Living without a Smart Phone

Well it’s almost a month now that I have been without the Smart Phone and I have to say that it’s really been a much easier transition than I was expecting, far easier than giving up smoking all these years ago!

I pop it in the same category as smoking as my use of my phone had an addictive quality to it. I found myself checking it just for the sake of it, a little like I might have smoked a roll-up just for the sake of it. It was an addiction that was distracting me from my children and from being truly present to what was unfolding around me.

As I’ve mentioned previously, it is the building up to the letting go that is actually worse than the letting go itself. I had to get my mind used to the idea that I could live my life without a smart phone, which is tricky, because we are increasingly conditioned to believe that we can’t live without a smart phone. But alas we can! We just have to make the shift beyond the conditioning that tells us this isn’t true.

The first few days were strange, because I kept reaching for it, mainly to take a photo. This interested me, the extent to which I was taking photos and my motivation for doing so. I realised that partly I was taking photos for other people, like a show and tell, “look where we’ve been and what we’ve seen” rather than just being truly present to the moment. Social media of course is based on this whole notion of showing ourselves to the world - of fulfilling that need to be seen and heard, which may have been denied during childhood.

I’m not sure its healthy though, to live our life through the lense, of being more concerned with sharing our experiences with others rather than simply living them. I’ll never forget being up at Lukla in the Himalayas, on our descent to Kathmandu having trekked to Everest Base Camp, and my fellow gap year students being obsessed about trying to upload their photos to Facebook. This was back in 2007 and Facebook was relatively new. It was beyond my comprehension. Especially the fact it cost them a fortune, not least in internet cafe fees (this before WIFI) but in the time it took them, which prevented them to enjoy this little town up in the mountains. You can read much more about this in my book Namaste btw.

My Nokia brick phone - “oh look, how cute your retro phone is”, one of my friends said - is painful to use. It took me two weeks to work out how to make a phone call, let alone how to respond to text. Still, it’s been a helpful process, automatically bringing with it better boundaries. People don’t text me so much now and if they do, my response is short and sweet simply because it is too difficult to text more than the basics! This prevents the exchange of unnecessary offloading and sharing and means that we are more likely to meet and talk in person.

It’s also cleared my contacts and the energy that I was previously lugging around with me. I only put people in as contacts if I actually have some contact with them and this is not many - my world has got smaller, and yet richer too!

Maybe I email more now. But I like emailing. I’m a writer. I like to write. So it’s not really a big deal for me. Albeit it is a big deal for others and while I might send ‘catch up’ emails to my older friends who all live off island, very few of them have the time or interest to respond to me - it has made me realise how superficial our friendship had become and how much energy has been wasted trying to hold onto them. So even this has brought with it a letting go and a deeper recognition of the amazing friendships I have made since, here on the island, and the depth of those friendships that sustain that need for deep nourishment that only genuine two-way friendships can provide.

Whether I’ll always be without a smart phone who knows, but for now it is working, and has reduced my stress levels simply because I’m not ‘on call’ 24 hours and nor did I need to be - that was just another illusion. I’m able to switch off further from this crazy world and enjoy more peace in the process. There’s this wonderful poem by Mary Oliver, which keeps coming to mind and which I’ll end this blog post by sharing…

“Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.”

Love Emma xx

Happy new moon coming!

We’re in the dark moon today, with for some can be tricky, but I’ve actually found it refreshingly clear in its message that there is no going back now. The eclipse season is finished and this new moon feels like it is integrating the changes that the eclipses brought with them.

I’ve seen some fundamental changes in many of my clients over the eclipses, and or many I have seen this week, there is an acceptance of that change and an integration thing place. Things aren’t necessarily sorted - when are they ever - but there is greater clarity that the changes were necessary and we just have to keep on keeping on, putting one foot in front of the other.

The weight of all this change has laid heavily on shoulders and spines and much of the emotions have been overwhelming for the hips. I have seen a common tightness around the collarbones in many I have seen, the battle between the head and the heart weighs heavily on the neck and the shoulder girdle, which includes the collarbones. We can carry a lot of misguided guilt, especially if we feel we have upset the apple cart and set things spiralling.

We haven’t really, even this is part of the illusion, sometimes we have to do what we have to do regardless of the not being certain of outcome, or the impact that our decisions may have on others. At the end of the day the changes we wish to see in the world have to begin with us individually - sure, we might try to do external fixing, but this is just a distraction from getting inside ourselves and making the changes there - always easier to look outside ourselves and moan about the world’s disharmonious situation (for example) rather than looking at our own inner disharmony.

It always has to be about the internal and about being honest with ourselves and living as authentically as possible. It does seem to me that this new moon is helping with this, helping us to be more honest with ourselves and to see more clearly who we have become, so we can let go of notions of who we were and who we’d lie to be, and see ourselves clearly as we are, even if this is uncomfortable because we’re not as love and light (thank god) as we might believe ourselves to be.

In many respects it’s time to drop the act, to stop caring about what others think, to stop being anything but our true selves, warts and all, and learning to love the shadow. We are who we are. Some people will like us, some won’t, but that’s life. Some people will criticise us and others won’t. Why should we care? If we are contended and happy within ourselves then really it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Opinions change as often as the season. And of the they’re merely based on a conditioned perspective that will only ever se life a certain way. Why should any of us be limited by this, by someone else’s way of seeing the world?

At some point we have to break free, stand on our own two feet, take responsibility for our experience of life, but let go of worrying about everyone else. Always easier said than done and a constant work in progress in my life, but one worth preserving with for it does bring much greater freedom. These are exciting times. There is a sense of creating a new world, of dreaming the dream of a new world, and allowing ourselves to get on with creating it. We have the power. The only thing often getting in our way is our own crap. Sooner we let that go, the better for the planet!

Happy new moon coming.

Love Emma x

Following your joy

I’ve been trying to follow my joy over the last couple of months, I realised that it seemed silly not to, after all, we’re only here on Planet Earth in this incarnation the once, so best make the most of it, and let go of all that crappy conditioning that says it has to be hard work and negative.

This means that I’m currently growing most of my medicinal plants for the joy of it! This is quite a turn around for me, albeit one I have been working towards the last few years, moving away from the emphasis on outcome and achievement and focusing instead on the process. I guess this fits rather nicely with one of the main teachings from the Bhagavad Gita about letting go of the fruits of our labour:

You have control over your actions alone, never over its fruits. 
Live not for the fruits of action, nor attach yourself to inaction.  Established in Yoga, O Arjuna, perform actions having abandoned attachment and having become balanced in success and failure, for balance of mind is called Yoga. Krishna speaking Arjuna in Bhagavad-Gita (Chapter 2)

This concept shows up in Buddhist Teachings too with the notion that equanimity (a balanced mind) is letting go of the fruits of our actions. In the Yoga Sutras, the last Niyama refers to “Isvara Pranidhara” , surrendering our ego and selfish desires to God/consciousness and offering our actions up to ‘the divine’ and humanity. Its similar therefore to this notion of letting go of the fruits of our actions.

This for me is the creative process, one of creating for the love of creating, without getting attached to the outcome of our creation. I’ve mentioned it before, but often people get stuck before they get started, simply because they worry and fret about how their creation will turn out, rather than just getting on and embracing the process of creation itself. It took me two books to realise this as I was very concerned about the outcome of their publication and how they might be received, which sort of took away from the creative process itself. But by the third I had learned and let go of my attachment to it before it was published, I was done, I did it for the love of it, as a creative process, nothing more than that.

The last two years with my medicinal plants, while I’ve enjoyed the process of growing and planting, I was always focused on the outcome and whether I might be able to make my teas and tinctures from the plants and while this was satisfying, the whole process became time-consuming, laborious and stressful. The joy was taken out of it. This year I figured I’d probably do the same, even though I knew that sounded silly given that I’m on a mission to reduce stress levels not feed them, and it wasn’t until the calendula started flowering that I suddenly realised I would do it differently this year.

I heard myself in class this morning using one of my favourite quotes, the one that goes something along the lines of ‘if you always do what you’ve always done, then you will always get what you always got’ and it reminded me of my plants and I felt the validation in my decision to do it differently this year, to let go of the outcome and just do it for the sheer joy of it, without having to compromise that or complicate it.

When I came home there they were, blooming in the sun, my dedicated bed of calendula, which could make soothing oils and lotions, but the flowers just look to beautiful to pick, they’re a joy to me! I added a whole heap of clear quartz shards into the soil and attempted some sacred geometry with some other stones before planting out the plants so whether that’s the reason they’re so beautiful I will never now, but I can certainly feel their energy, which is now permeating out into the universe and the insects sure do love them.

I incorporated some clear quartz into the moon garden too and that is taking shape. I admit I will be picking the Tulsi for tea, and I might make a tincture from both the arnica and milk thistle as this the first year I have grown these, but the rest, I’m probably just going to let do their thing, and free up my summer to keep following my joy in other ways.

I have planted a whole heap of echinacea this year too, which I have planted out in the front garden, so that clients will have the joy of seeing these flower in the summer and imbuing their energy on the way into the cottage and my healing space, but let’s see, I’ve grown them for the joy of growing them really, whatever the outcome may be!

I really recommend “following your joy” as a spiritual practice and enquiry because it highlights the many ways we deny our joy as a result of our conditioning and patterns that tell us otherwise. It highlights our sense of worthiness and deserving - or lack of - and might just take us deeper into our sacral chakra where a lot of this sits unconsciously affecting our reality and our ability to create the reality of our dreams. You’ll find yourself up against yourself at times and it might cause you to become more conscious of the reason you do certain things. It’s certainly one of my more interesting enquires, and I’m curious to see where it might take me next.

So enjoy this weekend and keep the feelings of joy high!

Love Emma x

Cultivating a positive and heart orientated perspective

What’s become clearer to me is that we are indeed going through a period of re-prioritisation and re-orientation, realising more of what is important and therefore how we expend our energy and time. There appears to me to be a draw towards gratitude and acknowledging and celebrating all the beauty and blessings in our life.

If we are used to catastrophising and always seeking the negative then this will be a significant shift for us, and we will likely have to pay great attention because old habits and patterns of negativity will still be there, ingrained, and we will have to work to replace them with a more positive approach to our perspective and life. But it can be done!

Yoga Sutra 33 reads, “Vitarka badhane pratipaksha bhavanam’’ which basically means when improper thoughts trouble you then take the opposite side. This can be applied to our thinking. if we notice we are thinking negative thoughts and caught in a pattern of head versus heart, fear/insecurity versus love and future/past versus now, then we can begin to cultivate greater awareness of shifting away from our habitual patterning and instead rest into the heart, feel into love and be here NOW. This is the first Yoga Sutra - “Atha yoga anushasanam” - Now, the teachings of Yoga. This stresses the importance of being in the here and now.

When we are in the here and now, it is much easier to rest into the heart and be grateful for all that we are and have in our lives. The problem comes when our head takes over, as it has a tendency to flitter between what has happened in the past and our imaginings of the future, and before we know it we can find ourselves entering a rabbit hole…we can stick ourselves in the past simply because we cannot move away from our memories (false or real) of what happened to us previously and therefore we will be less likely to take a step into the unknown and uncertain of the future. Furthermore, we can get stuck in our imaginings if the future, based on our memories of the past, and again, be so much in our head that we also don’t allow ourselves to move forward in our lives.

I go into this in my new book, From Darkness Comes Light, which should be available to buy in September…but as a summary, the fear of the unknown and uncertain sticks us in our head and fills us with fear. Then we lose all sense of gratitude, because we are busily trying to figure everything out mentally and intellectually. If we can orientate back to the heart - which frankly couldn’t care less about certainty and being known because it just wants to help you express your soul in the world just for the sheer joy of experiencing itself (to therefore to gain anything from the experience, hence all the spiritual emphasis on letting go of the fruits of our labour and having no expectation to outcome, just create for the sheer joy of the creative process, not for the end result (therefore if you want to write or paint, just do it for the love of it, not to sell a best seller!))- then we will fin ourselves in the present moment where all is well and all is possible. There is nothing to fear, nothing to gain and nothing to let go of either. We just be.

I do feel that many of us might be treading this space. The eclipse awoke each of us a little bit more to our potential and wants his to step further out of our comfort zone and to truly express our soul and our gifts in this world. We just have to let go of old patterns around not being good enough, not being deserving/worthy enough of a bloody good life, and not letting old feelings of insecurity and fear of loss get in our way. There is nothing to lose as we don’t own anyone or anything anyway! And we are good enough, beautiful enough, deserving enough, because we are SOUL.. and how can it be any other way. It’s just our silly little ego that tells us otherwise.

So we can really work with this sutra to shift our perspective and remember to express gratitude, to acknowledge all the many blessings and gifts in our life. The Kirtan on the beach last night with the children was an absolute blessing. Eben slept on me the whole time, which was a gift in itself as he can be a pickle playing with other children, and it was wonderful to see Elijah off playing with his friends, and my other mum-friends able to enjoy the chanting while their children played too. It was a delightful evening, the weather was amazing, the fire an added joy and beautiful people sharing their lovely energy - thank you Katie! We’ll do another family friendly Kirtan again soon.

So with gratitude to all of you who read this, albeit I’d write it anyway, but nonetheless, I do appreciate the support and all the joy that writing and sharing brings into my life. Hope to see some of you around a fire or on your yoga mat or even joining me online tonight for the free Reiki share at 8.30 where we will be sending Reiki to those in need and to ourselves too.

Love Emma x

The post-eclipse rumblings

Well, here we are, a few days now after the lunar eclipse and on the waning moon and there are some intense energies filtering through. It feels to me that we are all being really encouraged to let go now, of what has been. A soul contract has ended. We should have learned all we needed from that contract and it is time to take on a new one.

This means letting go of all that has been, including our attachment to our wounding, and letting down our defence patterning to open to greater vulnerability, self-compassion and kindness - ultimately bringing greater depth and meaning into our lives. There is a deep grieving which is accompanying this letting go, and a deep tiredness and weariness too. We are collectively tired and weary of all the bullshit and of being continuously encouraged to live in a way that negates our own nature, and nature generally.

Underneath the tiredness and the weariness is a deep anger. A roar. A scream. Something which does need to come out. We are tired of being told how we should be, how we should live, of always selling out on something deeper inside us and outside of us too, of needing to keep up with technology because this is our future, of materalism, commercialism, conventional and limiting thinking. If you’re reading this, the chances are you’ve had enough. But where to go now?

Well the same place we have been going for eons and should be going again, deep inwards. It’s going to be an interesting ride these next 5 weeks or so until the summer solstice. The light is ramping up. We can’t keep ignoring that inner voice inside us that is desperate to change the story, to go on a new journey, to live a different way, to throw caution to the wind and step beyond mainstream. This is the new soul contract. This is about something more than us individually, it’s not even about the collective, it’s about Mother Earth and nature.

I didn’t realise it when I arranged it, because I just had a feeling I wanted to share more of Yoni Yoga locally, because it is a Tantric practice and if there’s one thing the world needs now, women especially, it is Tantra, to raise consciousness and liberate the mind, body and soul, but it has been arranged at just the right time, to bring greater love and support to those of you who can attend, as we journey through the summer solstice. I’m very passionate about Yoni Yoga. It has changed my life immeasurably, bringing me back home to myself, to a deeper place inside, bringing greater feelings of pleasure and joy both in my body and in my life generally, it has liberated me from some of my own crappy conditioning and set me free in a way I never thought possible or previously imagined.

It has become increasingly clear to me that this is the time to follow our joy, to let go of our stories of wounding and victimhood and to each do our bit to become increasingly conscious of teh way we are living and the motivation for our actions. I have become increasingly aware how many continue to play out their need for control and power (the old paradigm, which I wish we could move on from now) in new age spiritualism. Perhaps its a process we all go through. We discover spirituality and can get very excited abut it, throwing ourselves into it, trying to convert all our friend and family to it, wanting to live, breathe and teach it share it, be it, enlightenment within a few years please.

But then sadly because it takes time to truly evolve, at least with any embodiment and grounding (to make it real and not just something we can intellectualise and talk about) we end up playing out our old patterns in it, so we still seek to control and gain power, just that we do it under the guise of ‘being spiritual’, which makes it all OK. We still want our followers and people to look up to us and see what a wonderful spiritual business we have created because we are oh so spiritual and look at our power and the way we can control ourselves to make things happen…

All ten while not yet realising that true spirituality is the exact opposite of this. It is letting it all go. Including our need to control and pop ourselves on a pedestal. We gradually retreat from the world. Our work becomes increasingly sacred and we don’t want to share it with everyone, certainly not those who in any way devalue it or abuse it. We are not seeking fame nor fortunate, we just have a passion for the practice and we are keen to share it.

I’m really keen to share Yoni Yoga. And lots of other things. But Yoni speaks to me the most now, because the yonis are talking. The yonis have had enough. The yonis seek greater freedom from the shame that has held them bondage for too many sad and long years now. The wild feminine wants too be free again, will, liberated and loved. You here me right? Great. Come along and join me, and if you can’t, well there’s the online Menstruation and Moon course to get you deeper into your truth and our Greater Authenticity worshop on the 29th too. Here’s the link for Yoni, limited spaces, https://www.beinspiredby.co.uk/events-calendar/2022/6/7

Other than that, be gentle, rest on Mother Earth and rest into yourself and above all else, be kind.

Love Emma x