Solstice adventures - Avalon

Happy solstice! I hope you’ve had a good one. We’ve had an amazing solstice adventure beginning Sunday…

Sitting here writing this from a really comfortable bed in a yurt on the land of Avalon, looking through the open door, I can see the Tor in the distance, I think I might well have died and gone to heaven.

All the obstacles and challenges that the path of heart creates are more than worth it in these moments. I had a few other moments yesterday too, in Glastonbury itself, of synchronicities, coincidence, ‘aha’ and magical moments. Some things just suddenly made sense and with that a perspective shift.

I had forgotten how amazing it is here in the yurts at Lower Coxbridge. I used to run yoga retreats here, hiring the main house and the barn too, but the house and barn are now rented out long term, so the yurts are the only bits now available and what a joy they are. We had the log burning stove going all night to keep us cosy and warm, and enjoyed seeing sunset as the sun set beyond the Tor, and not long after then a rainbow filled the sky, it’s a magical place here alright.

This morning the sun is rising to my right, and over behind me, in the left, the moon is half full, on her wane. Today we head away from Glastonbury on another adventure ending up at Stonehenge for sunset…excited to see what the day offers, and hopefully be on the land that little bit more…

Yesterday we did a lot of walking, up and around the Tor, back down a different way through Dod’s lane which is an ancient track linking Glastonbury and Stonehenge. I had read about it only the night before, but now we stumbled across it as we headed into the town to visit the Godess Temple. There is something profoundly magical about the land on and around the Tor.

We spent time at Chalice Wells too, my soul craved the quietness and healing and this too is a potent place, the land talks and you can more clearly hear your own inner guidance. It’s just next to the White Spring and we visited her a few times, lit candles, dunked in the spring, I even sang a little bit, joining in with other women finding their voice in the darkness of the cavern, it was a moment I shan’t forget, how energy finds energy and music begins.

We didn’t shop like we might have done previously, after all, there’s only so many crystals that one needs! We left time for hanging out here at the yurt, and I’m pleased we did. No WIFI is bliss for me, not so for Elijah, but it’s so wonderful to tread the earth and just be absolutely surrounded by nature, with very few other sounds, just bleating sheep and the birds.

Sometimes we don’t realise how much our environment impacts on us until we step away from it.   How much the same thoughts can consume us until we make a conscious decision to let them go, remembering that we are not our thoughts, any more than we are our feelings, they come and go, there is no consistency to them.

It’s stability though that I’m working with, a complete lack of it actually, and trying to be OK with that, to let that go as a concept that has underpinned so much of my life and see if I can still find my peace without it. It’s a work in progress, as is so much, but being here on the land, one realises that this is enough, this connection, the land. If only we can find space away from WIFI and noise and activity, never easy in a place like Guernsey!

The funny thing is, there was a time when the idea of no WIFI spun me out. When coming here and staying in the yurts was wonderful bar the lack of effective phone signal, let alone access to internet, it was an issue and I’d find myself hovering around the back of the main house trying to connect in, trying to stay connected, feeling it essential somehow. Not now. Now I try not to go online unless I need to, which drives friends and family mad, especially as I’m no longer attached to a phone. Funny how much we’ve come to expect 24/7 response time to our messages and emails.

xxx

Sitting here on my mat, the sun rising one side and the moon the other, the Tor ahead, it dawns on me how THIS is the stability I seek. It’s here. Every day. It crossed my mind yesterday but I can feel it and see it so clearly today. It is the land. It has a consciousness and it holds us well, if we allow it. I hear myself telling others this and I know I lean into it, but have I truly learned to trust it?

Today I trust it. Yesterday I trusted it too. I felt it at Chalice Wells closing in on me and hugging me close. I felt it up the Tor and as we walked down the back way into town. Today there is a knowing that was once just an idea forming in my head, now I know it deep within me, now I know that this is the only stability in our lives and to try to create greater stability is to waste our energy because everything changes, nothing is certain, not really, even the run and moon have their cycles so they are not one constant. There is no consistency. We live in a dynamic universe, it is chaos mainly.

So perhaps the lesson is not to try to control this and make it something it isn’t, so that we may rest easily into it, but to accept and embrace that everything changes, including us, and just go with the flow of this. I mean I know this. But to truly live it, beyond the concept, to absolutely let go of the various societal constructs we have created to make things stable, well, it’s not easy, because once again there is a going against the mainstream flow of ‘this being the way it is’. No. There are many ways. But to find yourself going against the grain. Well you have to dig deep. But, but, but, the land holds you when you do.  

 More to follow…onwards to stones, playgrounds and Stonehenge…

Light always follows the dark

Wow, that was some intense full moon and I know I am not the only one who is still feeling the ripple of it as the moon wanes. Usually the energy drops away pretty quickly afterwards, but not this time and I know some are still being squeezed, this intense sun energy not helping matters - and actually when you think about it, it was the closest full moon to the summer solstice next Tuesday and the full join merely reflects more sunlight onto the planet, and it was a super full moon too, so we have a lot of energy coming in!

Anyway I will never forget being sat up at a menhir watching the moon rise on Tuesday evening with one of my stone friends. It was incredible. The moon was huge! I had watched it building in the sky the few days prior to that, had been out walking, as I shared in my last blog, and ventured down to Fermain for a swim in her light as she rose on the Monday evening, menstruation having just literally started as I ventured down Fermain hill to meet a friend. I did feel an alignment it has to be said. So i shouldn’t have been surprised by the intensity of it, rocking cores and roots, the cards had all said it was coming and we all knew on some level…

But alas, I wasn’t expecting it to arrive so suddenly. My friend said something as the huge moon rose, her light lightening the landscape, it had been strange wandering about, and not having her light to guide us, she rose late, or at least it felt later than usual, and lower in the sky too as she followed her path around to the west, and that was that. The way the words were spoken, or, more to the point, and it really is more to the point, the way I received them and interpreted them triggered me big time. A very old pattern was squeezed and my power was automatically sucked from me.

I spent the next couple of hours trying to process. I was extremely tired. Tired in a way I have not been for an awfully long time. So tired that I had to give in and leave earlier than I would usually. So tired that I barely remember the drive home as I was so incredibly desperate to get to bed. I never feel that tired. I never have that much of a need for my bed. It was the strangest feeling of all this stuff coming up for me and this feeling that the life forcs had literally been sucked from me. In my mind I blamed my friend, it was he who had taken my power away, and with that blame the victimhood came in, poor old me.

I awoke the next morning totally depleted. I hadn’t had enough sleep, Eben awoke super early and i was not impressed my this, but alas, one has to keep going. I was well and truly stuck in victimhood albeit I couldn’t see it at the time. Very old feelings of hopelessness, despair and just being sick of this world came in. I’m familiar with this feelings, i spent much of my later twenties feeling them, and I write at length about that in my book From Darkness Comes Light, for they were the feelings that fed my depression for many years.

It’s a feeling that when it’s acute, makes me want to take myself away from the world, because it seems so pointless and hopeless being here. I feel utterly powerless to make changes and just feel very angry with it all. It’s not a feeling I experience these days so it was interesting to be able to witness it, knowing on one level it was an old pattern which had been triggered and which now needed healing and releasing, and on another being caught up in it to the extent I ranted at home, shouted a bit, and then cried a lot.

But fortunately it passed quickly and I could see it for what it is/was. I could see that my friend didn’t take my power away, how could he? No one can take our power away, sure they can trigger us, find our weak spots, but it is US who GIVE OUR POWER AWAY. The tone of his voice had triggered a memory, of being criticised, and my reaction to the notion that I was being criticised has been to internalise it, consider myself bad/wrong/useless and with that step into victimhood and give my power away and enter into a state of depression (and sometimes anxiety).

I was so joyful to finally see this pattern and understand what I have been doing since a child. We all have patterns, that become unhelpful, that constantly keep us stuck in the past, that cause us to react in the same way we’ve done our whole lives. While this pattern hasn’t been triggered for a long while, it was clearly still there, and needed to be gone, for me to find another way to be, that does not automatically pop me into victimhood each time there is a trigger and especially on which I interpret as criticism. But it could be any other trigger, that somehow makes me feel insecure and not worthy.

Anyway, I realised too that the process of reclaiming my power has always been transformative, so the perceived loss of power has played a role in my knowing more of myself. However it used to take months, if not years, of bobbing around in and out of depression, until I found yoga and Reiki and came to understand a little more of what was happening, and these modalities helped me to strengthen and reclaim my power when it dropped out. I now I realise that those were the times, which I might have named ‘times of awakening’, the times when rally all that happened was I reclaimed my power, and with that my centre and greater wholeness.

Usually that process caused me to dig deeper into practice and into heart and to follow my inner guidance, even though it always tends to go against the flow of society and of others’ expectations for me. Again this all feeds the pattern around victimhood - often in life we do things not because we want to, but because others want us to do them - and this causes us to give our power away because we are going against our own wisdom and nature. We can also give our power away to the extent that the only way we can think to gain some back again is to find some way to control our inner world, whether that be through eating disorder or obsessive behaviour, some way that we can feel that we own our life, just a little…

This all became very clear to me on Thursday, it took a whole day of swimming in the discomfort of the muddiness, trying not to sink, and yet tempted by the sinking, to find the light and my way again. I should be grateful though, in the past it might have taken me weeks or months to clear an old pattern, being stuck in my discomfort during that period, reaching out to therapists for help. The other day it took 24 hours of going deep into myself with lots of Reiki and paying attention to what each of my clients was saying as they each carry a message (we learn from each other), and to a soul friend, who helped me to shift my perspective.

Now I’ve seen that it is not about being criticised, because that’s just my mind that determines that anyway, as fas as my friend was concerned, he wasn’t criticising me, he was trying to help me understand something, so it was literally my mind that interpreted it a certain way because the context is clearly a weak spot for me, and my ego didn’t like it. Always the ego!

But because the mind searches for previous examples of ‘the feeling’ and labelled it ‘criticism’ it followed the pattern…criticise means being attacked, so we must therefore retreat into ourself and give yourself a hard time for not being ‘good enough’ because if we were good enough we wouldn’t have been criticised. See, it’s a very old child-like pattern around the notion of goodness which runs deep - we are encouraged from a young age to be ‘good’ children. And if we take that on as a truth as I did and most others did too, then when we feel we are somehow bad, we will have a pattern of giving ourselves a very hard time and give our power away in that moment of turning in on ourselves.

It serves no one to play the victim and give our power away. I don’t want to give my power away! And yes, it is a process, and yes, the reclaiming as I said, can help us to transform, because we have to, at some point, let go of our victimhood and that process, of digging deeper, can be enlightening, and can cause us to make decisions that change our life in innumerable ways, but at the same time, there are other kinder ways that facilitate, allow and support that too, and I’m definitely done with the old ways that disempower and close down my heart and soul to the world.

So seeing a pattern is helpful, because then we will more likely see it next time it comes too. And it will come. There will be a time soon when I feel like I am being criticised but I will have a better chance at making a better choice, a moment where I will be able to catch myself, and consider how I respond - whether I react the same way I’ve always done of retreat, withdraw, give power away and step into victimhood, or stay in my power, in my centre, acknowledge the situation and make a kinder and more heart orientated way of managing it. What I hope to do is catch myself and laugh at my silly monkey mind with its crazy mind games, to acknowledge what is happening and then just smile and move on.

Someone may well be criticising me, but I still have a choice about how I respond to it. At the end of the day people criticise us from THEIR perspective. It’s from their way of seeing the world and how they think we should ‘be’ within it. And at the end of the day why should we care? That’s their stuff not ours. You can be guaranteed that anyone criticising us, is criticising themselves far more. So we can be compassionate to that, and forgiving of their need to externalise their crap! We can be so good at projecting our rubbish onto others, but as the other, we have a choice about whether we let it affect us or not.

Anyway, its clear to say, from my various conversations with clients and friends that the moon was most definitely bringing up old patterns for each of us that now need to go, especially old patterns around loss of power and insecurity and closing of hearts. With that there may be heightened feelings of anxiety and paranoia, depending on our patterning. Tied in with all this is self worth, and the moon was also bringing up patterning around joy and deserving - do we allow our joy, move towards it, or when it appears do we sabotage it because we don’t feel we are worthy, deserving or enough for it? Further, are fearful of it being whipped away from us, so better not to go there in the first place, keep the heart a little bit closed?

I certainly noticed myself sabotaging joy because of my inherent vulnerability and when I acknowledged this it felt like a huge weight was released from my heart. I realised the subtleties of our defence and how we might think we’re open hearted and able to love unconditionally, but when it comes down to it, we can be very quick to pop up the defences and attach conditions to our love, based on previous experiences around loss of safety and giving our power away/feeling that we’ve lost control etc. In the process we allow our victimhood and start blaming others and we close our heart.

When i close my heart, as i did the other evening, I feel a depression because a part of me is not allowed expression. It’s not easy to explain, I make an attempt in my book on depression, but depression, that feeling of constriction and darkness is generally an indication that I’ve outgrown my life, that i need to let go of a pattern that is keeping my heart closed down and my soul in some way restricted. So when the trigger comes, it’s actually a gift, because itfgives us the opportunity to see it for what it is and break through to the other side. It’s never easy, we have to break down to break through, but this is all part of the journey to greater love and wholeness.

The reason its not easy is because a part of our ego construct, the part that is trying to keep us safe by setting up the pattern in the first place needs to drop away, it needs to be annihilated, but of course the ego doesn’t want to be annihilated so it fights. The fight is the messy bit because essentially we’re up against ourselves, but we can very easily externalise this and blame others and fight with them. It’s tough sometimes to work through our crap and see it for what it is. But if we have chosen the path of heart and spiritual growth then we have no choice. It doesn’t just happen. We have to do teh work. And the work is tough. And many give up and others get lost along the way. It helps to know we’re not alone and to have a good support network who can guide us through to the other side.

At the end of the day the light always follows the dark and sometimes we need to go into the dark to find a new way. It generally involves surrendering, letting go of everything we thought was true and real to instead be shown a new way. The new way will inevitably allow more heart and soul and make us feel infinitely lighter and more joyful in the process.

And on that note as we approach the lightest day of the year, we can anticipate more of our darkness popping to the surface to be cleared. So be gentle and follow the joy, pay attention to the patterns as they arise. I am reminded of Rumi’s poem, The Guesthouse, and how each thing that comes, however testing it might be, is really a gift to one you up to some new delight.

As for me, I’m off to Glastonbury on Sunday, for a little spiritual pilgrimage, ending up at Stonehenge for midsummer’s eve on Monday and sunrise on the solstice on Tuesday… my traveling buddy, Elijah, is coming along with me, so we’ll do some exploring, and my sister-in law, Star, and neice, Willow, are joining us at Stonehenge, arriving as they are from Australia with my brother, Ross, this afternoon. Exciting times!

Have an amazing weekend.

Love Emma x

Cycles

I went out dowsing last night, an utterly magical experience, with the sun setting one side and the moon rising the other, and the magic of the night revealing a couple of menhirs to me that I hadn’t noticed previously. It’s stunning in the lanes at dusk too, the smell of the honeysuckle and the elderflowers.

It pains me a little that we have to cut back hedgerows here on Guernsey, they were abundant previously with the pink campion and cornflower. Fortunately some sensitive hedge cutters have avoided the honey suckle, at least in the lanes by us. The elderflowers are in abundance this year, I’ve mangled to make some elderflower cordial with more to be made soon, anything to capture their fullness, Petit Bot hill is full of them.

What I love most though, is getting out in the moonlight and enjoying her energy on my own. My cycle is currently aligned with the moon, which means I’m in the dark stage, sort of back to front, in so much as I’ll likely be menstruating on the full moon, and ovulating on the new, while the moon is in the reverse, her full is like ovulation, and new like menstruation…the beginning of the cycle.

Some will say there’s a reason that we menstruate when we do, and especially if we are in alignment with the moon. I touch on this in my online Menstruation and Moon course, in so much as the white moon cycle and the red moon cycle. The white moon cycle is said to be the most common cycle and is linked to the new moon so when you’re on a white moon cycle, you bleed around the new moon and ovulate around the full moon.

Because this cycle mirrors the traditional cycle of the moon and Mother Earth, a woman with a white moon cycle is said to be in the mother phase of her life - either she wishes to conceives and start a family or she is focusing on nurturing and raising her children. This is due to the fact that the full moon is considered to be the Earth’s most fertile time - which is where we are at now. So when a woman goes through the most fertile stage of her cycle in alignment with the moon cycle, then both energies are aligned and enhanced.

This was my experience when trying to conceive through IVF. I write about it in my book Dancing with the Moon (you can buy from Amazon) about my excitement that even though I was taking all these various IVF drugs, egg collection happened on the full moon, so I was effectively ovulating then. It was from those eggs that Elijah and Eben came to be, albeit Eben frozen as a blastocyst for 3 years, which still blows my mind even now! Eben is completely aligned with the moon, in so much as my waters broke on a super full moon 6 weeks early and he has gone totally crazy on full moons ever since!

It’s said that women on a white moon cycle pull energy inwards towards themselves and use this to replenish themselves on all levels of being including physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. However, finding yourself on a white cycle doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the mother phase of your life. A white moon cycle could also indicate that you need to give more energy and nurturing to yourself and this may be an intuitive nudge reminding you that you need more love and care for yourself and your resources need to be directed inward instead of outward for a while.

White moon women were often favoured by the patriarchy (and still are today) because all their energy was solely focused on the men and children in their life…

The red moon cycle is less common than the white moon cycle and is linked to the full moon. If you have a red moon cycle, you will menstruate during the full moon and ovulate during the new moon, which is the cycle I’ve been on the last few months. In ancient times, these women were the known as the priestesses, the healers, the witches and the medicine women. In contrast to the white moon, these women are focused on channeling their creative energy outward.

These women may also be mothers and raising children but they are focused on, and passionate about, being in union with their community, teaching and leading others. Further, women with a red moon cycle have a deep desire for spiritual growth and self-actualisation, creativity, business, leadership, mentorship and personal development. Everything they learn and experience helps empower them from within, enabling them to empower other women around them.

The red moon cycle is also said to offer a deep connection to a woman’s sexual energy. This is the powerful and potent energy that patriarchy has tried (and continues) to disconnect women from. In theory, a woman on a red moon cycle is a woman of great power. Needless to say that it was these same women, labelled as witches, that were punished, vilified and ostracised from society for being in their power and therefore threatening patriarchy. This theme has certainly been coming up in my life and shared in recent blog posts, the trauma of this that threads its way through our wombs and genetic line from olden times.

It’s worth noting though that we can easily shift between a red and white moon cycle when life has been particularly imbalanced, challenging and/or frenetic. I have noticed this in my own life, that my cycle can swing between the full and new moons when there are big transitions in my life, and my body is shifting stagnant energy and seeking to move past some heavy emotional blocks.

For example, after my friend died last September my cycle did a turn, as I was asked to go deeper in and see what I hadn’t wanted to previously see, about various aspects of my life that weren’t working, nurturing, nourishing and/or supporting me. Menstrual awareness was extremely helpful to me, as the changes in my cycle encouraged me inwards to listen and understand more of what I was previously ignoring. When the changes had been made my cycle settled into a new alignment with the moon cycle and life has taken on a different rhythm.

Not to say that there aren’t still triggers. It was pre-menstrual symptoms, depression especially, that brought me to yoga and Reiki and holistic therapies back in my late twenties. I write about this in new book From Darkness Comes Light, how these symptoms were actually a blessing in disguise, not something to banish, turn away from or somehow numb from, but an opportunity to go within and see where my life was out of balance with my innate nature and indeed cycle. The anger and frustration I felt before my period was a result of me living in a way that didn’t feel in anyway aligned to heart. Once I made changes in my life and in my relationship to myself, and came more from the heart, the anger and frustration gradually dropped away.

Further, the not feeling comfortable in my own skin reflected the fact I had a very poor relationship with my body at that time, living with an eating disorder I didn’t want to accept, and giving myself a very hard time on a daily basis. The more I accepted myself and came to terms with the disorder, and took steps to heal from it, the less I felt squeezed prior to menstruation. The weepiness eased too, with the healing, because I was no longer holding on to repressed tears, and living in a constant state of overwhelm and stress. The sore breasts too, which turned up in my life when I was forgetting to nourish myself with love and kindness…

Not to say life isn’t without its stresses and now I use menstrual awareness as a form of spiritual practice, to notice when my stress levels have become a touch too elevated and I am entering the pattern of overwhelm and exhaustion. We each have our patterns and those of us pitta-orientated (from an Ayurvedic perspective) will tend to veer towards the overwhelm/frustrated, if we are out of balance, and to over extent ourselves …it’a constant awareness and I’m grateful to my menstrual cycle for being a guide.

Going back to the white/red moon cycles, of course it’s not a constant. Not every woman has a cycle that is 29.5 days long. From an Ayurvedic perspective certainly we are all different depending on our natural constitution and dosha (fault) and as I mentioned earlier, if life is throwing us challenges and stresses, and if we are going through life changes, then this will affect the length of our cycle too.

For example, pitta people tend to have a regular cycle that is between 28-30 days with heavy blood flow often lasting 5 days, and they are likely to feel angry ad aggressive prior to menstruation. Vata people will tend to have an irregular cycle, anywhere from 21 to 35 days, sometimes longer, with lighter/shorter periods and be weepy and emotional prior to menstruation. Kapha individuals will have a regular and longer cycle, maybe 28 to 33 days, with heavy blood flow lasting 5-7 days, and be lethargic and sleepy prior to menstruation. This just shows how different we can all be and how our cycle might not always align with the moon.

It’s helpful to know though that there is a tendency towards certain pre-menstrual emotions and that rather than denying them we can work with them. There is a reason for them! I know some women find their symptoms so extreme that they feel they have no choice but to medicate them and that is their right to do so. But I am also aware that working with my own cycle, they can be a messenger to help us better know ourselves and let go of whatever we are holding onto from our past or genetic line that needs to be cleared to help us feel whole.

They say that the more we do this work on ourselves in our menstrual age then the easier the transition to menopause. Menopause is a huge transition for women in their lives and some have a really hard time navigating it, for many this is the first time, during the peri-menopause, that they’ve even noticed they might have had a cycle as it starts to go astray, disorientating them, much like the post-natal period. In fact the two are often likened, so if you were conscious of navigating the post-natal phase of change then it might well make it easier to navigate peri-menopausal…maybe…

Furthermore, i have been told that the more you work with your menstrual cycle and do the healing required by the insight you gain through it, so the transition to menopause is easier - menopause will throw up all the unresolved stuff, and hence the excess pitta that many experience, the hot flushes, anger outbursts, overwhelm, disorientation and general loss of vitality, simply because it’s all coming up in one big go, asking women to go deeper still…or perhaps deeper for the first time, and to really feel into what they want to do with the later stages of their life. My Ayuvedic doctor says post-menopause is an incredible time in a woman’s life, no longer hijacked by her emotions on a monthly basis and thus there is nothing to fear…

For me, trying to be conscious of my cycle and working with it, has been a source of much insight and wisdom, and I’m grateful to the moon and the goddess for their holding and the deeper connection that this creates. No doubt when the time comes there will be support to navigate the peri-menopausal and menopausal states too, and

So enjoy the approaching full moon energy and all she is trying to reveal to you. I did have some clarity out in the lanes last night, her light no doubt helping to bring light to the previous shadow of awareness. This is a super full moon so her energy will be felt even stronger than usual! Connect with her as best you can, and be open to all that she reveals, however uncomfortable!

Love Emma x

Take a seat

It became clearer after working with clients this week that we are indeed being squeezed. It’s not an easy time and many are feeling completely exhausted and tired by all it. Unresolved patterns, especially those around insecurity, unforgiveness, distrust and betrayal, are coming up.

Eclipses change things. The ancients knew this. Many of the neolithic stone alignments were placed to be able to help the ancients know when an eclipse was coming. Eclipse interrupt the flow of the terrestrial magnetic current and this impacts us. The energetic shift bubbles on for a good while after the eclipse has taken place. The new moon has a similar effect so added to the ‘weight’ of the eclipse. It might well be a relief to make it to the full moon next week.

Not to say full moons are necessarily easy to navigate. They tend to highlight more of the shadows, the stuff we don’t want to look at. We can be really good at deceiving ourselves, of not seeing what is literally in front of our eyes, simply because it can be too painful to accept the reality of our reality - the fantasy in our heads seems easier and kinder even if it is just that, an imagining. Plus this next one is a super full moon, meaning its closer to the earth than usual so emotions may well be heightened.

The one thing that has become clearer to me though is this need always to determine more of the future, to make it somehow certain. You might think we should have already learned that lesson, in so much as the pandemic changed this perspective for us, we had only the moment, the future became increasingly uncertain and planning went out the window. But we are back in that zone again, of planning and making certain, and yet there is this little voice telling us not to get too carried away…all the media talk of Monkeypox illustrates this…

I’m not sure yet where i sit with all this, mainly because I haven’t yet done enough sitting with it! I did get out dowsing the other night though and that always helps me feel a little more connected, beyond the mundane of the 3D world. I finally got to visit the healing well opposite St Andrew’s church which I didn’t know was there. It’s funny how these things can be on our door step and we know no better!

But this is life ins’t it. There is a timing to everything. I have to remind myself of this when I get impatient and try to force things to happen. It’s not to say we can’t do that, only that it won’t feel as aligned as when we just allow life to unfold in its own pace. We are always reminded not to give up ourselves for the sake of it, but to enjoy the dance, and the movement between places - the uncertainty of it. Easier said than done and an ongoing awareness and deepening into faith, trust and positive perspective - Ishavara Pranidhana, which basically means surrender to a supreme being however you define ‘it’.

So if you are being squeezed, take note. Try not to collapse yourself into it but elevate the perspective, there are higher forces at work and this might be the time to literally take a seat (under a tree, on the beach, on sacred land, in a dolmen, be still) and let the universe carry on anon…no doubt you’re being re-aligned and all you have to do is to let go of trying to control the outcome. Having fun might help too!

The full moon will soon be upon us. I’d like to think it will make things clearer, the surprises that the eclipse brought in might well settle into something more sustainable, or maybe we just need to let go of that too…and see that the gift was in the shift in perspective, of opening us to greater potential…no doubt it’ll all become clearer in the next few days.

Happy Friday!

Love Emma x

Between moons

I don’t know what happened, but the new moon seemed to usher in a slightly turbulent and agitated energy. I mean, the universe has been ramping things up this year, lots of change, and the eclipse definitely brought in a huge shift, for me at least, and I am aware that the post-eclipse energy takes some time to settle, but nonetheless, it does feel that the previous new moon stirred things up a little.

There’s been a lot of air and fire it seems to me, lots of chatter and movement and lots of frustration and anger. I know I’m not the only one who has experienced an anger outburst seemingly coming from nowhere this last week. I haven’t had an anger outburst like that for a long time, not aimed at anyone, and always its a silly trigger, but I guess it helps to free up a lot of frustrated energy that was sitting somewhere inside me. Other have reported similar.

The ‘air’ in the air has resulted in children who did not stop chattering all bank holiday. In my own life I am aware of things still being very much ‘up in the air’. And emotions are running high. Or low. Or a bit of both. Up and down. There is a lack of consistency and stability. Even in the outer world, people are trying to get on with their lives, but things are not ‘back the way they were’ pre-pandemic. Look at all the flights being cancelled and the chaos this is causing for some, as they try to live old patterns of travel all over again. Escalating costs of living don’t help - food prices keep changing and keeping us on our toes…we are being asked to be more conscious of how we spend money and indeed earn it too.

For me that’s what this energy is highlighting - old patterns and the need for change. Old unhelpful and outdated patterns around guilt and trust especially, and how we value things in this world, for us to work through as the moon waxes in the sky. This next full moon is supposed to be ushering in a sense of fun and this does feel needed. It can get very serious on this healing and spiritually orientated path if we are not careful. The universe is no doubt having a laugh at us as we get stuck in our stories and outdated narratives and identifications.

I have been exploring some of these with Michelle Johansen through her systematic work and family constellations. It’s incredibly insightful and has helped me to recognise another theme which threads it’s way through things…that of the feminine and of the freedom that we women have been gifted in this lifetime, in comparison to how it may have been for those women down our ancestral line, since the time that the Goddess was rejected and patriarchy denied the feminine. Men have suffered the result of this too. I watched The Wickerman last week and this highlighted patriarchal and religious stifling.

Thank God to be living now and not then - even if I find myself moaning not the overwhelm that life for women now creates, because so much is expected of us and many of us crave more time simply in the home. This has been my orientation recently and I am grateful to work form home. Home is where the heart is they say and certainly a home needs the fire tending, of women being present to it and enjoying the space it provides. Lack of space is crushing for the soul and creativity especially and us women are creative beings. Trouble is, if we are always doing and rushing and giving, there is little time for spacious being.

There are many things to be grateful for - I have been reminded that there was a time when women like me and many of my students, clients and friends would have been killed for what we do, in healing and growing medicinal plants, for example. Its easy to forget that this distrust and guilt will run through the ancestral line, that we may be living our reality based on what happened to our previous family members, simply because of our DNA and the generational patterning that feeds its way up and down the line.

This has led me to reflect on medicinal plants and the way that we have commodified these, or made os many illegal and the harm this causes. Look at cannabis and its medicinal and spiritual use (this used in the right content btw, not sitting around doing bongs or smoking spliffs…) and how many lives are ruined here on Guernsey for small possession. But that’s a whole other story, and one I hope we will address as a society at some point. Anything we have a war on is only going to result in more pain and disharmony, when will we learn?

As always we have to come back to ourselves individually. The only way we can fix the outer is by addressing the inner. We know everything we need to know deep within us and the more we come back to ourselves the better for everyone. I was delighted to begin a new Yoni Yoga course on that basis yesterday, to join together with other women all keen to come back to themselves a little more and open to their innate knowing and wisdom.

Anyhow, I don’t know that I have any advice as such, but I have been reminded this week to live each moment as if it was our last and to truly look at those patterns that will be revealing themselves and to stand back and notice when we are entertaining victimhood and blame, as this is often when we need to notice more of ourselves, and take our power back again. Things are moving and that’s half the problem. My book, From Darkness Comes Light, is in its final typeset now and being reviewed by a couple of friends and family, soon to go through the next stage towards publication, watch this space. And we adjust as a family to our changes of consciously uncoupling I think they call it now, it’s a new way, and new ways need to find their way…

We did enjoy, the boys and I, a trip to Herm on Sunday. Yes we got to some stones, the Island is awash in them, it’s a sacred isle, but we also had fun on Shell beach. Oh how lucky we are to have Herm on our doorstep even if it has become a bit too much of a business for my liking, but this, sadly, is the way of the world…

Oh and Neptune is causing fogginess and confusion…so let that be…all will become clearer…

Enjoy the waxing energy.

Love xx