The eclipses and rage
This is some eclipse season, helping to shine a light into the shadows. I’m in the middle of a twenty-one day Reiki cleansing too, which probably doesn’t help, let alone all the work with my teacher and the energy work that I have been doing, to say nothing of the connection with the ancients and the ancient sites and their transformative energy. Yet I know that I am not alone and others have been going through it too, so I take comfort in this – I am not as insane as I might have thought!
The rage when it came was all consuming. I could feel it coming. Over the years I have gotten better at feeling this and knowing that I need to find a way to release it, usually from deep within the liver, which lends itself perfectly to holding unexpressed and repressed anger, frustration and resentment - the solar plexus. It’s a horrible energy, which is probably the reason that we don’t always allow it expression, because it can be so damaging, at least if expressed unconsciously, which is often the case.
But it needs to move and be released somehow, it needs expression, to move, stuck energy does us no favours, it sits there in the shadows, our past still impacting on our present in patterns that might no longer serve us. It is helpful to let go of the past, so that we are not weighed down by it in the present, yet it can be so tricky sometimes because we don’t always know at the beginning what we are letting go of, the pattern only revealing itself when we are in process, so there is trust and faith involved.
I could feel my skin bubbling with the holding on to all this hot rage and frustration, and I tried to access this, and allow it a path of expression on my yoga mat. I became aware of the need to forgive myself for something I had been giving myself a hard time about, and to forgive others who I felt had harmed me in my past (even though it wasn’t their intention to harm).
It is sometimes difficult to forgive if we believe that we have been harmed by another, because on some level we might want to hold onto the notion of ‘you harmed me’, so we can continue to play out our victimhood and buy into the blame dynamic. Yet at some point we have to take responsibility for our wellbeing, and we have to find the courage and strength to let our past and our unhealthy patterns go, so that we can free ourselves, and release the toxicity and negativity that may impact on us (not them), that clogs our livers and digestive systems.
To do this, our higher self will call in a situation that will allow us to see more clearly the patterns that have been laid, because it will bring up in us the emotions that have been repressed, so that we might be able to shift things, shine a light into the shadows, allowing us to become more conscious in the process, less impacted by our past. Eclipses and solstices help to support this process, they will always shine a light for us, so I should have expected it, yet it still surprised me, the ferocity and intensity of the energy around the eclipse.
The eclipse took place on the Sunday and on the Monday I felt the energy building. The pattern was becoming clearer, it was playing out around Elijah’s home schooling, and the same old feelings of helplessness and not being heard, old uncomfortable feelings around my worth and my power and powerlessness came up, feelings of annihilation and desperation, of harm and of sheer frustration. It was all there for me to see and feel how much the repression of all this was creating toxicity.
The healing process fascinates me, how we still, years on, find ourselves holding onto strands of all the stuff that we think we have looked at and resolved, as our lives move on in brighter and more empowered directions. Yet there is still sometimes a resonance and we don’t even know how this continues to play out, until the moon and the eclipses might help to make it clearer somehow.
I probably sound completely mad unless you too have been through this yourself because there is a moment when you feel as if you might be losing your mind, as if you might now have reached a place of insanity because you see the world so differently to others, and this of course feeds into the dis-harmony and the lack of inner ease, because you consider that maybe you have gotten it wrong, that perhaps your inner truth, heart, guidance system is somehow flawed because others struggle to understand you.
I picked a fight, I did this consciously too, because I knew it would help me to release the pent up energy that needed expression. It worked and I found myself screaming with the rage of it to the sky and to the universe, as if now I really had reached a degree of madness, and yet it felt so good, to allow the rage, that aspect of self that is often denied. The tears came, big fat tears of anger, and then of sadness and then of nothing in particular, exhaustion perhaps, spent.
It’s like a storm, or a fireball that comes from nowhere and takes hold, wreaking havoc for a short time, churning everything up, moving stuff, and then blows itself out, and everything returns calm, if a little bruised, settling. It’s inner child stuff usually, the adult self needs to hold the child self that feels as if it has been harmed, needs to reclaim it and hold it safe. I always have this need to find my teddy bear when this comes up, this is the give away!
The whole process can be so healing and yet sometimes so difficult to navigate without falling into further patterns of victimhood and blame. If you can navigate it, as consciously as possible, allowing it then, it can be an extremely liberating process, leaving you with a renewed sense of self and compassion too. How it then unfolds is difficult to tell, but the attachment has lessened, because your present is not so informed by your past, limited, so there is greater potential.
You might notice this coming up for you these next few weeks as we approach another eclipse and a full moon. Be assured that there is nothing wrong, you are just being cleared out so that the new can enter in. So welcome it, whatever it brings, be with it, try to be conscious of it and avoid the usual coping and suppression mechanisms, be gentle and witness as best you can the process as it unfolds within and outside of you too.
These are potent times, and I find it very exciting the potential of the new world we might create if we can go to those deepest and darkest places. Life will undoubtably becomes brighter the more we can embrace the vulnerable parts that we often keep hidden. Let’s see…the eclipses are here to help us create a brighter world and we can each be part of that, individually affecting the collective.
Abundance!
I met some friends on the beach with our children today and two of us were talking about the seeds that we had been given to plant, by our mutual friend, Fi. It seems that mine have been rather more abundant than my friend’s seeds, and she quite rightly pointed out that abundance comes in many forms, and this did make me think, because life can be abundant in so many different ways.
I have been lucky or perhaps it’s the result of my being a touch over-enthusiastic, because I have been blessed with about 500 pots of medicinal plants (sorry Tara, not to rub it in!!) (There are lots still to re-pot!). Typically the ones I am most excited about, the pot marigolds (so I can make calendula cream) have not been as abundant as say hyssop, or mother’s wort, or even gypsy wort now I come to think about it. Goodness knows what I’ll do with them.
Mind you, Fi did say to me that it’s not so much what you do with them that will bring the joy, but the process of actually growing them. This is so true and one of the fundamental teachings from the Bhagavad Gita, about not being attached to the fruits of our labours. There is a verse that can be translated as follows: “You have the right to work, but for work’s sake only. You have no rights to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your notice in working. Never give way to laziness either”.
If ever there was an opportunity to put this into practice then it has been growing the medicinal plants! I had no expectation or attachment to outcome, I was growing them simply because Fi had given me the idea and something in me said, “yes, 'let’s do this”. In fact it was Ewan who planted some of the seeds, I just gave them Reiki and have tended to them ever since. I’ve planted more along the way, although I wonder now the reason I did this, because I already had so many, and I am considering that in the context of my wider pondering on greed, which has come up in recent weeks as I witness the effect of greed playing out in the wider world and I have been considering it in my world too.
The thing is with the plants, I have just grown them for the sake of growing them and because it felt like my heart wanted me to do it and it has been hugely enjoyable. I have no plans of what to do with them, beyond the pot marigolds. This too has been wonderful, to not have placed pressure on myself to do anything with them really, albeit I have bought a couple more books on herbal remedies and what I might make, if I have the time and inclination, let alone the financial resource to buy all the bits and bobs that are often required in this whole ‘making things’ process!
The message from the Bhagavad Gita, is to renounce attachment to the fruits so that you can remain even tempered in success and failure, and that it is this evenness of temper, which is yoga. It is said that work done with anxiety about the results of the work, is far inferior to work done without anxiety, because this brings with it self-surrender. We surrender all attachment to outcome and just do it for the love of it and because - on the whole - it is our dharma, our reason to be in this world. There is an understanding that those who work selfishly, for the fruits alone, for the results of their actions, will end up miserable!
It is difficult though, because of course generally, we do need to earn money to live. This pandemic has certainly challenged so many of us with this. I heard myself saying today, “double the amount of work, for half the amount of income”, because this is what the pandemic has brought with it, and I know I am not alone, because others are saying it too. The additional administration these last few months to adapt to the changing circumstances has been huge and the income has been much less than it would be ordinarily because of restrictions caused by social distancing.
Yet I know that for me work is not just about income. I teach yoga and share Reiki because I love it. It makes me feel alive. I was positively depressed during lockdown when I wasn’t able to touch people and share it face to face, E was finding life with my dull mood hard work! So I am just so happy to be able to teach again, regardless of the fact that it helps me earn money. And while I know not to be attached to the fruits of the labour, I am grateful for all the abundance that fills my life, the plants, the vegetable patch, the friends, the bird that visit each days, the time with my children, the peacefulness of dusk, and the abundant sleep now my younger son doesn’t wake us as much.
Life is full of abundance. I suppose we just have to notice it, and step out of the conditioning, which always sees abundance in terms of monetary gain. We have to remember to enjoy the process, to do the work for the sake of the work that needs to be done, not because of an outcome. It’s much easier said than done. Even in yoga there is the grasping for an outcome. I noticed it tonight for the first time, when I asked students to establish an intention, something they might like to receive from the practice and I realised that this was setting them up to expect an outcome, to see their practice as something leading them somewhere, rather than just practising for the love of practising.
I notice it playing out during the practice too, this attachment to a pose needing to look a certain way, so that there might be pushing and pulling and a loss of the magic that might arise if only we could just be OK by allowing the body to unravel when it is ready, not because we are forcing it in some way. As if we might achieve more, whatever that might be, peace and harmony perhaps, a better body. I don’t know, we all have our different reasons for practice, our different attachments, our different ideas of how it might be.
But really, it is my experience, that just turning up on our mat is enough. Just being there with our body and with our breath and honouring both and surrendering to the process and to the practice. There will be greater abundance, simply because there will be a change, that will help you - if nothing else - to recognise it, because perhaps it’s always been there but you have just never recognised it, because so often we focus on what we don’t have, and miss all that is already filling our lives, the love, the silence, the noise, the craziness, the solitude. It is all abundant, it’s just our perspective that sometimes needs shifting.
We begin to notice more of the joy that comes with the work. In letting go to the fruits, we begin to see all that we had previously dismissed and overlooked in our quest to always be somewhere other than where we are. It’s actually liberating to live like this, albeit it demands another step outside the box, living in a society that is generally focused on outcome, always working towards a future date to improve from a past date already taken place. Life is so abundant, let’s give thanks for that!
The Chakras
I love working with the chakras, it has underpinned my work for many years now and I am always keen to share them with others, be that through yoga, Reiki and/or Ayurveda. I thought it about time that I blogged about them again, in case they should be of interest to you, or you might learn something helpful or interesting by exploring more of your own chakra system.
Basically, the chakras are wheels of energy that form the energy system in the human body. There are seven of them in total (the magic seven!), and they are responsible for overall health, providing a sense of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
The chakras are also junctions of consciousness (mind) and the physical body, nourishing particular organs and controlling various psycho-physiological pathways. They are responsible for transporting neuro-electrical and spiritual energies of the spinal cord and also for conveying stimuli from the higher centres (for example the brain, pituitary gland) to the lower organs.
Furthermore, the chakras correlate with the endocrine system (hormone system) and therefore a chakra imbalance will present as a problem within the endocrine system e.g. thyroid gland or ovaries etc. The endocrine imbalance happens as a result of chakra imbalance, not the other way around, and therefore you are always encouraged to get to the energetic imbalance if you hope to heal the physical manifestation of that imbalance.
An imbalance in a chakra is created by an obstruction in the energy flow. This might be caused by deep buried memories within the subconscious mind from childhood trauma, or from tension build up at the chakras, which can affect posture, metabolism, emotional state and breathing for example. Physical ailments may develop by the chronic repeated obstruction to energy flow.
When one chakra is blocked, the other chakras begin to compensate and either become overactive or under-active and you might start to notice issues arising here too. That’s the reason it is so important to truly get to the root cause of any physical complaint and consider the energetic imbalance.
This can be addressed through yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda. In many respects I have found Ayurveda to be the most powerful modality, because it works not only through diet and lifestyle, but incorporates massage, yoga asana and pranayama too, working on physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and energetic levels simultaneously. Like with any holistic approach to healing, you will need to take responsibility and do the work, no one can do it for you. Plus it can take time!
I think this is often the greatest obstacle to our healing. We have a tendency to want the quick fix approach, forgetting that it may have taken years of living out of balance with our innate wisdom which has led to our loss of wellbeing in the first place. It will take time and it will demand our attention, if we truly wish to heal, then we must be prepared to look into the shadows and reclaim those fragmented and lost parts of self. We have to be truthful with our selves.
This is the reason I love working with the chakras though, because the transformation is very real, and deep, you can’t get much deeper than working energetically, because this underpins everything, and connects us through all our lifetimes, so that past life stuff can come up too. It’s all in there! The more you work with the chakras the more life makes sense and the more you can live a life of freedom and genuine sustained contentment.
The root chakra will follow…
xxx
The Blessings in the Curse
Now I’ve found my flow within this new reality that we find ourselves in, I have to admit that I am loving it. I appreciate that people are dying and are losing their jobs and others are unwell and separated from their families, yet I am grateful for this opportunity to shift how we are living and align to something slower paced instead.
In many respects I have been quite lucky as our lives were already lived relatively simply. I wasn’t going to an office and I wasn’t working full time, so being at home with the boys has not been a shock to my system as it would understandably have been for others – I am in awe at those attempting to work full time from home and school children all at the same time. It helps too that my parents are on hand by FaceTime to help with Elijah’s learning, and I have been grateful for their support.
But more than that, over the years of practising yoga, aspects of how my life used to be lived have dropped away, I don’t go out for dinner, or socialise with the girls beyond meeting for a sea swim, for example. I don’t go to the hairdresser regularly, or have my nails done. I don’t go shopping for clothes or for anything else beyond food if I can help it! I don’t go to the cinema or to the gym. I don’t really do very much when I think about it, beyond yoga, writing, cycling, going to the beach, and being with the children!
Of course there are things I miss, but the missing doesn’t feel as great as it did at the beginning, as I have let go a little of those attachments too. No doubt there will be more to let go of as this lockdown continues, but I’ve started to recognise more of the positives than the negatives and long may this continue! To be honest I have felt much more gratitude for all I have in my life, now, than I ever did previously and this in itself has been a positive, as are these:
· There is less rushing and for this I am eternally grateful! I have known for a while that I needed to slow my life down and stop with the rushing, especially rushing the children in and out of the door, and lockdown has achieved this for me. We no longer need to rush and life is so much easier!
· Time has taken on a whole new meaning. Aside from being on time for the yoga classes that I have scheduled, and the FaceTime sessions with my parents for Elijah’s home schooling, there is no need to be on time for anything else because we have no plans, we are able to just literally flow with where the energy takes us and that is extremely liberating.
· This means that we are able to drop more into the notion of there being no time or space, as we learn in Reiki Level Two, and I feel that this lockdown has allowed a greater lived sense of that. Time and space seems less of an obstacle as we connect over the internet regardless of space and time – one of my friends, Lottie, has been able to join some of the Facebook Live sessions with us from Australia, which is just wonderful.
· There has been greater connecting with people who are on my wave length, who I hadn’t had the opportunity to connect with previously. It’s as if a whole new world has opened up bringing with it lovely new connections. There’s also been a deepening in established connections, which has been wonderful too.
· The reduction in noise from the roads and the skies is a true joy and I can hear the bird song much clearer than previously and I’m slowly learning to recognise which bird song comes from which bird type!
· I also feel that I can see more clearly too, without all the traffic, and I actually stopped my bike the other day, when I was out cycling, to stare at the wonder which was someone else’s garden full of beautiful flowers blossoming.
· I feel like I can breathe more easily too, especially when I am out on my bike, the air just feels cleaner, like its filled with more prana, perhaps because it is spring and nature is abundant in energy.
· At times it feels as if the flowers on the hedgerows and cliffs and in the gardens are from another world as they look so stunning and so vibrant, with their bright colours, reminding me that nature is abundant in her beauty and is not scared to share with it others, so that we too can delight in it.
· Being more aware of what I am buying, and trying to make as many snacks as I can as well as cooking from scratch twice a day and having the time to be a little more adventurous than I might be normally.
· The opportunity to write - not least a little more time without the regular trips backwards and forwards to the school each day, but also the creative impulse, as if the time and the space and the extra yoga lessons that I have taken with my teacher have allowed me the opportunity to drop deeper into the creative.
· Extra yoga lessons with my teacher have been a joy as both of our schedules have eased and E is at home to help with the children.
· The time spent as a family. We were lucky as our lives allowed us a lot of family time previously, but now we have even more time together, and while this certainly brings with it its challenges (how can it not!), it has also been wonderful to be more involved in Elijah’s education, and witness more fully the mania of Eben!
· This has been another benefit, watching the children coming into their own, in their own ways. Elijah has never passionate about school and he is enjoying not having the pressure of that and he’s now stopped counting down to the weekend! He has enjoyed learning from home, and I have enjoyed being more involved in his learning so that we can celebrate his achievements together.
· While Eben has been a challenge at times because he just doesn’t understand the reason he can’t see my parents, and he misses his friends and pre-school, it has been lovely to see him thriving and wilding himself even more than usual.
· Watching the boys’ relationship develop. They are forced together for most of the day and they have thrived on this, playing in a way they have never played previously, and we are laughing more together as a family because of this. We’ve been grateful for the opportunity to walk a dog for another family, we love this dog and she has brought much joy to us as a family.
· This is the other thing, this wilding. The boys have always been a little wild and E and I too really, but now we can truly embrace this aspect of self, getting out into nature, wearing the same clothes more than once, and embracing the dirt!
· I’ve stopped being so obsessive about the cleanliness of the house. This is a big one for me as I am a bit OCD with cleaning as those who know me will agree, but I’ve let this go a little too, as I have re-prioritised my time, I’d rather be writing or playing outside with the boys than cleaning for the sake of it, hoorah for that!
· Creating a Reiki community, which is something I have always wanted to do but never had the time nor the idea of how I might make this happen. But it has happened all by itself and I look forward to the weekly Tuesday evening sessions so that we can connect through Zoom.
· Creating an online yoga community has been wonderful too, to stay connected and share yoga with others during this tricky time felt by many, especially those juggling a working schedule and home schooling children. It is a joy for me to teach yoga and I am grateful that I have been able to continue to do this and to share my passion to help and support others as yoga has helped and supported me enormously over the years and continues to do so.
· A depending connection to the Earth and to her ancient wisdom. I have even started planting seeds to attempt to grow medicinal herbs, something that has been on my mind for a while now, and I am hoping that they will be kind and grow for me and for me to share with you. A whole new world potentially awaits, let us see.
· Getting out running. I’m not a runner, I prefer swimming and cycling, but running has helped me to process my thoughts and all that is happening, it has given me the space to think about the book I am writing, it has helped me to notice the beauty of nature around me and to clear my head and enjoy some solitude away from the family.
· Having to face my long-held fear of IT and learning how to do online videos for myself, let alone sending out newsletters and doing minor updates to the website. It has been a teeny bit empowering and I hope I can continue to build on it. I am very grateful to Katie Bisson, my brother and Nicky Jenkins who have all helped in the background.
· I have had to face my fear of seeing myself on the screen! I employed Steph to film the videos on my website professionally, and so I have never watched them as she kindly did all the editing without needing my input, so I have avoided thus far seeing myself on them. However with Facebook Live and Zoom I get to see myself on the screen as they are recording and I have to admit that really it is no big deal, I wonder what all the fuss was about!
· I have had to look a little at my fear of my family getting ill or dying. I suspect I am still very much in denial about this as I comfort myself very quickly with thoughts of karma and our souls having their own journey. It’s a fear that I will one day have to overcome, but I’m hoping that now is not that time.
· I’m extremely grateful for my family and for my home, and for the land on which we live, and this beautiful Island on which I was born and the wonderful community we have. We are truly blessed.
· While it might sound as if it is all about me if my ramblings above are anything to go by, It is extremely humbling to recognise those who are deemed essential workers and those who are not. As a yoga teacher and Reiki practitioner, I am not deemed an essential worker, and nor would I have been if I had continued to work as a company secretary in the finance industry. There is a humility that accompanies this and it is my hope that greater respect is given for those key workers post-Covid, the ones who ensure that there is minimal disruption to the fundamentals of our ability to live, from those working at the docks, to those filling the shelves, from those caring for the elderly to those working in hospitals. Let us not forget.
· What I am loving the most is that this period is unprecedented, there is no guideline, no societal expectation on how we as a society or individually should behave or feel. I doubt there is a business model that can help guide businesses through this time with any certainty, we are all having to find a new way. This is extremely liberating not only in the moment, but also for the future of our society. We each have our own role to play in this, as part of the collective, to determine the kind of life we want to live post-Covid.
· My soul feels more at ease, it enjoys this gentler rhythm, the time to observe my breath, to feel a part of nature, and to be in the flow of it – helped enormously because it is spring time.
There are many other benefits too, in the wider world:
· Councils in the UK have been told to house homeless people, some are now even being housed at Heathrow.
· The population has renewed respect for health workers and those on the front line.
· Around the world, Seismologists are observing a lot less ambient seismic noise – meaning the vibrations generated by cars, trains, buses and people going about their daily lives has decreased. This means that the Earth’s upper crust is moving a little less and overall the Earth is currently a much quieter place to live than it was.
· There has already been a noticeable decrease in air pollution in some of the world’s most polluted cities.
· I read that even the Ganges is looking a little bit cleaner!
· People are coming together and helping their communities and especially the vulnerable within them.
· People are connecting across the internet, there is a sense of global solidarity.
I appreciate that there are many suffering because of fear about poor health and losing those they love, others fearful for the loss of the life they had previously enjoyed as more are made redundant or otherwise lose their jobs. Yet I know that every burden carries with it a blessing, it is the natural lore. So while it might feel chaotic and mad, once the turmoil has eased, the bigger picture will become much clearer.
We each have the opportunity now to re-assess our priorities and to really live and embody them, not just think about them, and then put the list back into the drawer until we have more time in our lives. That time is now. If ever there was a time. It might still feel crazy and messy, but every ending feels this way, and we should take comfort in the thought of the peaceful and more aligned new beginnings ahead, we just have to trust and keep letting go into the flow.
I hope that this time is kind to you and that you are able to be kind to yourself too. If ever there was a time for kindness and compassion then it is also now. Every now. But especially this now.
Lots of love xxx
The light is never far away from the dark
If ever there was a time to settle into the light then it is now; as so many are overwhelmed and suffering, being forced to face their deepest fears.
It is a turbulent time of change and upheaval on Mother Earth, and I feel it is more important than ever to hold space for those who wish to connect to their inner light and wisdom, pouring love out into the world and raising vibration through yoga and Reiki classes.
I’m writing this while on retreat on Sark, where the energy of fear has yet to appear and we are able to settle into our centre more easily. While others may feel differently, this is a heartfelt choice for me right now, although may well change as events unfold.
On Saturday, I was cycling down Sark’s high street, trying to think what I might write to those who attend class when I felt an overwhelming need to visit the local charity shop, which I’ve wanted to do for years. In here, I was immediately drawn to the book section where a book, “The Game of Life and How to Play It” by Florence Shinn caught my attention. I opened the book by chance on page 51 and there in front of me were written these exact words:
“Perhaps one’s fear is of disease or germs. Then one should be fearless and undisturbed in a germ-laden situation, and he would be immune. One can only contract germs while vibrating at the same rate as the germ, and fear drags men down to the level of the germ”.
Then later, at class, a particular poem caught my attention that I felt absolutely had to be shared:
The Choice for Love
What does the voice of fear
Whisper to you?
Fear speaks to you
In logic and reason.
It assumes the language
Of love itself.
Fear tells you,
“I want to make you safe”
Love says
“You are safe”.
Fear says
“Give me symbols.
Give me frozen images.
Give me something
I can rely on”
Loving truth says
“Only give me
This moment”
Fear would walk you
On a narrow path
Promising to take you
Where you want to go.
Love says,
“Open your arms
And fly with me.”
Every moment of your life
You are offered the opportunity
To choose-
Love or fear,
To tread the earth
Or to soar to the heavens.
If ever there was a time to accept the universal order, which only appears to be chaotic and ever-changing, then it is now. Regardless of what life throws at us, individually or globally, the dance of the universe is a happy one. We should nor fear the change or the loss – from darkness comes light.
This is an opportunity to put into practice all we have learned on our spiritual journey thus far:
To stay centred through great confusion.
To go with the flow, not sweating the small stuff.
To develop a forgiving heart if someone has caused us harm.
Accepting life as it unfolds, however uncomfortable.
Finding the courage to live from our hearts and our deepest truth, even if that goes against what is expected of us by others.
Letting go of judgments and feeling compassion instead for those who have made different choices to our own.
Sending love and light to all those suffering, especially those who judge and criticise us for the choices we have made.
Love Emma x
Ten years of sea swimming - the joy!
As I approach the ten year anniversary of all-year around sea swimming, I can’t help thinking how much life has changed, so that sea swimming has become normalised (as has chakras and crystals), which can only be a good thing.
Even doctors are nowadays prescribing sea swimming for depression as a friend of mine recently discovered. It was a bout of depression and anxiety that initially brought me to all-year around sea swimming. Depression was familiar, but anxiety was new to me and I was gripped by a ridiculous fear of leaving the house and was weepy and emotional, slightly paranoid too.
I’d been overworking, teaching too much yoga and channelling too much Reiki without protecting myself properly or establishing good boundaries. It was a lesson learned. But nonetheless at the time, it was a little traumatic as I wasn’t familiar with the intensity of the feelings of anxiety and fear of leaving the house.
I stopped working, I had no choice, and took myself off to the doctor who referred me to the local mental health service for CBT. She prescribed Prozac too, but as with previous prescriptions for this drug, I knew that the pharmaceutical route was not for me, depression in my experience is a depression of the soul and this was a wake-up call; I wasn’t listening to my heart, or honouring my soul; my spirit was low.
One of my friend’s, who had a history of depression, invited me to join her sea-swimming, she said that it has really helped her when she was feeling low. I was aware by then of the healing power of nature, and E had encouraged me into the garden, and at the advice of my Ayurvedic doctor I was getting my hands in the earth and weeding – as if weeding out the weeds that were causing my depression, my inability to access the light. I was keen to try sea swimming and appreciated my friend’s support.
I’d been an avid surfer during my teenage years so was frequently in the sea all-year around, albeit in a wet suit. During my twenties, while I had stopped surfing by then, I hung out with a group of friends who were passionate about the sea and we’d frequently do the ‘weaver run’, often on our walk home late at night from the Rockmount, either at Cobo or Vazon. This involved removing our clothes and running as fast as we could into the sea at low tide, risking a weaver fish sting!
We’d also meet regularly after work during the summer months to swim at ‘Barnacle Point’ off Albecq or from the rocks near Fort Houmet, eager to connect with the sea after a day spent sat in soul-less offices. Towards the end of my twenties, I started travelling regularly, to Australia mainly, to undertake my yoga training, and I’d swim every day in the sea. Back home in Guernsey though, I might go a few times during the summer, but I didn’t make a habit of it.
So now I was keen to see how connecting with the sea might make me feel. My friend collected me one mid-morning and drove us to Petit Bot, where we were the only people on the beach. It was this that positively affected me as much as the sea swim. I was so used to working during every hour that I had available to me, that I rarely took time to get out during the day time, and it felt odd, like a whole new reality was presenting itself to me – one where you allowed yourself to go to the beach during ‘normal’ working hours and do something for yourself, namely swim!
The swim itself was amazing. For the first time in days I wasn’t pre-occupied by the stomach churning anxiety and emotional sensitivity that this brought with it. Instead, I experienced myself very much in the present moment, of being shocked awake in the freezing cold sea! I couldn’t believe how much better I felt afterwards, as if something had literally been awoken in me; my mind calmer, my body more grounded than it had been for a long time, my energy cleansed, and my soul nourished by this interaction with Mother Nature.
I was hooked almost immediately and haven’t looked back since. I took a few months off from working, and went sea swimming daily, either with my friend, and the other ladies who swam at Petit Bot at that time, or with E watching from the beach. My mental wellbeing improved significantly during this period, and I always accredit sea swimming for this.
Not only did the physical act of getting in cold water help to ground me in the present (and therefore ease the anxiety and depression) but it also helped me to look at my life and re-prioritise the way that I was living it, with daily sea swimming becoming an essential part of this. It created a shift in my perspective too, and I started to feel joy again, how could I not, as I took in the beach and the sea and the sky above; a true blessing and I started to feel gratitude again – my thoughts became more positive.
It took him a while but a year later, in the following March, E started swimming regularly with me and hasn’t stopped since. This began our mutual love of Petit Bot and we have swum there regularly ever since, sometimes daily depending on our schedules and the extent of the shore break, which seems to have gotten worse over the years!
I swam in the sea throughout both my pregnancies, swimming the day before both boys were born. I was back in the sea as soon as I was out of hospital too, albeit I wasn’t able to swim as I had to have Caesarean sections for each of them. I wasn’t meant to be submerged in water, but I just needed to cleanse my energy and stand in the sea up to my waist, feeling its coolness and hearing its sounds; grounding and soothing after the trauma of birth!
Both our boys, Elijah and Eben, have fairly much grown up at Petit Bot! I remember the first time we took Elijah, fresh out of hospital and both of us going into the sea at the same time, as we’d done so many times previously, him in his car seat sat up on the pebbles at the top of the beach. We suddenly realised that this probably wasn’t appropriate, a helpless baby left on his own on the beach. It was just such a bizarre concept for us both, and this began our tag team effort, taking it in turns to swim ever since.
We’ve many photos of the boys on Petit Bot in various stages of development, car seats to crawling, toddling to running, and now climbing the rocks! We’ve seen the beach at all stages of tide, in all weathers and all times of the year; we know it well and love it dearly, there’s something special about knowing a beach. Our favourite time of year is October, when the summer visitors have left and the dog walkers are yet to arrive; we’re pretty much guaranteed to have it to ourselves. But we do have it to ourselves a lot of the time, especially early in the morning, and we’re always grateful for this.
We were tickled last year to be gifted, quite by chance, a Guernsey calendar, and were quite surprised to find a photo of us for the month of January (the person who gave the calendar to us didn’t realise this!). I contacted the photographer and she said she had met a friend at Petit Bot the previous January and had seen us walking down the beach, me carrying Eben in a car seat, and Elijah and E walking beside me, about to go for a swim, and thought it looked a lovely family scene. She kindly gave us a copy of the photograph, which I’ve posted above.
Growing up on the West coast of Guernsey and spending much of my time on Vazon beach, knowing that beach like a second home, it has been lovely getting to know more of the South coast of this stunning Island I’m lucky to call home. More recently I’ve been swimming at Saints with a small group of ladies, perhaps three or four times a week, on the way to drop Elijah to school in the morning – he loves it as he can climb the rocks and get some fresh air before going in the classroom.
This has added a whole new dimension to sea swimming, allowing me to connect with another beach, and one that needs to be approached on foot (or bike in our case) so is even more private than Petit Bot, attracting a couple of other sea swimming groups; the sunrise can be spectacular in the winter months. Also, it has caused me to develop a beautiful relationship with the other ladies, brought together by our love of sea swimming and spending time outdoors in nature.
We might swim at Fermain sometimes too, especially on a full moon, where we howl at her rising ahead of us, sometimes skinny dipping, sometimes not. I have to say though, that this is my favourite way to sea swim, it doesn’t get more natural and uplifting than skinny dipping and winter is the best time for this, at least you’re less likely to bump into anyone else coming to the beach!
I should make the point though, that these days I’m rarely in the sea for long. I used to swim maybe 5-10 minutes or so in the winter months, but a few years ago I started to get really cold afterwards, not helped because I was in the midst of sleep deprivation and just found it was taking me all day to warm up, not so pleasant. These days, especially in February, I might only be in for a minute or two at most, but even this makes me feel better, and well worth the traipse down to the beach and back up.
I can’t imagine our lives without sea swimming now, it’s become a part of our life, something that we make time to do, which will often determine the rest of our schedule, especially on the weekends. It’s the first thing we do when we have been away from the Island, getting our fix of Guernsey sea on our skin, and a definite if I have been working energetically with people and need to cleanse. It’s amazing and I’m always keen to introduce others to sea swimming so they may feel the benefits for themselves.
The benefits of sea swimming for me:
· Cleansing my energy;
· Grounding me in the moment - you don’t think about much else when you’re in the sea, other than how cold it is, how long you might stay in and whether you’ll get caught by the waves.
· Energising me.
· Connecting me to nature so that I notice the tides, sunrise and sunset, and seasonal and moon cycles.
· Feeling like you’re getting away from the rest of the world.
· Slows life down, you can’t possibly be rushing or stressed on the beach.
· Listening to the sound of the sea and watching the waves, both of which I find soothing for the soul.
· Shifting a bad mood!
· Raising the spirits and easing any depression
· Reducing anxiety by the connection of feet literally to the earth (well sand really, but you know what I mean) and the sensation of the cold water on skin, getting you out of your head and into your body.
· Strengthening your immune system – I’m not sure how that works, but I’m pretty sure that sea swimming plays a role in me rarely being ill, I’ve not had a single cold yet this winter (touch wood!).
· The special relationship you create with other sea swimmers as you share this mutual love for the sea.
· It’s free, and the very act of getting onto the beach and getting into the sea and having a little swim is good for your general fitness.
· It has strengthened my connection to Guernsey and helped me to feel extremely grateful for living on this beautiful Islands.
· It makes me feel alive and happy.
Yoga and change
Nothing brings me greater joy than witnessing yoga students embracing yoga and wanting to further their practice. There’s something about the practice, be it the breath or the postures or the relaxation, that affects them and they feel better for it; there has been a positive change and it motivates them to turn up again and again.
You can’t help but be changed by yoga. Yoga by its very nature encourages change. The way that we see things today does not have to be the way we saw them yesterday, and so it is with yoga too. The way we feel today, after a yoga practice, may feel very different to how we felt yesterday when we didn’t practice, and sometimes the way we feel after each practice changes too.
Some days we may feel positively elated, joyful, ecstatic, and other days we may feel tired and emotional. Yoga can bring stuff up for us. We might start to notice aches, pains and tensions in the body and mind that we hadn’t noticed previously. We might notice behaviour patterns and the manner in which we hold on to thoughts, notions and concepts, some well outdated and no longer serving us.
Sometimes the changes that yoga brings can be challenging. The painful emotions are confronting and the awareness of how much our life is out of a balance can be too much for some, so they stop coming to class. As much as they might like their lives to change, the change itself is too scary and they’d rather maintain the status quo however uncomfortable that is.
Others have no choice but to keep coming, there’s no going back for them now, the changes, however uncomfortable, are less uncomfortable than maintaining the status quo, of remaining the same. The body and mind have made it perfectly clear to them that there is a way out, that there is a chance of a new beginning, of a better way of living, of feeling something that’s more positive than the way they have been feeling, of hope for a future that they had almost given up on. There is a chance…
The joy of yoga, is that if we take the leap, if we overcome the obstacle of fear that prevents the change, if we listen to the body, to that ache and pain, and we keep practicing, well then then yoga will hold us while the changes are being made. Perhaps we need to let go of a destructive relationship or a draining friendship, perhaps we need to change jobs or professions to align yourself more fully with our talents, perhaps we need to leave a situation in which we have a vested interest. Yoga will help us through all of this and more.
Yoga is not to be saved for when we feel in a good place in our lives, or comfortable in our own skin (“I’ll come back when I’ve lost weight”, “you’ll see me when I’m not so tired”), yoga is for when we are in the nitty gritty thick of it, when we are on our knees, when we can barely get through a day, when we can’t stop crying, when the anxiety has become acute and overwhelming, when we can barely look at ourselves in the mirror, when we are lost and alone and fearful. This is when we need yoga the most.
Yoga does not need to look a certain way. Yoga doesn't care at all what you look like, what you’re wearing, whether you’ve brushed your hair, or are wearing make-up, whether you are fat or thin. Yoga couldn’t care about any of this. It just cares if you showed up today. If some part of you managed to make it onto your mat, even if you spent the session (as I’ve done many, many times) in tears, breathing from one pose to the next through your mouth because your nose is too snotty and you have to keep stopping to let the tears drop onto your mat, and wait until you can connect again with your body and breath and move into another posture, a momentary respite before the emotional wave crashes in again.
There’s this wonderful saying about people coming into your life for ‘a reason, a season or a lifetime’. I see this in yoga. People come in for their reason, for their season, or for their lifetime. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen supported by yoga as they make a life change and then I don’t see them again. But this doesn’t matter, because they have allowed yoga to change them, the practice has given them the strength to make those changes.
Others drift in and out, being touched, but not allowing the practice to touch them enough, and others, once they have a taste of change, are in it for the long run, it makes them feel better and it helps support them in their daily lives through thick and thin. Yoga is there for a reason, for a season and for a lifetime, you’ve just got to get practicing and see what it brings.
As Desikachar writes in his book, The Heart of Yoga, “The body and mind are used to certain patterns of perception and these tend to change gradually through yoga practice. It is said in the Yoga Sūtra that people alternately experience waves of clarity and cloudiness when first beginning a yoga practice. That is, we go through periods of clarity followed by times in which our mind and perception are quite lacking in clarity. Over time there will be less cloudiness and more clarity. Recognising this shift is a way to measure our progress”.
Perhaps it is this that changes us the most, the ability to see more clearly our truth, and to experience a greater sense of who we are, underneath the layers of illusion and false notions that we have adopted over the years. It always makes me think of the famous quote accredited to Gandhi, “Be the change you’d like to see in the world”. This is yoga. You cannot help but be changed into the change you’d most like to see in the world. Yoga changes us, and usually for the better.
We shouldn’t be scared by the change that yoga brings. Yoga just asks us to look at our lives more honestly, helping to open ourselves up to our potential for living a life beyond our wildest dreams. All it asks of us is to keep turning up and practicing, that’s all. “Practice, practice, practice and all is coming”, Sri. K. Pattabhi Jois is accredited for having said. It has become a little of a mantra for me over the years. This not to be attached to the fruits of our labours, but as a reason to keep turning up on the mat, day after day, year after year. Just keep practicing and let yoga reveal itself to you as you your-self are revealed.
My life has changed beyond recognition since I found yoga. Yoga saved my life. I’ve changed so that I don’t really recognise the old me, the before-yoga Emma. I’m not sure who that person was, but she wasn’t me, she was lost and depressed, paranoid and at times anxious, lacking in any sense of true self or self- confidence, soul fragmented. The yoga path has not always been easy, there have been many tears and healing crises along the way, but each practice has sparked something in me, helped the light to glow a little brighter, helped to make me whole, and it is this that has always motivated me and spurred me on.
I love it when I see this light lit in others too, because I know that it has a ripple effect. You being changed changes those around you, your family, your friends, your colleagues, they all start glowing a little brighter because something in you sparks something in them. It is in this way that yoga is changing the world one person at a time. Embrace the fear of change, and let yoga hold you, be the change you’d most like to see in the world – the one where fear is replaced with love. Love will continue to come back to you.
Letting go with a burning bowl ceremony.
Today we held the yoga class to let go of 2019, followed by a burning bowl ceremony.
I was introduced to the burning bowl ceremony back in 2005 when I was in the middle of my Reiki training and I was part of a lovely group of Reiki students who met once a week with our teacher, Dr Alyssa Burns-Hill, for meditation and angel cards. I loved this hour, each Thursday evening, 6-7pm, on the way home for work. Not least because we got to sit and meditate together, Ally often leading us through guided meditations, and enjoying angel cards and the insight they provided, but because, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged.
I was relatively new to this world back then, the holistic one, with angels and chakras and crystals, but there was something about the energy of all this, the way it felt then, that just, well, felt right. The people were friendly and welcoming, and despite my naivety, I never felt judged or out of place. We’ve all gone in our own direction since Ally left the Island and I wouldn’t probably recognise many of them now, but I’ve always been extremely grateful for this very light fuelled time of my life.
One of the ladies was an American who has since moved back to America, and it was her who suggested one night that we do a burning bowl ceremony. i don’t remember the ceremony itself, but I do remember feeling a huge sense of relief that there was this opportunity to let go of things. Until that point in my life - I was approximately 29 years old then - I had no idea that we could let go of things that were no longer serving us. Mind you, there was lots I didn’t realise we could do back then, I was only just beginning to recognise that we create our own reality and that our thoughts create this. I was only just awakening.
So the burning bowl ceremony had quite a profound effect on me and I have done one every year since. Often these were with one of my best friend’s Hayley, with whom I spent a number fo new year’s eves. I’ll never forget on new year where we burned our letters in a saucepan and the whole thing was in flames and there as a complete panic that we ere abut to set the house on fire! How we laughed! Clearly we had a lot to let go of that year, but actually we did every year, and I’m never sure that back in those days the cava helped much!
One year, maybe when I was 34 though, my cousin, Yolande, and I were joined by my friend Samata, and we conducted our burning bowl ceremony at the fairy ring here in Guernsey, one wild afternoon when we were all sober! It was a blustery day and it was a challenge, it has to be said, to get the flame going, but Yo got it going and with that up into the air went all the things we wanted to let go of - I have a feeling that smoking was high on my list of priorities back then, to give up that is. That year, 2010 I did. I recognised that sober burning bowl ceremonies were best!
Burning bowl ceremonies are powerful. Potentially. I should caveat that. As I said to students this morning, you have to really feel it. No point writing down that you are going to let go of things that you know that you have no intention of truly letting go of from your life. Or after too much cava so that it becomes more of a wish list with ‘not drinking so much cava’ top of it, ha ha. You have to feel ready, as if there may be some possibility, with a little help from the angels and the universe generally.
Letting go is an interesting concept. I’ve worked a lot with it over the years, and this year I have been working with it a lot. What I’ve noticed is how difficult it is to let go! Even though we might think we want to let go of some childhood trauma, or some hurt that happened to us with maybe an ex-boyfriend, or whatever it may be, when we truly look at it, we realise that we’re holding onto it because on some conscious, some crazy level, we want to be pained! I know it makes no sense when you read that, but think about it. We’re all holding onto something. Some hurt, some pain something that stops us being totally free of suffering. I’ll be surprised if I’m wrong about that.
So what stops us letting go then? I suppose in many respects we form our current reality based on what’s happened to us in then past, so if we let go of some aspect of our past, well then that has the potential to change our current reality, and as much as we might want that, well it can be scary because it’s new and unwritten and we don’t know what it might feel or look like. Better to keep things under control, the way they’ve always been…only that deep down we know that hat isn’t serving us either. It’s a dilemma.
It’s like smoking. What good comes from continuing to smoke? And yet when we’re a smoker, so much of our identity is tied up in being a smoker. What will happen if we want a time out? What about our friends who smoke and our relationship with them if we don’t go fo sneaky fags together? And all that sneaking around? What happens when we just start being a ‘normal’ non-smoking human being, you know one who doesn’t feel crappy for smoking, who isn’t rebelling against parents, society, whatever it might be. Or if we’re smoking the wacky backy, what happens when we stop numbing out!
For so many years I kept smoking mainly because I liked to smoke the wacky backy. It was such a part of my identity and yet I hated smoking generally. But how to give up one and not the other. Impossible. I had to really look at that very honestly and come - in my own slow time - to recognise that while I may have thought I was having these wonderful spiritual experiences smoking cannabis, and somehow becoming more ‘spiritual’ (whatever the hell that means), I was actually just numbing out from life. I was self-medicating, in the same way that some might take anti-depressants or other ‘acceptable’ drugs.
It was difficult to let that go. You know what I mean? Who are we when we let go of whatever we are holding onto?
How about that childhood trauma (we’ve ALL got childhood trauma, it comes with being human), what happens if we just let that go? Gosh all of a sudden we get to take responsibility for our lives and our experience of it. Maybe we finally get to stand on our own two feet. Scary.
That hurt from those who took advantage of our kindness or who rejected us? Gosh, well then we have to accept the fact that actually it was us who put ourselves in that position and it is us, only us, who can really do any self-loving and who do a huge amount of the abandoning. We can’t keep blaming such and such for messing us up (even if he/she did…but we chose he/she in the first place). so all of a sudden we have to stop being the victim. Ouch.
I’ve been through all this. It’s the breath that really made me take note. A full breath in? Receiving all life can give? Am I worthy of that? The exhalation, letting go, truly…am I prepared to do that, who will I become?
I’ve been hauling my past around with me, like a heavy bag hung over my shoulders, weighing me down, making me play out unhelpful behaviour patterns all the time, attracting much of the same (crap) into my life despite the intentions and the affirmations and all the stuff I hope might change things.
You have to be ready. You have to get to a point where you’re done. I’m done. I no longer want to be defined by my past. There is only this moment and this moment can be whatever you want it to be. But for it to be unhindered by the past, tossed around, you need to let it go. It is not you. Just like the thoughts that run through your mind, day in and day out, are not you either. They’re thoughts. Your past is your past. In the past.
All the great spiritual teachers and masters teach one thing. Live in the present. You can’t live in the present when you’re carrying your past around with you, anymore than you can live in the present when you’re obsessed with the future.
But how do you let go? You just do. Like a hot potato. You just let it go. No need to analyse, to question, to write about it (ha!), justify it. None of that. Like forgiveness, you just feel it and you just do it.
A burning bowl ceremony helps enormously. Burn, burn, burn!
Today, lots of beautiful students wrote down the stuff they want to let go of from their lives and this evening E built a fire and burned the notes. I stood and watched, with a sliver of a new moon behind me, the sun having set and creating the most beautiful light on this unusually still and magical winter day, and I thought how wonderful, this letting go. In the flames. Fire to smoke and up into the air, transformed as we too, with our letting go are transformed (and eventually transformed from this body to spirit). Magic.
If there’s one thing I wish for all of you it is to transform, again and again and again, and I’m pretty certain that letting go of our past, of beginning anew and anew and anew is a fairly powerful way of doing this. Live in the present. Set the past down. Aside. Look back at it with LOVE.
That’s the key. My friend, Michelle Johansen reminded me of this recently. Look back at your past for the blessings it gave. That hurt, that betrayal, that trauma, that crappy thing that happened to you, look back with love. Say thank you, feel gratitude, know that helped to make you the most amazing human being that you are, helped you to awaken and heal, to take steps to heal, time and time again. It made you YOU. That’s worth celebrating huh?
So here’s to a new decade, a lighter one too, without that haul of the past weighing us down and continuously limiting our future.
Let go!
This is a most powerful power (in my humble opinion) about letting go, shared by my doula, Anita Davies, which has been really impactful on my life, through birth and beyond…
She Let Go
by Safire Rose
She let go.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear.
She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice.
She didn’t read a book on how to let go.
She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort.
There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…
Love Emma xxx