Tārā as the guiding star: the menstrual cycle

This week’s Mahāvidyā, is Tārā. She is the great wisdom goddess, whose name literally means ‘star’. She is the protectress of navigation and earthly travel, as well as spiritual travel along the path to evolution, and fulfilment and enlightenment, offering the liberating grace of divine transcendence.

In this way, Tārā is a beautifully light-fuelled reminder of the ultimate direction and meaning of all our lives, as we are each our own embodied star, containing within us the wisdom to know the direction of our path, and of our time here on Planet Earth, a beacon upon ourselves 

In the Buddhist tradition, there are a number of different forms of Tārā although her most recognised quality is that of beneficence and compassion. She is by far the most popular and greatest deity within Tibetan tantric Buddhism, worshipped throughout Nepal, Tibet and South-East Asia, and recognised as the ‘mother’, related to the very earliest worship of our Mother God.

However from a Hindu Tantric perspective, Tārā has a fierceness and capacity for violence which is similar to Kālī. She is one of the ten Mahāvidyās, which translates into English as one of the great revelations or manifestation. In Tantrism, there is the idea that the Divine Feminine is the supreme cosmic force in the universe equivalent to Brahman.  

An important aspect from the Mahāvidyā perspective is that Devi or the Great Goddess, has a tendency to manifest herself in a variety of forms so as to protect cosmic stability. The ten Mahāvidyās represent a common way of expressing the idea that goddesses can take many different forms. 

The common theme underpinning all this, is a recognition that our perceived world of dualities – male/female, pure/impure, sun/moon, good/evil, microcosm/macrocosm etc is a false one. For seekers, to know true reality is to reach a state of being where all opposites unite. 

As you may know from an earlier blog post, Kālī personifies the highest reality and ultimate truth. Blue as the sky, and equally all encompassing, to the seeker, the terrible Kālī is also the benevolent mother, the destroyer of false notions and beliefs and the primordial power that moves the universe. All the other deities arise and dissolve in her. 

Among the other mahāvidyās, none is as close to Kālī in spirit and appearance as Tārā. Second only in importance to Kālī in her importance, but like Kālī she carries deadly weapons and stands triumphantly upon the dead body of Śiva. As Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli writes, “Tārā has a paler complexion, but she is every bit as fierce. I understand this fierceness to be a strong compassion, a love that has the capacity to bestow deep liberation”.

The siddhi (magical power) that Uma associates with Tārā is “of trust in change as a way to be carried through difficulty”. The root syllable of Tārā’s name, tr, means to take across, and the feeling of her power is that it can carry us over and through challenge, but only if we give ourselves up to it. This is the central revelation of the siddhi of menstrual cycle awareness: that if we honour and respect the forces of change that work within us through the menstrual cycle, then what we learn about this cycle carries us through the challenges of all other cycles of change. Meeting the challenges of our experience of the menstrual cycle supports our capacity to embrace change in all other dimensions of our lives. 

Tārā’s siddhi has the capacity to carry us through the mire and confusion of suffering and difficulty to reach the solid ground of wisdom and knowledge. Tārā is also, like Kālī, a great goddess of transformation. She is the first transformation of Kālī, the primary manifestation of the force of change at work. The notion of transformation is central to the spiritualised understanding of the power of the menstrual cycle: for it is through an acceptance and understanding of the rhythms of the our own monthly cycle that we are able to accept the transformative wisdom which each of these experiences has to offer us. 

If, however, we do not take the opportunity (or are denied the awareness that makes such acceptance  and intimate knowledge possible), then the great gift of cyclical knowledge and its capacity to transform us becomes a curse. Without the siddhi of understanding and acceptance which Tārā offers us, then the greatest female siddhi of them all becomes nothing but a heavy burden. For to encounter menstrual cycles without awareness of the capacity for deep wisdom that resides within them becomes an experience of difficulty and challenge that seems to have no point, a focus of resentment, annoyance, embarrassment and shame.”

It’s in this way that we can use conscious menstruation as a spiritual practice, understanding more of the siddhi of transformation that Tārā can bring. I have been experiencing this for myself for a number of years now. It wasn’t that I was unaware of my menstrual cycle prior to this, in many respects it was my menstrual cycle and PMS that played a central role in bringing me to yoga and waking me up, but that I hadn’t worked with it as a potential practice for spiritual liberation and opportunity to access deeper wisdom. 

My menstrual cycle used to be a source of much suffering and misery. Over the first two weeks of my cycle, the follicular stage, during the time between menses and ovulation I would feel great, have lots of energy and feel relatively confident and enthusiastic about life. But then the luteal phase would arrive from post-ovulation to menses and it would be like a light switch being turned off, all of a sudden I would be flung into the darkness of depression, and lose interest and enthusiasm in life.

The closer towards menses the worse I would feel; not only depressed but also anxious, sensitive to criticism, very critical about everything, especially myself, irrationally angry, ‘flying off the handle’ at the smallest things, weepy, bloated and completely uncomfortable in my own skin. It was a really horrible experience that made me loathe the menstrual cycle and its resulting PMS (as my experience was later diagnosed). 

It was the depression that brought me to yoga and this took me to Carol Champion, a Guernsey-based nutritionist who helped me to work out the link between the intensity of the depression and my menstrual cycle, a symptom of PMS. While Carol helped me enormously, my ongoing fascination with PMS and my quest to ‘rid myself of it’ took me to Ayurveda and this took me to Uma and onto Code Red by Lisa Lister, and I haven’t looked back since.

What I didn’t know back then, was that our menstrual cycle helps us to know more of the truth of ourselves. As Dr Christiane Northrup writes, “The menstrual cycle is the most basic, earthy cycle we have. Our blood is our connection to the archetypal feminine. The macrocosmic cycles of nature, the waxing and waning, the ebb and flow of the tides and the changes of the seasons, are reflected on a smaller scale in the menstrual cycle of the individual female body. The monthly ripening of an egg and subsequent pregnancy or release of menstrual blood mirror the process of creation as it occurs not only in nature, unconsciously, but in human endeavor. In many cultures, the menstrual cycle has been viewed as sacred.”

Our menstrual cycle can show us when we are living out of alignment with our truth. Me not feeling comfortable within my own skin those last two weeks of my cycle was indicative of my life at that time. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin generally because I was living a life that didn’t fit. I was working in a job I hated, I was in denial of an eating disorder, I was smoking cannabis and endless cigarettes and I was drinking far too much wine and giving myself a bloody hard time about all of it, leaving me feeling depressed, anxious and full of hatred for self.

Then yoga came along, quickly followed by healthy eating and Reiki and life changed as I changed my relationship with myself and vice versa.  The bouts of depression eased as I discovered more of my heart and started listening as my soul was also allowed expression. The symptoms of PMS eased too, but I kept overlooking the cyclical nature of what it means to be a women and I was constantly trying to ‘heal’ and ‘fix’ the second half of my cycle, because it made me feel ‘darker and edgier’ than the first half.

It wasn’t until much later when I discovered menstruation consciousness as a spiritual practice that I realised that the different stages of the menstrual cycle are not meant to be the same!   We women are cyclical in nature, like the moon, we have our own waxing and waning, and the more I connected with the moon, the more I connected with my menstrual cycle and the waxing and waning journey it took me on.

I stopped trying to ‘fix’ my cycle and learned to listen to it instead, to be with it, and appreciate the wisdom it was imparting, the manner in which it was highlighting where I was out of alignment with my truth, or where I was living my life out of balance, selling out on myself, stepping too much into my masculine energy again, doing too much, being too much of, well, everything and overlooking the subtleties of other ways of being, or other interests and passions awaiting discovery if only I might get out of my own way!

This wasn’t to deny then the full range of emotions that I might feel during my cycle, the last two weeks especially, but to better understand, interpret and absolutely allow them. This has been key. Whereas once I turned away from the emotional intensity of the last week of my cycle particularly, now I turn into it, because I know that it is potentially the most informative and transformative moment of the entire cycle. 

As Dr Christiance Northrup writes: “Since our culture generally appreciates only what we can understand rationally, many women tend to block at every opportunity the flow of unconscious “lunar” information that comes to them premenstrually or during their menstrual cycle. Lunar information is reflective and intuitive. It comes to us in our dreams, our emotions, and our hungers. It comes under cover of darkness.

When we routinely block the information that is coming to us in the second half of our menstrual cycles, it has no choice but to come back as PMS or menopausal madness, in the same way that our other feelings and bodily symptoms, if ignored, often result in illness.

The luteal phase, from ovulation until the onset of menstruation, is when women are most in tune with their inner knowing and with what isn’t working in their lives.

Studies have shown that women’s dreams are more frequent and often more vivid during the premenstrual and menstrual phases of their cycles. Premenstrually, the “veil” between the worlds of the seen and unseen, the conscious and the unconscious, is much thinner.

We have access to parts of our often unconscious selves that are less available to us at all other times of the month. In fact, it has been shown experimentally that the right hemisphere of the brain—the part associated with intuitive knowing—becomes more active premenstrually, while the left hemisphere becomes less active.

Interestingly enough, communication between the two hemispheres may be increased as well. The premenstrual phase is therefore a time when we have greater access to our magic—our ability to recognize and transform the more difficult and painful areas of our lives.

Premenstrually, we are quite naturally more in tune with what is most meaningful in our lives. We’re more apt to cry—but our tears are always related to something that holds meaning for us. Years of personal and clinical experience have taught me that the painful or uncomfortable issues that arise premenstrually are always real and must be addressed.

I pay attention in this later stage of my cycle. I notice how I have a rush of energy five days or so before menses, like I did the day before my contractions started for my youngest son (my first born was birthed by Caesarean Section prior to contraction due to full grade placenta previa), as if allowing me to tidy up things. Then I notice how my energy wanes, as if it has been sucked from me, so that I do not feel to rush around and instead there is a pull to retreat from the world as I also become more critical of the state of the world I find myself living in.

This is not necessarily an easy time for my partner because I become more critical of everything and my tendencies towards cleanliness of my immediate environment become more pronounced. Fortunately I’m rarely critical to the self anymore and the anger to self has dropped away. The fire inside me still burns strongly in me though at this time, lots of pitta, resulting in less tolerance, less patience and I am more likely to snap far quicker than I might do ordinarily – I might have a ‘sharper’ tongue too, and my temperature rises, resulting in a more unsettled night’s sleep and looser stools. 

I also become more opinionated and vocal about issues close to my heart. I feel much more creative too and tend to experience an overwhelming need to write. I can write prolifically during this time too, I’m on my second blog post of the day during this time, for example, having already edited a bit of my book – the enhanced critical eye and pickiness has its benefits as I can edit much more easily, I’m more certain, less wishy washy, it’s a good time for decisions, the words come flow more easily (at least if I am in the zone – my cycle will tell me if I am not!). 

In many respects my passion and my fierceness, and the fieriness that underpins this, reminiscent of Tārā and her fierceness, which Uma explains as a strong compassion, a love that sets us free, defines this period of my cycle. Don’t mess with me! I might feel increasingly vulnerable, to the extent that I might rather not have to stand in front of students and teach yoga or Reiki if I have the choice, but I will stand up for what I believe in, and this from a place of compassion and love. 

I surprise myself sometimes, because I don’t realise until that time the extent to which I feel passionate about something, such as women’s rights to birth with a partner of choice as revealed itself to me this latter part of cycle, and women’s relationship to menstruation and the need for more women to recognise that menstruation consciousness can be used as a for of spiritual practice, rather than feared through shame, embarrassment or any of the myriad of negative conditioning that we have absorbed from society. 

But this is the thing about this stage of our cycle. The more we pay attention, the more we come to know what really makes us who we are, and where we need to be placing our energy and what needs expression and/or healing. The dark moon day, the day before menses, this is a gift, as if the veil between the worlds is lifted, there is always some insight we may receive,  transformative potential if we can interpret it, and perhaps it doesn’t matter if we can’t, because it will likely unfold anyway, once we have started to become more open and receptive to it, friendlier then. Pay attention!

Notice the moon cycle too and how aligned or out of aligned your cycle is with this. Everyone’s cycle will have a different duration, those like me who are more pitta orientated will have a more regular cycle that lasts 28-29 days, but someone who is more vata orientated will likely experience an irregular cycle and those kapha orientated will have a slightly longer cycle. It’s the same with bleeding, depending on Ayurvedic constitution, the consistency and length of menses will be different, light and short for vata, initially heavy then lighter, 5 days for pitta and heavier 5-7 days for kapha. You’ll be more prone to weepiness and emotional outbursts if vata, anger and aggressiveness if pitta and lethargy and sleepiness if kapha.

Each phase of the menstrual cycle has a different Ayurvedic quality to it too. The vata phase lasts from approximately day 1-5 (from the first day of bleeding). The kapha phase lasts from the end of bleeding until ovulation (approx. days 5-14) The pitta phase lasts from ovulation until your period starts (days 14-18). This can really help you to understand your dosha, your fault, as you notice how each phase of the cycle affects you from an Ayurvedic perspective. If your pitta is out of balance, as mine was, for example, then you’ll feel excess fire, anger and aggressiveness in the pre-menstrual stage.

When I was paying particular attention to my menstrual cycle in preparation for IVF, I was absolutely delighted when my ovulation (albeit medically created through the use of IVF drugs) coincided with the full moon, and we conceived both our boys from this full moon cycle. There is a natural affinity between the ‘full moon’ and the ‘fullness’ of eggs at ovulation. Studies suggest that more women ovulate at the full moon than they do at the new moon as if proving the relationship between the menstrual cycle and the moon - so important to know this kind of stuff if you are trying to conceive. Even though my cycle is not the 29.5 days of the moon cycle, I tend to bleed on the new moon. I know that I need to pay extra attention if this alignment shifts dramatically.

I could write extensively about the menstrual cycle as you can probably tell, how studies have found that women who work in strip bars and at trucking stops get given more tips when they are ovulating, as our bodies secrete pheromones into the air that increase our sexual attractiveness to others, and how our ‘ripeness’ make us feel more attractive and contented within ourselves and therefore more attractive to others. 

I could also write about the impact of fear and ignorance on our menstrual cycles and this siddhi. How women will willingly spend decades of their lives taking synthetic contraceptive pills or using other contraceptive implants that not only reduce their sexual response but can cause long-term health problems (think  migraine, breast cancer, susceptibility to stroke, bone density loss etc.) not to mention compromising natural fertility (many realise too late). As Uma says, “these are all desperate choices born out of fears that there are no other options”.

The point is though, that without awareness of the menstrual cycle we run the risk of dismissing the great siddhi that Tārā has to offer us. Tārā is an inspiration and our guide on the complex path of spiritual freedom. One of her cosmic attributes is to  save us or free us from the different troubles we have to face in life. She doesn’t help us to destroy these obstacles but to sublimate them and successfully overcome them, gaining greater wisdom in the process. 

In other words, Tārā helps us transcend all the inferior and ignoble aspects of our life, helping us to connect with higher aspects of self and live from this elevated perspective. In the process we are not only saved from imminent danger, of lower energies and lives that don’t fit, but she also offers us the possibility of accessing elevated and more aligned levels of spirituality. Furthermore, as the greatest obstacle to overcome is our mind itself, Tārā helps us go beyond the fluctuations and limitations of this, so that we may see ourselves and life more clearly. 

As Uma writes, “Thankfully, many women now are lifting ‘the curse’ and embracing conscious menstrual experience as a route to a spiritual wisdom that liberates feminine experience from the limitations of patriarchal cultural expectations. We can use the practice of womb yoga [or Yoni Yoga!] to address ancestral repetitions of suffering and shame around menstruation, and we can use breath, movement and awareness practice to embrace the flow if the blees, to alleviate the physical and emotional pain and suffering that may be associatedwith our experience of menstruation”. She’s right! There’s no turning back once you begin,  the path, the star, becomes brighter and we transform into more than we could ever imagine!

*If you are curious to learn more, then I highly recommend reading Code Red, by Lisa Lister, Yoni Shakti by Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Dr Christiane Northrup. Also the work of Alexandra Pope and the Red School is valued by others.

Freedom of choice for birth in Guernsey

In Guernsey, during lockdown, pregnant women are now denied the opportunity to take a birthing partner with them when they go to theatre for a Caesarean -Section. To me this is inherently cruel and has elements of patriarchy about it.

Having had two Caesarean Sections myself I am very aware that the experience can be extremely scary and traumatic. My first pregnancy brought with it complications, which meant I had to have a planned Caesarean Section. I was told repeatedly that due to the complications there was a risk that I might require a general anaesthetic resulting in neither E or I witnessing the birth of our baby. 

This troubled me endlessly, and when it came to being administered the spinal block I was shaking with fear and had to make a real effort to keep myself still. I cannot tell you the relief when E appeared in theatre, not least to hold my hand and give me strength while the procedure was taking place, and to reveal the sex of our son, but in recovery afterwards when my blood pressure was unstable and of which I now have very little memory.

My second Caesarean Section was less stressful and much more of the spiritual experience that I had hoped birth might be. Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli in her amazing book Yoni Shakti talks about birth as being the principle siddhi, or magical power, that allows the greatest spiritual transformation of all the siddhis, including menstruation, miscarriage, lactation etc if the women is conscious to it. 

Accessing the spiritually transformative experience of birth was extremely important to me. I wanted to be conscious of the process, less restricted by fear, as I had been during my first birth experience. I had hoped for a home birth where I might have been able to drop into the space of birth more easily, but this was not my path and I ended up with an emergency Caesarean Section, six weeks earlier than my son’s due date due, due to my waters breaking early. You can read all about this in Dancing with the Moon. 

It was still a profound spiritual experience for me as I surrendered to it in a way that I had not been able to do during the birth of my eldest son. It helped enormously to me that E was able to join me in theatre and that I did not have to experience the fear that I had felt during the first Caesarean Section, in that he might not be able to join me. I was able to approach theatre in a far calmer and more peaceful state of mind. 

Now, here in Guernsey, because of the alleged additional risk of COVID, birthing partners are no longer able to accompany their birthing mums to theatre. This sounds like a fundamental loss of human right for women to choose who they might have with them at what might well be a decisive turning point in their life. For first time mum’s this is a life changing event, as they transition from maiden to motherhood and absolutely they should be supported during this emotionally charged time by partners if they choose.

To me, this loss of choice, overlooks and dismisses the emotional, mental and spiritual needs of women, denoting the birth experience to nothing more than a surgical procedure. It also disempowers women and removes their voice. I know that many have complained and attempted to find a solution but they are repeatedly told that this is the way, that there is no other option available to them.

Pregnant women are in a vulnerable position throughout their pregnancy, continuously reminded by the medical profession of the inherent risks of both pregnancy and birth to the extent that they can then be easily manipulated and controlled through fear. In the process this denies them their own wisdom, which is potentially much easier to access than it might usually be because of the inherent spiritual experience of pregnancy and birth.

 The medical-decided risk of pregnancy and birth is evaluated in a way that overlooks this spiritual wisdom, and the mental and emotional needs of women. I totally appreciate that the outcome of a healthy birthed baby is essential, but at what cost to women? In Guernsey we seem hell bent on controlling through fear, which has elements of patriarchy to it, men, generally, making decisions about women’s lives and making them powerfulness to it.

A letter I wrote about this was published in the Guernsey Press on Saturday 6 February, and the very next day an article appeared on The States of Guernsey website entitled “First-time mum that [sic] underwent C-Section during lockdown is aiming to reassure expectant parents”. I cannot claim that this arose as a result of my letter, as I know this is a hot topic on social media and the States have been sent a number of letters and requests for a change of stance on Caesarean Section protocol during lockdown, but I was humoured by the timing.

I was concerned too, that the States felt the need to try to reassure parents, knowing full well that their decision has not been taken lightly by those affected. And they will be affected. What women do not need as they approach birth is any additional stress and emotional strain, for this will likely impact on their ability to birth vaginally and result in the one thing they will be keen to avoid, namely a Caesearn Section under lockdown. 

There are broader issues here though, around human rights. During childbirth, every woman has a right to:

·       safe and appropriate maternity care that respects her dignity;

·       privacy and confidentiality;

·       make choices about her own pregnancy and childbirth;

·       equality and freedom from discrimination.

Can the States of Guernsey honestly say that they are allowing expectant mum’s their own choice about how she births during lockdown? 

In the article on the States of Guernsey website, Head of Maternity and Paediatrics, Annabel Nicholas, is quoted as saying, “We are so passionate about women and families having the best experience they can, whatever the circumstances”. This, after new mum, Mrs Cornes, is quoted as saying, “Any emergency and any unplanned C-section is scary, but it was even more so because of COVID. At 12am when I was being wheeled down both Jake and I were crying…”. Is this really an example of the States of Guernsey offering women and families the best birth experience they can, whatever the circumstances? Is this allowing expectant mum’s their own choice?

As written in my second letter to the States of Guernsey, I’m both disappointed with, and ashamed at, their decision to once again overlook the mental, emotional and spiritual needs of birthing women, let alone their birthing partners. We’re told repeatedly that the decision has been made for safety reasons and yet given that we now have thorough and rigorous testing facilities in place, it seems crazy that this cannot be extended to birthing partners to enable them to support expectant mums at a crucial and life changing time. 

Surely if expectant mum and birthing partner self-isolate prior to the birth and are tested frequently, there should be no reason why the partner, in full PPE, should be any greater risk than one of the theatre staff. This overzealous decision to separate birthing mums from their birth partners in theatre is inherently cruel and I hope those in ‘power’ come to their senses soon. 

And really that’s the crux of the matter, this question over power, that weaves it’s way, even now, through our lives as women living in the 21st century. There are much broader issues at play, not only human rights and the fear and risk-based nature of allopathic care, reducing birth to nothing more than a surgical procedure, but what it means to be a women, and the choices available to us in relation to our body and our experience of these deeply feminine and life changing moments of our life.

All women should have a human right to be accompanied by their choice in birthing partner at the birth of their baby and Guernsey needs to wake up and start giving pregnant women a little more respect, empowering her, not taking her power away, regardless of the external circumstances and the state of the world at that time. 

**Those of you in Guernsey who feel a similar way, it would be wonderful if you would find them courage to give voice to this, either by writing to your local deputy, the States of Guernsey and/or the Guernsey Press. Also sharing on social media. Women need to reclaim their voice and be given back their right to choice.

Enjoying this lockdown

I don’t know if it just me, but I am really enjoying lockdown this time around, and I make no apologies for it. Last time it was awful because of my reaction to it; rather than flowing with it, I fought against it, and struggled to let go into it, holding on tightly to my old way of being, resistant to the possibility of a more positive and less limited way of being, of a new world that lockdown may have been ushering in. In the process I made myself extremely stressed to the extent that my dad was concerned I was heading for breakdown. 

While it was a messy and uncomfortable period of my life (and no doubt for many others too), turning life on its head, and throwing me/us into the unknown, it was also a very rich time for growth, because it encouraged me to look more honestly at my life and my unhelpful patterns, and this process revealed some fundamental mis-identifications regarding self-worth, security and loss of safety, which, until that point, I had been able to overlook and ignore.

I hadn’t realised, for example, how much my self-worth and feelings of security were tied up in factors external to me; in my yoga classes and my earning potential, to say nothing of feedback from others whether that be ‘likes’ on Facebook or otherwise. Lockdown came in and I felt a huge loss as everything I had built up around me to give me a sense of purpose  and a sense of safety and security, were taken away. I completely and utterly lost my grounding, as if the rug had been pulled from under my feet. 

Lockdown also highlighted my inherent stress and as I looked more honestly at this, and what underpinned it, I began to realise how much we create our own stress, through the thoughts we think and our interpretation of the world we live in and our relationship to this. In many respects, stress can become a coping mechanism, healthy if used in small doses but unhelpful and harmful if it continues for too long.

There was absolutely nothing helpful about my stress levels during that first lockdown; every time I attempted an online class my stress levels increased simply because the internet connection was so temperamental that I couldn’t be certain I could teach the class all the way to the end. On the occasions when the internet dropped out, I would be beside myself with the frustration of it, feeling as if I was letting everyone down, despite it being beyond my control.

I also noticed my tendency towards taking too much responsibility for the wellbeing of the world, as if it was my job, and my job alone, to save everyone from the suffering that lockdown brought with it. This ironic because in the process I was creating so much of my own suffering! I was also struggling to focus on my children, because until that point, I placed greater focus on everyone else, almost feeling that they were more in need of my time and energy than my own family.

In my attempts to save the world (!)I attempted to teach multiple classes, many for free, on a combination of Zoom and Facebook Live, and exhausting myself in the process. It wasn’t just that though, if the internet didn’t challenge me, then the dwindling numbers did instead. I wasn’t used to that, and I felt unsupported, feeding my unresolved feelings around rejection and criticism, as if people were rejecting me – I needed to feel needed because of my inherent insecurity that I had tried to pretend was no longer a part of me. 

I took it all very personally,  forgetting that everyone was trying to find their way in a world that didn’t feel quite right. Many were weary of being on the internet after a busy day juggling work and home learning, other’s couldn’t work out how to use Zoom, many didn’t like practicing from home and there were some who just didn’t feel they needed their yoga practice, because the great outdoors (and wine!) were offering support instead. It wasn’t personal, but this just merely shows how I was well and truly triggered by lockdown! 

Life has changed significantly since then. It was a wake-up call for so many of us and I realised after lockdown that I now needed to do the deeper work, to look more honestly at my fears and unhelpful core beliefs around security and rejection especially, and the way in which these continued to inform my present moment experience, despite them being based on past experience and therefore completely unhelpful to my current reality. 

I took ownership of my inherent insecurity, fear of rejection and perceived loss of safety and enquired into them. I attempted to break down my escape routes and establish myself more firmly within my ‘self’, not on factors outside of myself. This meant stepping back and essentially putting myself through the mill, finding another way. I also started looking more honestly at my perspective and my tendency towards the negative. 

Dropping deeper into my practice really helped, especially embracing more of the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga which helps to highlight our unhelpful patterns of movement and thinking and the many ways we harm ourselves and create our own suffering.  Studying the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with my philosophy teacher, Helen, made a huge difference too. In the Sutras, Patanjali defines yoga and the activities and obstacles of the mind and gives us the tools to help us navigate the difficulties of life and explains how we might cultivate positive thinking. 

The second of the Yoga Sutras, ‘Yogas Citta Vrtti Nirodha’ can be translated as ‘Yoga is the containment of the mind’.  ‘Vrtti’ can be translated as thought waves or modifications of the mind, but when the Sanskrit root is used in asana names (such as Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana) it means revolve or turn around. I’ve no doubt that each of us has experienced how the vrttis – the five activities of the mind which can be positive or negative and include correct perception, wrong understanding/mistaken knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory – spin around inside the mind, especially when we try to sit in meditation. 

 The idea is that we don’t banish thoughts or repress memories/emotions, but that we free ourselves from the turmoil that they (the vrttis) cause by training the mind towards greater discernment and detachment through the eight limbs – yama (external constraints, relationship to world around us), niyama (relationship to self), asana (mastery of body, postures), pranayama (extension of energy), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses), dharana (focus on one thing), dhyana (deeper, more consistent and sustained) and samadhi (self- realisation).

As for cultivating a positive perspective, we have to ask ourselves, whether we can do this regardless of the circumstances? Establishing a positive or calmer state of mind can be challenging for all of us, especially if we feel our families, our health and/or livelihoods are being threatened. It requires us being able to step back from the emotional situation to try to see things more clearly. In yoga then, we attempt to calm our thought waves (relentless as they can be)  that create the various fluctuations (monkey mind) using the many techniques available to us. 

Some of you already know from previous blog posts, but it was coming across sutra 2.33, “Vitarka-badhane pratipaksha-bhavanam”, which really made a difference to me. This means when disturbed by negative thoughts, cultivate the opposite mental attitude - easier said than done, but still entirely possible with awareness. Thus when we find ourselves spinning around with some old negative pattern (feelings of anger, loss of self-worth, resentment, disappointment, fear of loss of safety, anxiety over an imagined event, reacting from a memory) then we try and think something more positive and peaceful instead. 

 Essentially we are asked to flip our perspective, see the other side of the coin. I’ve found this helpful, in catching myself and noticing my negative programming and trying to change it into something more positive. I’ve also found it helpful in noticing my prejudice and judgments, as I am reminded that there is always another side to every story and we would do well to remember this, to stand back, practice detachment and discernment and consider the other side before we jump to conclusions (it’s the same idea of walking in someone else’s shoes before judging them)

The more I have worked with this idea of cultivating a positive perspective, the more I have recognised the manner in which we create our own suffering through our negative thinking and our misidentification with things having to be negative in the first place. There are two sides to every thing and every perceived curse brings with it a blessing even if we cannot see it at the time. More often than not, it is our reaction to life and our interpretation of it as it unfolds that creates our loss of mental wellness, rather than the experience itself – our reaction often comes from a place of fear and our interpretation will be clouded by our conditioning.

Thus when lockdown arrived rather suddenly here in Guernsey two weeks ago now, whilst it took me a week to find my grounding and adjust, I was soon able to flow with it in a way that I hadn’t been able to do previously. I tried to see the positive and embrace it. I noticed my old tendency around fear of loss of income and shifted gear on this, recognising (finally) that there is more to life than money and the time spent together as a family is a gift, priceless.

I have become increasingly aware that we have all we need and that the more we have (that we don’t actually need), the more we flitter it away. We’re sold the illusion that having more will make us happier, whether this be financial gain or achievement, at the expense of everything else, but I don’t believe this to be true. What could be more valuable than living a simple and uncomplicated life, spending time with the people we love and hold dear in our hearts, and laughing? Money can’t buy us that; that’s the illusion I’m afraid. 

 The transition to Zoom was without drama, I decided I wouldn’t get stressed about the internet not working – if it worked it worked, if not no big deal, I needed to flow with it. As it happens we’ve not yet had a single internet glitch, and I have absolutely loved sharing my practice with those who find comfort in online real time learning and I have really enjoyed connecting with students new and old students through Guernsey Mind, as well as those dedicated students who attend all classes. I’m very grateful, thank you, the sense of community and opportunity to share is very welcomed.

My old feelings of insecurity, not being secure in myself or in the world I inhibit have been tested. The trouble with free classes is that people don’t always stay until the end. The Guernsey Mind classes are free and not everyone lasts until the end of the class, I can see that on the screen, but whereas previously I would have felt rejected by it, focusing only on the number who ‘left me’, now I see the positive – the majority of people stay with me until the end and regardless, I really enjoy the experience! 

I’ve embraced this opportunity to be together as a family, E also not able to work. We’ve engaged in home learning to a point, but we’ve also enjoyed lots of other ways of learning, mainly through play and outdoor adventures. It’s been liberating to explore another way to be together, as a family, that is not rushed or stressed, that has its own slow flow. Of course the boys still bicker and I am continuously challenged by the relentless requests for snacks, drinks and tissues, and have become little more than a glorified slave (thank god for the respite of teaching!) but there is service in this too! 

 We’ve tried to do things differently too. Get out as much as our two hours of daily exercise will allow, to new places, on adventures, breathing in the fresh air (sorry, no face masks for us in wide open aerated spaces, we like oxygen too much) and trying to spend time amongst trees and natural water, both helping to support our immune systems. We’ve changed the way we eat, eating our main meal at lunchtime and trying to take on as many vitamins and minerals as we can. There’s been some baking too, and quite a bit of chocolate thrown into the mix, food for the soul hey!

I honestly feel that cultivating a positive mind-set has been key. Any time I have noticed myself slipping into negativity, or becoming judgmental, I remind myself of this, of cultivating a different perspective, and I have attempted to shift my perspective and see the positive – E is very good at helping me to see this. I don’t always manage it and I am not perfect, far from it, I have my messy days like anyone, when my mind is in turmoil, spinning around, but it happens less, when I can pause and catch myself and notice what’s happening in that moment to set me off in a spin in the first place.

The Yoga Sutras are amazing. Each time I read them I learn something new, something helpful. It’s incredible to think that this wisdom, thousands of years old now, is as relevant to us in our modern life as it would have been to the ancient seers.  We have been gifted all that we need to cultivate a more peaceful state of mind, so that we do not create so much of our own suffering through our negative and restricted patterns of thinking. The key as always is to delve in deep and practice. I’m confident it’s worth it! 

I’ll leave you with a quote from the brilliant Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a botanist, keeper of the Irish Celtic wisdom and a bio-chemist who was asked the question, “how do we keep well during a pandemic?” The answer, she says is simple: “recalibrate your life, slow down and take advantage of nature’s bountiful remedies during a time of disquiet and unease”

Imbolc and being in our nature

It dawned on me today, on Imbolc, how we never say we like going ‘to do nature’, we say ‘we like being in nature’. It’s one of the few things we might enjoy, that we don’t actually ‘do’, we just be in it, we may even allow ourselves to ‘be’ it, nature that is, our own nature, we can’t do that either can we, not really, we are either in our nature, or we’re out of it.

Nature brought me back to myself these last few days. I may have stopped sea swimming, but I am still called to the beach, especially now in lockdown. We’ve been able to visit on the bikes, as a family, in the morning, on the high tide, and E and I have even run in, just to feel the coolness on our skin, to cleanse our energy and invigorate us for the day ahead. It’s not swimming though, my feet don’t leave the ground, I’m in and out so quickly that it’s barely even a dip, more a get wet quick and get out even quicker!

It’s not that we haven’t been doing the home learning, or exceeding our two hours exercise time, but we have made the most of every minute of this, to cycle, run and beach comb, something different each day, to just slow down into nature’s pace, enjoy the time to notice the waves, to hear the birds, to witness the changing landscape as the season changes. It’s a blessing really, a gift, just the family, a whole beach to ourselves.

I love Imbolc though, this is one of my most favourite times of the year. There’s such a magic to it, like the beginning of the inhalation, a spark, something that happens that gives life to the land again, as the breath gives life to us. I’ve been trying to explore more of this in my own practice, to notice what it is, which part of me, from where does it come, the drawing in of the inbreath. It’s a great mystery. One day we breathe out and the breathe never comes in again.

I was fortunate to be with my Gran when she passed on. I’d checked her chakras with my pendulum and they were all in balance. She awoke briefly, to check that my mum was OK, and then she finally took her last breath, her breath having been laboured before then, the death rattle, the nurses had called it. It was definitely an experience I will never forget, because I had a sense that she was in a state of deep peace as she passed over to the other side, the breath extinguished, no more inhale, no more life.

In my practice nowadays, since my teacher has shown me another way to move the body so I might feel more ease and grace and stability in postures than I have ever experienced previously, the inhale sometimes comes upon me as a yawn or deep sigh, like you might get when you have been crying for some time, something that draws the breath in, as if it is called from a deeper place. Imbolc is like that for me. It comes from somewhere that cannot be named.

All of nature is asleep, in winter hibernation, seeds under the ground showing no signs of anything, and yet as if from nowhere, as if the shift in light is enough to set the wheel in motion, and on it goes; the birds start singing again, at dawn and at dusk, their collective tunes remove the silence. The light too changes, there’s a texture in the air that cannot be named, but you know it means that spring is on its way. And the land, the land is changed too, snowdrops and daffodils, bulbs beginning to poke through.

I feel changed as well. Nature beckons me outside again. I long to get in the garden when it stops raining and tend to my plants, which have been left unattended for too long now, hanging on in soggy earth, crowded by weeds, which know my attention has been elsewhere, inside, with winter. “I’m coming soon”, I tell my plants when I venture outside to feed the birds, and I silently pray to the heavens, have we not had enough rain now.

I’m planting a whole heap of different herbs this spring. I’ve already planted lavender and chamomile seeds, it was extremely satisfying massaging myself with my own lavender oil these last few months and being able to use my own calendula salve on the boys’ cuts and bruises (when they let me, sometimes in their sleep, so they can’t wipe it off again when I’ve turned my head, the tricks us mums have to use us mums to help our children along).

Imbolc sits halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, but you probably already knew that. A prehistoric mound at the Hill of Tara in Ireland is aligned with the rising sun on Imbolc morning; when the sun rises, the entrance to the chamber blazes with light. I’ve a feeling one of our dolmens here on Guernsey is also aligned with the sun rise on Imbolc but it was too wet this morning to traipse out there for a morning walk. Maybe tomorrow.

Imbolc is also known in Ireland as Brigit’s Day; a time sacred to the goddess Brigit, goddess of the holy well and the sacred flame. She is a ‘triple goddess’ –  the maiden, she kindles the smith’s fire of the forage, the hearth fire of the home and the inner fire of the poet. Her attributes are intuition, inspiration, divination and the spark of life. Her life-giving waters are the sacred springs and holy wells which can be found throughout the British Isles. When Christianity arrived in Britain, the sacred day of the goddess Brigit became the feast day of Saint Brigit.

It’s the spark of light she brings that makes this such an incredibly uplifting and hopeful time of year. Everywhere there are signs of the Earth stirring. Our acceptance of winter is giving way to an urge to move forwards into spring time energy, there is a vibrancy to it, like the energy of an embryo, packed with the potential of human life, and ready for the change ahead. We don’t just plant seeds in the ground, but we plant our ideas too, leaving them to germinate, letting them go to find their way.

Now more than ever, we need to try in our own way, to weave the web of the life we’d like to leave to our descendants here on Planet Earth. Planting seeds that will flower after we have gone, that will allow more of the being and less of the doing that defines our lives these days. We are of course still bound by our old conditioning and life patterns, but lockdown, covid, all of this, is giving us a chance to pay attention and see what needs to be changed, surrendered, let go of with Kālī.

There is order in the chaos of it all, an intelligence that lives within all of us, that weaves the web, brings us together, tears us apart, one cycle after another, a continuous circle of destroying and creating… and here we are on the cusp of another spark, of the turning tide of the breath, of the connection to the holy well within us, our inner fire and the light in our heart. We are living it, Imbolc, it is a state of being deep within our own nature, it can’t be lived outside ourselves. 

Enjoy what it brings, and if you can, take time to be in nature and find the stillness within yourself. Maybe you can hear the dreams stirring within you and feel the vibrant energy of the potential that lays ahead. 

P.S. I can’t take credit for the beautiful headdress, I left the willow offering instead (and yes, I ran back home as part of my daily exercise!), which I may learn to regret as willow is known in Celtic myth and folklore as a tree of enchantment and dreaming, and is associated with poets, the moon and water. It enhances confidence to follow our intuition and inspired leaps of imagination, it also helps to put us in touch with our feelings and deeply buried emotions. The willow helps us to express these emotions, letting them go rather than holding onto and owning them. The twigs of the willow are flexible and are used to teach us how to go with the flow of life rather than resisting it and repressing our feelings. 

Bring Kālī into our lives: the power of change and time

There is no doubt that I lost some of my grounding last week, but I have found the earth again and with that I have felt drawn back to Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s work and to the Goddess. Not that they went anywhere, just that the calling has been greater this last few days.

I have it in my mind that over lockdown and through the Yoni Yoga classes, I would like to share more on the Daśa Mahāvidyās, the ten great wisdom Goddesses, albeit I hope we might run out of time and lockdown won’t last for ten whole weeks… but one can never be sure! If there’s one thing Covid has taught me, it is to go with the flow and stop trying to make life certain and known!

It’s Kālī who I am especially drawn towards. She is the Queen amongst the wisdom goddesses and contains the whole circle of siddhis, or magical powers, within the reaches of her power. Acquiring a siddhi is a threshold between worldly and transcendental awareness, as a junction between the two and as a passing through, it is a kind of initiation.

Uma proposes that a women may encounter eight female siddhis in her life including:

·      The onset of menstruation at menarche

·      Menstrual cycles

·      Female orgasm

·      Pregnancy

·      Miscarriage

·      Labour and birth

·      Lactation

·      Menopause

Because the physical siddhis are naturally arising physical experiences, it is important to understand the difference between merely experiencing their physiological aspects as bodily functions, and recognising these experiences as potential siddhis. It is conscious recognition that transforms the physiological and physical experience into a siddhi. 

As Dr Christiane Northrup writes, “Unconscious biological instinct and biological instinct that is honed and refined by consciousness and choice are two different things”. Thus if women are able to relate to their emotional, physical and physiological experience in any of the above events as siddhis, or as sources of insight, wisdom and opportunities for spiritual expansion, then they will need to approach them with conscious awareness. 

This leads me to Kālī, the greatest of all powers, whose powers of transformation, liberation and destruction both contain and permeate the whole of life. The literal meaning of Kālī is time and she teaches us that time is an inescapable power. As Uma writes:

“Kālī is also time and change from the perspective of cyclical knowledge; for the way that time is measured out in women’s lives is through the repetition of cycles, each one the same yet different from those before and afterwards. When we place this powerful goddess as the protective entity around the cycles of our lives, we embrace the inevitability of chance as a potential for great wisdom and understanding. Kālī in her closeness to death and darkness, shows us the necessity for self-acceptance and surrender. Her mahā-siddhi, or great power, is the power that comes with acceptance of change, and the willingness to let go in order to grow.”

I feel that this is pertinent for us all now. This is a great time for change and for letting go. We were given the opportunity here in Guernsey during the lockdown in 2020 and the opportunity has come again. I really do feel that there is a significant power around us right now, a true opportunity for wisdom, insight, spiritual growth and raising of consciousness, if we are able to surrender into all that life is giving us rather than turning away from it.

As a true pitta kapha, I have always struggled to let go of things, of past experiences and of believing that things have to be a certain way. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I have been drawn to Kālī these last few days, because I know that this is absolutely a time of change, of letting go of the picture we have in our heads of how we think it should be, and opening ourselves up to something that has yet to be lived and experienced.

Uma continues, “At its most profound level, Kālī’s siddhi empowers us to drop the limitations of who we think we are in order to encounter the limitless potential of what we can become. Kālī invites us to surrender completely any ideas that come from a desire to fix or define our sense of identity. To access the unlimited powers of her siddhi requires that we allow a part of us to die, the part that most strenuously asserts that it is the very source of our identity: our idea of who we are”.

The idea of identity is a challenging one for us women, because the notion of what it is to be a woman have been manipulated and changed by patriarchy. I joined a series of lectures on goddess led by a high priestess of Glastonbury and I was amazed to see the way in which the depiction of women changed when patriarchy came in. Prior to patriarchy, images of women were drawn and carved with full breasts, hips and thighs and a soft belly – women were powerful for they created new life and these child-bearing aspects of her were revered and celebrated. Many of the images did not show her face, for this was not deemed important. 

Then patriarchy came in and the image of women changed. Now she was sexualised with pert breasts, now covered, seductively, and longer thinner limbs, a face and hair, a clothed body with none of the fullness that was evident in the early goddesses. Her power was taken away. The maiden was objectified by men, menstruation was seen as dirty and birth kept hidden, the mother was no longer revered for bringing new life into this world. The wise crone was no longer celebrated either, her wisdom lost.  

Even now, we expand a huge amount of energy on attempting to fight off the signs of ageing. Still society celebrates the body and face of the maiden. Women have a hard time transitioning from maiden to mother, not least because of the demands on, and changes to her body, coupled with the overwhelming reality of life lived with a new baby and the constant sleep deprivation and need for lactation, but because of the loss of identity living as we do in a society that still only values the maiden and her youthful beauty. 

 As Uma writes, “Whilst it is deeply frightening to let go of the idea that we can always appear to be a certain way, with the passage of time it is absolutely inevitable that Kālī’s power needs to be faced. Such is her power, that if we choose not to engage with its effects through conscious acceptance and willingness to surrender, it will get to us in the end through suffering, grief, bitterness and regret. In relation to the cycles of a woman’s life, what Kali siddhi offers us is the immense power to recognise that the only constant is change itself. In our youth, our menstrual cycle teaches us this lesson over and over again, and the sooner we wake up to what we are to learn, the sooner we are able to embrace our limitless power and potential to live life in freedom”.

It’s fascinating to me, because the menstrual cycle prepares us for the changes ahead, and for what it means to be a cyclical woman living in touch with our cyclical nature, if we choose. We are the micro of the macro and we wax and wane as the moon does too. My boys have a bonkers barometer for me, I’m more bonkers at certain parts of the moon cycle apparently! I’m no doubt more bonkers at certain parts of my own cycle too, and in the moments when I am encouraged to transition from one way of being to another, because it is always messy!

My yoga teacher always says that yoga is teaching us to die well. By that she means that our practice can give us the opportunity to cultivate the ability to let go with ease and grace. Our every practice is an opportunity for this. I clung to my vinyasa practice for many years, and the transition, the letting go, to something kinder and gentler and compassionate, more aligned with who I wanted to be, was tricky for me. My identity was tied up in my yoga practice and on what I felt it was giving me physically. 

But the process taught me to trust the practice, that this takes us from one way of being to another if we allow it. But more often than not, we cling on through fear of something, of having to go deeper often, of having to be honest with ourselves to the extent that we can no longer ignore that inner voice that knows that there is more to us than we are allowing, another identity if we can only get out of our own way and die to the world as we know it.

Life supports this process too if we allow it. Those shifts from one way of being to another, of maiden to motherhood and on to wise crone, from menstruation to menopause.  And those cycles from one identity to another, of one way of expressing ourselves in the world to another. But all of this with conscious awareness, of being open to life as it unfolds moment to moment.  

I feel that lockdown here in Guernsey, the virus then, the corona-virus (corona = crown) is bringing with it an opportunity for significant change, of spiritual growth and a shift in individual and collective consciousness. Not only is the wheel turning again as we move into Imbolc and the stirrings of spring, but there is a turning into something wiser and deeper and more authentic and real if we allow it. 

This is a time of conscious acceptance and surrendering, of letting go of who we think we are, and who we think we have been, to become the person we are now meant to be instead. We might not know what that means and how that looks, but we can take comfort in knowing that it will only ever be for our highest good.

If this resonates with you on any level, then call Kālī into your life, but be prepared. She is a force to be reckoned with, a power like no other. She is heavy so that the weight of her power can spiral out to influence the movement of every cycle. She is also the power of time and change, these being the only true constants. So we embrace all of this; we are like stars in the night sky that appear to be fixed but are in fact wheeling around in a constant heavenly dance of shifts and change.

In our practice, we encourage change. We settle into the watery element of the pelvis, spiralling and moving, as we go with the flow in the outer world too. We find our roots, that which holds us steady, and we find our heart too, and open this to the world as if the one and only thing we might ever do with our one life is take the risk and love and create, over and over again. 

Cultivating friendliness.

Here in Guernsey, we are in our second lockdown. It is different this time, more is known and certain. We know more about the virus and how to manage it, despite the new variants, and more about how life is lived in lockdown. We are also more certain that lockdown will last longer than we might have initially envisaged but that we will be free of it in the end.

Yet despite all this, lockdown and Covid, on some level, continue to highlight that we live in an uncertain world where all is not known. And despite knowing this and orientating myself more into the unknown and uncertain through my yoga practice, I have still been thrown off balance a little by the recent lockdown.

It’s not lockdown itself per se, although I do find spending 22 hours effectively indoors a touch challenging (and huge respect to those of you currently self-isolating and stuck inside for the best part of 24 hours a day), but just the fact that once again everything has been thrown on its head and there’s no way of knowing where it is all going…{I’m pretty sure they write about that in the children’s book, “I need a new bum”, fab book).

I noticed my tendencies when life free falls as it has done, my need to cling on to something certain, establish a routine, make life a little more known. I never appreciated the need for routine, yet now I see how it gives us a sense of security, of making us feel as if everything is OK, that we know what we are doing from moment to moment. Every day Eben wakes and asks me what we’re doing today, he needs to know, to make him feel OK about the day ahead.

I have also noticed my tendency around self-criticism, in contrast to my focus on cultivating friendliness to self! The home learning really brings this up. I have an idea in my head of what this should look like and of course the reality is very different. As much as I might try, formal learning is a bind to my eldest, he’s not interested, and while I have all these ideas about learning from play, the children end up fighting and I end up raising my voice more than I’d like. They also end up spending more time on electronics than I’d like.

There’s a quote I came across a few years ago that really says it all, “what screws us up the most in life is the picture in our heads of how life is supposed to be” (The Daily Guru)

It’s easy to have this idea in our heads of how lockdown should be, but the reality is that life lived 24/7 with family is at times beautiful and wonderful and at other times extremely fractious and tricky. I’m realising that we need to give ourselves a break. If ever there was a time for cultivating friendliness to self then it is now. The home learning will be what it will be, the yoga classes on Zoom will be what they will be, the moments of getting at the home, albeit in the rain, will be what they will be too.

Life goes on. We laugh and smile, we rage and cry. It’s all thrown there into the mix. There is nowhere to hide during lockdown, we have to face ourselves as we are, the escape routes are blocked unless we choose to drown our sorrows. So we have little choice really but to be compassionate, to know that we are doing our best, to forgive ourselves and let go of our notion of what it shouid look like, and just live it, every single chaotic, highly charged and joyful moment of it.

I realise that what i need most is purpose, to be in service to others. whatever that might look like, wearing a mask that you can’t breathe through properly, smiling even though others’s can’t see your smile because of said face mask, turning up to teach a yoga class online even if very few students join you, helping doing the shopping for friends and family in need, a text message here and there, and above all trying to stay positive.

I’ve also realised how careful we need to be about retaining our vibration and our positivity. It’s the silly things that can cause us to lose this, to diminish our light and out us on edge. For me it was watching too much TV! I don’t usually watch TV but this last month and certainly since lockdown there has been far too much TV. We’ve been watching Hinterland, which is dark and at times, traumatic and it doesn’t make me feel good, so I have had to stop watching it. It’s the silly things!

Yoga is essential for me, getting on my mat, moving, breathing, resting, chanting, reading the Sutras, talking with my teachers, keeping the energy high that way. There is hope when the light burns brightly, and comfort to be gained through spiritual community, able online.

This is a time of deep growth if we allow it. 2021 is about growing up, stepping up, taking greater responsibility, and lockdown is definitely encouraging us really pay attention, notice the ways that we get in our own way by the thoughts we keep and the escape routes we take to try to get away from what is happening in this exact moment. What could be more perfect than this exact moment? Perhaps its our relationship with the moment that also requires our friendliness, our acceptance rather than rejection.

Let’s see how week 2 of home learning goes, and more feral children desperate for their friends and a good run around! Good luck everyone, see you on the other side! Friendliness, let’s remember that! Friendliness to self, friendliness to others, and friendliness to this exact moment!

Love Emma x

Cultivating a positive perspective in the face of adversity

Love would still laugh, despite Covid. It is more important than ever that we stay positive. In Ayurveda we are encouraged to cultivate a positive mind-set. It’s not easy, especially if we have spent a lifetime focusing on the negative, but if we can catch ourselves and shift our perspective then it can be extremely helpful to our sense of wellbeing and experience of life..

Translated as ‘cultivating the opposite’, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 2.33 says, “when disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite ones should be thought of”. Thus when adverse notions take over the mind, Patanjali suggests that we look at it from the other side, so that we cultivate looking at things from a different viewpoint.

This is not always easy to do when we are in the midst of a very difficult time, but with practice even the most challenging and emotionally turbulent moments can become more peaceful and we can experience less mental suffering. If we are stuck in an attitude of fear or resentment then we can positively cultivate the opposite.

Of course when we ‘cultivate’ the opposite thought, it causes us to first notice and observe the fact that we are thinking a negative thought in the process and likely getting caught up in it. Thus we are required to take a step back and see ourselves being pulled in this negative direction by our mind, thereby creating, for the most part, our own suffering.

When we do this, we are more able to create space between ourselves and our minds, which can help us to see things more clearly and objectively. Then we can ask ourselves if we are overreacting and whether the situation really is as bad as it seems, and whether we need to step away from the situation altogether in order to stop myself reacting in a way that is unhelpful and causing our suffering.

This is a good reminder for those who are currently suffering with the speedy move into lockdown here in Guernsey, and are in feeling fear and anxiety about the ever evolving situation. We have to ask ourselves if us feeling fear and anxiety is positively changing things, or whether we are allowing more of our own suffering. Perhaps we need to come away from social media, or stop communicating with those who are feeding our fear and anxiety.

We need to remind ourselves that all is ultimately well, that the universe never gives us more than we can handle and that we are, all of us, ultimately held. This too, though, this notion of being ultimately well needs to be cultivated too, because it involves a deep trust, faith and belief that comes from the heart. In yoga this faith, śraddhā, isn’t a spiritually-based faith, or blind faith in something; it is a faith that we are going in the right direction, faith in our path, faith that our practice will lead to a life of ease. We may not know where we will end up, but we have certainty, conviction and courage in our journey.

In Reiki, one of the principles reads, “for today, do not worry”, This reminds people that there is a divine purpose to everything and that without this awareness further limitations may be created.  Energy used for worrying is, in essence, wasted as it brings no change to the situation.  Taoist sages declare that ‘any event in itself is neither good nor bad, it simply is’.  

Sometimes it is important to simply trust that things will work out for the best in the end.  What is beyond our control cannot be changed and squandering copious amounts of our energy on worrying may only serve to diminish our vitality and cloud our perception.

My mother in law always finds a way to see the positive in every situation, creating a silver lining in every cloud. It used to drive me mad because I was inherently negative in my outlook (depression thrives on it!), and struggled to accept her positive stance to the extent that I really didn’t understand how she could always be so positive, was she forcing it?

Having worked with this for a number of years now, through yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, I have finally started to experience for myself the benefits of cultivating a positive mind-set. It is tricky, old habit die hard, and if you are inherently negative as I have been, then it does require conscious effort to catch yourself before you fall into a negative spin. When you start trying to see things from a different perspective, however, looking at things from all perspectives (almost like the notion of not judging until you’ve spent a day in someone else’s shoes) it can be extremely helpful; liberating for the mind.

Now, more than ever, it is imperative that we try to stay positive. Falling into a negative spin serves no one, especially not us and our families, let alone the wider community. For some, the spiritual practice goes out the window when faced with adversity, further allowing people to drop into their fear, anxiety, victimhood and negativity; feeding a well trodden path, deepening an unhelpful pattern. Each moment gives us the opportunity to begin again, to change how we react and to cultivate a more positive mindset in the face of adversity.

This is the time to deepen a spiritual practice, in the midst of chaos, when we are thrown into unknown and reminded that life is one of uncertainty. We need to carer out the time and space to all out our mat, whether with children or on our own, whether joining an online class, or practicing quietly, linking breath with movement and positively changing how our future unfolds. For those Reiki attuned, self-Reiki is key for our healing and ongoing spiritual development, and sharing where we can with family and by distance with friends and the wider community.

Our spiritual practices, yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda for example, can teach us that there are infinite possibilities for us to grow, change and develop, and more often than not, it is our suffering that is the catalyst for positive change. We cannot change what has already happened, but we can change how our future unfolds, by the thoughts we keep and our potentially positive perspective. We have a choice. Our practice can help us enormously in moving from a place of suffering to a place of greater freedom.

This is a time to cultivate greater friendliness and compassion towards ourselves and towards others, to remember that we are part of a whole and that many are in mental torment. We do what we can, looking after ourselves and our own mental wellbeing, cultivating a positive perspective, and turning away from anything which dampens our spirits or allows us to buy into fear and anxiety.

I shall leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Ven. Ajahn Sumedho:

“If we are really allowing that which is most upsetting to be there, or that which is most boring, or most frightening, concentrating on it, welcoming it even, then we shall be taking an opportunity to be patient, gentle and wise…I look back over my life as a monk. I really resented some of the most difficult situations at the time, but now I view them with affection; I realise now that they were strengthening experiences. At the time I thought: ‘I wish this wasn’t happening, I wish I could get rid of this’. But now I look back with enormous gratitude because they were beneficial experiences.

Anguish, despair, sorrow can be transmuted into patient endurance, into wise reflection. Life is as it is. Some of it is going to be very nice, some of it awful. A lot of it is going to be neither nice nor awful, just boring. Life is like that. We observe: ‘This is how our lives have to be’. Then we wisely use what we have, learn from it, and free ourselves from the narrow limits of self and mortality”.

Love Emma

Love would laugh a lot

It follows on a little from my previous blog post, still this inherent fear around safety and security keeps coming up, there are many layers to it and it is deeply embedded so it is inevitable that it will take time to truly get to the root of it. I have a feeling I am not alone here though, that it is an inherent fear for many of us, passed down from generation to generation.

I’ve noticed that the more I try and free my centre, my ‘core’, the more I go into free-fall. This is a scary feeling because it is unknown and uncertain, so I find myself grasping for anything concrete to bring certainty back again. A few days ago, when my teacher guided me to a place where I was not gripping in my core, I felt an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety, and accompanying nausea. I honestly felt as if I was free falling and I wondered if I might have to stop the practice, such was my fear.

The feeling didn’t last, and it made me very curious because the practice was taking me deeper into my feet and hips, so that I would also lessen the grip of my thighs, part of the fight, flight and fear musculature, and free more of my knees, which hold a lot of fear (you’ve only got to think of the saying, “my knees buckled from under me”). I began to realise how much my thighs hang on, and my knees and core tighten as a kind of defensive “I will not get harmed and I can run away” position. 

That’s all very well and good, but this pattern has become unhelpful. It’s not so much that I need to change my thighs, it’s more so that I want to feel more of life, not be so restricted and limited by patterns that I have developed over my lifetime in reaction to fear. I know that I am safe and secure, that we are lovingly held by the creator, but on some level, I still struggle to rest easily into this.

So when the practice did reveal more of the free fall feeling and the fear and nausea that accompanied this, I paid attention. I began to notice what I did in response to this feeling, not in that moment during the session but later, in my life lived off the mat. 

I noticed how I tried to grasp for something concrete, for a sense of security, questioning whether it was about time I got a sensible, stable and secure job, with a guaranteed monthly salary and a pension - this in contrast to the insecure job of teaching yoga and Reiki, when you’re never quite sure how much you might earn week to week, let alone month to month.

I noticed how I begin to lose perspective of the bigger picture, my world becoming smaller as I focus on my perceived threat to survival rather than re-membering oneness and being in service. I drop into ‘thinking’ brain, trying to ‘work it out’ and I start running to give me much needed (or so I feel) headspace, and although it is unconscious, I use it as a way of strengthening myself.

I become increasingly rigid in my mind, as the running makes me more rigid in body, the two a reflection, and it is this rigidity that restricts my consciousness. In these moments of perceived loss of safety, I also cling to my opinions as if they alone will make me safe. I struggle to find the middle ground and will become more argumentative. I also withdraw into myself, become increasingly serious. 

I fall out of alignment with soul, feeling separate and vulnerable. But really what happens is I get more controlling, as if this, on some level, gives me a false sense of security, as if I really am able to control the outcome, which is of course impossible, at least impossible without getting extremely stressed!

Initially I attempt to control my immediate environment, and in the past, this would have meant obsessively and compulsively tidying and cleaning. Now it’s not quite so obsessive or compulsive but the tendency is still there! 

I also try to control my behaviour, trying to live up to my extremely high and unrealistic ideals as if this alone will keep me safe. In reality, all that happens though, is the inner critic gets involved, and I berate myself with a whole heap of criticism for my various shortfalls to the extent that my spirit plummets and my toxicity levels increase. 

The inherent perfectionist does not let go easily. It was this pattern that fed the eating disorder, in an attempt to control the food I ate. It doesn’t get much more controlling than controlling your food intake and therefore your nourishment, it’s a very cruel form of self-harm, because you are never doing the job as well as you should and therefore the inner critic goes wild.

There is also the control of everyone else. Not easy for those around us, and yet we are all doing it to some extent, and if we’re not, then we’re numbing out instead. 

I notice how all of this sends me into a negative and downward spin - I’ve a sense that this embedded threat-based, negativity bias is the default programming of our consciousness.  In the past I would have popped straight into depression, but the patterns have shifted over time, I’m aware of them for a start, and depression doesn’t arrive so easily, if at all, now.

I know how awful it feels when it does though, because it is difficult to find your way out again and the negative voice is all consuming, fed by the anxiety you are feeling and that in turn feeds the anxiety, and thus it is a downward spiral where you give yourself an enormously hard time, and life can feel as if it has become pointless and hopeless, without purpose.

The spirit slumps even more and the soul is absolutely ignored as the ego has taken over complete control. All this because of that feeling, the free fall and the uncertainty that this brings. 

There is a way out though, I’m seeing it more clearly. There have been signs and I have been trying to pay attention, see more of the roots and how they might be gently eased, the soil changed, by a shift in perspective and energy. 

It’s helpful to notice the patterns and the way in which we react to what we are feeling and to our life as it then unfolds. Recognising our disappointments and giving voice to them, so that they are no longer sat inside us eating away at us. 

When the negative spiral begins, if we can catch it early enough, nip it in the bud, it’s helpful to try to do something that lifts the spirt and soothes the soul, like getting to the beach, watching the sunrise and sunset, walking on the cliffs with a friend, being out in the elements, taking a dog out, just getting outside somehow and being distracted from our thoughts by being with someone else or an animal, something that occupies our attention.

Recognising that fate sometimes takes over our life and unforeseen events happen and we feel you have no choice. We always have a choice, but this rests in how we deal with the situation that fate brings to us. It’s helpful to look for the positive outcome and where it is leading us. We might try to recognise the new direction or opportunity as it unfolds from the chaos.  If our perspective is positive then the outcome will be positive. 

The key is not to strive against the situation but to see beyond the negative. Every single thing that happens has positive repercussions, even if it is hard to see it at the time. Ayurveda supports a positive attitude as a path to healing, cultivating balance and wholeness. 

Cultivating gratitude changes things, brings in a perspective shift as an antidote to the negative. Seeing that the situation could be worse and remembering that there is always choice, always another way. 

Self-compassion is essential too. Witnessing the patterns of potential harm caused by self, and doing something about them, changing them, cultivating compassion, nurturing the spirit in the process. 

I’m finding self-compassion easier these days, and it has become clearer to me that the focus this year is about cultivating greater friendliness towards myself, more jovialness, the feeling I feel when I spend time with my closest friends, when there is humour and ease, a recognition of one’s perceived faults but in a friendly way, with laughter and compassion – a greater recognition of one’s humanness without judgement.

This is a whole other language than one of ego and the duality of being good or bad or this or that. There is only what is and a gentle recognition that the ‘what’ is marvellous and wonderful and all it that was ever needed or needs to be. There’s nothing then to berate or harm, nothing to correct or fix, nothing to put down or in any way criticise. It’s incredibly liberating.

Self-compassion is both an attitude and an action, we take on an attitude of compassion for self and we take steps to action this. I always had an issue about self-care and I think it’s because it was more of an action, another tick box opportunity, ‘massage taken, self-care done, tick box’, ‘yoga class attended, self-care done, tick box’. It doesn’t encourage us to change on the inside in quite the same way as self-compassion does. Self-care is very much doing, and self-compassion is more so about being; something has to soften within us.

When it comes to gratitude, I can hear societal voices asking me if I am really sure that all I have is enough? This, because we are always focused on wanting more; more badges, more qualifications, more money, more houses, more cars, more possessions, more stuff. As if looking outside of ourselves will bring us the inner contentment that we ultimately seek. We all want to be happy, peaceful and contented, but isn’t that something that has to come from within?

Thus the continuous looking outside ourselves is unhelpful and unnecessary. When is enough ever enough? In many respects, if we can simplify our outside world, then we will encourage a greater sense of simplicity within too – there will be less to distract us. But this does mean we have to find the courage to live our simple way, to let go of our educational, societal and capitalistic conditioning that tells us we should always be wanting more, achieving more and obtaining more than what we already have; no more striving or achieving for the sake of it!

It is all very well recognising these patterns and understanding them, but I wanted to touch them in my body too.  I have been taking regular SHEN sessions with Jo Henton, which have supported this process, it’s a good fit with my approach to yoga practice. Each week a new delight has revealed itself, more of the fundamental imbalance in the root, which has given rise to a hardness and holding in the solar plexus and the heart.

This week, the session took me to a feeling that I have been trying to uncover for a good while now, but didn’t know what it was until it revealed itself to me – it was a extremely deep yearning for my mum. I would have felt this when I was little, perhaps the drop off at play school, a temporary separation from her, and it brought with it intense sadness and grief for the loss of her in that moment.

I wondered if this might be the mother wound that people talk about; not a harm done by my mum but an intense love, so deep, so powerful, that I didn’t know what to do with it, as it brought with it the opposite pain of loss, this feeling that now revealed itself to me, like an old friend, there was a deep recognition and a relief to finally feel this again, after years of hiding from it, because of my deep love and longing for my mum and all the love she has for me, for all her attempts to keep me safe, I have never doubted my mum’s love or her devotion to me, and I know myself to be extremely lucky.

The yearning was primal, free-fall, nauseating, deep in my solar plexus and there was a very real aching, almost like a stabbing pain in my right upper arm bone.  As I felt all of this my shoulders moved without my apparent control, flicking, releasing deep tension that had been held there most of my life. 

I have always had over developed shoulders, not so noticeable now as they were when I carried more of the weight of the world upon them. I blamed surfing and netball, but as I have deepened my awareness of the manner in which our body keeps score, I have been increasingly aware of the emotional tightness and hardness that they have held. 

I suddenly realised the reason I have done all I can to avoid feeling this feeling of intense yearning, loss and sadness for my mum, because it is so very yucky and unpleasant. I suddenly realised why I had stopped letting my mum hug me or hold me; on some level I was protecting myself from having to feel this degree of loss again; the love was so strong, the loss would be strong too.

I rejected my mum in many ways as a late teenager, and caused her much harm, sorry mum, I didn’t know what to do with all the love, all her nourishment, perhaps on some level I never felt I deserved it. The trouble is, I couldn’t make any sense of it, we rarely can at the time. I know that I hardened my heart to her, and kept this all deep inside, and now I know it is because of her love, which is so strong, that the potential loss was too much, so I self-sabotaged, rejected it, as some strange way of protecting myself. 

I also suddenly realised the reason that my children suffer with separation anxiety. I’d had an inkling but it became crystal clear that I had been unconsciously transferring my anxiety around separation from my mum onto them. I knew how it felt and I didn’t want them to feel it. It wasn’t conscious. I can’t blame myself for it either, as that helps no one, not me and especially not my children – as mothers we really shouldn’t be promoting self-flagellation. 

It’s also possible, of course, that my children are really feeling the feeling of loss inside them too, of the grief that accompanies love. Love brings grief, because there is always the possibility of loss and of the intensity of the feeling deep in our centre and in our arms, as we realise that loss means never holding that person again or never being held by that person again. So we might turn away from love, for love brings pain; put up the closed sign at the heart, harden to our centre, make ours arms hard too, no holding or too much holding on.

I could see more clearly how I had closed my heart to love generally because of the fear of the feeling of loss. How I’d hardened to my brother when he emigrated to Australia, because of the intensity of the sadness and the grief of my perceived loss. How this caught me out at times, a tear slipping out as I remembered, and then turned away again. We make peace eventually, time is a healer, but we should remember that we grieve the living as much as we might grieve the dead. 

We’ll find grief in our upper arms. Like our lungs have tears that they cry, but we do not express them through our eyes, instead they collect in our arms, an extension of our hearts, like a river swollen with water, set to burst, but it doesn’t burst, it holds on tightly, the water stagnant now, there’s no room for it to move and it cannot burst its banks. Like a face swollen by excessive alcohol and sugar, how it looks like it needs to pop to give the person some release, their eyes hidden by the fullness of their cheeks, not healthy, the holding of grief.

In my yoga practice, it was the knees though that we were exploring and yet all this revealed itself to me, the knees! I was surprised how quickly the knees took me into my centre and back to the yucky feeling. Not of loss this time but of nausea. I felt sick and I asked my teacher why I was feeling like this. She said that the way we were relating to the knees, and the leg bones either side of this was likely causing me to access deeper parts of my centre, parts that are involved in the vomiting process, that help to remove toxicity from the body.

It was then I remembered how fearful I was of vomiting growing up, this to the extent that I developed a technique, involving the tapping of fingers and the repetition of some words that I had to perform each night before I went to sleep, to ensure that I wouldn’t be sick that evening. I realised how much my fear of vomiting caused me to keep everything held in. I was always in awe of my best friend who could put her fingers down her throat and vomit, I just couldn’t do this, I had trained myself not to do this, and in many respects, this was a blessing, because the eating disorder could have gotten very messy (it was messy enough, you’ll have to wait for the book to read more about that).

We found a depth to the knees that I didn’t know was there, a place in the pelvis for the skull, a spine that settled between the hands and arms and felt very alive. We found how the body might have felt propped on a mother’s hip, or wrapped around her leg, as my children do to me, and yet I find myself telling them not to. “He’s too big to be carried”, I’m told, and it’s annoying having someone hang off your leg as you cook, pulling your leggings down. But I felt that differently today, that this won’t last forever and it is to be embraced, not changed. 

I suddenly recognised the humour and joy in our thigh if we allow it, in that yuckiness, there is always the opposite of how we are feeling, excitement, joy, possibility. You cannot have one without the other, and so it becomes about perspective again and orientating away from something negative to something more helpful, more joyful, more loving. Wrap your legs around me I will tell my children, hang off my leg like it’s a tree trunk. I won’t berate you or tell you you’re too big, I’ll laugh instead, I’ll choose laughter and love instead. 

I felt into my liver too, and had a sense of the toxicity, not least from self-flagellation and the constant negative inner critic growing up, but the toxicity that comes from holding on, from resisting, from living in two extremes, the end of the inhalation, the end of the exhalation, rather than just sitting between the both, continuously orientating in the middle ground, neither here nor there, just being with what is present as it unfolds moment to moment and choosing how we are in relationship to that. 

Fear will show up in our body in different places, just as it will show up in our life in different ways. We don’t know until we start delving deeper, the many ways that it prevents us from living, truly living in this moment. I came across this wonderful quote that I think sums up this week and all this awareness gained:

“There is no escaping the uncertainty of life, nor its beautiful, ugly chaos. We must embrace its unexpected twists, dead ends and bridges, its red lights, surprises and blessings. Because without them, are we really living?” - Javaria Akbar.

So it is, the message on the new moon this week; self-compassion, cultivating gratitude, turning into love with all its potential for loss, rather than turning away from it, living our life, each moment, as if it is our last, truly living, with all the messiness, the chaos and the unknown. Letting go. Allowing ourselves to be loved and held by our mum. And laughing lots. “What would love do in this situation?”, we might continuously ask ourselves. Love would laugh a lot.