The mind and its control
I’m on Sark as I type this, the wind howling outside and rain lashing the window, after what was a stunning weekend. Sark is always at its best in spring, the flowers are incredible and it’s quiet, at least compared to the summer.
For me this was my favourite Sark retreat yet, because of its intended intact with only ten students all of whom were keen to do deeper into their practice and their healing and this made such a difference to the group energy. Stocks held us all beautifully, it is a magical spot, and being able to use the Cider Room to practice yoga was amazing, not least because it meant everyone could stay on sight, but because it is a beautiful yoga space.
Retreats always bring stuff up for those of us leading and indeed attending, whether it is overcoming anxiety about the boat, or anxiety about leaving family, or irritation about the room not being just right or annoyance that the food isn’t as tasty as one is anticipating, or the challenges of being in a group environment and all the foibles that we have which might rub each other up the wrong way after a few days spent together, always there is something to learn about ourselves!
I have been learning a lot recently about the nature of the mind’s need to stay in control to appease our underlying fears whether those be around safety, or abandonment, or rejection, or criticism, or whatever theme might weave its way through our lives, often from childhood trauma.
Trauma has a lot to answer for in the way we live our lives and relate to ourselves and others. We have to be careful as we can easily overlook our trauma, assuming that others have suffered more, but trauma doesn’t need to look a certain way, and sometimes it’s the seemingly incongruous stuff, which can traumatise us throughout our lives unless we do the work to heal the root.
I have become increasingly conscious that many of the decisions we may have made during adulthood are in response to trauma and avoiding feeling the feeling that the trauma created in the first place. This can cause the mind to do all sorts of things to avoid those feelings.
At the end of the day, the mind likes to feel that it is in control because then it allows us to feel a sense of safety. The trouble is, when the mind doesn’t feel in control because whatever it does to control is challenged, then we can feel extremely unsettled, and suffer all over again.
For example, there were events in my childhood which caused me to feel unsafe. Each event compounded the one that came before and over time my mind found ways to try to ease my mental (and indeed physical) discomfort. For a good while I felt unsafe going to sleep, not because of my immediate family, but because of a neighbour who liked to spy on me and terrorise me by silent phone calls and being caught wandering around the family home on occasion. I wrote about all this in From Darkness Comes Light so you can read more about the story there.
The point is, that I was scared for the safety of my family, my Mum, my Dad, and my brother, who I loved dearly, we are a close family. I would feel increasing anxiety in my stomach during the evening, not that we knew this was anxiety, we thought it was growing pains, and I developed a fear of being sick. To appease all these fears I started tapping my fingers in an obsessional way along the bed frame, it had to be just so. I also started becoming obsessed about the cleanliness and tidiness of my immediate environment - everything had its place in my bedroom and was colour coded and very today, folded a certain way, hung just so.
Later, in the middle of A-levels and with the fear of going to university and leaving my family ahead, let alone the pressure of A-levels and wanting to go to the university of choice, I developed an eating disorder. This was the ultimate control of my mind really, to completely over ride the needs of my body and determine what I ate and when. I wrote about this in my book too so won’t go on about it here. As you can imagine it wasn’t pleasant, but I see now how it was just my mind trying to bring some semblance of control into my life, to allow me to feel safe.
This because now my mind was constantly busy, thinking about everything being in its place and what I was eating, and so it was consumed by this to the extent that I didn’t feel the feelings in my body so easily. Of course there was a lot of judgement and self criticism too, it is difficult living up to such high expectations for oneself, down to how clothes are folded and how you sign your name on a card - I couldn’t rest easily, couldn’t sleep unless everything was ordered as my mind needed.
At university I discovered that drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis eased the relentless of my mind and caused me not to care quite so much, albeit now I was challenged by the fact I had ‘gone off the rails’ and was behaving in a way that was kind of alien to my soul. Admittedly cannabis was actually helpful from a soulful perspective, as a plant medicine, but of course I wasn’t using it in that capacity, I was experimenting, but also numbing and it was illegal anyway, so that really challenged my ‘good girl’ persona, let alone the damage being done by smoking which concerned me endlessly.
Of course an awful lot has changed over the years and yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda have gifted me healing, transformation and in the process, mental freedom. Yoga of course is all about the mind, about containing it, so that it doesn’t run riot, and so that it is our servant, rather than us being the servant of it. There are levels though and more subtle levels of control at that.
I recently stumbled across more of the mind games, and watched my mind when one of our bags didn’t make it to the place we are staying here on Sark. The bag had our cooker in it for us to cook the boys dinner, and also my organic tea and plant milk, which I really like to drink in the morning, plus Ayurvedic herbs and snacks for the boys etc. The bag not turning up threw my plans and my mind was a touch agitated, not least because we had to find another way to feed the children, and this after having taught yoga when all I wanted to do was lie in a bath, but because I was concerned how I would lead a whole day of yoga and Reiki the next day, without drinking tea!
While on the one hand I was very aware that this was all first world problems and the bag would undoubtably turn up at some point, my mind was agitated to the extent that I dreamt of organic hazelnut milk and I woke a little disgruntled that I didn’t have any Ashwaganda to take, nor any tea to drink. Of course there was tea at the place we were staying, but I don’t really like drinking black tea in bleached teabags because my mind knows that is not all together good for you, or the environment, and it can be harsh on the stomach.
Yet I drank it and survived and as the day unfolded I began to realise that the bag getting lost was actually the universe helping me to see more of my mental patterning and need for control, and the way in which the mind can so easily be thrown off balance. At the end of the day, the mind likes to feel in control because that makes it feel safe, and when the mind isn’t in control it gets completely thrown and we can lose our centre, becoming stressed, anxious and/or irritable; just feeling uneasy if nothing else.
I began to see much more clearly, how the decisions we make, are not necessarily made from a place of heart or flow, but from a place of avoiding the feeling of discomfort of the unknown. And actually this is exactly what spiritual practice gifts us over time - the ability to settle more easily into the unknown and uncertain. Because let’s face it, the future is unknown and uncertain, so the more comfortable we can get with that, the less triggered we are when things don’t go to plan.
We have to remember that the mind knows only what it has experienced in the past. So it will use the past as a reference point. If we have suffered trauma in the past, it will do all it can to avoid further trauma by creating patterns that it feels will help us avoid experiencing those feelings again. So in relationships if we have suffered abandonment or rejection we will do all we can to avoid this happening again, which might cause us to make ourselves invaluable to the other person, mothering them, or over giving to them, somehow making them dependent on us to get their needs met, so that they won’t abandon or reject us.
This might mean that we negate our own needs, and can end up in unhealthy and toxic relationships, or one of co-dependence. It might also mean that we compromise our sense of self. I think it was Gabor Mate in his latest book who wrote about the choice we have as children, to be authentic or to receive the attention of care givers, that often we have to choose between the two, and frequently we give up being ourselves and our authenticity, in our quest to receive attention. We can take this into our future relationships unless we are onto it and realise what is driving our choices sub consciously.
Furthermore, if we have a pattern around feeling unsafe, then we may sub-consciously seek a partner who makes us feel safe, but again, while that need may be met, to appease our mind and the effect of our trauma, we may negate other needs and put up with certain unhealthy behaviours and ways of being, such as allowing outlives to be controlled, which in some strange way makes us feel safe, and yet at the same time can limit our potential.
Often what we think is love is trauma bonding, where we come together with another with similar trauma so we understand each other, but again, unless we are consciously working to heal our past and set ourselves free from the mental patterning that arose from the trauma, then we end up stuck together, almost feeding each other’s trauma and ways of being that are again, not always healthy, whether that be over drinking, taking drugs, over working or obsessionally exercising together etc.
Of course our unresolved trauma and the mental patterning, habits and behaviours, can cause us to do all sorts of things like keep super busy so that we don’t have to feel - and of course this has been normalised in our society so is not seen as a problematic per se, at least not as an avoidance of deeper work. It’s the same with work, if we work excessively, also normalised in our society, then this also keeps the mind busy so that it doesn't need to fret about the unknown and the uncertain.
We can get very good at planning too, and organising, again, trying to make the unknown future known and certain. This too is normalised as a society where we are constantly encouraged to plan ahead, whether that be for Christmas, Easter or the summer holidays, or work meetings or whatever it may be, we can easily schedule our year so that our mind feels more comfortable knowing what is ahead - or what it thinks is ahead, because of course plans change.
The universe you see - especially if we are doing this work - has a habit of throwing in curved balls just to remind us that we are not in control and life is not known and certain. The pandemic was a classic example of this and look how it shocked everyone and caused a huge loss of mental wellness. The vaccine was an attempt to restore order, try and show that us humans are in control, but everything is subject to cause and effect.
It is interesting when we start looking at our lives and enquiring into the underlying reason for our choices, love or fear? So many choose occupations, not necessarily for the love of it, but because of avoiding their fear of say, not having enough money, or not being accepted by friends of family, or being judged differently, or needing to prove one’s worth externally, or needing to keep busy so as to avoid feeling, or being judged for being lazy, or not good enough, or all the other drivers which underlie our decision making.
To choose from the heart, to follow a path of love, is not easy. We can sometimes kid ourselves, as I have done at times, that we are living from the heart, but sometimes that love is conditional on getting a certain need met, and if that need is one of avoiding feeling our fear, then we are coming from a place of fear ultimately, and not love - the mind controls the heart. Loving unconditionally is challenging, as it demands a certain vulnerability, it asks us to let go of trying to control it and just be open to life and our experiences as they unfold without trying to control them or add conditions to them.
This is where yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda take us, to a place of unconditional love, which means we have to keep letting go of the conditions, and the control, and learn to love and accept ourselves and others as they are, making conscious choices, not from fear and avoiding more trauma, but from the heart, taking leaps of faith and consistently stepping into the unknown and the uncertain.
The more we can heal our trauma and understand the effect this had on the mind, the more easily we can start to notice the patterns in our life and do something to let them go, to move from a place of fear to one of love instead. The more we heal and let go of the underlying fear, which causes us to place protection around our heart, to hold an ‘edge’ in our energy field, then the more the heart opens and we feel this wonderful way of love, everything brightens, our spirit lifts and we are lighter energetically, less weighed down by the past.
It is my experience that it is worth going to those shadow places, to set our minds free of our past and future, orientating our mind into the present, progressively identifying and letting go of our mental patterning which keeps us small and limited and feeling falsely safe and expands so much energy in maintaining the status quo. It’s always interesting what these enquiries reveal, helping us to realise how much of our lives are lived unconsciously, driven by fear.
Over time this does shift, yoga, Reiki, Ayurveda all help, to connect us into the heart and essentially set our mind free so that we suffer less, and open to greater love in the process - softening our edges - and it might be this, this softening, this opening, this just being with whatever is arising in the moment and sitting with it as it passes through us, that might just change the world into a more harmonious and loving place to live - this because whatever it on the inside will be reflected on the outside - a chaotic mind creates a chaotic world, a fearful mind creates a fearful world, so love will create more of a loving world, and this will ultimately lead to greater freedom.
Happy wax and delving into the shadows!
Love Emma x
It's time to step up and blossom!
Wow that was some eclipse, asking us to go deeper to the wounded healer and clear really old trauma so that we can begin anew, not having our current reality affected by what has happened previously and to let go therefore of those old and unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns, especially around fear of safety and lack of trust, let alone around vulnerability, conditional love and self-criticism.
These are powerful times with the moon doing its 18.6 year swing, to the lunar major standstill in early 2025. We can expect to feel increasingly drawn to heal, and to go deeper inside ourselves, so that we can evolve spiritually.
This is a brilliant time to immerse in spiritual practice, yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda can help enormously and I am eternally grateful to all of these practices for helping me to see deeper into the shadows yesterday and clear really old trauma from this and past lives, so that today does really feel like a new beginning, a new way of seeing and relating and indeed being.
The wind is interesting too, as if it is blowing away the cobwebs to set us further free.
I am excited for the future and for more of you stepping up to embrace this wave of healing energy washing over the planet. Those of you debating going into practice but struggling with confidence - it is time to elevate the awareness and see the bigger picture, that you are merely a channel and conduit for others to benefit - if people had not found the courage to step up before you, then you might not have benefited from their healing offerings, so now it is time for you too to step up, get out of your own way and spread your love and indeed light into they world so the whole planet can benefit.
We have to remember that we are part of something much bigger than our little selves. To stay stuck through lack of self belief and confidence serves no one, and so we need to find the courage and strength to take that step into the big unknown, knowing that we are protected an help by powers that be, that we have guardian angels, spirits guides, Reiki guides and ancestors supporting us - think of them like your own cheer leading team, cheering you on in the background, asking you to play your role to help heal where healing is needed - and remembering that there is more than enough to go around, the universe knows only abundance and the more we open ourselves up to share, the more people will open to receiving from us and from others in the process.
It is part of my dream to spread Reiki into this world so that more can benefit from this incredible energy. Reiki positively changes things, it opens our hearts to unconditional love and there is nothing more amazing than feeling this flooding into our heart when we have let go of more of our protection and armour that kept us limited in conditional love - especially in our relationship with ourselves.
We never truly realise our potential until we realise it. Both yoga and Reiki are practices which ultimately lead to our greater freedom, to a state of pure consciousness, a state of complete and unconditional love. It is only when we heal and let go of whatever is in the way that we then experience a new wave of this lighter energy coming in and it is the best feeling in the world, absolutely worth going through the trickiness and uncomfortableness of the healing work,. which asks us to sometimes feel that which we are pushing and repressing into the shadows because it hurts.
The trouble is, the shadow keeps driving our decisions, at least sub consciously, so unless we get to them root, we will keep creating more of what we don’t want, we will stay stuck and small, giving ourselves a hard time, and never really experiencing the feeling of utter joy and bliss that accompanies spiritual evolution.
There was a time when this whole planet was bathed in love. Nature knows only love. The ancients knew only love. But over time, and with patriarchy coming in with its idea of sin and badness, control and power, we lost our way and we still suffer from this hang over with deep feelings of shame and guilt, as if joy and bliss are somehow bad, and we are bad for experiencing both, because we have signed and our constantly having to pay the penance.
It is time to break free from this unhelpful conditioning which runs deep in the very fabric of our society. It is time to take our power back, to learn to love and accept ourselves and others just as they are and to open to deeper aspects of ourselves that we have kept hidden, so that we can let go of those other heavier emotions that keep us controllable and stuck.
We are here to become fully aware, fully conscious, and the universe and indeed nature is helping us. Both know only love. This is why being out in nature has such a positive effect on us, because we are bathed in love. We can experience more of this, not only by spending increasing time in nature and being outside, but by embracing more of our own nature beyond the wounded patterns we have taken on since birth and indeed previous lifetimes, let alone the trauma that has fed through our DNA from our ancestors.
We have a choice though and now is the time to change things, not just for ourselves, but for the generations yet to come, so again elevating the perspective beyond our small selves. It is time to be impeccable as the sorcerers taught, to notice where we waste energy and to contain it for the deeper work. We cannot evolve if we are spread too thin, if our energy is dissipated on pointless activities and draining people. This is a time to tighten boundaries, put yourself first and say “no” in the process.
Also, to pay attention to where we are self important, because self importance means that we have something to defend and that is exhausting energetically too. Self importance shows up in so many ways and it is always easier to see it inn others than ourselves. However whatever we seem and criticise in others if often what we most need to look at in our own lives, because people are mirrors, shining back to us our shadows, the bits we don’t want to look at in ourselves.
Entitlement is deadly for this planet, just look how it plays out with al the billionaires and how that is changing the shape of this planet, quite literally, not just society but our relationship to nature and the way we treat the planet with such little respect because of the obsession with power and money and how we individually feed into that because of our neurosis around not having enough, or repetitional risk of not keeping up, or worrying about how others perceive us, or judge us, which causes us to live according to that, rather than how we actually feel on the inside - so any lives are shaped by our fears of being judged or criticised by others, worrying more about what they think of us, than we do at times about our own heart and soul.
It can be so subtle how our lives are shaped by our thoughts and feelings, forgetting that we are neither. These are lower chakra trappings, at some point we have to move up, we have to elevate then perspective deep into the heart and stop relating to ourselves solely through thoughts and feelings. They might help, but they are not us, not our true being.
I love this quote from Dr Edith Agar, “I reminded myself that I was there to share the most important truth I know, that the biggest prison is in your own mind, and in your pocket you already hold the key: the willingness to take absolute responsibility for your life; the willingness to risk; the willingness to release yourself from judgment and reclaim your innocence, accepting and loving yourself for you who really are - human, imperfect, and whole”
This is time to take responsibility, to notice where you are blaming others and making yourself a victim. the world needs more people taking responsibility and less people playing the victim. This is responsibility for you, not for others. You can’t do it for others, we cannot change others, only ourselves. It is incredible how much we burden ourselves though with other people’s issues and don’t allow them then o stand on their own two feet and find their own way. This is about you, no one else, you arrive into this world on your own and you will leave on your own, it is your journey.
For those feeling stuck, book a spiritual life coaching session or Reiki and we can go deeper, see what is catching and getting in your way so that you too can stand more full in your centre and indeed power and help to share your gifts on this planet.
Have a happy wax, the eclipse will keep rumbling its effect and indeed gifts into our world over the next few weeks. Eclipses have a habit of changing things, of bringing in more of our farm and indeed fate, so pay attention and prepare to transform.
Love Emma x
Nettle soup recipe for the eclipse squeeze
If you’re feeling the eclipse squeeze (we’re sitting between the lunar eclipse and the solar eclipse on 8 April) and the resulting tiredness it is gifting then it’s time for nettle soup! Not only is this full of iron and other minerals and vitamins that will help to perk you up, but it is super easy to make and very yummy to taste!
I tend to make soup by intuition, but have made an effort to try to make a note of what I actually did when I made some earlier today!
Firstly you will need to pick the nettles - make sure you use gloves because they will sting! Fortunately cooking will remove the sting, but make sure you have your gloves on until such time as they are stingless. Now is the best time to collect them, during Spring, focus on the younger and fresher tops, the greener and tenderer the better and pop them in a large basin.
Ingredients
About 150g of nettles - discard tough stems
A tablespoon of coconut oil
About 750ml of organic milk (I used organic almond milk)
About 800ml of vegan stock
A leek or a small onion peeled and finely chopped
3 bay leaves
Salt and pepper
You can add garlic as you choose, peeled and crushed, I’m just not a fan.
Method
Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, using the gloves, pick the leaves off the thicker main stems of the nettles – if the nettles are very young, use the whole thing.
Melt the coconut oil in a second largish saucepan, then fry the leek or onion with a pinch of salt, until soft and translucent.
Stir in the garlic and a good grating of nutmeg, leave to soften for another minute or so, then stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for another couple of minutes.
Add the milk, stock and bay leaves and bring to a simmer.
Fill the sink or a large bowl with cold water, then tip the nettles into the pot of boiling water and blanch for about four minutes, until they are wilted and soft – the shorter the cooking time, the more vibrant the colour of your soup will be.
Drain the nettles and plunge into the cold water to stop them cooking any further. Once the leaves are cool enough to handle, squeeze out as much water as possible, removing any tough stalks as you go.
Add the nettles to the soup pot, then liquidise in a blender or with a blending stick, adding a little more stock or milk if it’s too thick.
Benefits of nettles
Nettles have been used medicinally for a very long time and with good reason, here are some of the benefits:
Nettle leaves contain vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and folate, and other B vitamins, as well as calcium and iron that are easily absorbed. Magnesium, potassium, protein, beta-carotene, and chlorophyll are among the other nutrients.
Nettles may have anti-inflammatory and antiallergy qualities, notably in the case of hay fever.
Nettles can help eliminate excess uric acid and alleviate certain symptoms of the condition. Brewing a cup of stinging nettle tea is the most typical technique to relieve gout-inflamed joints.
Along with vitamin C and cranberries, drinking stinging nettle tea can help cure a bladder infection by reducing inflammation in the bladder or urethra.
Due to its nourishing and anti-inflammatory effect, nettles are great for the skin and hair and have been known to help with acne and eczema.
Nettles can improve the general health of the female reproductive system and is frequently used in fertility and peri-menopausal blends.
Nettles help ease exhaustion caused by iron deficiency due to heavy menstrual cycle, pregnancy and diet.
Nettles help to reduce inflammation and enhance cardiovascular health factors including blood pressure and cholersterol.
Nettles are known to enhance insulin release by the pancreatic islets of Langerhans, and can help to protect against hyperglycemias by lowering fasting blood glucose levels.
Nettles include anticancer substances and can help to reduce inflammatory indicators, which are anti cancer qualities.
The Beta-carotene and vitamin A gifted by nettles have been proved to preserve eye health.
Nettle is an excellent diuretic and may lower the risk of kidney and gallbladder stones.
Fresh eggs at Ostara and happy full moon lunar eclipse!
if there’s one thing this moon cycle has reinforced in me as I navigate an Ayurvedic Spring re-set, is the need to buy fresh, local and organic wherever I can. Thus I am very excited that one of the home school families are selling their own fresh organic eggs, from their stall in a lane in St Saviours not far from the church. It is well worth the journey. The girls are selling their home made cards too and intend to extend on their range of offerings over the summer months.
The address is Nha Trang, Rue de la Grange, St Saviours, GY7 9FL and the what3words is ///laptop.cramps.forbidding
Meanwhile we have also been planting lots of seeds and I hope that we can sell some of the herbs that we are growing, and excess veggies too, so keep a look out on here.
It’s the full moon lunar eclipse today, which has been making many of us very tired, as it tries to bring more balance into our lives and encourage us to slow down to the pace of nature, up with the sun and to bed with the stars, and being close to the earth as often as we can.
Eclipses change things - they unlock fated paths, so good luck and enjoy and do reach out if you need support working it through, Reiki is brilliant for this and Spiritual Life Coaching takes it to another level.
Full moon blessings!
Love
xxxx
Happy Ostara and full moon lunar eclipse waxing!
It was the Equinox on Tuesday, 20 March this year, and what a sunrise it was too, aligned with one of our sacred sites here on Guernsey. I managed to catch sunset too, down at Fort Grey, the sun setting in the notch of some rocks off towards Pleinmont. You know there were over 70 dolmens back in the day, and now we only have four remaining, but I’m grateful for those and their various solar and lunar alignments.
There’s a Libra lunar eclipse heading our way on Monday and asking us to delve deeper into the way we are relating and tapping also into the energy of balance that the equinox brings.
Eclipses are powerful transformers for change, I’m only just recovering from the last one and the way of change that brought in! Equinoxes are potent too, my life was changed beyond recognition by a chance encounter in a dolmen on the spring equinox 3 years ago now reminding me that we are never in control, that there is a higher being/organising principle that orientates our life in a more positive direction, even though it may not feel like that at the time, as always there is upheaval and a need for letting go for the new to settle in.
We are reminded of this throughout the Yoga Sutras and in Reiki too, that we may think we are in control, we may do all we can to ensure control but at the end of the day we really aren’t in control as the pandemic proved. We just have to hold still to that deeper part of ourselves that ‘knows’ and can surrender to the greater magic that enters our life when we let go of thinking we know.
For me that’s really what all of this is about, the sun, the moon, the stars, the shifts from one alignment to another, all of them lead to magic. But we have forgotten this in our fast paced 3-D mundane reality, where so much is externalised and where are constantly distracted by phones and busy-ness and supposed gold, like magpies, believing happiness and contentment comes from outside ourselves, in the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the clothes we wear and other people’s thoughts and opinions about us.
It’s all crap of course, just distraction from finding more magic in our lives, in ourselves and in the land. The powers that be don’t want us to be free and able to connect with the magic, because that is a threat to the establishment and the human order of things, meanwhile we come sicker as a society and squeezed individually. I am eternally grateful to the teachings of Patanjali for offering a path to freedom and to Reiki for bringing more magic into my life and the life of my students.
On a practical level, the energy is definitely potent, but making us tired too, lots of viruses circulating to help to clear the excess Kapha (earth and water) out of the system, with all the phlegm being released, and of course encouraging us to be quiet, restful and contemplative.
I spent the Equinox doing exactly that and it was much needed, engaging in an Ayurvedic re-set and prioritising rest and sleep. These shifts should not be taking lightly, the equinox especially, it’s a big one, as we head now towards the longest day of the year in June.
It’s possible the next few days could be intense, especially if your cycle is aligned to the moon. We need to do all we can to retain a peaceful mind, especially in relationship to others and fortunately the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali offer us some advice in verse 1.33 by naming four qualities we can cultivate to establish and maintain a peaceful mind:
maitri karuna muditopeksanam sukha duhkha punyapunya visayanam bhavanatas citta prasadanam
Maitri - friendship - friendliness to those who are happy or content. Be friendly and happy towards those who do well.
Karuna - kindness and compassion towards those who are suffering.
Mudita - Joy, being pleased and enthusiastic in people who are doing good things, celebrate and be joyful
Upeksha - Detachment, distancing ourselves from and not allowing ourselves to be disturbed by incorrect/bad behaviour/ destructive things people are doing. Try not to allow ourselves to be affected and disturbed.
There’s a lot to learn from that one sutra, especially if we are dissatisfied with our life and with those people in our life. It helps us to cultivate greater love and appreciation for those who are doing lovely and wonderful things to support our lives and to have greater compassion for those who suffer, and also it gives us permission to detach from those who treat us badly, so that we are no longer disturbed by them, at least mentally.
So as the equinox and the libra full moon, all about balance, cast more of their magic in our lives, we are reminded of this too, to seek balance where we can. The mind can have a really hard time with this, especially if we are used to always doing, so it’s an awareness if nothing else, another opportunity to witness the workings of our mind and the way in which it holds us captive, restricts and limits us and gives us a very hard time if we let it.
Happy Ostara and waxing moon!
Love Emma x
ADHD, trauma, the pandemic and Vata
I have been pondering the increase in the number of adults currently self-diagnosing or professionally diagnosing ADHD while simultaneously witnessing an increase in clients working through trauma created by, or aggravated by, the pandemic.
ADHD is something I have explored previously because of my concern about my youngest son Eben, who displays various symptoms. However, I have come to recognise that for him at least, the restlessness and hitting (to effect a dopamine hit), are probably due to birth trauma, which has negatively affected his nervous system and indeed his root chakra and fundamental feeling of safety - he has an inherent distrust of doctors, which has not come from us, but possibly from the way he was treated upon brith with invasive procedures within hours of birth and a separation from me and lack of initial human touch.
Furthermore, there are times when I have questioned my own restlessness and impulsivity, but can also trace this back to a traumatic event in my childhood where the behaviour of a neighbour caused a deep fear to take root in my mind which has led to all sorts of issues over the years - you can read more about this in my book, From Darkness Comes Light.
This experience, while destructive, has been useful in helping me to understand more of the manner in which our mind can create our suffering, because of its response to events in our life, and the way the body keeps score of this and the implication then for our nervous system and energy body, the root chakra especially.
From an Ayurvedic perspective ADHD is an indication of a Vata imbalance. Vata’s elemental makeup consists of air and ether. The common translation of Vata is “that which moves things.” Vata is often referred to as the vayu (wind) in the body, and it is the primary motivating force of the doshas—without it, the other doshas are unable to move. Vata is responsible for our mental and physical adaptability. It is the energising force of the body and mind, and it governs our nervous system, our bones, and our senses of touch and hearing.
When Vata is in balance for our prakruti, or constitutional nature, it is balanced in body and mind and in our response to stimulation, allowing us to more easily navigate our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Furthermore, our breath effectively supports our nervous system, and there is homeostasis between tissues and organs. The movement of our life force (prana) is regulated by Vata, and this function allows us to “inspire” (inhale) easily and to surrender (exhale) with ease as well.
The actions of Vata dosha in the body/mind include creativity, joy, communication, hearing, touch, breathing, heart function, circulation, menstruation, birth, orgasm, elimination of wastes (urine, faeces, sweat), all physical movements, movement of thoughts and feelings and general functioning of the nervous system.
Examples of Vata dosha in excess or in an imbalanced way include dry skin, irregular appetite “grazer”, cold hands and feet, dry cough, constipation, horse throat, restless legs, tapping fingers, pulling hair, tics, hiccups, belching, stiff muscles and joints, anxiety, tinnitus, vertigo, difficulty remembering, trouble getting to sleep/staying asleep, fearful dreams, hyperactivity, cracking joints, loss of menstruation, delusions, disassociation, shortness of breath, excessive talking, bone density issues, flatulence, tremors and trouble swallowing.
From a medical perspective ADHD is viewed as a developmental disorder, and there is an understanding that it cannot develop in adults without first appearing during childhood. The main characteristics of ADHD appearing in childhood include inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness, which are said to manifest differently in adults - for example hyperactivity tends to decrease in adults, while inattentiveness tends to remain as the pressures of adult life increase. Adult symptoms of ADHD are also understood to be more subtle than childhood symptoms.
Some specialists have suggested the following as a list of symptoms associated with ADHD in adults:
carelessness and lack of attention to detail
continually starting new tasks before finishing old ones
poor organisational skills
inability to focus or prioritise
continually losing or misplacing things
forgetfulness
restlessness and edginess
difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn
blurting out responses and often interrupting others
mood swings, irritability and a quick temper
inability to deal with stress
extreme impatience
taking risks in activities, often with little or no regard for personal safety or the safety of others – for example, driving dangerously
In many ways I can look at this list and see Vata imbalance and also some Pitta imbalance too. Certainly from an Ayurvedic perspective we can treat to these imbalances through a combination of changes to diet and lifestyle and with the help of medicinal herbs. Of course undertaking somatic healing work can help too, to go deep into the body and try and feel into, and heal, underlying trauma - Yoga therapy and Reiki is of course amazing at this, but massage and SHEN will help enormously too.
The reason I am sharing all this with you is because I have noticed over these last few months that the effect of trauma caused by the pandemic is showing up for healing both in myself and in clients. Without doubt the pandemic caused a trauma to our collective root, all of a sudden our foundations were shaken, as if the rug had been pulled, and many are only just coming back to earth now.
For those of us who chose not to vaccinate, the persecution felt very real and I certainly experienced a wounding from this, as we turned on one another for holding different opinions around what we might put into our body. I can’t help thinking that this feeling of persecution lays deep in our cells and DNA, especially for those old souls amongst us who may have lived previously through the witch trials that were conducted from the 15th century until the 18th century.
I don’t know why, but this seems to be in my orbit currently, so setting the scene a little, the rise of the Roman Empire caused Christianity to become increasingly popular and with this Paganism and Pagan rituals were outlawed (392 C.E.), which led to the murder of those following Pagan ‘religions’ (worshipping the Mother Goddess for example) before the ‘real’ witch hunts and trials began.
In short, Pagans were murdered for refusing to convert to Christianity and their beliefs. The Roman Empire attempted (and succeeded) in taking over Paganism by replacing Pagan holidays with their own, which was done intentionally to make it easier for Pagans to convert to Christianity. The Church also destroyed Pagan worship sites and built churches over the top of them - we have classic examples of this here on Guernsey with two incredible Goddess menhirs at the sacred sites of what are now Castel Church and St Martin’s Church and there is a Christianised menhir at St Saviours Church which was also another significant sacred site.
The next step was to destroy and replace Pagan beliefs especially about women, and Christianity at that time taught citizens that women had no souls (!) which made it easier to remove guilt over killing them. Women who were healers and midwives were classed as ‘witches’ and were persecuted for having knowledge about health, well-being and healing. These patriarchal views eventually led to the rise of men dominating the healthcare field as doctors - even today I am always amazed by the number of male gynaecologists, for example.
From what I can gather, Pope Gregory IX authorised witch hunts to take place in the 1200s but these hunts didn’t take off until 1484 when Pope Innocent VIII declared witches as a threat and the inquisition was involved. Paganism diminished under the Roman Empire, but had a resurgence around the Renaissance era (1500s) which threatened Christianity again. Thus witch hunts took place again during this time as witches were linked to Paganism.
Some of the key beliefs in Paganism include women having knowledge and power and Pagans worshipping a ‘Mother Goddess”. Women were often viewed as divine because of their power to create new life - hence why the power centre in women is often viewed in the sacral chakra, the yoni, rather than the solar plexus. Pagans believed in equality between men and women whereas the Romans devalued women within their patriarchal society and Christianity adopted the Roman view point into their belief system, devaluing women in the process.
Not only that but Christianity devalued several Pagan practices, deeming them sinful - Reiki is still viewed as sinful by many Christians and I cannot teach Reiki in St Martin’s Community Centre even now, for example, as the land is consecrated. What’s particularly sad is that Pagans celebrated the sexual union of men and women (and fortunately we still have many neolithic structures evidencing this), because they revered fertility and a woman’s ability to produce new life, whereas Christianity devalued this ability as simply part of women’s role and saw sex as sinful and as a necessary act for reproduction, but now I am going off on a tangent!
So returning to my point, I can draw parallels in how so many were treated during the pandemic, not by Christianity - please note that this is definitely not about Christianity versus Paganism, I am just sharing what happened - but by Christianity’s replacement, in the form of science. Whether we want to believe it or not there is no denying that science is now viewed on a God-like platform; unless something has been proven scientifically then it doesn't exist and during the pandemic especially, politicians were incapable of making a decision that wasn’t backed by science, and even now they will use science as their defence.
Yet science doesn't know everything. Science likes to pull apart and dissect but it cannot know the human soul, anymore than it can understand the workings of the mind, or indeed our spirit. Science has limits, yet we were all subjected to its supposed knowledge and wisdom during the pandemic with the medical world viewed as our saviour through the invention of the vaccine. The persecution which then ensued for those who asked questions felt very real and reminiscent of times passed.
So of course this may well have aggravated existing trauma around fear of safety, which so many carry - incarnation also can cause quite some trauma, let alone the effect of our medicalised approach to birth and the ‘children are resilient’ notion and whatever cultural bias is in place at the time, whether that be ignoring the emotional body, being over zealous in health and safety, or suffocating with helicopter parenting, all of it can cause trauma, even if well intended.
This is of course in addition to the fear that was created throughout the pandemic generally, not least the fear of contracting Covid but the fear of carrying Covid and passing this onto others. I was doing some work for Guernsey Mind during this time and people were literally paralysed by fear, totally out of their body, their connection with the earth cut and their root chakra diminished. One lady appeared wearing two face masks such was her fear of contracting Covid and others were terrified of unintentionally killing family and friends.
Furthermore, there was shock for many, not least the loss of family and friends and the awareness that people were dying on their own and birthing without partners, but also at the way people so easily gave up their freedom. The fear for many was so great that they readily handed their lives over to scientists and politicians, doing exactly what was asked of them without questioning it, and believing that those who did question it were mad and irresponsible and didn’t deserve the right to live.
Those who were questioning it were very aware of the hatred towards them - of people thinking them selfish for caring about their health and not therefore wanting to wear face masks or vaccinate - and had to deal with their own fears around loss of freedom, forced-vaccination and loss of autonomy of their body, not traveling ever again etc.
I could talk about sitting either side of the fence, but it wasn’t entirely divisive. Personally I have no issue with people vaccinating or wearing face masks, but I did have an issue with not having choice around that. My bias is always towards freedom and choice.
But alas, people did jump one side of the fence or the other and there was a deep fear as life changed overnight for many and this undoubtably agitated the nervous system and indeed the immune system to say nothing of the heart break many experienced with the loss of a way of life previously lived, a grieving then for what came before and may never come again, and while yes, many were contented with the changes, change is change and can create a restlessness regardless of how we experience it.
I have a sense that we are only really just coming to terms with this now. Many are experiencing increased ADHD symptoms and while I know that ADHD is very real - please don’t think I am suggesting it is not real, I know it is very real - I do wonder if it is exacerbated by the pandemic and the shock to our systems. I wonder then if treating any underlying Vata imbalance may help to ease the symptoms and lessen the restlessness, impulsivity and loss of focus that is inherent in our lives today - not helped of course by being online, which, when done to excess, will also create a Vata imbalance!
And so maybe all these ADHD diagnoses are helpful in raising awareness of our inherent collective restlessness and trauma and our acknowledgement of this, so maybe as we do the deeper healing work that the moon is encouraging as it builds to it’s 18.6 year major standstill, we will collectively and positively change the vibration on this planet into something more stable - at least within ourselves. Then outer world is anything but stable and as I have said before, really the only change we can truly make is within ourselves, but with conscious action on the outside.
From an Ayurvedic perspective, there’s all sorts of things we can do to ease a Vata imbalance, such as getting low to the earth, of eating warming and nourishing soups, stews and curries, of staying hydrated, of massaging the body, of resting in baths, of wrapping up in blankets and keeping warm, of reconnecting to earth energy and letting it ground you, of being around trees, of getting hands in the earth and making food consciously, with loving hands, and slowing life down, of long and slow breaths and of doing anything which calms an agitated nervous system.
I don’t know, it’s just something that was coming through and I felt to share. I’m curious, maybe you intuit similarly, or maybe you have a different sense of things. I just feel we need to be super kind to ourselves, we’ve been through a lot and we need to simplify and calm things down, taking responsibility and making decisions with the next generations in mind - allowing greater love, equality and freedom in the process.
Enjoy the wax, Equinox next week!
Love Emma x
It's all about vibration!
“A definition of a "healer" is someone who was sick and got well, and a great healer is someone who was very sick and got well quickly. “Richard Gordon
Did you know that per the law of nature everything has a vibration? Perhaps you remember this from science lessons, the everything is made up of atoms and that these atoms are in a constant state of motion, and depending on the speed of these atoms, things appear either solid, liquid or gas, or they don’t appear at all.
For example, sound is a vibration and so are thoughts - we can’t see them but it doesn’t stop them being very real. Everything which manifests in your life is there because it matches the vibration of your thoughts. Yes, just reflect on that one for a minute - everything that manifests in your life is there because it matches the vibration of your thoughts.
Furthermore, everything in the universe is in motion, whatever its form. All things therefore move, vibrate and travel in circular patterns - life is absolutely not linear, even though our mind has been conditioned to see the world from a linear perspective. I blame patriarchy for that, shifting the lens of the mind through which we view the world, so that we have forgotten that everything is actually circular; day to night and day to night again, of seasons, winter to spring to summer to autumn and back to winter again, the moon from full to new and back to new again, and women, menstruation to ovulation and back again.
Furthermore, everything which exists, is identical by its own unique vibrational frequency. And incidentally vibration is defined by us humans in numbers of periodic oscillations, vibrations or waves per unit of time. This means that there is no solidity in the universe, nothing to really cling onto to make known and certain. This because a form that appears solid is actually created by an underlying vibration and by umm, our thoughts. We create our reality by the thoughts we think - now isn’t that a bit interesting, specially when you think how our collective thinking creates our collective reality.
And this is the reason it is so important to pay attention to our thoughts and not allow our thoughts to run reign. We are not our thoughts, but we allow our thoughts to create our reality. Reflect back to the pandemic for a moment and recall government’s fear based response to the virus, which led to our fearful thoughts emerging, which collectively resulted in a huge wave of fear gripping the planet, and from which we are only now being released, as increasing numbers of people let go of their fear…You start to realise how important it is to keep your thoughts positive, and not to be affected and swayed by the mainstream.
Life is a bit like a game of boomerangs, whatever you send out comes back again. It’s as if all of us are linked by some mysterious magnetic force and what you send out in word or thought against another, has a vibration attached to it, that comes back to you. This is the law of karma. For those operating solely on the mental plane the comeback can take longer than someone who is developed spiritually, in which case it comes back much quicker. For example if you hate, fear or resent a situation, you have kind of fastened it to yourself, for you attract what you hate, fear or resent. This is all vibrational of course.
What I especially love is that vibrations express themselves in corresponding geometrical shapes and in this way build up crystals that are the expression of vibration. Thus crystals collectively form a body of an element according to its particular vibration - and this vibration, when placed on or beside us, affects our vibration too. Many of you know this for yourself, having been drawn to a particular crystal, which you then bring into your life and witness the change it brings in helping with your healing, releasing and energising. Crystals and their vibrational frequency really do have an impact on our vibrational frequency!
Furthermore, think about snowflakes, and the faces of flowers, and how they take on these shapes before they are responding to the same sound in nature. To put it all another way, crystals, plants, trees, flowers and even us human beings are simply music that has taken on a visible form. Mad huh!
What is especially exciting about all this, is that hoorah, we have agreement in the world of science, medicine and metaphysics that certain frequencies can not only repel disease but actually destroy it. And this is what I really wanted to share with you, to help explain why spiritual and healing practices like yoga and Reiki and Ayurveda really help to support our health and wellbeing.
This because there is without doubt a link between frequency (vibration) and health. Underlying these modalities is the understanding that we are energy and that when energy is stuck it can leads to disease and it is by getting to the energy body that we help to heal and free the stuck energy so that the disease or dis-ease can be healed, it literally disappears. Many of you have experienced that for yourself with me and certainly my life has been punctuated by times of healing, whether that be ovarian cysts, PMS, depression, shoulder pain, knee concerns, all of these have bene healed by working vibrationally, incorporating yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda.
Those of you who have attended my Reiki attunement courses will know that I am especially passionate about the vibrational shift that occurs when you become attuned to Reiki. Your vibration increases quite quickly and this has a positive knock on effect on everyone else around you as your presence literally raises their vibration - and this explains why some people are drawn to you and you are drawn to others too, sometimes we just pick up their vibration and it either feels good which makes you want more of it, or bad, which in theory should make you turn away from it.
The problems arise when you might persist in going into environments and situations and spending time with people who do not resonate as well as you might do, leaving you feeling exhausted and drained. This accounts for the reason that after becoming attuned to Reiki, or taking further attunements, or indeed practising yoga and Ayurveda, that you sometimes feel to step away from certain situations, environments and people and energy vampires drop away. Of course this can be uncomfortable, but once you have created some space, then new situations, environments and people who resonate with you will come in instead.
Basically put, everything in nature vibrates at different frequencies. In fact quantum physics describes the universe as nothing more than vibrating strings of energy! Furthermore, scientific research has validated (hoorah for that) that different parts of our bodies have their own vibration, their own sonic signature then. This means that the sound of the cells in your heart differ from the sound of the cells of your stomach, for example.
This also means that when parts of your body become stressed or dis-eased they are no longer producing the ‘correct’ sound wave, the vibration is lower than it should be - they are not vibrating at their optimal and therefore best resonant frequency. To recalibrate or re-establish your frequency, you need to understand how lower and higher vibrations affect your energy and your health and wellbeing, this on all levels of being.
Our modern society literally bombards us with a ton of electromagnetic energy, which kind of gets in the way of our ability to tune into earth energy, which is universally healing by its very nature. It is the energy of love essentially. I have a very clear sense that at the time the neolithic stones were built, all was love - the planet knew only love, this a magical world where we as humans also saw beyond our 3D reality, where we knew only love too, where we lived in unity with all other sentient beings and were literally able to communicate with the earth, the sun and the moon, for example.
It is still possible, but much more challenging than it has ever been, simply because of all the interference from all the ‘technological advances’ including WIFI and phones, let alone all the electricity, transport and busyness of our modern day living. Studies have shown that people who leave big and noisy cities and move out to the country experience significant health improvements. Furthermore people who are ‘in contact’ with the earth through outdoor activities such as surfing, climbing, trekking etc, or who garden or consume a natural diet of wholefoods are believed to be far healthier than those who don’t.
This is because being in nature, of which we are a part, positively changes our vibration. You have probably had the experience yourself of spending time on the cliffs or beach, or in a forest or woods, a place that is humming with life, calms and heals you on all levels of being you feel better for your time spent being outside, surrounded by the natural vibrations of nature, of connecting to earth energies.
This is because the earth itself hums at a specific frequency, well below what we can hear as human beings, called the Schumann frequency or Schumann resonance. We reference this in Reiki, because scientific studies show that when people practice Reiki, not only do the brain wave patterns of practitioner and clients become synchronised in the alpha state, characteristic of deep relaxation and meditation, but they pulse in unison with the earth’s magnetic field - the Schuman Resonance. During these moments, the biomagnetic field of the practitioner’s hands is at least 1,000 times greater than normal and not as a result of internal body current.
So you see we are all vibration and everything living on this planet is also vibration, and once we understand this, and live with this premise in mind, then we can take action to positively shift our vibration, especially if we are unwell. Thus the foods we eat and the liquids we drink have a very real affect on us. The same can be said of our environment.
Remembering that the highest vibration is love, this means that whole foods grown with love and food made from these whole foods with love are not only going to taste nicer, but are also going to have a much more positive effect on our vibration and therefore our general health and wellbeing, than eating foods which are neither grown or produced with love nor made with love.
I am very conscious that foods made in a factory, even if they are organic, say organic humous, are not going to have the same vibration as humous made at home with your own loving hands and heart. Furthermore, foods cooked by angry and disgruntled chefs, or zapped in a microwave, or covered in a pile of cheap oil, are not going to have a positive effect on your vibration or your energy field, and you may end up with indigestion as you ingest and try to digest not only the food stuff but the disgruntled and angry energy of the chef.
This goes further. I remember reading about this when I first began my yoga and Reiki journey, how we take on the energy of any being that we kill to eat. So, for example, if the animal is in a state of fear when killed, because of being transported to an abattoir or just not treated very well, then you are imbuing that energy when you eat the dead animals - or fish or whatever it is.
Environments are no different as they can sometimes contain detrimental energy from underground streams or negative energy arising from trapped entities, unhappy spirits, detrimental energies from other dimensions, objects in the house/building, us as human beings, or from underground streams, or other natural forces of the Earth, or Hartmann and Curry grid lines, or from electrical wires and electronic equipment. All of this can negatively impact the vibration of the environment which will negatively impact us. This is why it is really important to clear these detrimental energies otherwise we can end up repeatedly sick, just from our living and working environments.
The trouble is this all sounds a little bit too ‘out there’ for many, but it is really so true. You know yourself that certain environments make you feel good and certain environments don’t. It’s really very simple. Some environments fill you up with energy and others deplete you. This is the reason the space that I live and work in has always been really important to me - treating a client in a space with detrimental energy, is not only going to make it difficult for them to reset, but it is not going to do anything to support their healing process.
And this, lovely people, is why I am especially passionate about the positive effect of being in nature, of working in a space free of mobile telephones and WIFI (and the EMF they produce therefore), of practising Reiki, Yoga and Ayurveda daily, of Vedic chanting and speaking Sanskrit, a language which has a vibrational frequency to it, of drinking filtered water, of eating food that has been grown and made with love, and doing the deeper healing work to free stuck energy which is resonating at a lower frequency than it should so that I can try, try, try to keep my vibration high, cultivating greater love for self and others in the process.
There comes a point where we realise we have choice. We have choice about how we live, where we work, what we eat and drink, the company we keep, the places we visit. It can be uncomfortable, as sometimes we have to make decisions, take action, that might be uncomfortable in our dealings with others, but we have to take all this seriously - we have the opportunity to thrive, but we have to work out first what helps us and what hinders us in this and we need to take responsibility for not only the situations we find ourselves in, but the environments, the company and indeed our own thoughts patterns. More on that another time…
Happy Monday!
Love Emma x
We are part of nature
“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” – Lao Tzu
I have been reflecting recently on our separation from nature, of our technological arrogance, of this online living and the increasing move towards a virtual reality devoid of connection to nature, as if we can survive without it.
Even some of my friends will ask to meet in nature, as if forgetting that we are nature, not separate from it, so it’s not something we go into, but a part of who we are. Only that many seem to have forgotten this and a whole generation are growing up believing online is best.
Admittedly, there was a time when I was lost and considered myself separate to nature. This to the extent, that when my brother and I bought our first house during my mid-twenties we ripped out the beautiful garden and replaced it with a simple lawn that required very little maintenance. I’ve apologised to the nature angels many times since!
It was when we were living in that house that I discovered yoga and Reiki. The mortgage hung heavily around my neck, so too the job I was doing to pay the mortgage, which pushed me to an edge of questioning what life was all about. There were other factors as many of you know from reading my books, but thank goodness the universe ushered in yoga and Reiki because I don’t know I would be here today if it hadn’t. Life is challenging at times and how anyone manages without a spiritual practice is quite beyond me.
These practices essentially woke me up to the fact that I had choice, that I didn’t need to live a life expected of me, that I had free will, that there is no rule book, no one way to live your life, even though society may tell you otherwise, and that all the physical, mental and emotional discomfort I was experiencing did not need fixing, it was merely highlighting that I was living a life out of balance from my true nature, and that actually what I needed was healing – to come back home to myself again.
And this is the thing; yoga and Reiki (and Ayurveda, albeit that came a few years later), have been extremely abundant in the gifts they have gifted to me, but really the greatest gift has been the opportunity to love and accept myself in a way I never knew was possible, and to come home to a deeper layer of truth – my truer nature – in the process. It is an ongoing journey, there is more to us than we realise and the mind has a tendency to think it knows best, and sometimes we have to lose ourselves to find a deeper level of self again.
When I reflect back, I realise that our greatest harming is not what happens to us externally, but the damage that we inflict on ourselves internally with our separation from our own nature and the negative and self - depreciating inner narrative. I hated myself back then and was always trying to externalise my worth – it’s crazy to me now but these were the days when the number plate on my car seemed important, as if having a 3 or 4 digit number plate proved my worth and status - so it is hardly surprising that I had little respect for nature generally. If you are rejecting yourself, then you are rejecting nature in its entirety, given that you are a part of it.
Fast forward twenty years and life looks and feels incredibly different. One of Yoga Sutras of Patanjali reads:
ahiMsaapratiShThaayaaM tatsannidhou vairatyaagaH (sutra 2.35)
"In the presence of one firmly established in non-violence, all hostilities cease".
What this sutra is telling us that a regular dedicated and committed yoga practice (and this is not just an asana practice) can help us to develop a deeper sense of ahimsa, non-harming, or non-violence. This is the first ethical principle, part of the yamas, mentioned by Patanjali and underpins all the other yamas, this because of its importance as a basis for how we live our life and relate to ourselves and others and this planet.
This is certainly true from my own experience – ahimsa naturally arises the more we practice yoga, this is one of the fruits of practice. Thus not only has yoga gifted me a much more positive and loving relationship with myself and an appreciation of my nature - so that I am not harming myself as I once did with my internal narrative to say nothing of the eating disorder and depressive tendencies - but it has also gifted me a much more positive and loving relationship with all sentient beings and with nature generally, of which we are ALL a part.
Where once I thought nothing of killing an annoying fly or moth, for example, or indeed ripping out a garden, now I wouldn’t dream of taking life so easily, as if my life is more important. Of course this has its issues, I don’t even like pulling up ‘weeds’ because they are living and what right do I have to extinguish life, to cause harm. And I really struggle to witness the destruction of nature, the over development of Guernsey for example is a particular bug bear.
Just the other day a friend of mine was saying how he found a car stuck in his field of daffodils. The driver had wanted to take a photo of the flowers and had thought that driving into the field would make this somehow easier. The person got their photo of daffodils but they made a mess of the field in the process. It makes me question our current levels of sanity, that a photo, one presumes to go on social media, is taken at the cost of destroying nature. But I shouldn’t be surprised, there are plenty more examples on Guernsey of land destruction, just look at the new Equestrian centre, let alone the new golf course.
The thing is though, we have to be careful because the more we believe ourselves to be spectators of nature, the more we destroy it because we think we can live without it, and the more we ignore it, the more nature will bite us back. It’s already happening - our food no longer has enough nutrients in it to support our health and vitality, this to the extent that life expectancy has gone down, meaning our children won’t live as long as our parents, sperm counts are down and children’s hormones are so messed up they don’t even know what sex they are anymore. We don’t see it, but we are essentially killing ourselves with this ongoing separation.
Someone sent me an article a few days ago, here it is, advising that micro plastics have recently been discovered in human blood and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is yet unknown, although there is a sense that this could explain puzzling increases in some health problems including inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer in those under 50, and declining sperm counts. If this carries on then one assumes that we will become extinct as a species and all from our own doing.
I am a great believer that we need to be the change we want to see in the world, that we need to expand our consciousness and become increasingly conscious of the way that we are living and the choices we are individually making which have an impact on the collective. It seems to me that the more we love and accept ourselves as we are, the more we drop into our own nature, the more we appreciate that we are a part of it, not separate to it, not a spectator of it, but nature itself. Maybe then we stand a chance of changing things for our children and their children and generations ahead.
I was inspired a good while ago now by the Mac Macarthy who set up Embercombe in Devon, and introduced me to the concept of the seventh generation principle - the law of Seven Generations advises on the wisdom of considering the impact of any decision on those born seven generations hence. Indigenous cultures made decisions based on this premise, around a fire, from their heart. Mac’s book, The Children’s Fire is really worth a read here.
We have to be careful what we are creating and where the motivation comes from – head or heart, ego or spirit? I have a sense that if looked after ourselves, if we improved our collective relationship with our selves, if we opened ourselves up spiritually, to the reality that we are more than just this body and mind, if we lived more joyfully from our hearts, then we might create a more loving, kind, sustainable and respectful relationship with all life.
Instead we seem stuck in this drive towards more online living, towards more of the “all about me” culture that social media encourages, to seeking happiness through the external and material, to our patriarchal conditioning around power and control, to our obsession with chasing the buck as if money makes it all OK, as if we can buy contentedness and inner harmony.
It feels increasingly that we are lost as a specie, that so many lives are lived on a treadmill that has not end, like hamsters stuck on the wheel, going endlessly round and round and becoming increasingly exhausted in the process, living for retirement that may never come, of being slaves to a system that is increasingly demonstrating its brokenness, education, health care, they’re no longer fit for purpose, life has changed beyond recognition even in my lifetime.
The antidote? Nature. Embracing our own nature. Being kind. Growing our own. Slowly it down. Realising we have choice. Making different choices from the heart. Doing the work to love and accept ourselves. Treading more lightly on this earth. Taking responsibility for our actions. Doing what we can on our small patch to make a positive difference. I don’t have the answers, but I do know that the way we are living is not sustainable and that it has to come back to the individual to affect the collective - that each of us can be the change we want to see in the world if only we choose more consciously and open up to greater love in the process.