yoga class, let alone helping with Beinspired in earlier years, teaching classes when he was on Guernsey. Vicki too, who has been a faithful friend throughout, helping me on the Herm retreats and covering classes for me, sometimes at the last minute, picking up when I went on unexpected and early maternity leave with Eben (and maternity leave with Elijah), she even had to finish off the retreat for me as I ended up being collected by the lifeboat with my waters breaking 6 weeks early during the middle of the retreat on a super full moon, typical huh!
Ewan of course has been unwavering in his support, he’s had little choice really, but I know there have been times when it has been tough, especially our first trip to India, running a retreat when the boys were only 1 and 3 years old - that was har work, because he was often having to entertain them for 5 hours or so a day on his own and I was still breastfeeding Eben (and still am!) which didn’t help. I dragged him back to India two years later when the boys were then 3 and 5, and that was still tricky because Eben kept running away from him and appearing in the yoga shala!
He’s managed on the many retreats in Glastonbury too, being the man on hand to help with students and ensuring they had logs in the yurts for their evening fires. Plus of course the endless hours of childcare while I’ve been teaching and attuning, often when the boys were babies, maintaining my sanity but probably at the expense of his own - Elijah cluster fed which made Monday evenings a traumatic event for Ewan as he awaited my return home to feed a screaming baby! Let alone the endless hours of my writing and turning often mad ideas into reality. I haven’t always gotten it right, putting other people’s needs ahead of my family’s needs, but he’s been supportive regardless. We’ve laughed and cried (well I’ve cried, Ewan’s mainly drunk more wine!).
My cousin Nick has provided amazing photography, so too his daughter Rosemary and of course Steph. Steph recorded many of the videos, no doubt bored to tears but she kept smiling regardless! There’s been so many others, teachers who have helped, friends who have given their endless support and spread the word, especially in the earlier days, those who run the retreat centres such as Emma in Goa with whom I am still friends, Devika in Nepal and her friend Cherry, and all the many students, wow!
There’s that saying isn’t there, about people coming into our life for a reason, a season or a lifetime and this is so true! There are some students who come and go, some who merely email for advice and then I never hear from again, sometimes not even a thank you (one learns detachment and being in service!) and those who have been with me from the very beginning. Our lives are all touched by one another in some way, especially when we usher Reiki into it. I’m grateful to everyone and to Her who collects us all together.
Who knows what the next 15 years will bring. Beinspired has its own energy and directs me, often challenging me to get out of my comfort zone. I have a few ideas too, so let’s see. For now, there’s definitely a calling to Sark and to share Reiki with the world. Yoga is going through its own transformation, the market saturated and sadly it has been reduced in many cases to nothing more than an exercise class. I live in hope that its philosophical and spiritual roots will find their way back through and yoga will no longer be seen as a middle class trendy thing to do.
I’m hoping that more will find their way to Ayurveda, simply because Ayurveda has helped me so much in my own life and continues to inform me in the way I attempt to eat and live. It demands a certain level of consciousness to begin but we are all getting there, the world is awakening, the term ‘chakra’ was unfamiliar to students when I first taught Reiki all those years ago but now it’s understood without any need for definition. With luck we’ll return to nature too, our own nature, as much as connecting with nature and all that this beautiful planet has to offer us, especially when we start respecting it.
I’m excited about the new baby, courtesy of Vicki, and about the other teachers who have started offering their heart and healing hands through Beinspired, both Jo and Katie. I’m also excited about the many Reiki practitioners starting to find their way, helping to spread more light to Planet Earth. This is what it’s always been about for me - reducing suffering, realising our potential (knowing the Self), raising consciousness and helping to heal humanity and Planet Earth in the process. Also trying to have some fun - sometimes we just need to lighten up and get out of our own way!
A huge big thank you to all of you who have supported me and Beinspired over the years - without you none of this would have been possible. A special thank you to Katie and Adam for facilitating the Kirtan yesterday evening -i t felt like the perfect way to celebrate these 15 years reminding me of the need for patience and that there is a timing to everything.
Love Emma x
