Happy Winter Solstice!

Friday December 22, 2023 at 3:27 AM marks the winter solstice

On this day, the sun is at its most southerly point on  the horizon as it rises, and it assumes its lowest position in the sky at noon. This day is called midwinter’s day and it is the shortest one of the year.

The annual solar movements along the horizon from one solstice to another describes a year. This apparent movement results from the earth’s orientation in space and the motion of the earth in its orbit around the sun. 

Early man was conscious of these movements along the horizon, as evidenced by the many dolmens which are aligned to the sunrise on both the summer and winter solstices, and the equinoxes too. 

One imagines that the winter solstice was especially significant, as confirmation that the light does indeed increase again. Until that point, one might have felt as if the world was descending into a darkness, from which there was no return!

Thus the winter solstice, known in the olden times as Yule, celebrates the return of the light, from now onwards the hours of light lengthen each day. It is also a time to celebrate our inner light, which keeps us going during dark days – there are inevitably times in everyone’s life when we feel as if the light may never return, but it generally does and we must not lose sight of that, everything is part of a whole, a cycle. 

Our ancestors understood that winter is the hardest time of the year, so the solstice was also a moment to stop, to look backwards in inner reflection and to look forwards to a more active season as the sun’s returning power brings increased daylight, growth and indeed activity. From now on the days will lengthen and the warmth will return. 

Megalithic monuments acknowledged the return of the sun. More famously, Newgrange in Ireland has a winter solstice alignment, when – quite remarkably – for around 4.5 minutes, the sun shines down the ‘roof-box’ of the Neolithic passage and illuminates the floor of the main chamber 18m away. Only lottery selected individuals get to experience this amazing event – pray for clear skies!

The outer Sarsen ring at Stonehenge also has a winter solstice alignment and it is possible to enter the site for free at sun rise – it is well worth the visit if you happen to find yourself in the area, to be able to access the stones up close only happens on the solstices unless you have arranged a private visitation. In Carnac in Southern Brittany, the majority of the remaining dolmens are aligned to the winter solstice sunrise – it was clearly a special time. 

Even here on Guernsey we have a winter solstice alignment, where the sun is directed by a little groove in one of the outer stones, all the way through the dolmen to where the male and female stones meet. It has been quite an honour to witness this over the years and I am grateful to the dolmen for revealing some of its mystery. 

It is important to realise that this festival is not the beginning, in a linear way of looking at things, but a rebirth within a cycle of wholeness. Traditionally homes were decorated with evergreens such as holly, ivy, mistletoe, yew and pine, all of which represented the cycle of life. We would do well to remember this too – life is full of ups and downs, we just have to keep on keeping on and nudge our way back to the light. 

Here are some suggestions for celebrating the winter solstice and honouring the return of the sun:

Go for a walk 🚶🏽‍♀️

The eve of winter solstice is a special night to go out for a night’s walk, embracing the changing energy of the land.

Watch the sunrise 🌅

Get up early and go to a special place to watch the solstice sun rise or the lightening of the sky in the South East. These are magical moments you will always remember.

Celebrate! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

With friends and family around a fire with a bowl of warming winter vegetable soup. 

Add a yule log to the fire 🪵

This tradition began in Norway, where a giant log was hoisted onto the hearth to celebrate the return of the sun each year

Collect & decorate 🌲

Holly, ivy, evergreen boughs and pinecones, symbolising everlasting life, protection and prosperity. Use them to decorate a table or mantle or to make a wreath. You could always gift this to loved ones

Watch sunset…

…knowing that the evenings will soon be extending

Dance 🕺🏻

Put on your favourite music and dance on the energy of the new beginnings that the return of the light brings

Light a candle and make a wish 🕯

A powerful way to symbolise your inner light

Join a yoga class or spiritual celebration 🧘🏽‍♂️

There is a Yoni Yoga class to celebrate Yule for women of all ages and levels of experience, including absolute beginners, at St Martin’s Community Centre this Friday, 6-7pm

Delicious dairy-free chocolate biscuits

A healthier option for a sweet treat!

Ingredients

175g organic oats

60g organic sunflower seeds

20g organic cocoa powder/cacao powder

40g organic coconut sugar

100ml organic maple syrup

65g melted dairy free butter or 65ml coconut oil

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan and line two baking trays with parchment paper

• Blitz the oats and sunflower seeds together in a food processor until you have a flour like consistency

• Tip the mixture into a large bowl and stir in the cocoa or cacao powder and sugar followed by the maple syrup and melted butter or coconut oil

• Combine the ingredients into a firm ball and leave in the fridge for 15 minutes

• Then use your hands to make small golf size balls of mixture which you can place on the baking tray and use a fork to gently push down on the ball to create a biscuit shape

  (The other option is to place parchment paper over the mixture and use a rolling pin to flatten it before using cookie cutters. I don’t find this works so well)

• Bake for 11-12 minutes before leaving them firm up on the trays before transferring to a wire rack to cool

  This recipe has been inspired from The Good Stuff by Lucinda Miller.

Balancing miso noodles

A yummy recipe to balance all the festive food!

Ingredients

4 cups of filtered water

8oz organic tofu cut into cubes

2 cups of chopped veg including some green leaves, such as sea beet (which you can forage at Saints and L’Eree), spinach, chard or kale

½ cup of sea veg, wakame works well

2 handfuls of organic rice noodles

2 tbsp of organic red or white or brown miso

Method

• Bring the water to boil in a large saucepan;

• Add the tofu, chopped veg and sea veg;

• Reduce heat to medium and simmer, covered, for about 10 minutes

• Meanwhile, prepare the noodles and add for the last minute of cooking

• Prepare the miso by mixing it in a bowl with some hot water (not boiling) to make a paste. Add to the soup and stir before serving.

  • Please note that you shouldn’t boil miso as this kills the enzymes

This recipe has been inspired from The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook by Kate O’Donnell

The moon packed a punch!

Well that moon certainly packed a post-moon punch didn’t it?!

Most people I have talked to have had a really challenging week with lots of old urgh energy coming up, enough to make us question whether we have really cleared those old patterns or maybe we were just kidding ourselves!

If this resonates then don’t despair, I have a feeling it was a part of the Gemini theme - showing two sides, the shadow and the light, so that the shadow can become the light and in the process you become increasingly whole, as if reclaiming fragmented parts, those bits discarded because of the underlying feeling, which wasn’t always so pleasant so best not to look at it and pop it in the shadows, hoping it will go away.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Those feelings we have stored in the shadows are what we might call Samskaras, or impressions from our past actions and they will get triggered from time to time by the external environment.

Sometimes we get so good at trying to keep the Samskaras hidden and not triggered that we will literally try and control our life and our life so that we don’t experience the triggers in the first place. It’s not that we do this consciously, just that the feeling felt so awful that we will do all we can to avoid feeling it.

This to the extent that even when triggered we will do something to distract ourselves again - maybe we eat something or drink something or go to bed or keep really busy, there are a myriad of ways that we disengage, disconnect and dissociate from our body and our reality to prevent having to feel that horrible feeling. But really this solves nothing, because if we don’t allow it to be there, if we don’t truly acknowledge and feel it then it cannot move through us and it is only ion moving through us that it holds its grip on us.

So we should be grateful then to the moon for coming in and shinning a light into the shadows so that we cannot ignore that feeling any longer. Not that its the moon per se but an external event that occurred around or over the moon that triggered your samskaras and brought them out into the open. They can be triggered by all sorts of things such as entering a place, meeting a person, reading about a situation, a particular experience, smelling something from then past etc.

Spending time with old friends I haven’t seen for years in old haunts I haven’t visited since Covid, actually brought up some lock down trauma, which until now had lain resting (or irritating) in the shadows, and the conscious me was none the wiser. It’s always heavy when our samskaras get triggered because the feeling is so unpleasant and there is no escaping it, at least not if one has committed to spiritual growth, one has to just work through it, feeling into it.

Remember our feelings, our emotions are just energy in motion, and hence need to be allowed to move through us, and not get stuck inside us. If suppressed or repressed, emotions play havoc with our heart and will find a place to get stored within the body, causing pain, tension and sometimes dis-ease.

Often there ism a correlation between the place in the body where the feeling is stored and the the feeling itself - overwhelm, responsibility burden will show up in the shoulders, fear of change in the elbows, feeling bitter will show up in the gallbladder, feeling empty in the stomach, feeling that life has lost its sweetness shows up in the pancreas, fear shows up in the kidneys, shame, unworthiness and humiliation in the pelvis, guilt in the throat, sadness, anger, grief and frustration in the heart and on the list goes.

Let us not forget too that we are not our emotions anymore than we are our thoughts, they come and go, come and go, all day long, and it is up to us which ones we give our attention. This is the reason some people err to the negative and some to the positive. Some have always just chosen a positive approach, placing more attention on happy and uplifting thoughts than on self depreciating and negative thoughts instead. It is the same with emotions, some people cling to a identify with some of them more than others and other people do a really good job of letting them flow without attaching anything to any of them.

Of course the emotion brings with it a story, which brings with it a mental imprinting such as a thought or limiting belief (all of this a part of the samskara). It is helpful then to pay attention to see what is held with the emotion, always there is a theme and without doubt, if we are open to it, then our angel, spirit and Reiki guides will be trying to get our attention, leaving oracle cards, books, coincidences in our path. Our job is to pay attention and not lose ourselves to the process but allow the process to change us, feeling the old feeling, noticing the mental imprinting and letting it flow, creating healthier samskaras in the process.

Yoga Sutra II.33 touches on this and it is recommended that deviant thought bombarding us, creating negativity, whether that be through doubt or fear etc, then we should change the perspective and focus instead on the positive. It is also recommended that at times like this we should practice yoga with the help of a teacher.

This of course because we can easily by-pass, not least spending our whole yoga practice thinking and not therefore being present to the body and preventing the union of body, mind and soul, but because we keep practising in a way we have done previously, always we should change things, even on our mat, in fact more so on our mat! A teacher won’t let us bypass, at least not knowingly.

Hopefully you have all navigated your way through but if not book for some Reiki, Reiki is amazing at helping us to understand the nature of our samskaras as they are triggered, getting to the underlying cause and source of any loss of wellbeing and helping to promote the healing process. It is in this way that we develop personally and spiritually and increasingly take responsibility for our health, wellbeing and vitality.

That moon certainly tried to move things through, lighten the heart, clear the solar plexus, strengthen the root, free the sacral, and open the throat. You might feel lighter now and clearer.

The Choice by Edith Agar is a remarkable read, not for the faint hearted in terms of the Auschwitz detail but if you can get beyond that, it is really interesting for those interested in psychology and healing and about our choices. Here’s the link to Amazon here

Enjoy the wane!

Emma x

Navigating change

The winds of change are definitely here, we’re at the end of Autumn after all, the Vata time of the year, when the elements of air and ether are at their strongest, ushering greater movement in our lives.

People tell me that they love change but I beg to differ. Even the Yoga Sutras (sutra II.15) tells us that our greatest suffering (dukkha) occurs due to change (parinama).

Sure we love change once it has happened and we can be assured of a happy and positive outcome but the process of change, of moving from one state of being to another, of stepping into the unknown without any guarantee of what might happen next – will we enjoy the new job? Will it work out moving in with our partner? Will we love the new country ? – All of these things can be potentially positive but there is always a moment, always a doubt, a last minute questioning whether we have made the right decision and wouldn’t we be better to maintain the status quo?

This because change brings fear and fear can cause us to resist change.

The mind LOVES certainty. The mind LIKES to ensure safety. The mind will do ALL it can to protect us even if that protection keeps us stuck, scared to make changes and move forward in our lives.

The mind also seeks to find evidence from our PAST to validate its resistance to change, and it LOVES to IMAGINE a FUTURE, usually from a worst case scenario perspective. The mind flip flops frequently between the past and the future and forgets to focus on THIS moment, NOW, when everything is OK. You’re OK aren’t you, right now, reading this?

Our life actually is one of trying to be OK. 

Always we are making decisions based on our motivation to be OK. Sometimes the decisions don’t work out as intended, sometimes our judgment is clouded because we don’t see clearly (Per Yoga Sutra I.6, the first of five activities of the mind is correct perception - sometimes we don’t perceive correctly – the second activity is wrong understanding/mistaken knowledge – we don’t understand correctly). Furthermore we can easily delude ourselves (Avidya, ignorance, appears as a klesha, an affliction of the mind, see Sutra II.3), especially if we are confronted with something scary, like change.

However, life is one of constant change, we cannot avoid it; every day the planet is turning, every day the sun sets farther south or north than it did the day before, every day the moon is in a constant process of movement from full to new and new to full, every day In our own lives we move from morning to midday, wake to sleep, birth to death. Even one second turning into the next brings miniscule (or sometimes huge) changes - we are a different person to the one we were ten years ago and no doubt we will be different in ten years’ time from how we are now. 

The change of any season is a great way to observe ‘change’ at work but especially now in Autumn. Supported by the increase in air and ether (and the resulting wind), the trees drop their leaves and those leaves return to the earth, where they started the first signs of life in the first place. As the trees move from full-life to a state of dormancy and hibernation throughout the winter period, they are preparing to burst into life again in the Spring. If they didn’t do this, the trees would waste valuable energy and nutrients trying to survive in conditions which do not support them.

So it is with us too. In this Autumnal time of year, by its very nature, Vata is all about movement and we are being asked to create movement in our own lives by letting go to create the space (remember Vata is space/ether and air) for the air to blow the new in - think of the heart chakra, represented by the element of air, sometimes we have a change of heart, sometimes something touches our heart and this changes everything. 

Our suffering arises when we resist this process, when we hold on to our leaves when they are ready to drop, when we listen to our head rather than our heart, when we stay stuck in unhealthy relationships, jobs and  friendships, when we keep feeding the same unhelpful and limiting mental patterning (habits, thought processes and behaviours), when we cling on and keep doing what we have always been doing because we THINK we know what’s best when all the time our body is screaming at us to let go and rest. 

How best then can we navigate change?

1. Acceptance is key 🗝

But acceptance can take time. We need to accept that we need to make changes in our lives. Spiritual Life Coaching is really helpful here.

More often than not we know we need to make changes, but we don’t always know what changes to make or how to make them. Often the change that needs to be made is internal, setting ourselves free from our conditioning and habitual thought processes and behaviours, healing old wounds and shifting core and limiting beliefs, letting go of outmoded ways of seeing the world and ourselves, changing perspective, as if awaking for the first time. 

Having someone help and hold space for us while we navigate all of this is incredibly helpful. Worksheets are provided between sessions for us to consider our limiting beliefs, our relationship with our body, our emotional state, our mental patterning, and the option of considering our diet and lifestyle from an Ayurvedic perspective too, as well as being supported by various spiritual practices including yoga and various breathing and relaxation techniques.

If this resonates, if you know you need to make changes but fear is getting in your way then do reach out and we can discuss how Spiritual Life Coaching may help you.

2. Cultivate greater faith 🙏🏽

Faith is the antidote to fear.

There is a wonderful Vedic chant from the Rig Veda called Shraddha Suktam, which is chanted to strengthen faith. The chant contains a verse, “Shraddha devanadhivaste” which translates as faith is our protection -  it really is!

Faith gives us the strength to make changes in our lives, to choose differently, even when there is no certainty of outcome, when we are asked to step into the unknown. 

3. Yoga practice 🧘🏻‍♂️

To cultivate greater faith we might delve deeper into our yoga practice, getting on our mat and taking conscious, comfortable, slow and steady breaths, lengthening into our exhalation, practicing asana (postures) in a steady and comfortable way, taking time to rest, engaging in a Yoga Nidra to work with a Sankalpa (intention) and take us deeper into the body. 

We might also enter into prayer - See Sutra I.23 where we are introduced to the concept of Isvara Pranidhanadva, an ultimate being, God, Universe and later, Sutra II.1 defines Kriya yoga as being the yoga of action with three key components, namely Tapah, which means heat/purification, doing something positive like getting on our mat, Svadhyaya, which means self-reflection, such as reading spiritual texts and seeing how they we can incorporate the teachings into our life and Isvara Pranidhanadva appears again as a reminder to surrender, appreciating the notion that we are not in control, that the world does not revolve around us, thus encouraging us to accept our place in things, that there is something higher.

The Yoga Sutras also reminds us in the first chapter (sutras I.13 and I.14) to develop a steady and balanced practice, which takes place over the long term, without interruptions, with a positive attitude, with enthusiasm and thoroughly if we can expect to see any positive changes.

We are basically reminded that there is no quick fix, that we are in this for the long run, NOT just when things are critical but all the time, so that the challenging times, like when we experience change, do not have to end up putting us into a critical state of mind – practicing regularly reduces our suffering. 

Explore the first three chapters of the Yoga Sutras with Emma, discussing various sutras and considering how they might be relevant to your life. Each session lasts 60 minutes and can be enhanced by a regular yoga and/or Reiki practice to help support general healing and personal and spiritual development. 

4. Spiritual practice 👁

We can expand our spiritual practice beyond our mat, to make all of life an opportunity to cultivate greater faith and help us manage change. We might visit sacred sites, spending time outside in nature, sitting against a tree, taking walks on our own by the sea, reading spiritual books, attending spiritual groups, studying spiritual subjects.

Spiritual Life Coaching can assist in helping you cultivate an authentic and consistent spiritual practice.

5. Reiki 👐🏼

Reiki not only supports our ongoing healing but also promotes our spiritual and personal development. Reiki helps to release energy blocks which will help to free us from the effect of previous trauma and the resulting mental, emotional, physical and energetic patterning that continues to inform our daily life.

In this way, Reiki helps to restore wholeness, positively changing the way we relate to ourselves and others, while increasing our energy and helping us to see our life more clearly. It is extremely helpful through periods of change, when we know something needs to shift, but we don’t quite know how to make it happen.

Becoming attuned to Reiki can also help as you can lay your hands on yourself.

6. Ayurveda 🌿

Staying grounded will help immensely too. Ayurveda offers us many options to help ease anxiety and fear when it arises, eating warming stews, curries and soups, using our hands to consciously prepare food or hands in the earth gardening, massaging our whole body with coconut oil and then lying in a warm bath (adding dead sea salts is really helpful too). 

There are herbal medicines we can take too, albeit these need to be prescribed individually for our specific needs.

7. Positive thinking 🔋

As stipulated in Yoga Sutra II.33, when we find ourselves disturbed and not sure of the best way forward, we can look at it from the other side, so we cultivate looking at things from a different perspective to try to resolve doubt and the lack of clarity. This can be like thinking, ‘well what will happen is I don’t do it versus what will happen if I do’. Or put ourself in another person’s point of view.

Thus if we are stuck in an attitude of fear or resentment, we have to positively cultivate the opposite. This involves working with the mind to see things differently, especially when we are stuck.

At such times we are encouraged to divert attention, reflect on potential consequences, take a step back to ask for advice, practice yoga and in such times seeking help from a teacher is invaluable. Spiritual Life Coaching can help enormously as referenced above. 

8. Loosening the grip 🌏

We take on habits, or a habitual thought process, and at the very beginning it might serve us in some way, keep us safe for example. But after some time, this way of being and living no longer serves us and it is time to let go and change, make new healthier habits or thought processes. The trouble is we humans are very good at grasping and attaching ourselves to there being one way. It is this inflexibility that ends up causing our suffering. 

If we can loosen our grip – aparigraha, the fifth yama or ethical principle/relationship to the world around us as noted in Sutra 11.31 means non-grasping, non-possessiveness, non-attachment – then in theory we can flow more easily moment to moment, adapting to change as it arises, allowing our transformation, and actually arriving in the present moment, experiencing it exactly as it is without needing to react to it.

9. Going with the flow 🌊

Sutra II.3 refers to the ‘kleshas’, the afflictions including attachment/desire (ragas) and aversion/hatred (dvesa) and how we alternate between the two, wanting and rejecting, liking and disliking, and how this causes unsteadiness in the mind.

If we can just let go of our preferences, then we can find greater equanimity. This is particularly relevant if change is forced upon us, sometimes we just need to go with it, let go of our preferences, to be shown that there may be another way – more often than not, redundancy, for example, while a shock, can be a blessing in disguise, presenting new opportunities. 

10. Bach Floral Remedies 🌸

Taking Bach floral remedies, the one for fear (Mimulus) or shock (Star of Bethlehem), or overwhelm (Elm) or the Rescue Remedy to help support generally.

11. Spending time with positive people 🪷

When we are navigating change, it is very helpful to spend time with people who are supportive of this.

More often than not people come from a place of self-service and they can be threatened when we make changes in our life, not least because they fear losing us (and their grip over us), but also because we indirectly encourage them to come out of their potential denial about the state of their life.

Many people like to put their head in the sand and they prefer it is those around them to do the same, so they don’t have to face their reality. 

12. Feeling into it 🫀

It can be really helpful to feel our fear and anxiety as they arise. To understand its root – which is more often than not, around our safety.

Remember FEAR as False Evidence Appearing Real and challenge it – where is the evidence that we will end up homeless, unwell, dead etc?

For more help please do reach out. The more comfortable we can be with the change, the easier it is for us to weather it when it appears in our lives.

Warming, Ayurvedic, vata-balancing recipes: