Having a float!

I went for a float on Sunday. I’d been told about float rooms a few years ago from a friend who swore by floating, finding it both extremely relaxing and enlightening, so it’d been on my mind. I’d heard along the grapevine that one had opened on Guernsey but I hadn’t gotten as far as booking in.

Then a pregnant friend mentioned she’d been and knowing we share a mutual love of baths she suggested that I go along and give it a try. So I did! And I have to say it was a really enjoyable, relaxing and, to a certain extent, enlightening experience.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised to find a very welcoming Dave and a very clean room with a lovely energy, safe and protected from the outside world!

Dave explained the process, how he would leave me on my own in the secure space so I could undress (you can wear a bather if you choose), put in the ear plugs before showering using products provided (faith in nature) and applying Vaseline to any open cuts (as these would sting otherwise!). I was then to ease myself directly from the shower into the float tank, which is little more like a wide and shallow bath, not the tank I had in mind fortunately! It has an emergency button if you need help at any point!

The room was dimply lit and I chose ‘ocean wave’ music to be played gently in the background throughout the session. Dave had warned me that initially some of his friends had experienced a sore neck after floating as they had been unable to fully relax their neck and let their head be held by the extremely high salt content of the tank (dead sea salts from Israel), which enabled the body to float. 

I’m pleased he had warned me of this because I quickly noticed that I was unable to relax my neck, there was something within me stopping me doing it. I tried to talk myself into it, asking my neck to relax but for some reason, it was holding on tight. It made no sense because I could feel that the salt content was holding me afloat, my head was not dropping backwards into the water, but nonetheless my neck was holding on tightly to something that it wouldn’t let go.

 Fortunately there is a plastic pillow of sorts that you can use, to rest the back of your head, so I grabbed this and placed it behind my head. It made a huge difference for me, for some strange reason I was able to relax my neck knowing that there was something contacting the back of my head, even though it was the salt holding this, as it would have held my head too, if my neck had allowed it!

With my neck finally relaxing, I felt as if the whole of me might now relax too, but all of a sudden there was a momentary panic as I questioned what exactly I might now do for the remaining 55 minutes of the session. I might well practice yoga and meditate a couple of times a day, plus practise some yoga nidra a few times each week, but I don’t often (never) lie down for a whole 60 minutes unless I am also reading in bed at the same time. 

I thought maybe I might think about a few things, process some stuff which has been playing on my mind, but amazingly the combination of the salted water and the sensation of lying, let alone the ocean sounds and the dim light meant that I was incapable of holding a stream of thought, and the effort to think became too effortful and with that I drifted into that beautiful liminal space where you are neither here nor there and time passes quickly, too quickly in this case! 

I felt my body move at times, as if I was jolted awake momentarily, perhaps a twitch or a release, and then I drifted back into that restful space where – I believe - healing takes place. It reminded me of Reiki, where you just drift off to this other place and before you know it the session is over.

Lo and behold before too long, the air con kicked in again and a waft of cooler air blew into the room, while the star-studded lights above the tank turned on once more, only gently, but enough for me to know that the session had ended. I scraped the salt off my skin and as much as I could off my hair, as requested by Dave, before stepping out of the tank and back into the shower to shower off once again.

After dressing and removing the ear plugs, I joined Dave in the reception area to pay him and to share my experiences. While he was probably keen for me to leave and let him get on with his day he didn’t show it and was extremely welcoming and giving of his time. I wondered if I might have been better driving, but fortunately the rain held off as I cycled back home, grateful in many respects for the fresh air and opportunity to wake myself a little before the boys joined me that afternoon.

When they did join me I became very aware how much my ears were tested by their noise. My boys are noisy and I do sometimes struggle with this, but I hadn’t realised the extent to which noise generally bothers my ears and how desperate a part of me was for peace and space. I didn’t get it of course, such is the reality of family life, and I felt on edge and aggravated by it to the extent that after dinner, and with my mother in law helping E, I was able to escape to our room where I promptly burst into tears.

I couldn’t stop once I had started, this endless stream of watery release, which I think was the result of something unearthed from my neck during the float. Perhaps it was also the release of something touched in a distance ki massage session with my shadow worker Jo just a few days previous to that, which had taken me to the criss-cross of a few layers beginning to reveal themselves from the shadows, as if this was all timed perfectly, the float facilitating the release.

It continued the next morning too, the tears just coming without any angst or emotion attached to them, just a release. My neck was a little achy and I was curious about this. In my yoga practice I really focused on my neck and I noticed, when I was lying on my mat at the beginning of the session, how I was unintentionally holding on in my neck. I had never noticed it previously because it was obviously my norm, but now I could see how there was just this subtle holding of my head and inability to totally surrender the weight of it to the floor. 

So I settled into that and noticed how my softening and letting go softened my throat and changed my breathing, so it was more relaxed somehow. I couldn’t quite believe how I had allowed that pattern to be there for all these years, this need to somehow protect the vulnerability of the neck and it’s place there between the head and the heart, not able to fully surrender the head and all this emotional holding, a lot of misguided guilt and an inability to allow the heart to flow up and out, to fully express itself in the world.

A few days on and the emotions have settled. It took me completely by surprise and I am grateful to the float for being a conduit for the release that it brought. I’m really keen to return again, they offer a three-session deal, which sounds great, albeit my one session did the trick. I’ve been feeling calmer since, and curious too, to learn more of the tension I’m holding and what underlies that, just as I’m curious to find out what will come of the additional freedom now in my neck!

It’s funny how the releases come in their way, how things can be divinely orchestrated, to an agenda that we’re created and yet has some magical input into it too. I always find this place a little uncomfortable though, the neither here nor there as things settle after any letting go, but I trust that it is for the greater good, that the change will come when the timing is right and that there is a bigger picture to all of this. My advice – go for a float! 

** It’s now six days after the float and a few days since writing that blog post and the whirlwind which it brought with the release has now settled, and I recognise the role it played in helping me to surrender and let go of a limiting belief that has been bothering me since March now. With that much needed clarity after months of not being able to ‘see’ clearly. It’s powerful stuff that floating!

 If you know you have something to release but you don’t know what it is, or you feel stuck in your life, not sure which way to go, lacking clarity and a little confused, then go for a float. If the body is holding on tightly, then go for a float. If you need some time out, some peace and some space to just be, then go for a float. I cannot tell you what an incredible conduit it is for letting go and just being…

Love Emma x

P.S. You’ll need to go look on Facebook, it’s called The Float Room, a friend sent me details, the email is info@thefloatroom.gg

Cultivating courage to see the need/be the change

A group of us were chatting about social media this week. Everyone in the group expressed some concern about the detrimental impact of social media, on the younger generation in particular, how it feeds their insecurity and distracts them from being present, how lives are now lived on phones and how everyone wants to be someone, feeding this ‘me’ culture which merely fuels the “I’m not good enough” story on which big companies profiteer.

One of the ladies who works with teenagers shared how she has witnessed a negative shift in behaviour and insecurity levels of teenagers since social media became prevalent. Another lady shared how her teenage son is negatively affected by it. Another expressed concern about the addictive nature of social media and being online. Yet none of these ladies had considered that their being on social media was feeding into it. Or to put it another way, none of these ladies recognised that as an individual they have a powerful role to play in how life unfolds on this planet and how social media unfolds in the future.

I touched on this recently when I mentioned about the butterfly effect, how the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in one part of the world could cause a typhoon in another, or something like that. But it’s not even that, or at least not that alone, but includes the idea of our power, or feelings of powerlessness and how our relationship to the potency of our power as individuals plays out in the world, and linked to that is the notion that we are the micro of the macro, that we might be an individual but collectively we are the whole.

Thus, I found it fascinating that despite identifying the negative aspects of social media, not one of the ladies thought for one minute that they might come off social media. I don’t think it was even a possibility in their minds. Not because they hadn’t thought about it, or couldn’t do it, but because social media has become so embedded in the fabric of our life that it’s as normal to be on social media as it is to drive a car. We do it because others do it, because it’s the norm, because that’s how life works now; this to the extent that we can’t see life being any other way than the way it is currently being lived. Do you know what I mean? 

The mind is incredibly shaped by society, and by societal expectations, which are driven, in the case of social media, by big corporations hoping to profiteer. Now that’s interesting isn’t it, that our minds have been shaped to feed the marketeers dream and we don’t even realise it, because as far as we are concerned, we’re just using social media like everyone else does, and if everyone else is using it, then it must be OK mustn’t it? 

Well you’d think so wouldn’t you but, like my ladies, there is an acknowledgment that it isn’t all good. On some deeper level they know that social media brings with it a whole heap of potentially negative consequences. Imagine then, the many ways our mind is being shaped by the social media content if our minds have been shaped to the extent that we think being on social media is OK even when we know on some deeper level that it isn’t. 

Take the example of my group of ladies, they all recognised the negative impact of social media yet they weren’t going to do anything about it. They were just going to keep feeding it. I found this interesting and it got me thinking how there is something else at play here, as if there is a disconnection between their individual actions and the bigger picture. This isn’t meant as a criticism, but it appeared to me that they were struggling to see how their individual actions are feeding the bigger picture. It’s the same for all of us on some level. 

Everything we do individually has an impact collectively. We may think we’re powerless to make a difference, because we buy into the idea that we are not worthy, not good enough and couldn’t possibly make a difference in this world. Yet every single one of us is far more powerful than we could ever imagine. Look at what we have created – by buying into social media, by feeding it, look how social media has become so embedded in the fabric of our life that we cannot imagine our life without it. If we had not bought into it individually, there would be no collective! See!

I was talking to a friend recently who works for an American company where they have been having lots of discussions recently about racism on the back of #BlackLivesMatter. This to the extent that they are now being encouraged to pull up their colleagues if they say something or do something that could in any way be perceived as racist whether intentional or not. This all in the hope of changing the vocabulary and narrative around racism to make it absolutely unacceptable in any capacity.

 My friend said that the discussions have gone further, to the extent that there have been questions around environmentalism and climatic change and at which point we are collectively able to pull people up about the actions they take that scientists believe negatively impact on the environment and climate. For example, when does it becomes unacceptable to run a huge motorboat that guzzles lots of fuel, or for one person to use a large car that requires lots of petrol and just takes up more resources in its manufacture. 

Furthermore, at which point do we begin to recognise that our individual actions, the food we eat, the transport we use, the houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the stuff we buy, all has an impact on the collective and on the whole and therefore directly on the climate and the environment. We all know that the climate is suffering, yet we continue to live our lives in the same way that we always have, just like we continue to feed social media even though we know it is having a real negative impact on the world. 

We all suffer with that disconnection to some extent, thinking it’s someone else’s problem, or waiting for someone else to make the change, or waiting for those in power to lead the way, or believing that our actions don’t really have much of an impact because it is just little old us. But a whole heap of little old us, the collective little old us, well that’s all of us isn’t it, that’s the population of the world. See, we each have a role to play in this.  But first we have to recognise this and take responsibility for it before we can make a change, before we can   be the change.

If a whole heap of us became the change, imagine what might happen! If we all came off social media, for example, withdrew ourselves from it, like the drug it is, numbing us from our reality, what then? If we all ditched our cars, what then? If we all started owning our mental and emotional landscape and took responsibility for healing ourselves and recognising our inherent goodness, what then? 

I was reading from the Katha Upanishad the other day, part of the Krishna Yajur Veda, this the Upanishad of the Secret of Eternal Life in which a teenager coolly walks up to Death and has a long conversation with him. Part of this Upanishad talks of treading the razor’s edge:

Get up! Wake up! Pay attention.

To all the blessings you’ve received!

Sharp as the razor’s edge is the path, they say,

More arduous than can be conceived!

Roopa Pai, explains: “To believe implicitly in a world that you cannot experience with your sense, to choose always the good path over the pleasurable, to be so dedicated to your quest that no earthly temptation can divert you, even while everyone around you mocks at your ‘idealistic nonsense’ – all of it demands a rare form of courage”.

What does that courage translate to in the real world? Not feeding social media when you realise it’s detriment to you individually as well as society and humanity as a whole; thinking twice before using the car or travelling by air; picking up litter from the road even though your neighbours never stop to help; taking issue with your friend or family member, respectfully, when you believe they are being racist; not buying something that you really like the look of because you know that it’ll just end up in landfill one day.

It’s courage perhaps that will positively change the world for the better. Having courage to take responsibility for our individual actions as part of the collective. As Roopa Pai writes, “Do you see how displaying this sort of courage will eventually make you a better person, in your own estimations if not in anyone else’s? Sure. But is it something you’d rather avoid? Oh, most certainly! See how the sages were so on point when they declared that the path to self-realisation was as sharp as a razor’s edge?”

I’m continuously reminded of Mahatma Gandhi and his famous quote, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. This not only in changing ourselves, but in changing our actions and thus changing the world. We are powerful beyond our wildest dreams and the sooner we recognise and realise this, the better for all of humanity and the more courage we have to face the razor’s edge!

But what can we do to cultivate this courage, to awaken, to recognise more of our disconnection and to create greater connection? Well I’m biased right, but there are some pretty ancient texts which guide the way and direct us towards yoga and meditation. Then there’s Reiki, the most amazing gift in my life, that will help us too, connecting to our heart and to love. Anything that connects us to our heart and helps us to love ourselves a little more and love others too, and this planet and all of humanity – we can’t help but make more of the change then. 

Supporting Guernsey Mind through yoga nidra and Reiki

Thank you so much beautiful people for helping to raise £308.50 for Guernsey Mind through yoga nidra and Reiki this evening.

I’m probably biased but I just love a room full of people channelling and receiving Reiki, it’s powerful stuff! I also love sharing a yoga nidra, so it was the perfect evening for me, especially as I taught yoga first too. The Reiki share was a particular highlight, where we linked palms and shared Reiki around the circle, my hands were buzzing!!!

Thank you very much to my helpers too, so much appreciated.

Sending love and Reiki.

Emma xxx

Yoga Nidra!

With the Yoga Nidra session for Guernsey Mind soon approaching I thought maybe I might share an article I wrote that was published by a European yoga & health magazine about seven years ago now. This was before children so I do not reference the way in which my journey with IVF deepened my experience of yoga nidra and helped me recognise more than ever the transformative and supportive nature of this practice.

I write about it in my book, Dancing with the Moon, but yoga nidra really helped me to maintain a positive mind set when it came to my journey to motherhood and I worked a lot with the Sankalpa, “I am pregnant with a healthy baby”. I practiced Yoga nidra a lot, perhaps daily at times, during the post natal period as I found it so incredibly healing and helpful when i was depleted from C-sections and sleep deprivation.

Only now are we beginning to get more sleep, almost seven years on from having our eldest and I still practice yoga nidra a few times a week. It was helpful earlier on this year when I was initially exploring sobriety, and throughout lockdown it helped enormously in managing my angst at not being able to physically teach yoga or give hands on Reiki. It has been extremely helpful in recent months as I work through some old patterns around boundaries and self-worth.

That’s the thing with yoga nidra. It not only makes me feel better, but it actually helps to completely change things, we are potentially transformed by the practice, if we can make the time. This is the reason I am so keen to share it, not simply as a deep guided relaxation, although it is this, but because it literally transforms our mind in a more positive direction if we allow it, almost re-programmes it then. It’s quite remarkable.

Anyhow here’s the article…

When I initially started practicing Yoga almost 10 years ago now, I simply could not relax.  It was impossible.  At the end of the Yoga class when the teacher announced Savasana, I would try and find any possible excuse to leave the class early so that I could avoid the last few minutes of relaxation.  

It was not so much that I was adverse to the idea of relaxation per se, it was more so that I found relaxing so mentally uncomfortable.  There were simply too many thoughts, too many tick lists, too many things I should be doing, rather than simply lying there on the floor trying to relax.

When I first ventured out to Byron Bay in Australia to immerse myself in Yoga a year into my practice, I shall never forget my first 2 hour Yoga session (the normal length of the classes out there at that time).  While I loved every single minute of the asana practice, the problem came, however, with a 20 whole minutes of quiet relaxation at the end of the class.  Proper quiet that is, with no music, no distraction, nothing.  Those were the longest 20 minutes of my life, or so it seemed in that moment! 

Still with me attending these 2 hour sessions once or twice a day every day for a month and unable to leave the class early (many teachers will understandably discourage you from doing so), I quickly developed my own way of dealing with the mental chatter.  I imagined in my mind a train line with open trucks in which I placed each of my thoughts and then watched them pass by, one after the other, until I was able, eventually, to experience some relief from the constant background mental chatter.

Over the next year I practiced a lot of Yoga as I developed my practice both on and off the mat, qualifying as a Yoga teacher in the process.  My ability to relax improved hugely, but it wasn’t until I assisted on a teacher training course at Govinda Valley, Sydney that I discovered the joy and indeed benefit of Yoga Nidra. The relaxation became something I enjoyed rather than something that I endured at the end of a Yoga class.

I can still remember the experience of that first Yoga Nidra clearly.  There we were, the whole class of students, lying comfortably in the corpse pose, a bolster under knees and a blanket covering each of us to keep us warm as the teacher’s gentle voice soothed us into a state of cosy bliss as we relaxed each part of our body part by part, experiencing sensations and bringing awareness to the natural breath; it was a journey like no other I had experienced previously.

Time lost all meaning, what was actually 30 minutes felt like 5, and before I knew it we were back in the room, on our mats, in our bodies, feeling much more centred and grounded than I had felt at the beginning of the class.  What was also noticeable was the fact the mental chatter had eased, I had managed to drift beyond it into that wonderful state of being between being awake and asleep, the hypnotic state, where real healing takes place.  I felt brighter, lighter, rested and renewed.  

Essentially Yoga Nidra is a powerful meditation technique inducing complete physical, emotional and mental relaxation.   During Yoga Nidra one appears to be asleep but the consciousness is functioning at a deeper level of awareness so that you are prompted throughout the practice to say to yourself mentally, “I shall not sleep, I shall remain awake”.

Before beginning Yoga Nidra you make a Sankalpa, or a resolution for the practice.  The Sankalpa is an important stage of Yoga Nidra as it plants a seed in the mind encouraging healing and transformation in a positive direction.  The Sankapla is a short positive mental statement established at the beginning of the practice and said mentally to yourself in the present tense, as if it had already happened, such as “I am happy, healthy and pure light”, or “I am whole and healed”.

A Sankalpa can also be used to encourage you to let go of something in your life like smoking or overeating, focusing on the underlying feeling that leads you to smoke or to overeat such as “I love and care for myself and my body”, or “I choose to eat foods that support my health and wellbeing” or “I am relaxed and contented”.    In fact simply having the opportunity to establish a Sankalpa is powerful in itself as it gives you a focus and enhances your awareness of self.

It is actually in connecting with yourself that you come to realise all the deep seated tensions that Yoga Nidra helps you to release.  These are all the unconscious and unresolved issues that are playing a role in some of the unwanted habits and behaviour patterns you are noticing consciously.  This is the stuff that goes through your mind time and time again, the stuff you resolve to change at the beginning of each year but that “will” alone will not change.  What you need to do is get to the root of the problem and Yoga Nidra provides you with a means to do this.

With all the letting go of this “stuff”, such as trapped emotions and feelings, you become lighter and there is more energy available to be used in a more positive manner.  Plus with the power of intention in the form of Sankalpa, that which we attract into our life also changes.  It is in this way that Yoga Nidra offers us so much potential for transforming our lives in an even more positive direction than we can ever imagine.

Of course let us not forget the physiological benefits too, such as lowering of the heart rate and blood pressure, the release of lactate from the muscles that can cause anxiety and fatigue, a more restful night’s sleep and, ultimately, a calming and unwinding of the nervous system, which is basically the foundation of the body’s wellbeing.  So you see our physical health and sense of wellbeing can improve too.

Over the years Yoga Nidra has helped me in so many ways.  At times of crisis, when I have been tired and exhausted, sick and stressed, it has helped to restore, renew and heal me.  At confused times in my life when I have been unclear of the way forward then it has provided me with much needed clarity.  At other times it has helped me to let go of unhealthy addictions and behaviour patterns, the most profound was changing my relationship to myself and therefore enabling me to effortlessly let go of the need to smoke tobacco after so many years of battling with this nicotine addiction.

These days relaxation comes easily to me and I positively seek out and embrace any opportunity for Yoga Nidra for it is just such an amazing practice. In this stressful and fast paced world we live, where we can feel so disorientated and fragmented, it really helps to bring us back together and connect with ourselves again. Needless to say, I cannot promote the benefits of Yoga Nidra to you enough.

But of course you cannot benefit from merely intellectualising these things, and reading about it will not necessarily change things.  What you really need to do is make a commitment to take the time out for yourself.  Lie comfortably, cover yourself with a blanket, close your eyes and allow yourself to be guided through a Yoga Nidra session.  I doubt you will regret it, in fact you may find it a life changing experience. 

The yoga body?

“This yoga is not about gymnastics, contortionism or pushing, pulling and stretching the muscles. This yoga is about unsystematically undoing the tension in the body, so the body becomes freer and expresses an aliveness, clarity and beauty.” 

— Christine Borg

The moon, the moon, the moon…we have a super new moon on Friday and a whole heap of planetary stuff going on that is just adding to the general chaos of life lived at the moment.

The best thing I believe, would be for us all to retreat away for the rest of the month until the next full moon on October 31st has passed! Everyone is being squeezed a little, even us here on Guernsey who are fairly exempt from the covid and lockdown chaos seen elsewhere around the world.

I’ve talked to a few people who are all responsible for managing others and they all say it is a complete nightmare with anxiety and insecurity and depression running high and people sick and off work worrying about their potential covid symptoms and others just fussing, there’s a lot of fussing going on.

I’ve been questioning where yoga fits in all this because in theory it should have prepared us for this. Yoga teaches us how to be able to stay centred in the midst of uncertainty and wobbly times. It is a spiritual practice that helps to cease the fluctuations of the mind. Yet I have a sneaky feeling that much of the yoga that has been passed to us in the West is not really the yoga that the ancient rishis talked about and Patanjali codified in his Yoga Sutras.

I feel a bit peeved about this as many of you know, about the way yoga has become little more than an exercise class when it can be so much more than this if we allow it - if we allow ourselves to get out of our tiny little minds and see the world differently. The trouble is our education and society has conditioned us in such a way that it is difficult to see life differently, to let go of the rational mind as it has become and to access other parts of it that are not at all interested in what is right or wrong, but in something far more sacred and special and different altogether that cannot even be spoken of because it has a whole different language and vocabulary that is beyond our rational mind.

It’s even difficult to imagine this and I know that some who have come to class recently are challenged because the yoga that I practice and teach is one that is less driven or determined by the rational mind and therefore is not as rigid as it might once have been. Not to say that rational yoga is not without its benefits. It got me this far and I have definitely let go of many of the samskaras, the negative patterns and grooves in my mind that were there when I started, and I have managed to release the memory of trauma form my body so that i am able to enjoy greater intimacy in my relationships with others and with myself, and there has been a complete shift in the way I live my life.

But something still needed to change, and into my life this practice appeared that has been confronting and challenging and asks me to go deeper than I could have ever imagined and as difficult as this has been at times with the increased vulnerability and the need to let go of my notion of that which I thought was right (and many of my judgements along the way) there is something that keeps me attentive and engaged.

There have been a few times when I have thought, “to hell with it, what is this yoga anyway if it is not just postures for the sake of posture” and practiced in the old way and yet it feels so dead, so forced, so insincere and unkind to my body and to my soul. I lose my awareness drifting off, and while I might still rest at the end of the session, and there may be a sense of euphoria of moving energy and breath, the mind is not so free and calm and light, and the soul, hmm, the soul does not have as much expression, or room for expression as it might like.

Is this yoga?

It’s something I keep pondering on. We all have to start somewhere and anything that begins to tame the mind can only ever be a good thing. But when do we know that we need to move on? When do we know that we have gotten ourselves stuck? A student mentioned this week about taking a friend to class and knowing that he had a yoga body and that he would be good at getting into the advanced poses. Does that make him a yogi I wonder? If so are all the gymnasts in the world yogis?

I don’t think so. But I do believe that this is the illusion sold to the west and reinforced by all the many yoga images we are fed these days. Would a photo of someone attentively moving and connecting with that which cannot be named but is accessible though the body really help to sell anything? Maybe not, and yet to me it is the most beautiful thing, when you see someone moving in a way that encapsulates the ease of being in their own skin, or being in their own nature, of not denying this, of not pushing, pulling or forcing, of having no ambition beyond being their true self.

For the last few years I have been inspired by Christine Borg’s video called “Moving with Attention”, which is just beautiful and motivates me to practice in a way that allows more of my own nature, and to teach in a way that allows more of my student’s own nature too, that might make me appear to know very little, but allows me to access parts of the mind that at times makes me feel mad, but I know also makes me feel very alive and very much in my nature in a way that I haven’t felt in all my 17 years of daily yoga practice.

Just watch this, and right to the end too! http://www.christineborgyoga.com/practice/ It might just inspire you too!

This is what the moon is bringing up for me, this need to keep listening in and living from that space regardless of how difficult it can be because it means that life is often lived differently from the majority and that can trigger feelings of vulnerability and a little insecurity too, because there is nothing concrete to hold onto anymore…only more uncertainty in a life that is lived less and less in the right/wrong. Yet there is no other way, not when you have began and if madness and quirkiness is the result, then mad and quirky I shall become!

As Vanda Scaravelli said, ‘Yoga must not be practised to control the body: it is the opposite, it must bring freedom to the body, all the freedom it needs.’

Happy new moon!