Our suffering is our awakening

The last few days have been wobbly, the moon is waxing and she’s a powerful one, due full on Thursday, the first of two this October, the second will find us on Herm for the retreat, coincides with Samhain too and this month is due to be quite a potent one astrologically.

I’ve spent the day trying to feel into her. I had a sense that she is bringing surrender and there was something about community too, but then it came to me this evening, it’s illuminating more of the illusionary world we inhibit. Life is an illusion, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t real, or that it doesn’t exist, more so that it is subject to our interpretation and this a perspective and state of mind, so everyone will perceive the world differently.

There is no absolute truth therefore, other than purusha, the soul, the seer, which experiences through the mind but it is not the mind, it is the observer. The trouble is we cling to the mind and its idea of how life should be lived and we try to make certain that which is uncertain and judge and categories and otherwise create our own suffering through buying into the illusion.

Its interesting timing then that we should find ourselves going through an election here in Guernsey during October and between these two potent full moons. It wasn’t until I was talking to a friend earlier this evening that I realised how much this has been bothering me. I have spent the last few days reading manifestos and listening to videos and my soul has become increasingly weary. I don’t doubt that everyone wants positive change, but people are coming at it in such different ways, some with heart, passionate about some cause, and others because their ego says so.

Even those I might surmise are coming from heart, are trying to sell us a little of the illusion and the lie. I’m all up for the decriminalisation and legalisation of cannabis, for example, why not when alcohol and pharmaceutical drugs are used by the general public legally. But let’s be careful when we start using the excuse that cannabis is a plant medicine. Yes it is a plant medicine, but like any plant medicine you still need to proceed with caution. Wormwood is also a plant medicine but I’m not about to smoke that, and nor will I take more than I need without it having a toxic effect on my body and my mind.

But you can’t tell people this, or have a conversation about how we might look at reducing our dependency on drugs generally, because drugging ourselves on alcohol and prescription drugs has become such an acceptable part of our society that the notion of going without would literally create shock waves, because our pain and suffering is so great that we need something to numb it…don’t we? I’m biased. In the past I did use cannabis and alcohol to numb my pain, sometimes excessively and sometimes under the illusion that it was expanding my mind (the cannabis) and making me more spiritual (ha ha!).

But I finally recognised that my numbing to ease my suffering was actually creating more suffering in the long term and my buying into the illusion that antidepressants was going to help me find my way with depression, was a step too far for me. My little soul which was fairly much suffocated by this stage, managed to find the strength to flash through my mind and somehow make me consider in the darkest of dark moments that there had to be another way. Thank God for the soul. Thank God for yoga too.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, chapter 2, verse 16, reads, “hey duhkhamanagatam”, which basically means what must be avoided is future suffering, what is done is done let it go - yoga is all about reducing suffering. The chapter then goes on to share with us the tools that will help us to reduce our suffering including asana (postures) but not limited to this! Chapter Six of the Bhagavad Gita contains four definitions of yoga and one of them is especially genius -'“ yoga is the unlinking of the link with pain”.

This has been my experience of yoga. I have been practising yoga daily for just over 17 years now and during that time my life has changed beyond recognition and my relationship with my self and my mind has also changed in ways that I never imagined it could ever change. My relationship to pain has changed significantly too; I am not longer scared of pain and I no longer need to numb myself from it. Without doubt, pain has become one of my best friends because it highlights to me where I need to focus my attention and it is in this way that I can ease my suffering.

Our pain will manifest in all ways, but there will always be a mental source. We suffer because of our mind. This does not mean that our physical pain is not real, our physical pain will feel very real, only that it is our mind that ultimately creates our suffering in how it responds and manages our pain. Therefore if we can find ways to manage our mind, then we might be able to free ourselves from our overall pain and our suffering.

Which brings me back to the election and the illusion. I appreciate that many of those standing are doing so to make a difference, because they believe that they have something new to offer to us, to save the environment, to boost our economy, to sort our education once and for all, to ensure that the elderly are better cared for, to improve the mental health service, to make cannabis available to all, but it’s all just words and it’s just feeding the illusion.

If we truly want change then it has to come back to each of us individually and we need to begin to take greater responsibility, to see through the illusion and stop feeding into it. Facebook is such a good example of this, so many people moan about how it makes them feel bad, how they waste so much of their time on there, but they still cannot delete themselves from it, they are still feeding into the illusion that they will miss out, or lose a sense of community if they are not on it.

My weary soul took me to see La Gran’mère du Chimquière today, to touch something real that has stood the test of time and change. I felt better for it, so too the sea swims and the time spent wandering on Richmond dreaming of spiritual community, This is what I crave the most here on Guernsey, the weaving of the spiritual into our ordinary life, creating a shift in our awareness, ushering in a new paradigm, which doesn’t try to create more of what’s been while calling it something different, but invites in a whole new way of being, one of heart and the sacred, of deeper respect for the self and for the world we live in.

This is a whole new idea of what it means to be alive, if only we could shift our perspective to that extent; so that all the rest would shift effortlessly in a more harmonious and positive direction, so that we wouldn’t need to be talking about treating symptoms but could get right back to the cause of the loss of harmony and wellness of our society in the first place, to what made us sick; treating the symptoms never solved anything.

In many respects our suffering if a gift. It has the potential to awaken us, and this is needed now more than ever before in our history. All of this life currently lived, with Covid is asking more of us individually and collectively. We are trying to fight it, but it is not a war to be fought, it is an opportunity to look deeper at all that is flawed and all that has been mis-sold to us, including yoga, yes, including yoga. This is a time for deep discernment and discrimination, to see beyond the illusion. Only then will life change in a truly positive direction. Are you up for it?!

Chakra Balancing Crystals

I can barely contain my excitement as my new batch of chakra crystals have arrived! My lovely cousin Yolande has managed to source these for me from reputable buyers, no easy feat right now with Covid-19 affecting mining and distribution.

I’m grateful to Yolande because I have questioned in recent months, the ethics of crystal mining and selling. I love crystals but I’m aware that as their popularity has increased in recent years, there are increasing numbers of people trying to benefit from this, and selling sub-standard products at a high rate. I also question the industry itself, and the manner in which the crystals are being mined.

It all starts to get a bit heavy though and detracts from the joy that crystals can bring. They make such a difference in my life and I am grateful for every one of them. I am hopeful that these crystals will make a difference to other people’s lives too and look forward to sharing them on retreats and Reiki trainings, and ad hoc workshops.

I can highly recommend investing in a chakra lay out so that you can place the relevant crystals on each of your chakras if you are feeling in need of balance. There is a free chakra balancing guided relaxation on my website, it is a bout 10 minutes long and you could listen to this at the same time of lying still with the chakra on you - this is something we do during the Reiki Level Two training. It’s something I do from time to time too. You could use the following:

Root - red jasper

Sacral - Carnelian

Solar Plexus - Yellow aventurine or yellow jasper

Heart - Rose quartz and Green aventurine

Throat - Sodaiite or Blue lace agate

Third eye - Amethyst

Crown - Clear quartz

Anyhow I just wanted to share these crystals with you because just sharing them may spread their joy to you too!

Love xx

Introducing my calendula ointment!

Well here it is, my calendula ointment, and if I’m honest, then I’m proud of myself for it!

Sometimes in life things just happen. Traipsing up to Everest Base Camp as detailed in Namaste was one of those things, so was my water breaking six weeks early while leading a yoga & wellbeing retreat on Herm as detailed in Dancing with the Moon. Not that I’m thinking that my growing pot marigold will lead to me writing and publishing a book but you never know - something things do just happen!

Me seeing Fi’s Facebook post about her organic seeds just happened. Me accepting some of her organic seeds just happened. Me deciding I might grow them on the waxing moon because I thought this might help them grow just happened. Me giving them Reiki also just happened. The seeds growing just happened, and it seemed to happen very quickly.

These were the seeds that germinated before any of the other medicinal plant seeds did, that grew faster than any of the others and demanded the most of my attention and yet I was pleased to tend to them because they were so giving with their cheerful and uplifting energy. These were the plants from whom I learned to transplant into bigger pots and bigger pots and even bigger pots because they just kept on growing!

These are the plants that whispered to me that they needed to go in the ground a few months later and caused me to spend an entire weekend establishing a moon garden on Lammas so I could make sure they were in the ground after this, when the full moon had aded her energy to the prepared soil.

These are the plants that produced the most beautiful yellow and orange flowers which are not only hugely cheerful but calming to the spirit too. I quickly began to love my pot marigolds and have never looked back since; they have been extremely abundant and giving, even now I am still picking the flowers. I struggled with this initially, it seemed such a shame, especially as they attract pollinators, but it is almost as if they like to keep giving more flowers to bloom.

In historic times calendula was used for magical purposes. It was also used by the Romans and Greeks in many rituals and ceremonies, sometimes garlands and crowns were worn that were made from calendula. It is sometimes called ‘Mary’s Gold’ referring to the flowers’ use in early Catholic rituals in some countries. They are considered sacred flowers in India and have been used to decorate the states of Hindu deities since early times, and they were used around the shala at Satsanga Retreat centre in Goa when we were there last year.

They were used for culinary purposes too, both for favour and colour. However it is its long history of medical use throughout the world that has made calendula so popular and continues to make it popular today. It is considered a vulnerary agent, a plant which promotes healing. It has been used internally and externally with above-average results compared to other healing herbs. It has anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. When applied to wounds, calendula prevents microbial growth and does not cause skin tissues to retract, thus providing more oxygen to the skin cells to lessen the healing time - as I discovered on a burn recently. The flowers are high in vitamin C and have been used to improve appetite and increase circulation.

I decided that I would use my flowers to make a calendula ointment that could be applied to skin. I started picking them and drying them on a hanging rack I bought for that purpose in our airing cupboard. Initially I picked all the petals from the flower heads thinking it was just then petals that one would add to any oil but then I read more into the subject and discovered, with much relief as it was rather time consuming, that the whole flower head could be soaked, phew!

I researched oils and while I opted for organic olive oil for my lavender, rosemary and sage, I chose almond oil for the calendula, it just felt the right choice intuitively. I covered the calendula flowers with the oil in a glass jar and placed it on a sunny window sill for three weeks or so and over a waxing moon too. Actually during the latter part of the moon cycle from half moon to full moon, I placed the jar outside so that the oil and flowers could absorb both the moonlight and sunlight directly. I’m ever hopeful that this may have increased its potency and healing properties.

After three weeks or so, I don’t know, just when it felt right, I drained the flowers and was left with this most beautiful orange oil. There was something about its colour and texture, like a form of liquid gold, that made me feel very satisfied and very grateful for the abundance of my beautiful plants.

My mum helped me then to melt organic beeswax into the oil so that I could make it into an ointment. This was exciting! It wasn’t anywhere as near as tricky as I had imagined, and extremely pleasing, I felt like I had actually achieved something, made a dream come true that I hadn’t even recognised was a dream, but there was something in me that was delighted to have made a potentially healing potion. I’m a passionate healer and a little bit Wiccan and I guess it was empowering. I infused each jar with Reiki and of course they were made with love too!

So here it is, my calendula ointment…

It can be used to treat acne, burns, scrapes, nappy rash, scratches, minor abrasions, small cuts, insect bites, recurring skin conditions such as dermatitis and eczema, to ease very rough and dry skin, on cradle cap and dandruff, on haemorrhoids or inflammation of the rectal area, peeling and chapped lips, vaginal yeast infections, conjunctivitis, deep aches, muscle spasms and rheumatism. Ointments keep body heat and water in so it shouldn’t really be used on hot, inflamed and weepy skin conditions.

I’ve used it in a few situations and I know I’m biased but it feels good! It eased some sore skin, it healed a burn quickly, it helped my son’s dermatitis and I used it on a sun burned nose too! I’ve given some to my friends to test on their various skin conditions and am hoping it works for them too.

I don’t have many pots, but if you feel it might help you then let me know. I am selling them for £15 for a 120ml pot.

But really they are invaluable to me, because they brought so much joy and it is difficult to put a cost on that!

Apologies for the slightly amateur photos, not my strongest point!!

Love Emma x

Mabon blessings - the autumnal equinox!

Isn’t it interesting that on the spring Equinox six months ago, the UK went into lockdown, and here we are on the autumnal equinox and the UK tightens its restrictions to try to control Covid-19 once more, and this for a further six months, taking us full circle to the spring equinox!

The timing is fascinating! Especially when you consider that equinoxes represent two of the cross-quarter festivals of the year, when day and night are perfectly balanced, the cross-over points between darkness and light and light and darkness, depending on where you are in the world and which season you are in.

Here in the west, the autumnal equinox marks the harvest, where we might reap what we sowed, and while the earth remains balanced between light and darl for three days, the days will soon get shorter and the nights longer as we are encouraged to hibernate.

This last six months have been life changing for so many, highlighting our fundamental fear around dying (more on this soon) and the fact that try as we might to ensure certainty in our life, life here on Planet Earth has always been uncertain and always will be, this is also part of the human condition.

And yet there are some certainties such as the sun rising each morning and setting each evening even if we cannot see it, the tides changing, the moon moving through her cycle and the seasons too, they have their rhythm. This is where we find certainty, in the rhythm of life and in our own rhythm, if we are able to feel into it and trust in it.

So in many respects there is something rather comforting about this autumnal shift, even though we can’t be certain exactly what it is ushering in for any of us, but it gives us yet another opportunity to trust in the process and go with the flow, and to appreciate the abundance in our lives, all the harvesting and the bounty this brings.

This balance of light and dark reminds us not only of balance in our own lives (how balanced do we feel?) but of the dualities of life, that we cannot have one without the other such as light and dark, harmony without disharmony, joy without sorry, and how we must find acceptance of all this and not be attached or averse to either way, because that will only lead to our suffering. It is therefore about a balanced perspective, of compassion, non-judgement and the ability to see all sides.

I can’t help thinking that Covid-19 has been helping us to learn more of this lesson. To get out of our comfort zones and our conditioned ways of thinking and start to shift the perspective a little, to appreciate more of what we have and stop focusing so much on what we don’t have, to find the positive in every situation, while appreciating the negative, and not getting attached to either way.

Here I have definitely felt a shift these last six months and I am anticipating further shifts ahead, heck we have another round of eclipses coming up at the end of the year so that will no doubt have an impact. But what I am finding is the manner in which I am learning more about my mind and it is becoming clearer the way in which we create our own reality based on our perceptions of the duality and whether we are therefore drawn to something or turn away from it and how we suffer as a consequence. Also kindness. I am learning a lot about kindness to self especially!

I am also appreciating the simple life, which I have longed for for a while and now finally Covid ushered this in so I am less distracted by the idea of getting off island and being so busy that my head is constantly thinking about the future events. This is a gift in many respects, the opportunity to be more present and I’m grateful to Covid for that.

So today I did celebrate. Sadly the sun was not shining for sunrise as I had hoped, but Eben and I collected leaves from the wonderful trees around Beau Sejour. I’m pretty sure this chestnut is one of the older trees on the island, like maybe 350 years old, E would know but he’s asleep so let’s just say its that old for now! It felt pretty cool regardless! I thought it rather appropriate that Eben was munching an autumnal apple when I took the photo!

We went home and we painted the leaves and made prints, which we are intending to cut out and send to family members around the world, Eben is desperate for some post to come back to him, so we figured we should get the ball rolling by sending stuff our first! This was fun, even though it did mean the paint went everywhere, but I suppose this is all part of the fun!

We planted acorns too. Many of you know we have established our ‘Plant A Tree Project’ and so we are making the most of any opportunity to grow trees that can be planted by others, children especially, in their gardens and spread our love of trees, and make the world a better place in the process…it’s the small things that become the large things, or so we hope!

We went blackberrying on our way back home from Saints for our swim this afternoon and I made a blackberry and apple crumble with apples from my neighbour’s apple trees and some gluten free oats and seeds. It was yummy!

I’m curious to see how life unfolds this next six months and as much as I love summer, I have finally accepted our retreat into the darkness of winter and shall embrace all the gifts that this brings. With any luck it might continue to shine a light into the shadows, not just individually but collectively too!

Mabon blessings! xxxx

The social dilemma

Twice today I have been told to watch Social Dilemma on Netflix. As I exited all social media in May, I asked one of the people whether it might make me want to go back on the social media again and I was assured that no, the documentary would instead make me feel like saying, “ha ha, I told you so!”.

Now obviously I’m not going to say that to anyone because we all have a choice in how we live our life and it’s not for me to judge anyone for making different decisions and having a social media presence. I made the decision for many reasons and have very much enjoyed having my life back again. In the nicest possible way, I don’t need to know the ins and outs of other people’s lives and I don’t want another reason to be distracted from my children and wasting my time.

I’ll admit that I did have a wobble, when I doubted the decision I made, questioning whether I may have been foolish to let go of Beinspired’s presence on there, not least for the community and sharing side of things but to keep people informed of classes and offerings. 

But I am also very aware that there is always another way, and I’m conscious that I don’t want to encourage people to spend any more time on social media and/or to feed into the marketeers and their obsession with selling and profiteering at the expense of all else.

I do what I love and I love what I do and I have faith and trust in something that I cannot name that will bring those to me who need to find me and take me to those who I need to find and connect. This to me is the other way, and when it happens, when there is synchronicity and coincidence then it is rather magical, like this sacred world going on that others don’t notice with their head in phones.

What clinched it for me recently was practising the yoga posture hanumanasana, the monkey pose, or commonly known as the splits. For years I have practised this pose but always by stretching my hamstring on the front and my hip flexors on the back, to the extent that it has not been without some forcing and the general discomfort of stretching legs apart.

Yet recently, practising with my teacher, she has guided me to experience a different way of accessing and being in this pose that does not in any way resemble the way I used to practice it. This way of being in the pose does not put so much pressure on my hamstrings and does not at all stretch the hip flexors and therefore brings with it much greater freedom to the spine and lightness within this.

It was certainly a process to get there though, a few weeks of practice and me struggling to access it in the way she was teaching me so that I resorted to how I had always practised it, stretching, and yet this triggered something in me, brought up an old pattern around the external and self-worth, which was uncomfortable and outgrown, yet here I was still feeding it because I couldn’t find another way.

I knew though that I couldn’t continue to practise like this as I knew it was unkind to my body and I was also selling out a part of myself, compromising it for the external glory of looking like I was in hanumanasana, but with none of the freedom and lightness that I knew could be found in it.

My mind let this go eventually, not without a struggle, the mind always holds on to the old, because it is known and comfortable, and yet eventually we outgrow it and the comfortable can become uncomfortable and then we are caught, to continue doing what we have been doing because it is safe and known and yet knowing that that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable because we know we need to let go! 

I can’t remember how it happened, I think someone said something that resonated, and I realised what I was doing and the bigger picture and pattern, and I knew then that I might not be able to go so far in the posture as I may have forced myself to do previously, but that there was no option but to practice the gentler way, that things have changed and that I now have a lot more respect for my body than I did previously. I was reminded that there is always another way.

So it is too with social media. There is always another way, and I know that we will try and convince ourselves that there isn’t. That if we are running businesses or have families overseas then this is the only way for people to know that we exist or for us to keep in touch with our families respectively. But this is really just a story that we tell ourselves and because we believe in the stories we tell ourselves then they become our reality – our thoughts create the world we live in and our experience of it.

Thus when I began to doubt whether I should be on social media, I felt disempowered by my thinking and my mind imagined my worst case scenario, that I wouldn’t have any students to share yoga and Reiki with, that no one might find their way to me and I would have to give up the one thing I love doing more than anything else. Because of my negative thinking, I gave out that energy and experienced a momentary loss of faith and lack of trust that ended up making me feel depressed and a little bit anxious for a future which wasn’t real but just imagined in my catastrophising. 

The experience with hanumanasana allowed me to change the script, to see the pattern I had around negative thinking and disempowerment so that I was able let it go simply by becoming aware of it. The fact I was able to experience another way of practising the posture allowed me to embody the fact that there is always another way, one that is more sacred perhaps, and works on a different level to the mundane, of which fear is such a limitation and pushing and pulling becomes the norm. This whole experience strengthened my faith.

I value what I do and the teachings that are passed to me by my teacher, and I have no doubt that those who are meant to find their way to me so I can share what I have learned will do so because the ‘something’ that drew me to my teacher will draw us together too. I have questioned whether this is egotistical of me, but I don’t believe it is, more so that I am extremely grateful for having found this sacred practice and a community of yoga practitioners who are also off grid and who have experienced this other way too – who don’t want to sell out on it. 

I don’t want to sell out on my childen either, they are worth so much more than that and our time together is always so precious, especially now they are back to school/pre-school. It’s all too easy to lose ourselves, get caught up in that which isn’t important in the grand scheme of things, to buy into other people’s dramas and to find ourselves anxious and disempowered by the experience. I really don’t think there is anything social about social media, but heck that is just my experience of it. All I know is that there is another way, one of spending time actually communicating with those who matter, getting outside and having fun.