The rest of the plants!

The rest of the plants are now in the ground at home and it feels good to have them all close, like their energy has lifted the property!

Here’s the wood betony, above, only a few of them, but they’re interesting nonetheless, curious to see what happens to them as they grow.

Here’s my one and only culver’s root. I’m grateful for this little being, it took its time, teaching me patience!

Here's all the elecampane now in place.

And here is the abundant St John’s wort, which is now in what was the veggie patch (with a courgette plant and corn hanging in there, the rest was finished).

These are red oak, grown from seed, we’re excited about those. Got a whole heap of acorns potted up on the waxing moon and with some Reiki…hoping they’ll be OK!

I’m busy drying herbs and various flowers…so far my lavender oil is my favourite, mixed with dead sea salts from Israel, just the most perfect bath companion; my skin loves it too, and the boys are keen as well!

Love Emma x

You're not a fraud!

It’s been in the ‘field’ recently, because a number of people have shared with me how they feel a fraud for working in the capacity of Reiki healer or yoga teacher when they are still healing themselves and dealing with their own trauma, insecurities and lack of self-worth.

I have fallen into this trap in the past too, of believing that I had to have all my ‘stuff’ sorted to work in a healing and yogic capacity. I used to put all my yoga teachers up on pedestals, for example, thinking that they had it sorted, that they were wiser and somehow better than me; healed and enlightened. Not that I had any evidence that this was the case, beyond my own perception of what it might mean to be a ‘proper’ yoga teacher and/or Reiki practitioner. 

And this is often the problem that we face; our own minds and what we believe to be right or wrong and our (mis)perceptions and expectations of what a particular ‘role’ in life might look like. Others will feed into this with their perception and expectation of what they think your life should look like too. Many yoga students assume that yoga teachers are vegan-eating, calm and centred semi-enlightened beings. This couldn’t be farther from the truth!

 We are all human and we are all doing the best we can, and those of us yoga teachers and healers are trying to find our way just like everyone else. As E always says, we’re probably more neurotic than most, and it is this, and our own suffering, that has led us to yoga and healing in the first place. More fool anyone for putting themselves on a pedestal and putting out to the world that they are sorted, because it will always catch up on you in the end.

I suppose this had been on my mind, when quite by chance, or not perhaps, I stumbled across reference to Michael Stone on a yoga website a few weeks ago. Michael was a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, Buddhist teacher, author and activist, committed to the integration of traditional teachings with contemporary psychological and philosophical understanding. He hosted sell-out seminars, retreats, conferences and workshops related to Buddhism across Canada and around the world. 

Married with two children and another on the way, he died from a drug overdose in Victoria on Vancouver Island at the age of 42 in 2017. Unbeknown to his students or the outer world, Michael was suffering quietly with bipolar disorder and several months before his death, his mania began to cycle more rapidly. Until that point he had been managing his mental health through Buddhism and yoga for years, but had sought medical help in the months leading up to his death.

A statement at the time of his death said, “He went to bed early. He ate a special diet…He saw naturopaths and herbalists and trainers and therapists. As things worsened, he turned to psychiatry and medication as well. Balancing his meds was ever-changing and precarious”. The statement went on to say that Michael kept his condition private because he “feared the stigma of his diagnosis…[but] he was on the cusp of revealing publicly how shaped he was by bipolar disorder and how he was doing”.

I was shocked when I read all this and felt sad that Michael hadn’t felt he could share his suffering with his students, as if he might be judged, or his sharing might somehow negate his teachings, cause others to question them. His website reads, “Michael was on the cusp of revealing publicly how his life was shaped by bipolar disorder. It was complicated though. As a spiritual teacher for whom so many looked to for stability, he wondered if it was better to hide his own fragility. As a psychotherapist, he was trained to put his own stuff aside in order to work with others. He was also a human who felt—and was allowed to feel—the stigma, shame, and self-consciousness that comes with a mental health diagnosis in a culture that largely doesn’t know how to deal with neurodiversity.”

It is complicated. There is a certain vulnerability that comes with being deeply authentic in this world with all its expectations, and especially when we have such high expectations for ourselves too. As many of you will know I have a history of depression and have been trying to write about it in a manuscript these last few years. The writing has taken me on an inner journey as I have been required to dig deep and resolve those aspects of self that still held an emotional resonance, that were still impacting on my mind, feeding into false perception and continuing to support – in many respects – my suffering.

During lock-down I dropped into a dark night of the soul and the depression felt all too real. It was all part of the process, and was necessary for my writing and own self-healing. A friend asked how it was that I could continue teaching and I remarked that it is in the teaching and the attempt at being there for others that keeps me grounded and helps support my own healing – life continues anon and I want to be a part of that, not hide away from it, because I feel that my life should look a certain way if I am to be a compassionate and effective teacher or human being. 

This is reflected to a point by Michael’s website, which further reads, “Michael loved his students and he loved his work. The practices he shared through workshops, retreats, and writing were a life raft for him. His work inspired and grounded him. As a neurodiverse person living with internal instability, he channelled his challenges and the insights gleaned from his experience into tools that he could share with others. It could be argued that it was in experiencing these challenges that Michael became so effective as a teacher and communicator. For someone facing his kinds of suffering, he did really, really well.”

This raises a very important point, especially for those who are battling with their ‘goodness’ and ability to teach/heal others when they are going through the mill themselves. It is only through our experiences that we grow as conscious human beings, that we gain insight and are en-lightened of the human condition. Let us not forget that we are in this together – we are all connected and are a micro of the macro. Our challenges are here to help us to grow and it is through our compassionate sharing that we can help to support others as they too navigate their challenges; empathy, understanding and compassion are paramount to the healing process.

Authenticity is crucial too. Without this, we are kidding ourselves as much as we are kidding others and we are setting ourselves up for a fall. This also comes with experience, the dropping away of the layers that prevent us from being honest with ourselves and allowing more of our vulnerability. It is a never ending process and demands patience and kindness towards the self. Unfortunately our ‘quick fix’ culture, especially influenced by the allopathic world, does very little to support this, and it is common place to find yoga and Reiki students grasping for the ‘cure’, the course, workshop, training and/or attunement that will suddenly make them whole and fix them.  

It will all help, of course, but it takes time and honesty, getting out of our denial, and the tendency towards self-sabotage and the misperception that we have to have it all sorted otherwise what right do we have to help others – buying into the idea that we are indeed a fraud. It’s tricky territory, because as soon as we start buying into this, we start to give ourselves a hard time and our internal critic reigns as we feed into the negative self-talk and add to the weight of our lack of self-worth, which underpins so much of this.

I went through this not that long ago so write with some degree of experience. Fortunately my healing friend, Jo, pulled me up on it and I am more aware of catching myself now. I have had a skin condition for three years now, which has gotten worse over that time. I have been trying to treat it holistically, mainly through Ayurveda. I can see so clearly why it is there from an Ayurvedic perspective, but have ‘struggled’ (this word is the give-away!) to heal it myself. I felt like a fraud – how can I possibly help others to heal Ayurvedically, when it didn’t appear to be working for me. 

This train of thinking did nothing to ease the bout of depression. I was giving myself a really hard time, to the extent that my spirit flagged and I questioned whether I might continue working in a ‘healing’ capacity. I went to the doctor in the end, which was a big deal for me, because until that point, despite the many lessons I have learned through my experience with conception and birth, I still held onto the notion that allopathic treatment is bad, holistic is good; the mind was buying into the separation and thus creating some inner-disharmony.

The doctor diagnosed peri-oral dermatitis, which was a huge relief, to finally have a diagnosis and something to work with and I wished it hadn’t taken me so long to ‘surrender’ to seeking allopathic help (and having to therefore let go of my notion of right/wrong, good/bad – it amuses me how we create so much of our own suffering through our perceptions). I was prescribed three months’ worth of anti-biotics, which caused me to actually laugh out loud in the doctor’s surgery, because of course I know only too well that what we resist persists - I have been a vocal advocate against antibiotics for a good while now and this was strengthened when I saw for myself the damage they caused when Eben was prescribed them at birth; even now his tummy is still not healed.  

It was a big deal for me to take the tablets, and yet I learned so much about my mind during the experience, that has been helpful. It kickstarted too my research into peri-oral dermatitis, which is of course not straight forward to treat, why would it be, how would I grow if there wasn’t a healing challenge to resolve! The anti-biotics will help to an extent, but will not get to the cause - any skin condition, as I know only too well, is linked to the heart and involves a good look at self-love and the manner in which we self-harm, and it is intrinsically linked to stress too, which is ironic, is it not, for a yoga teacher to be stressed! 

Yet stressed I can be, in my effort to be all things, to live up to my cultural expectation and my own inner drive towards achieving and being of some use and purpose in this world - living life to the full, helping and knowing more of my own mind in the process; in short, becoming conscious. Reading about Michael, it struck me that this might well have underpinned so much of his motivation too and I couldn’t say it better than the words used on his website:

“Considering his practice and teaching, it’s easy to wonder how he could’ve died. We could instead ask, how did he live so well considering the power of his neurodiverse wiring? What can we learn about our own minds and hearts from someone who visited the front lines of the mind? There is an all too common theme in yoga and dharma worlds: if you practice deeply enough, you will heal, and if you don’t heal, your practice or something in you is flawed. This is not true.”

 I agree; I know that those teachers and friends who have inspired me the most, are those that have gone through, and are going through their own mill. These are the people who are doing work on themselves, who embrace the challenges, because it gives them something to work with. Yoga and meditation are practices, they provide us with tools to help us navigate our way through life, they are not the cure in themselves, it is only when we work with them that we might come to heal more of ourselves. So it is the same with Reiki and Ayurveda – we adopt the principles so that they become a part of our life; we live them. 

There are times when we need help from others, when we need counselling or therapy, when we need allopathic medicine. All of these I have called on over the last few years; nine months ago I went through a course of EDMR because the yoga and the Reiki and the Ayurveda had got me so far, unravelled some of the trauma, but I was struggling to let it go and EDMR helped me through this process and I shall be forever grateful to Marni Alexendra for that (life changing) processing.

We should not feel it is a sign of weakness or be shamed by the need to seek professional help or to allow our students to know what we are going through; we are all only human, even those of us teaching yoga. We need to give ourselves a break and allow the break downs to help us to break through whatever is getting in our way. Sometimes we are our own obstacle because we feel we have to look, act or be perceived a particular way. It takes a lot of energy to keep up this pretence and half our problem is letting go of that and this idea of an image that we want to present to the world. 

I am grateful to the depression and also to the peri-oral dermatitis, for both have given me a reason to dig deep and learn more about healing and about myself. My learnings have helped me to be kinder and more compassionate to myself, forgiving and letting go of stubborn unforgiveness and having greater compassion and empathy for others too, so that my experience informs my work and I may share from a place of deeper awareness and integrity.

I suspect the depression will always come and go for it is a messenger that shows me where I need to let go of holding in my mind, of mental constructs which are limiting me and the process of letting go allows me to breakthrough to another level of consciousness so that the world appears brighter, with more potential than I could have ever possible imagined - as if a new world awaits if only I could get out of my own way (depression helps this). As for the peri-oral dermatitis, I’m not quite sure where this is taking me, but I’m flowing with it as best I can and increasingly accepting that we are more than the face we put out to the world! 

To those of you battling with this idea that you have to be whole and healed to do the work you do, give yourself a break: it is your humanness that will inspire others, and allow them to be more of who they are, not your denial of it. The more you can allow your authentic self its expression, with all its messiness and contradictions, the more it gives others permission to awaken and acknowledge those aspects of self that might require attention. It is in our healing that we help others to heal, it is in our growing and expansion that we allow others to grow and expand too. I’m grateful to Michael, for his story has allowed me to own more of my truth - thank you.

Love Emma x

More plants!

I managed to move more plants to our home yesterday, get them in the ground as they requested! They really do talk, its amazing. E thinks I’m crazy, says they are just responding to the gases in my breath when I talk to them, but I believe they have a consciousness and we can tap into that, same with trees.

Here’s the Echinacea, in our front garden, by some lavender that a kind neighbour gave to us. This is good for supporting our immune system and preventing colds and such like.

Here’s the Valerian, good for sleep and relaxing, looking forward to trying that!

Here’s some of my elecampane, got to figure out whether I can fit the rest of it into that space…

I’ve got about 70 pots of St John’s Wort that still need a home. E’s beginning to grow weary of me taking over ‘his’ garden that he’s cultivated from a wild mess of stone and brambles when he bought the property 15 years ago now. It’s incredible the transformation, and what he has found as he has turned the land, it was very much a rubbish dump out the back overlooking the quarry.

My veggie patch has been abundant too this year and we are going to extend this, if we can make the room, we’ve got almost 200 saplings we are nurturing for our Plant A Tree Project, and intend to extend on this the next six months or so. It’s so exciting, I just love the process of growing, my grandparents were tomato growers, my uncle was a rose grower, both my cousins have grown their own produce for many years, more recently my parents too, you can’t escape your nature can you.

Trying not to get too attached…that’s the tricky bit! That’s when the suffering comes, as I am continuously learning; the more attached we come to outcome or expectation, the more our mind craves it and is disappointed if it doesn’t materialise. So let’s just go with it, see what happens, ‘let it be’, that’s my mantra for now.

Love

The magic of Sark

We recently spent six wonderful days on the magical island of Sark, a place that has stolen my heart, like Byron Bay in Australia, it is just out of this world, as if a true gift from the universe and I felt that I had died and gone to heaven many times over.

We camped the first few nights, and I will never forget waking in the middle of the night and going outside to witness the many stars overhead and the moon rising in the distance, still there, higher in the sky though, the next morning. It felt like my own private show, everyone else asleep and just these marvellous skies that you miss sleeping inside.

We stayed in self catering too, which felt like luxury after the camping, and I really did feel as if we had been blessed, the weather was phenomenal and we swam in the sea as much as we could, hiking up and down the cliffs, often with Eben in arms, and I discovered the joy that is Derrible Bay; there is always something new to discover on every trip, and never enough time to visit all that one might like to visit.

If you haven’t been to Sark please go, but please do venture further than the Bel Air and the Mermaid, further the Stocks too, I know it’s a popular one for lunch (and it is a beautiful hotel owned by lovely yogis, which we are very grateful to use for our retreats, it’s only a short walk from Dixcart too), but Sark has so much more to offer. It’s an island that has hidden treasures that will share itself with you the more you open up to it and notice and appreciate its beauty.

There’s nothing quite as special as a high tide morning swim at La Greve de la Ville, below the lighthouse, for example. I enjoy the walk too, there’s plenty of blackberries for the picking at the moment, helped get the children back up the hill! The morning light shimmers on the sea, and the clarity of the water is magnificent, it always sets me up well for the day head, there’s magic in that bay that’s for sure, even the children swam, their first proper Sark sea swim!

Mind you there’s a little bit of magic in all the bays. We visited Derrible for the first time and it was well worth it, visiting Sarkhenge on the way, and down the steep path, I left a sleeping Eben with E and Grandma at the top, but Elijah and I were both fine on the path and over the rocks at the bottom, joining some of our Sark friends celebrating a birthday.

Estelle showed us the caves, which are magnificent, especially the creux, which means a cave without a roof, and this one feels like you might be in a cathedral, there is an energy to it, go and have a feel. The swim was wonderful here too, it’s a lovely sandy beach and with record temperatures, the sea was much needed and extremely welcoming.

There’s Dixcart of course, just down from Stocks (see you can go for a swim before lunch!) and we managed a few trips down here. It’s fab swimming both at high and low tide, and has a little waterfall for the children to potter around, playing in the stream too, and going in and out of the arch. The walk down is beautiful, through the ancient-feeling woodland, which is healing by its very nature, or around the cliffs, currently laden with juicy and sweet blackberries, yum!

Port du Moulin is another favourite, I’m particularly keen on high tide swimming here but we have swam at low tide too. There’s Buddhist carvings on the rocks if you venture between the cliff and Tintageu, and actually if you go around into the cave, there’s fools gold (pyrite) in the rocks. Elsewhere you might find silver and Sark amethyst and I’m sure there’s other magical stones too - you can’t help but be affected positively by all the crystal and mineral energy!

I ventured down La Grand Greve, all 360 odd steps on my own one afternoon for a low tide swim, this after two trips to Dixcart, my legs were certainly feeling it, but my gosh it was worth the effort. I hadn’t been down there at such a low tide before and I was not to be disappointed, this will be on my list next time, albeit we were treated to the hottest temperatures of the summer that particular day and I was swimming with friends.

I made it to yoga that evening, a trip to Sark is never complete without a class with Caragh, a friend, chocolatier and fellow yogini. Caragh weaves Qi gong and yoga together and we practised outside on the playing field at the Village Hall, a fab end to a fab day!

There’s so much more, we’ve still not yet managed to get to Port a la Jument, or for a swim at Rouge Terrier, nor at Havre Gosselin, let alone the Eperquerie landings as we always run out of time. We did find the Venus Pools on our last trip but the locals say there are better pools to find. It took us over to Little Sark though and I always like to visit the Dolmen there if I can as this gets you a little off the beaten track and there are more blackberries to be found!

There’s more Buddhist carvings out towards Bec du New and caves down there at Les Fontaines. There’s plenty of caves, we still have to explore many of these and this red book helps; I was introduced to Jeremy who helped to update the original version and I know now how to get on and off Derrible Bay the La Trobe-Bateman way! No trip is complete without this book in hand, and will ensure that more of Sark reveals itself to you when the time is right, and will find you wanting to return for more.

Not to say we didn’t visit the Bel Air, Eben is keen on the play equipment in there, which we think is lethal. You’ll know what we mean if you visit, but it seems to keep the children entertained! Not far away from here is Lynn’s peaceful treatment space, I visited her for a hot stone massage and was not disappointed, I highly recommend, she is an aromatherapist and Reiki Master too and teaches both Reiki and massage so she knows her stuff, go and treat yourself! She also has a one-bedroom (double) self catering unit to rent, not far from the Avenue, see https://www.lesronche.com

I could go on, about the cycling, and the joy of La Valette campsite, the heritage museum, Mont Plaisirs stores (the two ladies who run it have been friends their whole lives, and their mums were best friends before them, I like that), Caragh’s chocolate shop and cafe and all that amazing chocolate (plus the pool and trampoline, which the children loved), the charity shop with all it’s finds and Simon’s shop next door, which the children always visit, and Jill Gill’s new shop along towards the Mermaid, the cafe on the left on the way to Stocks which is by far the best place for lunch, oh and there’s a display in the old Village Hall all about Sark under the German occupation, which is fascinating and makes you feel incredibly grateful for the freedom of life lived now.

I encourage you to go and visit if you can. I’ve two retreats planned on Sark, it is a marvellous place to retreat, and these are now fully booked as if proving that. I do have it in mind to run a more intimate retreat, a soul nourishing weekend with yoga and visits to some of Sark’s special places (although it’s all special really), so let me know if you would be interested in that, and also if you’d like to go on the cancellation list for the Spring retreat - emma@beinspiredby.co.uk - but honestly any trip is a retreat and a treat too!

Thank you Sark and you beautiful Sarkees.

Love Emma x

Some of my medicinal plants!

I am so delighted to finally have the plants in my moon garden, ahead of then next moon cycle next week. We’ve been in Sark and it has been hot and I could almost hear them asking me to get them in the ground as soon as possible…the marshmallow had already started rooting through the pots!

So here they are, the plants en masse…

And here they are individually:

Gypsywort

Woad and wormwood

Mullem and motherwort

Hyssop

Marshmallow

And this is the pot marigold soaking in sweet almond oil awaiting me finding time to make calendula salve infused with moonlight, sunlight and Reiki, oh and some love…

There’s still a significant number of plants in my parents’s greenhouse needing to be planted out, this is next on the list. The airing cupboard is now full of flowers and leaves drying so I can make teas and oils. Here’s some marshmallow and calendula flowers about to go to be dried.

The beams in the kitchen are being used to dry lavender, sage and rosemary to make beautiful oils. Here’s the sage oil on its way:

I love my plants, they actually communicate. I’m so grateful for their abundance and all they give. It’s a learning curve trying to work out what to do and its costing a small fortune in bits and bobs, but I am enjoying making my own potions and feeling the benefit. The bath scrubs I am enjoying the most, especially with the homemade lavender oil, although the sage oil is definitely potent and great for clearing the energy - very calming when applied to the head.

I made some cough medicine for the boys recently using thyme from the garden. It actually worked! I was really excited about this, despite the amount of honey required by the recipe, made me realise how much we can do to help ourselves, it’s just about finding the time!

I’ve got to learn what to do with the St John’s wort as these are flowering…I shall share photos once those are in the ground too!

Happy Friday!

x