Riding the storm

Most people I talk to are currently going through this mill in some way, facing various challenges that are squeezing them and making life a touch interesting. The ‘up in the air’ theme continues on. I can’t be sure the new moon on Wednesday is going to make any difference. i feel we are just going to have to ride this storm until at least after the Equinox, which should shift things, but even then…well we’re having to learn to live with uncertainty and the unknown. To do otherwise is to wish our lives away waiting for things to settle.

The only moment we have is this one and while it might be difficult, there is still much joy to experience, lessons to learn and hope to be found; we’re simply being encouraged to open up to new levels of being and seeing and relating. Let’s hope there might be greater peace as a result - in Ukraine, as much as in our own lives. Although we have to remember that ultimately the peace has to come from within, regardless of what is happening outside of ourselves.

It was with this in mind that I saw my Ayurvedic doctor on Friday because I am aware that all the events of the last six months have thrown my vata and she can prescribe stronger Ayurvedic medicine than I am able to access personally! Plus it’s always good to speak to her, as she helps me to see more clearly what is happening, and reminds me always that it comes back to energy.

I live with two vata (air and ether) beings, and I have another who is mainly fire, earth and water (pitta kapha) but feeds off the air. I’m fire, earth and water too (pitta kapha) and should really be able to calm them down, but there has been so much air, the recent winds certainly didn’t help, that I haven’t been able to maintain as much of my own earth, let alone theirs too!

Elijah’s excess vata has manifested in his separation anxiety. He’s also being assessed for autism too, another indication of vata constitution. I never thought I’d end up a label parent but I have realised that labels help us to make sense of what our children might be going through and helps them to understand themselves better too. It’s understandable that, despite the inclusivity, he didn’t fit into school. His sensitivities are a gift, but might be better nurtured in a different, more nature-based setting.

It’s perhaps not surprising that since we have flowed with him, rather than against him, that he has been the happiest we have known him for years.He’s much more grounded now he spends the majority of his days outside, and often up trees. He has become obsessed with tree climbing, we caught him up the Norfolk island pine in our garden the other morning, he had the firs stuck in his hair as evidence, tricky in that hair!

There is always a sacrifice to make and Elijah being at home probably means we won’t be taking quite so many trips to Sark this year, or farther afield, but it is a small price to pay. I really do feel that we have to orientate away from the patriarchal paradigm of it being all about money anyway, but of course money means power and we live in a time of power, you have only to look at Putin and how the Ukraine situation is unfolding.

It’s not an easy mind set to shift though, we’re all conditioned to it, and we do need money to survive in this world currently, but there still remains the mind-set that the richer we are economically, the more secure, successful and happier we are as human beings. I know that this isn’t true, and that one cannot put a price on happiness and contentment, nor on a way of living that allows flow and space. But nonetheless, the conditioning runs deep and I have had to do some digging deep to let that go over the last couple of years, Covid and the lockdowns helping enormously.

Because I have written about Elijah, other mothers have contacted me recently, concerned about their children who are anxious or showing signs of autism. I don’t yet have any regrets about the decision we have made and like I say, it comes at a price, but it is one we are currently happy to pay. But our way is not THE way and no doubt our way will have to shift and shape to accommodate his needs as they change too.

Many, however, are under the misguided notion that having your child at home has to look like home-schooling during lock down. It doesn’t. There is no curriculum to follow, you do what you want to do in a way that best suits you and your children. This too is a huge mind-set shift, because we are always so concerned about children losing out, or not keeping up and all this other rubbish. There was no rule book as best I know when we arrived on Planet Earth about how life should be lived, and certainly not one about how the mind might be trained and therefore educated.

I was taught lots of information that has been of no use or value to me in actually living my life. Much of it was really boring too, and all those endless exams to check that I had retained the information, nonsense too! And this from someone who thrived on academic success. But really now I see how unhelpful it all was. I couldn’t look after myself when I went to university because I hadn’t been taught life skills. So if there is one thing we focus on with Elijah it is that, how he might work with money, how he might make a fire, how he might prepare food, how he might interact with other people, how he might fix things etc.

At the end of the day, concerns about curriculum and whether you have to give up holidays, whether you can get by on a lesser wage and whether you will have as much time for yourself and all the activities that are currently carried out becomes irrelevant when you see your child suffering. Because then, really you have no choice and it should never matter what anyone else thinks. And locally, there is a Home Ed group that can provide support and more structure if needed, and help and guidance and a friendly face too.

So while Elijah is more contented and stable now, enjoying regular massages from me as recommended by my Ayurvedic doctor to help ease the excess vata, the focus moves to my youngest, Eben, our fighter! He’s been like that all the way, the embryo frozen for two years, a constant kicker in my tummy, breech and kicking his way out six weeks early on a super full moon while I was leading a yoga retreat on Herm. He hasn’t stopped since. He’s like me in many respects, I don’t stop much either, my Dad’s the same. We’re pitta doers, always on the go. I know now why my parents always found me so exhausting!

The difference being that I wasn’t a fighter. Well I mean I am, in so much as I might fight for what I believe in, spiritually certainly, and I’m pretty sure I used to fight my brother when we were younger, but Eben is different. His name chose itself and it means ‘grounded warrior’ so we shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m pretty sure that he has a past life or two as a fighter as one of the first words he uttered was gun, and we had not exposed him to them (that we know about) so it was a bit of a surprise. His fighting though, also comes because he likes the reaction and poor Elijah tends to be on the receiving end.

I do feel that his entrance to Planet Earth has not helped and possibly set this all in motion. He was whisked away from his mummy within minutes of being born, had a cannula inserted into his little hand, had a needle inserted into the bones between his spine, curling him into a ball in the process (they chose not to tell me too much about it as they said I would be too upset by the idea of it), fed formula and antibiotics, popped on his own in a little plastic box, and administered oxygen. It would be hours before I saw him, let alone held him.

It’s possible, that as a consequence of all this, he suffered some trauma. It’s possible that this has caused issues around the way his brain fires connections, especially in terms of dopamine. It’s possible he has lower levels than other children and has to do certain things to get more of it, like hit his brother repeatedly, eat sweet things (dried mango is his go-to), and generally act out, not because he’s naughty, but because he is seeking a reaction to obtain his dopamine hit and experience feelings of satiety.

The easiest way I find to understand the brain and how this all works, is to think of it as a very complex and intricate computer. Instead of electrical circuits, the brain consists of billions of cells called neurons. These neurons are organised into circuits and networks. Each neuron acts as a switch controlling the flow of information and if a neuron receives enough signals from other connected neurons, it fires, sending its own signal on to other neurons in the same circuit.

The brain itself is made up of many parts with interconnected circuits that - in theory - work together as a team. Different ‘circuits’ are responsible for coordinating and carrying out specific and various functions. The networks of neurons send signals back and forth to each other and throughout different parts of the brain, spinal cord and nerves in the rest of the body.

To send a message, a neuron releases a neurotransmitter into the gap (a synapse) between it and the next cell. The neurotransmitter crosses the synapse and attaches to the receptors on the receiving neuron, a little bit like putting a key in the lock, and this causes a change in the receiving cell. There are other molecules (transporters) that recycle neurotransmitters and bring them back into the neuron that released them, which limits or shuts off the signals between neurons.

Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter that your body makes and your nervous system uses to send messages between nerve cells. It’s often referred to as a chemical messenger and it plays a key role in how we feel pleasure. If people have lower levels of dopamine, they will seek it out in alternative ways, which gives a rush of dopamine in the brain - it motivates drug taking for example, such as cocaine and amphetamines, and as with my son, it can motivate the need for sugar and carbohydrates and just acting up and fighting to get a reaction. There is a label for this but we’re not quite there just yet. But regardless, it is taking us on another journey individually and as a family.

Life tends to gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want, at least from a soulful perspective, and I find my life taking on new direction, led by the children. I’m learning lots about the effect of trauma on babies and children and the manner in which this affects them as they grow and the various ways that this can be healed and managed, and this from experience as much as from written text. I’m becoming increasingly aware that the more I surrender to the needs of my children, the richer my world becomes, not financially necessarily, but certainly from a heart and soul perspective.

And this brings me back to Ayurveda and energy and the notion that we see in you and Reiki, that the more we transform and change and balance ourselves and access greater levels of authenticity, the more positive the effect on those around us - our vibration shifts positively, theirs is more likely to shift positively too. So always, it has to come back to us and how we are relating to the world. If I’d like a calmer life then it’s no good looking at my children and simply trying to make them calmer and more balanced, I have to make myself calmer and more balanced first.

I’m very aware from my conversations with a child psychologist and from my friend who is a family counsellor, that regulation is key, regulation of the parents and caregivers mainly. My friend has been telling me this for years. Sleep deprivation is therefore not idea, because it creates patterns of disregulation simply because one is living on an edge. But really, regulation in my world means being energetically balanced.

And life generally has a way of throwing us off balance, especially when the energy is all up in the air and strong winds come in to further challenge us energetically. So the key is to try to maintain energetic balance as a parent. If we’re out of balance, all over the place and floundering, then the chances are our children will be too. And this is one of the greatest travesties of government reaction to Covid-19 the last few years, is the way it has impacted on adults and their mental health and how this has further impacted on their children.

We are continuously told that children are resilient, that they can better weather the storm than adults, but this is simply not true. Ask any child psychologist who works with traumatised children. They are no more resilient than adults, and the trauma they experience can have a far reaching effect on their ability to be in this world, and in their relationship not only to themselves but to others too. One of the things I really struggle with is this misconception and the way it has been played on during Covid. Only now are we really seeing the effects.

I was talking to a friend in the UK who works with dyslexic children and she was saying how there are more children than ever being tested, not because they are dyslexic, but simply because they’re far behind where they’d normally be because of all the disruption to education the last few years, let alone the anxiety, which makes it more difficult for children to learn anyway.

This is the crazy thing, children who are not regulated stand very little chance of learning anything because they are stuck in fight/flight, the lower part of the brain and they can’t access other parts so the information doesn’t go in. This is what was happening to Elijah. He just couldn’t understand what was being taught to him in class because he was too anxious, let alone because of dyslexia.

For me Ayurveda is always extremely helpful because it helps me to see the energetic changes that need to be made. The process itself can be informative, transformative and potentially enlightening too and I always relish the opportunity to go deeper as I never know quite what I might find and how this might shape my outer world. This is a time of great potential, we have to find our way to tap into this individually too, for the collective.

Not to say that I’m not also encouraging energetic changes within the boys too. Eben, is slightly easier to get Ayurvedic medicine into, and especially now we’ve set him up with a crystal reward system which I never thought I’d do, but needs must, and he LOVES it, such is the nature of an achiever! He’s difficult to massage though became he is ticklish and laughs instead. He’s very strong willed too, so I have to negotiate, but the reward system certainly helps with this. We’re also working on sleep, he’s a kicker and I get kicked half the night he joins me, but we have a plan…just got to put it into place!

There are many ways generally that we might reduce excess vata and ease the groundless and airy feeling, which can feed restless and anxiety and just make us feel depleted. So if you too are feeling like this, then I can highly recommend massage, eating warm, nourishing and easily digestible foods, like vegetable curry and rice, swimming and walking, guided relaxations, early nights and lots of rest, lying on the earth to literally ground, and being very gentle with the self. Preparing food mindfully helps, so too getting our hands in the earth and I am all set to start planting medical seeds next week, after the new moon.

I do find it so interesting how the changes that are coming in, however uncomfortable, are opening up new ways of being for us, that we might never have previously considered, or thought possible. I have always loved being with children, but I had no idea that my own children would change my life to this extent. I can see how these changes feed my soul, if I can only get myself and my conditioning out of the way and keep allowing myself to go with the flow even if I don’t know where the river is headed. As Ralph Blum writes, “relinquishing control is the ultimate challenge for the spiritual warrior”.

The message really, is to continuously settle into the unknown, to wait for the right time and then take an empty-handed leap into the void, and allow the self-change. This is where we’re at. A time of self-change, if we are up for it. Now is not the time to take action but to sit tight, like a new seed settling into the earth, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the time to sprout. I’m going to let the children lead the way and see where it takes us and all the while focus on the energetic balance and riding any storm and getting more sleep (hopefully!).

Enjoy this wane to the dark night.

Love Emma x