Comparing, criticising and judging...

The full moon is approaching bringing with it some pretty high and low tides with the equinox only a few weeks away, all of this supporting change for those who want to make the most of the opportunity.

When we think of change, we often think about changing the outside, moving jobs, changing career entirely, moving house, starting a new sport, something that is seen in the external, but actually the change really needs to happen on the inside, and it is a change that helps to make us whole, more of who we are beyond the various masks we put out to the world.

It is this change that is in the air, one of inner change and transformation, seeing more of our shadows and working with them to bring them increasingly into the light so there can be greater harmony between body, mind and soul.

I have noticed a few themes coming up, the three limitations of judgment, criticism and comparison. The moment we notice ourselves doing this, we might catch ourselves (we have to be quick) and remember that we have no idea what it is like to live in that other person’s shoes. We are trained from a young age to judge, criticise and compare and it is a game that we get caught up in with others, judging, complaining and criticising about someone else, it makes us feel safe, or validated, or superior. All of it, of curse, is just a mind game courtesy of the ego, a conditioning that keeps us limited.

Our thoughts create our reality. The more we are comparing, criticising and judging others the more we are likely doing all this to ourselves - again another training of the mind, to give ourselves a hard time and keep us disempowered and well, limited. The other side of this of course is to big ourselves up, we can be very good at doing this when working on ourselves, with a spiritual practice to boot, feeling ourselves superior to others because we see the mind game, but still we get caught up in it, regardless. The mind and the spiritual ego especially is ever so tricky!

The funny thing is, those we judge, criticise and compare ourselves against are the very people who are our greatest teachers, for they bring us the gift of the opportunity of seeing our shadow and bringing it to the light and learning from it. This will not only free us up mentally, reducing ours limitations, but it will free us up energetically, it will also help to change our external reality simply because we have stopped judging, criticising and comparing ourselves to others and holding ourself up to our own judgements, criticism and comparison. It’s an ongoing process, but one that can really change things the more we become aware of it.

So my advice is to notice who is currently triggering you and to reframe them into your teacher rather than your irritant and /or persecutor. Then use it as an opportunity to dig deeper into yourself and see what old and limited story you have been telling yourself. Remind yourself of your humanness and of their humanness too, and how we can never truly know what another is thinking or feeling and that we all have our stuff that we carry around with us. We might even cultivate some compassion here too.

if nothing else, it’s worth remembering that it’s always about us. As written on the temple of Delphi, “know thyself”. This the thyself without all the stories, narrative, falsehoods, limitations and faces that we hide behind. The moment we stop caring about what others think about us, is the moment we know we’ve brought a whole heap more light into our life and can drop a lot of the crap.

I’m looking forward to dropping deeper with some of you this week at Yoni Yoga and the Hatha Yoga class on Friday and also those of you coming to see me privately, ideally timed to optimise this moon’s energy of shifting things on and letting go and letting go and letting go again….

Oh and did I mention my book is almost ready for release…it’s in holding on Amazon…but will soon be let go of into the world…

Happy waxing moon!

Love Emma x

Living more lightly

It all started when we stayed in the yurt off-grid at Sarah’s place near Glastonbury (where I used to run retreats) before the summer solstice. She has been progressively moving towards sustainable living and it was so lovely to get one’s feet on the earth and switch off for 24 hours, living simply. The experience and my chat with Sarah really helped to begin a shift in mindset in the way I am living.

Then we went to Lihou and the lack of WIFI and the simple living resonated all over again. I was also astounded at the amount of waste we accumulated in such a short period of time. Our trip to Jersey was really the turning point though, or at least it got my attention to actually make some changes.

Here, the hostel had a strict recycling policy, and I was astounded to find that there was no facility for recycling plastics. From what I could gather plastic (other than plastic bottles, these could be recycled) would be sent off island to China, passing the problem elsewhere, or at least this was the story I was told. I noticed how much plastic packaging I was popping in the general waste bin and it alarmed me. It didn’t help that we were on holiday and thus our plastic wastage was more than it would be ordinarily.

I had already been having conversations with a friend who lives as lightly as possible here on Guernsey. It helps that he lives alone, but I am in awe of his lack of wastage, re-using where he can and avoiding buying food products that are packaged in plastic. He doesn’t have WIFI which is a dream for me, I would love to live without WIFI and a TV, let alone the morning sound of iPads, but life has become what it has become and I am not the only person living in this household, so if nothing else it enables me to practice tolerance, ha ha!

Then we had a friend come visit us from France, where he lives with his family on 50 acres of farmland where they farm sheep. He was telling me how they virtually live from their veggie patch and own eggs during the summer months, with their own frozen lamb and turkeys when required. I felt quite uncomfortable preparing lunch for him that first day, emptying plastic packaged after plastic packaged products from M&S, my shop of choice simply because it is close to where we live and I was short on time that day, the easiest option it therefore seemed.

But easy isn’t always a positive thing and I became very aware of my impact on the planet with all the plastic crap from the seemingly endless trays of soft fruits I buy each week for the boys. It started all sorts of conversations with all sorts of people about seasonal eating and how our children are so used to getting the same fruit all year around so that it isn’t a novelty or a treat anymore to eat strawberries, for example, as it was in my day - how old I feel, ha ha!

Then I had a chance encounter with a fellow healer and ex-Guern in the sea at Saints who was visiting the island. She now lives off grid in Brittany and we had a good chat about healing, her simple way of living and the demise of the sacred encountering with this planet. I left inspired and knowing that I really had to do something, make changes. .

I also finally got around to watching a documentary filmed by the States of Guernsey about what happens to our household waste here on Guernsey, which was part of Elijah’s home learning. It was interesting. Not least because it confirmed my concerns about pet food wrappings, that the pouches cannot be recycled. We make a point of buying tins for Bazza but I know that most of the food is only available in pouches (a mix of plastic and foil) and therefore in general waste, and while this is processed to produce RDF (refuge derived fuel) it’s still not ideal.

Did you know that the States collects approximately 350 tonnes of black bag waste each month? That’s the equivalent of the weight of almost two blue whales! Quite astounding that we produce so much waste. What is even more astounding, or not when one considers our inherent laziness, is the fact that people put stuff in the recycling bags that can’t be recycled, such as pet food pouches and Hello Fresh products (it might be fresh, but it has a carbon footprint) which means that someone or something has to sift through and separate, adding to work loads and processing. If only we could all pay a little bit more attention!

With a new month looming I thought I might put it to best use by making changes. As you know one of my mantras is “be the change you want to see in the world” and I do have a sense that if we all lived a bit more respectfully and lightly, and indeed consciously (how I wish everyone was Reiki attuned too, for example, to bring more love and harmony to self, which would then be reflected back in the world), we might create a world like the one the ancients lived in, where they built megalithic temples to honour and harness the earth’s energy, where they lived with deep respect for nature and this wonderful planet we live on.

But alas, still we have these influential individuals running the show; Elon Musk continues to send satellites into space, Marc Zuckenberg, quoted as saying “You can be unethical and still be legal; that’s the way I live my life.”, continues feeding misinformation and political bias on social media, controlling what people see on Facebook and how they may therefore see life, and don’t even get me started on Bill Gates. Yes, sadly our world is influenced by some big influencers who all have a whole heap of money and who say they’re trying to help the planet, but I don’t see that playing out in reality.

But really, it doesn’t matter about them, it matters about us, and doing what we can do, individually, to make the changes that we’d like to see in the world! I’m a fan of enquiries. I did an enquiry once into a life of sobriety which, well, led to sobriety, I did an enquiry into life without social media, which led to a life without social media in it, I did an enquiry into life without a smart phone and this has thus far led to a life without a smart phone (I’ll be honest though, the Nokia is a pain in the arse, easier just not to have a phone, please don’t text me on it if you expect more than a one word answer!).

So this enquiry is about living more lightly, buying from hedges as much as I can, avoiding buying anything in plastic packaging and reducing all waste. I already make my own deodorant, perfume and bath oils, while a friend kindly makes me face cream, so i just need to expand now to hair products. I am hopeful all of this will positively affect my bank balance too, but let’s see, I don’t expect it to be as easy as I might want it to be and I have a busy month coming up…I’ll let you now how it goes.

In the interim, take a look outside, one late, dark and clear night and notice the number of satellites in the sky. It’s really quite scary what we’re doing, and we don’t even know about about or have a choice in it…so I guess a reminder to make the choices we can make to help support nature and this beautiful planet we live on.

Love Emma x

Wait until you know

I didn’t really think too much of it, this wave of energy I suddenly have for getting things sorted, clearing out, catching up and re-organising, until someone mentioned that this new moon is in the sign of virgo, which is all about being, well, organised!

But there’s more going on with this moon then just organising or maybe it’s all related, as we head towards the new school term and all that this brings. This seasonal shift is one of huge change, a big letting go into the flow of the darkness and trusting that this takes us where we need to next be.

On a practical level, the new term does involve some effort, at least for those of us kitting out and preparing children. But it’s more than that, there’s an emotional upheaval too. On the one hand many will be desperate for the new term to begin so they can have some quieter times without the frenzy of children, and for others, there will be a sadness about seeing less of their children, let alone the panic about the new timetable and all that this brings in terms of juggling and organising school drops offs/pick ups, lunches, activities, home work and everything else that needs to be remembered and achieved.

Dichotomy is the word that keeps coming up for me, mainly as I am going to be putting one son into the school system while another stays at home with me. So on the one hand everything changes again because we’re back into the rather testing school routine of having to be somewhere at a particular time and having to toe a certain line, and on the other, I can continue anon meeting with other home school friends and their children for our alternative and unconventional way of being and learning.

I know that others are feeling the same. Maybe not about education, but generally about being pulled in two opposing directions, the material and the need for money and security and cash to pay the bills, and the heart, which speaks in an entirely different language to mainstream and conventional living. For many, therefore, it is a confusing time and things are up in the air - which is interesting, as autumn ushers in more Vata, the elements of air and ether, drying us out and causing more airiness and airheadedness too, you have been warned!

In many respects I can’t help thinking that life is even more confusing now then it was during the pandemic itself. The pandemic shook things up and forced us to live differently and whether we liked it or not, accepted it or not, it did change things on a very fundamental level and only now are some people feeling the effects of that. Many have tried to carry on life as it was, but after the initial joy of freedom of travel, they’re left knowing that there’s more to life than work and holidays and that there was something they tasted during the pandemic that has made them question things and the way they see life whether they wanted to or not.

I guess what I mean by that is that people woke up. They might have already been awake, but they woke up more and the wake up is around systems and institutions and the various and many ways we have been taught to see the world and view our leaders and politicians and live according to their decision making. Many are questioning the state of the world and their place in it. Many are realising that as far as we know it, we only have one life in this lifetime and maybe there’s a way to live it that is different to how we might once have considered it.

That there is this voice within us, that catches our attention from time to time. A voice that has been getting slowly louder over the last few years. A voice that speaks of another way, perhaps a more gentle, sustainable and community based way that speaks of love and change, or one that speaks of simplicity and peace. A voice that questions things which were never questioned previously. A voice that is wondering what kind of life we’re creating for the next generation. A voice that questions whether it truly is sustainable for the human specie to live at such a pace with all the noise and expectation, to say nothing of all the information buzzing around our energy field day and night, day and night.

In my work, the same energetic pattern keeps presenting itself over and over again. A crown chakra craving more attention, wanting to open to deeper spirit and faith, and a root desperate for change, to re-root in a different way, to tread a different path. And in between all this a solar plexus that is struggling to digest all of what has happened and move beyond the fear of what might happen if the third eye and heart are to be believed with all their knowing and longing and dreaming, and a sacral chakra that whispers of the divine feminine and passion and pleasure and creating a life that is truly worth living, of being able to say, “I love my life and I am genuinely and eternally grateful for it, thank you”.

And this is a life that is not dependant on external validation, that is not about how much money is being earned or the title that accompanies that earning potential. Because let’s face it, at some point that drops away and what then? I was talking to a client about this earlier, about the 2 years it took me to unravel my life and identity post-finance career and accept the changes that this brought with it, to find a truer version of me beyond the external feedback of worth I had been receiving based on a job title and place within an organisational hierarchy, without the regular pay check that gave me a false sense of security and without the ‘conventional’ identity that fed my need at that time to care more about what others thought of me than I cared about myself and being true.

The trouble is we all care too much at times, about what other people think about us and our compliance with what is expected of us; we’ve been trained from a young age, makes it tricky to make changes, at least make them without feeling guilty about it, vulnerable, self-conscious, or self-critical. We hold ourselves up to our conditioning, we hear the voice in our head, the voice of our mum, or our dad, maybe both, of our teachers, of our care takers, of those who have influenced the way we think and see the world. We are limited and controlled by these voices that are not our own.

It takes work to hear beyond these voices and access our own intuition…and believe…and trust…in it. Then it takes courage to act on it, a lot of courage and standing in our power, staying true, not losing our centre, and being strong enough to stay there too, not to waver and go back and suffer on and on and on, wondering how it might have been different if only we could just let go of those voices in our mind that control us day in and day out, the mind has a lot to answer for, our mind, our collective minds, creating a world that keeps us limited and controlled. We have to wake up and stay awake. We have to be bold enough to do it differently, to do it OUR way.

Sometimes though we just don’t know. We know changes are required, we know that a new way needs to be forged, but we don’t know enough yet to make a decision that might truly change things. We play around with ideas, some more radical than others, but its all a confusion in our mind. We just can’t make a decision, nothing is clear yet. My advice then, is to just keep on keeping on. Until you know, you don’t know and best to wait until it’s clear. It does become clear, it just takes time sometimes to filter through the craziness of our minds.

I share in my new book, From Darkness Comes Light, which should be published in the next few weeks, about making a pivotal decision in my life, when I was approaching 30 and changes needed to be made because I wanted to write and get out of the finance industry, and of playing around with ideas of returning to university to study magazine journalism, and how when it came down to it, and I sat on my friend, Vicki’s, sofa watching her paint her living room walls, she heard me say how all I wanted to do was travel, practice yoga and write about it, and hey presto there it was, just I didn’t hear it, as I didn’t think it was an option, for various reasons, which you can read about in the book itself, but alas that is what I ended up doing.

And here I am, 18 years later, reminded of this, because it hasn’t really changed, not really, just i hasn’t been possible the last eight years with a younger family, but that urge is still there and it is coming back again now the boys are a little older, and still the obstacles in my mind appear, but I have learned now to trust that if the heart has a sense of what is needed, and I can surrender to that and trust in it, then the universe will create the necessary opportunity. We live in a universe that knows only love, we ask, it gives, we just need to be aware what it is we are asking for…and whether it is truly in the interests of all levels of our being.

Reiki helps enormously to find our way through the confusion and I am eternally grateful to Reiki for this very reason, I don’t like to think where my life would be now without Reiki in it, still smoking and drinking my ay into oblivion each night with the pain of living a life out of alignment, or dead for that very reason. It was my closeness to death that initiated all of this, all that has come since that fateful night back then, all of which you can read about in my new book soon;-)

This isn’t a plug for my book, or for Reiki, albeit I am super keen that every person on this planet has the opportunity to be attuned to Reiki because it really positively changes things and we are going to make that easier in September by reducing the cost of our online Reiki Level One learning (please note those of you on Guernsey can come and see me in person for the actual attunement, or you can do by distance too, especially if you are off island, distance is no limitation in Reiki!), this is to reassure those of you feeling this moon energy and going through some changes that it will become clearer in time.

Often the confusion is part of the process as it asks us to dig deeper, do things we might not do, get a Reiki treatment, look at our diet, try some yoga, take an art class, swim in the sea, anything with might just shift our awareness even just a little bit, because sometimes that shift in awareness, and a clearing out of the old, is all that is needed. And this is a time for letting go, and of establishing new routines and timetables, look at nature, it’s letting go into a new season, leaves falling, colours changing, such beauty in its ability to surrender all that’s been.

So embrace it all, get quiet and still and let it all go and wait and wait some more until you know, and when you know, go for it, make the decision and commit to it.

Happy new moon - enjoy today’s dark moon!

Love Emma x

Fun on Jersey!

We’ve just returned from a fab family three day trip to Jersey, I had no idea our sister isle could provide so much fun for the children and megalithic joy for me!

We stayed in the hostel at Durrell’s, part of the Zoo complex, which meant that we also got free entry to the zoo. I can really recommend this place, quiet, incredibly clean, and just really easy with the children. It helped enormously that we were staying at the same time as a bunch of lovely ladies from the UK, one of whom was there to swim between Jersey and France, it took her just over 7 hours, amazing! One of the ladies is a yoga teacher so each morning they practiced together outside in the beautiful garden, me practicing on my own under a tree, all six of us enjoying the peace and tranquility.

As chance would have it, we were staying at the hostel at the exact same time as another home school mum and her two children. Eben especially was delighted for the play friends and the three of them ran feral, Elijah joining in from time to time, when he could be encouraged away from his iPad! Breakfast is also included in the cost of the accommodation and you do have the option to use the kitchen to prepare food as long as Durre'll’s don’t have a function on, I do highly recommend it for a family, as long as you don’t mind bunking it and sharing facilities (there’s plenty of communal toilets and showers).

As luck would have it, by staying at Durrell’s I was super close to two main dolmens, one of which, La Faldouet, I visited a couple of times as it is abolutely amazing, especially at night with the stars overhead and the enormous capstone glowing in the night air. Le Courperon is pretty potent too perched on the cliffs. I was lucky to get a whole hour to myself inside La Hougue Bie, which is said to be one of the ten oldest buildings in the world, built long before the Pyramids built to align perfectly with the equinox. It’s rather amazing!

We were visiting Jersey with our friend, Stu, and his two boys, their wife/mummy being my friend Marie-Noelle who died from cancer last September, Stu is from Jersey and was staying elsewhere, but we met up during the says and the boys had a lot of fun our first day at the zoo (the butterflies and pigs were a surprising hit, and the orang-utans too of course, oh and gorillas) and lunch and a swim at Rozel Bay and then fun was had at the water slides down at the Merton, albeit I made the most of that opportunity to leave the men and boys to it and head off to explore La Hougue Bie on my own, the joy of having the car!

The next day we headed to aMaizin Adventure Park, which was a real hit and we spent most of the day here in the end bar a trip to St opens for lunch, and I left them to it for a bit to find Monts Grantez dolmen on some National Trust land above St Ouens, which is an incredible dolmen, there is a side chamber that is phenomenal energetically. I was also lucky to get a swim in disorientating to be able to see Sark in the distance, because usually I’m on Sark seeing Jersey instead!

Back to the maze, well there is a maze, a maize one funnily enough, which is really impressive, albeit I admit to getting a bit bored by the end! The adventure park though has lots of other things, go-karts, bouncy things, tractor rides, mole hill, crazy golf, outdoor play and indoor play equipment, aerial runways etc etc, lots of things to keep them busily entertained, a definite highlight!

Our last day we spent just the four of us and visited the amazing (there was definitely an amazing theme to the trip!) charity shop at Durrell’s. I do love a charity shop and this one is spacious and filled with some cool stuff, well worth a visit if you are into them and all for a good cause too, for as much as I don’t like seeing animals in captivity, I do appreciate the work that Durrell’s do and just wish we lived in a world where a zoo is not required to protect endangered species in the first place and they could all live in the wild naturally.

I took the boys to see some of the dolmens and we went for a swim at high tide down at Bouley Bay. We did have a bit of a wasp drama was the only thing. Here on Guernsey, at least in St Andrews we have had a real fly problem this summer, which is being investigated by the authorities - those of you who have come here for a private session will be well aware of my efforts to keep the flies out of the healing space. Jersey has a wasp problem though, tons of wasps, and unfortunately Elijah got stung on the beach, and this sent the boys into quite a spin, so the whole beach were definitely aware of their fear of wasps and daddy was instructed to walk behind us with the food bag, which was funny at the time!

We also chanced upon an arboretum, up near the airport, established as a memorial to someone who died back in 1975. There are various trees from various parts of the world and with E as a tree man, he was keen to explore it more. It is a beautiful walk, we ended up doing all of it, around the reservoir, which probably ended up taking 1.5 hours in the end, if not a bit more, as we explored paths that took us off the main path, and we stopped at times to take in the trees, the Australian eucalyptus and the American red woods are especially amazing.

We found a really good place to eat, at least to cater to our needs, up in Trinity at the Trinity Arms, which offers some vegan options for those who avoid dairy. It has a play area too, which is always helpful! This all before our boat journey back to Guernsey, which was inevitably delayed, so we didn’t get home until 11.30pm, a little late, but all part of the adventure nonetheless and I’m sure we’ll eventually catch up on sleep but this summer is full on, non-stop activity, and while autumn is in the air, we should still have a few more weeks of being able to make the most of the sunshine.

Jersey is fab for the children though and for adults too actually, I saw it in a different light this time. I used to have to go to Jersey for work, and prior to that for studying, and prior to that for inter-island netball and volleyball games and partying, and prior to that for surfing so I have seen it from different perspectives, not all of them necessarily uplifting, I loathed the ICSA studying weekends especially! So it was really lovely to connect more with the land and its megalithic history, and to make positive memories with the various families.

More on the changing energy and things being up in the air to follow as we wane to the new moon on Saturday.

Love Emma x

Moon time on Lihou

We’ve just had an amazing time on Lihou island with a mix of family and friends. It wasn’t planned to be this way, we were just lucky with the dates, and the extra night offered to us due to a cancellation, which found us able to watch sun set and then turn around and see the moon literally rise the other way, our first night, and then another sun set and moon rise, a little later, the next night.

The weather was sublime, a much welcomed north easterly wind keeping things cooler than they might otherwise have been, and lots of walking the land, swimming in the sea and the Venus Pool (what a treat to have this all to ourselves) and opportunity to connect with the island and its magic at night too.

Needless to say after two nights of slowing down and connecting with nature on this deep level, following the ebb and flow of the tides, the movement of the sun and the moon in the sky, the chatter of the birds, the rush of the wind and the general back to basics experience with children able to be free, wild and feral, returning to Guernsey was its usual challenging self, and I’m pretty sure others would have also like to stay for longer, but alas Lihou is a popular place to holiday.

I was back here in time for the full moon itself, an Aquarius super full moon, the last super moon of the year and it was stunning, a bright orange glow as it rose, but I have to admit to being too tired to stay up too late with it this month, albeit I did manage a moonlit walk, always good for reducing pitta in the body, so a bonus in the middle of a heat wave when our pitta is especially challenged!

The full moon brought clarity with it about the direction that life might now flow, of where there has been imbalance and how one might balance that out. It’s all about the balance though, isn’t it, I was talking to a friend about that yesterday, how we find our way, how our hormones and menstrual cycle can help us to become more aware of imbalance in our lives and do something about it if necessary.

I have found it really fascinating observing the changes in my menstrual cycle this last 11 months since Marie died and my life took on an unravelling, with copious changes, some rather significant ones too, since then, and how the premenstrual symptoms have eased as my life has taken on greater authenticity and alignment to my truth - how those symptoms were merely highlighting my frustration at life being so misaligned in the first place.

It’s on an ongoing awareness. and while life has taken on a more gentle flow, of a settling into this new way of being, of a lifestyle that supports our eldest’s need for home education, while earning money to support a growing family, and a longest son who has manic energy levels at times, and an attempt at consciously uncoupling whilst co-habiting and co-parenting, well it’s as moment by moment experience and one that might find me in moments of despair seeking solace on my mat and at other times marvelling at the wonder of all of this and how we have the capacity to find this way, differently and lovingly, reminding me that there is always a way and until we know that way, we just have to hang on in there and keep listening.

What has become apparent is the relentless nature of the summer holidays and especially with the weather being so amazing that every day brings with it beach and sea swimming adventures, and the most challenging aspect of that, is the constant taking on and off the blasted wetsuits! An amazing investment fo our boys this year as they delight in the sea but my gosh, I am looking forward to a break from the putting on and off of these tricky things! Still, high tides at Fort Grey or dawn at Vazon have just been utterly amazing and I am eternally grateful to live on Guernsey, even if it does feel so stupidly busy at times.

I’m slowing things right down (she says) these next few weeks the summer. We’re off to Jersey anyway and hopefully have more opportunities for back to basics land experience, looking forward to that, and more memories made while this glorious weather lasts, before the turning of the wheel and another cycle begins, but for now I am contented to just flow with things. The blackberries are already here and we really could do with a big dollop of rain, the land is dry, dry, dry and all my plants are dying back already, but this too reminds us to take better care, and the rain will come, so let us rejoice in the sun for now. On that note, it’s time for a high tide swim!

Happy summer holidays!

Love Emma