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

Dark Night of the Soul

I can’t help noticing that this is a big year for many people. Like 2003 and 2008, there is significant change and the turmoil that comes with this.

It feels to me that with all these eclipses we are in a washing machine spinning around and around. I can’t be sure when the washing cycle is going to end but I do know that we have an annular solar eclipse** on 26 December, followed by a penumbral lunar eclipse*** on 10 January 2020 so perhaps things might settle then.

This, after a year that found us experiencing a partial lunar eclipse* on 6 January 2019 followed by a total lunar eclipse* on 21 January 2019, and then a total solar eclipse on 2 July 2019 followed by a partial lunar eclipse on 16 July 2019. 

I’m certainly no expert on the effect of these things, I can only share from my own experience but I have to admit that life has been a touch challenging this year and while I like to blame the moon, I’m going to blame all these eclipses too!

There was the Ayurvedic and Sanskrit studying and then discovering the Scaravelli-approach to yoga, which turned everything on it’s head, this before July. My Ayurvedic exams took place a few days after the July partial eclipse and this was followed by a virus that left me sick and feeling very sorry for myself all summer. 

I finally recovered from the virus in time for our retreat in Glastonbury on the full moon in mid-September, and I felt so much better for this, but it was short lived. In came the super new moon on 28 September 2019 and things felt decidedly sticky again with more illness and more disorientation. 

For others too, there is a sense of being shaken, as if we are being collectively shaken awake (this is exactly what is happening!) and with it there has been illness, bereavements, life-changing diagnoses, relationship break-ups, and/or job changes, and some of these changes happening suddenly, pulling the rug from under our feet, leaving us feeling confused and ungrounded.  

To me it feels like we’re going through a collective dark night of the soul. This is when life feels desperately uncomfortable, with a sense of despair and sometimes a total disinterest in living or in life itself – the darkness descends. Sometimes this feeling may only last a matter of hours, and other times it can last for days on end, and we might wonder if we will ever see the light ever again. 

Life doesn’t fit. Nothing feels right. There is a complete lack of clarity about how life may unfold and a panic that it might stay life this forever more. Life is full of uncertainty, and yet the uncertainty becomes more pronounced, and this brings with it a feeling of disorientation and not having a clue which way is up, or how life might look, or even who you are anymore as who you thought you were starts to dissolve and yet you’re still living the life of the person dissolving. 

There are tears, lots of tears and some anger, frustration, irritation, rage and an overwhelming sense of tiredness and exhaustion. Chaos reigns, we feel helpless and very alone, cast adrift without a map or a paddle to find our way home. And even if we know deep down that we just have to keep going, that it is just a process with a potentially positive outcome, it’s still extremely challenging!

I take some comfort in Simon Haas’ words, “A dark night of the soul is a period of purification and transformation. Like the process of refining gold or making ghee, parts of us that have remained concealed from others, and even from ourselves, rise to the surface during a dark night experience. During a dark night, we may become increasingly irritable, angry, impatient or resentful. We may fall into guilt, self-pity and even self-loathing. This is often our experience to the suffering we’re experiencing. We may even feel hatred towards those who we believe have contributed to our crisis”.

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to all of this! It’s both embarrassing and humbling! I am a cliché!

He continues, “We all have a dark side, an “ungodly” side, which only those closest to us may know. Sometimes the dissolution of our world can reveal things about us that surprise even ourselves. We suffer the death of who we thought we were, whilst encountering those parts of us we have kept hidden – qualities, behaviours and motivations that may be difficult for us to acknowledge. In a dark night, we come face to face with what we can no longer hide.

Some for instance, become aware of how much anger that carry. Others must face the unbearable truth that ultimately, they don’t really care about others. These inner revelations can be difficult to acknowledge or bear…[there is] a strong impulse to retreat from life. This impulse is partly the result of acute suffering and partly due to a loss of personal direction, leading to paralysis. When the ego is being destroyed, there is often intense angst and a strong desire to disengage from life. It can extinguish even the desire to remain alive…when our inner world collapses, we’re entirely powerless, like a shell tossed about in the waves of the ocean. It’s an inner helplessness.”

Sadly, I can’t offer you much advice in what you might do if you’re stuck in a dark night of the soul. It’s a process that we have to work our way through in our own way. Personally, I take comfort in getting out in nature, walking the cliffs and sea swimming, spending time alone (when I can) in silence, practicing yoga, repeating the Bija mantra, daily Yoga Nidra (grounded one’s mind), rose quartz, lots of rose quartz, and playing with the children, running around the beach, getting some fresh air together. Sleep helps enormously too, slightly tricky if you have children who don’t value sleep so much though!

 I am very well aware that as uncomfortable as it all is, it is part of the bigger picture and if I can remember this (and not get caught up in the intense emotions) then I feel some comfort in knowing it’s not just me! In fact, it’s the “me” that’s the problem, because essentially what is happening is part of “me”, is dissolving and the ego isn’t particularly happy about this, but it is necessary, because it leaves more space for the heart and the light to come in, instead.

This is all about the heart, it can only ever be about the heart. Love not fear. And as much as everyone says they love unconditionally, it is actually really difficult. There is huge vulnerability in truly loving, without conditions, of putting our hearts on a line and opening ourselves up for being hurt, betrayed or disappointed. Yet we are being asked to step more fully into the heart and out of the small mind. The situations in our life will ask us to step more fully into the heart.

 It is in this way that we may positively impact on the state of the planet. Where there is love, there is fear, and we see this clearly now with the fear being created by the media about the state of Mother Earth and the climatic disaster awaiting us. The fear will not create the change that is needed though, the only way things will change, at least positively and in the long term, is if we keep embracing love, and overcoming the fear (not ignoring it or turning away from it, but acknowledging it).

It feels to me that the whole universe is being upgraded, if only we can step up into it. We are experiencing perhaps a collective dark night of the soul, Mother Earth too. Only that Mother Earth will always be OK, she knows how to look after herself, it’s us, us humans, who will ultimately suffer. Which is why it is our duty to keep stepping into the love, not to just talk about it, but to embody it, to find it within ourselves to weed out anything which stops us from truly loving and truly living.

We are asked to turn towards those who have hurt us or harmed us or who just irritate us, with love.  We are being asked to be clear about our boundaries and what is acceptable in our life – we are being asked to love ourselves too, to keep stepping into the heart. Love conquers all. It is love that underpins absolutely everything (another reason to bring Reiki into your life, the energy of love!).

 I’ll leave you with this marvellous quote from Jack Kornfield in his marvellous book, “A Path with Heart”, which sums it all up rather nicely for me and reminds me of the spiritual and heart in all life:

“Whether in a monastery, in our place of business, or in our family life, we need to listen to what each cycle requires for our heart’s development and accept its spiritual tasks. The natural cycles of growth – developing right livelihood, moving to a new home, the birth of a child, entering a spiritual community – all bring spiritual tasks that require our heart to grow in commitment, fearlessness, patience, and attention. The cycles of endings – our children leaving home, the aging and death of our parents, loss in business, leaving a marriage or community – bring our heart to the spiritual tasks of grieving, of letting go gracefully, of releasing control, of finding equanimity and openhearted compassion in the face of loss.

Occasionally we get to choose the cycles we work with, such as choosing to get married or beginning a career. At these times it is helpful to meditate, to reflect on which direction will bring us closer to our path with heart, which will offer the spiritual lesson that it is time for in our life.

More often we don’t get to choose. The great cycles of our life wash over us, presenting us with challenges and difficult rites of passage much bigger than our ideas of where we are going. Midlife crisis, threats of divorce, personal illness, sickness of our children, money problems, or just running yet again into our own insecurity or unfulfilled ambition can seem like difficult yet mundane parts of life to get over with so we can become peaceful and do our spiritual practice. But when we bring to them attention and respect, each of those tasks has a spiritual lesson in them. It may be a lesson of staying centred through great confusion, on a lesson of forbearance, developing a forgiving heart with someone who has caused us pain. It may be a lesson of acceptance or a lesson of courage, finding the strength of heart to stand our ground and live from our deepest values”. 

*A solar eclipse happens when the moon moves between the Earth and the Sun while a lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth casts a shadow on the full Moon.

**An annular solar eclipse happens when the Moon covers the Sun’s centre leaving the Sun’s visible outer edges to form a “ring of fire” or annulus around the Moon.

***A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth and the Moon are imperfectly aligned. When this happens, the Earth blocks some of the Sun’s light from directly reaching the moon’s surface and covers all or part of the Moon with the outer part of its shadow, also known as penumbra.

Overwhelm

Today I had a moment of overwhelm.

I felt the rage rising inside me and I heard a scream, it came from my mouth, but I didn’t recognise it as mine.

Not once, not twice, but three times. I felt like I was screaming for me and for all of humanity. This was a raw scream from a deep place that I didn’t even know existed and it surprised me.

I have been feeling this scream building the last few weeks, and as much as I’ve tried to scream, to clear my throat chakra, it felt forced and insincere. I tried the lion breath and some Vedic chanting too, hoping that this might clear the block, but alas, the feeling remained. 

But yesterday, there was a trigger, something small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things that happened, and all of a sudden I was filled with this overwhelming sense of frustration and anger at the pointlessness of it all. 

In that moment of madness, I felt done. Done with life. The fury was all consuming and hot, fury at the world, at humanity and at Planet Earth. How have we managed to create this collective disaster that is our current society all out of balance? Why is there so much pain and suffering? What is the point to it all?

The tears followed. Big and warm angry tears running down my cheeks and dropping onto the floor beneath me. I was so angry that I didn’t know what to do with myself, almost shaking with it. 

I remembered my breath and took big angry gulps of air. I roared.

Anyone would have thought me utterly mad. I felt mad! It was a release, that’s for sure, a healing crisis. It was very real, very present moment and very much a part of what has been building since the last eclipse.

We are awakening, as a collective. And there has to be significant letting go of the way that we think life should be lived, of what it looks like. We need to step out of our comfort zone and into the unknown, and establish a new way of living that better serves our future generations. My children and their children!

Of course the collective is influenced by the individual and so it is us, each of us, that actually needs to do the letting go, so that we positively impact the collective and all of society.

But letting go is difficult, and painful, because we have to let go of our pains and our traumas and all the stuff that we hold on to, which falsely defines who we are, and which prevents us from moving our lives forward. The letting go, sometimes means that we feel into our pain, and this discomfort is what prevents us letting go in the first place.

It’s been a fascinating and yet incredibly exhausting process, all this letting go these last few weeks. I mentioned this in my previous posting, but it’s like things have been popping up rather quickly, one layer after another, of stuff that I thought I had already worked through, and resolved, at least in my mind if not in my body. But clearly there’s more depth to this current healing process than I had recognised and the moon has been encouraging greater release.

So old stuff has come up from nowhere, like an old energy entering my life again, which has felt uncomfortable, because the resonance is all wrong, but there it is nonetheless, reminding me of a time gone by, a depression here, a disappointment there, a frustration here, an old behaviour pattern there, I even reached for my childhood teddy bear the other day, because inner child stuff has certainly been a part of the process.

When I stand back (if I can manage to stand back) then it’s really rather amazing, that we are being given this opportunity to clear out, on the autumn clear out, for the greater good of all humanity as humanity herself, with climate change concern ringing in our ears, giving us the perfect opportunity to make the collective shift that needs to be made.

Today seemed to bring all those old feelings together in one big surge, and threw in, just for good measure, that feeling of utter despair that comes with overwhelm. It’s a scary feeling, because while it is one of great potency for change, it can push people over the other edge, into a void from which you may never recover, numbing out on life as a result. 

I am aware that it is part of a process, of the breaking down of all that’s been, so that life can be recreated all over again. This is life, if we allow it. It moves through cycles. The opportunity to destroy and re-create are constants. We just need to learn to ride it, to be comfortable in the uncomfortableness of it all, of not knowing what it is that we need to destroy, and what might come into its place instead. 

I comfort myself by thinking about a river. How its course will often change, but how it just keeps flowing, sometimes turbulent, sometimes gentle, but one way or another, it does its thing, weaving its way to the sea, its journey’s end, and with that, a letting go of what it has once been. 

I know that I’m not alone, because whatever I am feeling, is felt within the collective, we are one, and because I have asked friends, and many are sharing this healing crisis and feelings of overwhelm.

Please be very gentle at this time and keep close to the land. Get in the sea if you can and keep clearing your energy.

There is an awful lot of fear out there. 

Climate change is now everywhere. Lots of people talking…let’s see how many do the walking. We’re very good at making excuses for maintaining our own status quo, and yet finding fault with how other people are adjusting to the need for a more sustainable way of living.

Fear separates communities, and it separates aspects of ourselves, so we must be careful not to buy into it. 

The antidote to fear is love. The world has only ever needed love, yet how many of us truly love? How many truly love themselves, let alone others? That is, without applying conditions, making it conditional.

I’m humoured by all the ‘sustainable business’ chatter that we’re also now hearing. I can’t help thinking that it is business that got us into this mess in the first place. Investopedia reads, “the term business also refers to the organised efforts and activities of individuals to produce and sell goods and services for a profit”. Business is ultimately about making profit and I can’t help thinking that until we reframe and re-define business, then nothing is going to change.

Sure there’s lots of people talking about sustainable business, but are they going to give up their bonuses and profit margin so that greater consideration can be given to the climate and to Mother Earth? Unlikely. Many will actually use the whole idea of ‘sustainability’ and ‘going green’ to profiteer even further, using it as a marketing tool to attract people to their business. Sorry, I’m feeling a bit cynical about it all!

No one really knows what we should be doing, or how we might positively shift the way that we are living. Not yet. But we will know. It’s just a matter of raising consciousness so that we have the awareness. And the only way we will do that collectively, is if we do the work on ourselves to raise our own consciousness, to love more, and let go of anything that prevents us from doing so. 

This happens in many different ways, sometimes life circumstances present opportunities to grow, through illness and trauma, and sometimes we just need to grasp the ball by the horns, so to speak, and do the inner work that is required of us, the universe and the moon will always support us.

 The calmness has returned now, and I have a strong sense that what is trying to breakthrough is the children; my children, your children, everyone’s children. They are our future and we need to become increasingly conscious of how we are treating them and the ‘food’ we are feeding them, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally too. I shall ponder anon and see what else materialises, as my children try to get my attention (the irony of it!).

If you feel a scream coming on, then go for it. It’s not as mad as it may seem, because it can really clear the energy. I’m not mad, honest, just sharing and opening myself to vulnerability, in the hope that this may help you too. 

Seasonal shifting

Driving on my own, on an early Sunday morning to a course I was leading, I was struck by the joy that is the changing season.

I love summer and I never want it to end, but when it does, the pitta in me is grateful for the change. This is especially now, with children, where I am lucky enough to spend a considerable part of the summer on the beach. This is wonderful, but a challenge for my pitta, which has most definitely been out of balance this summer, especially with the earlier-summer-exam-stress.

 Pitta comprises the elements of fire and water and pitta people can be aggravated by too much sun exposure and by the summer season (the pitta season). Pitta people are often athletic and driven people, competitive, hard working and ambitious. They have a tendency to like to control things and have high expectation for themselves and others. 

They like nice things and a lovely (and often luxurious) lifestyle. They like to consume hot and spicy foods, tomatoes, caffeine, alcohol and stimulants like chocolate – thinks that feed their fire! They have a tendency towards frustration and anger, and can be impulsive, jealous, envious and get really annoyed by people.

When there is too much pitta, pitta people are prone to loose stools and excess stomach acid leading to ulcers and acid reflux. They are susceptible to red skin conditions and hormonal imbalance too. This is when the rage may appear too!

If you can relate to any of this, then perhaps your pitta has been out of balance too and you will rejoice at the shift that the seasonal shift will bring to you. Already my pitta feels soothed by the cooler mornings and evenings, and I relish the calmer energy, and the changing light that is brighter and sharper than summer, and brings with it a much welcomed settling – like a breath of fresh air, which finds me almost sighing with relief (as much as I love summer!).

Autumn is the vata season. Vata comprises the elements of air and ether, and so it’s the turn of those with a tendency towards vata to be potentially aggravated by the seasonal shift. It’s worth noting here that you don’t have to have a predominantly vata constitution to be affected. We will all have an element of vata, and some of us will have a tendency for this to be aggravated (like pitta and kapha) from time to time depending on how we are living our lives. Certainly I find that my pitta imbalance brings with it a vata imbalance.

Vata people like change and movement, and like to flit around, snacking on the go, rather than taking regular meals. They like to eat bird food (think nuts and seeds) that help them to fly even more up in the air, trying to get lighter and lighter Sometimes they are living so much in the air and up in the ether that they chop and change their minds and don’t always get things done, or manifest on the ground, in this world.

When out of balance, vata people have a tendency towards nervousness, anxiety, fear, indecisiveness and worry. They can suffer with tics, tremors and twitches. They can also suffer with light and disturbed sleep, and can be prone to constipation and excess wind (too much air!). They can also feel cold and scattered and airy and their skin might flake (reflecting their flakiness).

So look out those of you who have a vata constitution or a tendency for vata imbalance, as this seasonal shift could affect you. There are simple things you can do to ease the imbalance, such as eating nourishing and warming foods, avoiding the bird food, taking warm baths and oil massage, establishing a regular and daily routine with regular times for eating, sleeping and working etc., calming and grounding yoga, yoga nidra and body scans and some light exercise like walking and swimming.

Those of you with kapha tendencies might find yourself challenged by the winter months ahead, but you should be OK during autumn, as long as you keep warm. Kapha people are cooler and slower and their digestion tends to be sluggish with excess mucus. When kapha is in excess, they can be prone to weight gain and excess sleep. They can also be prone to attachment and greediness. So you might watch out for these tendencies if you know that you have kapha in you (a combination of earth and water). 

I haven’t yet found out if I’ve passed my Ayurvedic exams (I don’t get the results until November) so I am not yet able to practice professionally as a lifestyle and diet consultant but I’m always happy to try to help on a case study basis if you feel drawn to Ayurveda. 

Ayureda uses a combination of diet, lifestyle and medicine to effect positive change, balancing the dosha (fault) and restoring harmony and balance. It sounds easy but can sometimes be a touch challenging – our diet patterns are well ingrained and we are often asked to focus on new tastes. The lifestyle changes can also be confronting because our lifestyle patterns are also well laid. The medicine can sometimes taste bitter and we have to remember to take it at the prescribed times, which can be tricky.

But all of this, all of the changes that are asked of us and our reaction to this can be both revealing and potentially healing. There is a reason that we are out of balance in the first place and that dis-ease may have appeared (mental as much as physical). So we need to start to do things differently, to unravel the imbalance.

Sometimes however we don’t need to do very much.  Sometimes the imbalance can be re-balanced just by the seasonal shift. So to all the pitta people, enjoy the cooler and clearer skies and the routine that this new season brings as the schools return and everyone catches up on the summer months of activity. 

Here, I’m back to teaching yoga and there’s a whole heap of retreats ahead which is exciting, as I do love retreating a little from the chaos of the rest of the world and especially as the light dims and we are encouraged to retreat inwardly in any case. There is a joy in seasonal shifts, another opportunity (as if we need more hey!) to let go and flow into the unknown. 

So enjoy the flow, and hope to see some of you soon, on your yoga mat or at Reiki.

Ceasing the fluctuations of the mind - world peace!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the change we might all like to see in the world. And I figure it is probably world peace, and also climatic change, or at least, steps taken to achieve positive climatic change.

The peace one fascinates me the most. Well they both fascinate me in their own way, because we might say we want climatic change, but how many of us are actually taking our own steps to achieve this? How many of us are reducing our air travel, for example, or quitting our cars? 

How many of us are truly reducing our plastic consumption (with everything still seemingly packaged in plastic)? How many of us are planting trees? How may of us care what we put into our mouths and how it was sourced and the impact that this has had on the environment? The examples go on and on, and I’m certainly not in a position to preach. 

How about peace though. How many of us are doing anything about creating more of this? How many of us can say that we truly experience inner peace? How many of us experience peaceful relationships with our family and friends? How about peaceful relationships with the wider public and Mother Earth (link now to climatic change!)? 

If there is one thing that I have learned from teaching yoga and Reiki, is that very few people live truly peaceful lives. My recent Ayurvedic studies have further highlighted this to me. Underlying any imbalance there is often a lack of inner peace, lives are frenetic and busy, minds are anxious, depressed and relationships are continuously tested. 

The mind has a lot to answer for really, left to run riot it can create many problems, shaping our life experience, without us necessarily even being conscious of it. This is the joy of yoga in many respects, because at it’s core it is about easing the fluctuations of the mind and in the process helping us to wake up – see Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, “yogah citta-vritti-nirodhah” translated by Frans Moors as meaning, “Yoga is the pacification, concentration and complete focus of the mind’s fluctuating activities”.

Frans Moors further writes, “Patanjali defines Yoga as a particular state of the activities of the mind, which are usually in fluctuation. Yoga is the complete orientation (nirodha) of the mental activities (citta-vrtti-s) towards a state of harmony, clarity and total awareness. At the highest state of nirodha, all fluctuations have stopped”.

Can you imagine a mind that doesn’t fluctuate, which is always orientated towards harmony, clarity and total awareness? Which doesn’t constantly swing from one thought to another? That doesn’t judge, over analyse, sabotage and generally create it’s own suffering? A mind that doesn’t make up stories or get stuck in it’s own rut? A mind that doesn’t get depressed or anxious? A mind that sees only the truth, beyond the illusion, beyond the false perceptions and the confusion? A mind at peace?

This has gotten me thinking a lot about the mind, in the sense of how it limits us and prevents us seeing/being the wholeness of who we are, how it shapes our lives, prevents peace. One of my favourite quotes has always been, ‘limitation is a creation of the mind’, which was used frequently by my dynamic yoga teacher in Byron, especially when it came to practicing something that might take students out of their comfort zone, like handstand or headstand.  It became like a mantra to me at the time, seeing me through the intensive 7-week training, making me test my limitations both on and off the mat. Many of my limitations – he was right – were in my mind, self-imposed. 

More recently, I have been undertaking training in the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga with a teacher in Scotland. This practice seeks freedom of the spine, and as a consequence, creates freedom in the mind. All yoga is essentially orientated towards this objective (ceasing the fluctuations of the mind - freedom), but this particular approach (for me) is profound; truly honouring the body’s natural intelligence and resting into the earth with gravity, revealing the magical connections between effort and rest. In the process there is almost an immediate freeing of the mind, albeit momentarily. 

This approach has helped me to recognise the many ways in which the mind controls us, even in our yoga practice, overriding our body’s natural wisdom. I see it played out in mostly every class I teach, as student push and pull and further unbalance an existing imbalance, in mind if not in body. For example, we might carry lots of tension in our shoulders, and yet still we keep practising postures, and approaching postures, in a way that continuously stresses the shoulders. Another example includes the mind being super hectic and rather than trying to slow it down with a gentle and slow approach to our practice, we practice in a hectic and fast way, further stressing an already stressed system.

We can blame society for this really. On the whole, we are conditioned to achieve. There has always been an end game, if not exams then some form of evaluation. So the mind always feels that it has to work towards something, like the perfect posture for example. The trouble is, that there is no perfect posture, postures are not goals in themselves but frameworks for finding (deeper) connections within the body, of pausing the thinking mind, and awakening. As we become more conscious through our practice, we might better come to recognise this. 

However, initially, even if we make conscious decisions, like attending a yoga class to ease our stress, it is very easy to become unconscious during the practice itself. Being conscious is an ongoing awareness, and even then, it is difficult to experience, because the mind is very tricky, it doesn’t let go very easily. We have only to consider how difficult it is to make changes to our diet and lifestyle to recognise this. 

As much as we are conscious that a change needs to be made - we can no longer ignore the fact that the body is suffering with some disorder or complaint - it is difficult to surrender the grip of the mind and let go of the many (bad) dietary and lifestyle habits that we have spent a life time cultivating. These habits have become normal to us, even if they are harming us, and to let go of them, find another way, is confronting for the mind, even if the body is willing. 

I was talking with a yoga teacher recently about the fact that some students come to class for the first time and get a real taste of the potential of yoga in that one class, but never return again, because it is just too confronting for them. In their brief journey with yoga they may become conscious of their own truth, behind the confusion and the denial, but because their lives may have to change as a result of this awareness, and because of the enormity of what might need to change (divorce, leaving jobs etc.), they never return to class, their head goes back in the sand.

It is sometimes difficult to look honestly at our lives. It might take us some time, perhaps a whole lifetime, to recognise what our friends, families and/or counsellors may have recognised years earlier; the destructive relationship, the wrong job, the damaging diet, the unhealthy lifestyle, the draining friendships, the stories we cling on to about our past that keep us stuck in the past, the grudges we hold that are making us angry and bitter inside, and on the list goes. 

I’ve noticed the limiting nature of the mind in other ways recently too. Sometimes it’s the things that we most love, that are most precious to us, our dreams perhaps, that we somehow protect by never bringing them into the world, and in the process self-sabotaging, because sometimes that’s easier than facing the fear of revealing that which we hold dear. At it’s core, this limitation arises because of our fear of rejection or/and of not feeling good enough. 

The irony being that we are the ones who do the rejecting, as we reject a part of ourselves, and we are the ones who perpetuate that old story of not being good enough.  In doing so, we are the ones who prevent our inner peace, who curtail our hopes and dreams of living a life of freedom, being all that we can be, however that may manifest and regardless of what others may think (with their limited perceptions). We buy into false truths – not real, just imagined in our mind – so many lives lived based on false notions of the truth.

 No wonder the world is in the state it is in with all the false judgements, confusion and inner strife that we allow the mind to create. It is easy to forget that we are a micro of the macro; our outer world reflects our inner world. Thus the more we can experience a sense of inner peace, freeing ourselves from anything that restricts us, addressing our neurosis, our anxieties, our depressions, our hurts etc. the more the outer world will also reflect this – and the greater the world will be at peace.

This is the reason that we might step onto our yoga mat each day, to ease the fluctuations of the mind and experience greater peace.  However, it’s one thing to experience a greater sense of peace during and after a yoga class or a weekend retreat, for example, but it’s quite another to invite it into our daily lives – not to react, not to shout, to find a more peaceful way to interact with our children for example, or with our partners or other family members, let alone with ourselves. 

Only this morning, I caught myself raising my voice at the cat (the cat!) for once again trying to sneak upstairs and into the bedrooms, and I thought to myself, “what am I doing?! Here I am wanting more peace in this world, and I can’t even keep the peace with the cat”. This awareness was handy a little later in the day when I found myself becoming frustrated with my youngest son for refusing to sit in his car seat without the usual five minutes of negotiation – could I maintain the peace? 

There will always be the opportunity to learn because our every interaction, our every relationship (in relation to) provides us with the opportunity to choose how we respond - in peace or otherwise. Each moment is an opportunity for greater awareness - awareness of the role we each play in creating what it is we might like to see changing in the world such as world peace and positive climatic change. This can feel scary, because it demands personal responsibility, but is necessary. Little by little is how I’m approaching it – a work in progress!