Emma Despres 19/06/2024 Emma Despres 19/06/2024

Happy solstice!

I hung out with the moon last night, I love how it does the opposite of the sun, rises far in the south east in the summer, and hangs low in the sky, while the sun rises far north east on the solstice and hangs high in the sky.

I was in a dolmen too, and they have a habit of connecting us more deeply with the earth if we let them, magic portals to other worlds, we just have to have the energy to transition and our society does it’s best to keep our energy lower than it would have been for the ancients with all the external noise, and of course the internal noise too.

I am certainly not a conspiracy theorist but I can see how we are being continuously dumbed down and distracted so that we cannot hear the earth so clearly, or our inner voice, which always knows…

I found myself up with the birds this morning and heading out to the coast to watch the sunrise. It’s not technically the solstice, that’s tomorrow, but the sun is already at the standstill and I wanted to check an alignment. There’s something quite incredible about watching the sunrise, I danced with joy witnessing this huge ball of pink light rise into the sky. I remembered what it feels like to be truly alive.

This is the earth’s gift to us of course, if we can be quiet enough to listen, if we can find the solitude that this requires, away from the hustle and bustle of daily life.

Interestingly I was able to witness the sun rise at exactly the spot that I witnessed the winter solstice set, just in the opposite direction. There is order in the cosmos, even if it might not feel like it at times.

I hope you enjoy the magic of the next few days, of the sun reaching its farthest rise to the north east, and the full moon following on Saturday, and all that she gifts.

As always we are reminded, that we know it all anyway, deep inside us, and all this practice and connection is just helping us to remember, to get out of our own way, be quiet and still and listen and witness.

Happy solstice!

Love Emma x

Emma Despres 17/06/2024 Emma Despres 17/06/2024

We are impermanent!

We are impermanent.

We are not here forever.

One day we will die.

This is perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from my meanderings into the world of sorcery, which has fascinated me for much of this year.

As a whole, our society lives as if we humans are permanent, as if our lives will never end. We put off today for tomorrow, and we struggle to let go of the past because there will be time to deal with that in the future…if it ever comes.

There’s this wonderful section in Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Active Side of Infinity, in which Don Juan, the sorcerer is trying to each Carlos, the apprentice, about impermanence:

“We beings are on our way to dying”, he said [don Juan]. “We are not immortal, but we behave as if we were. This is the flaw that brings us down as individuals and will bring us down as a species someday”.

Don Juan started that sorcerers’ advantage over their average fellow man is that sorcerers know that they are beings on their way to dying and that they don’t let themselves deviate from that knowledge. He emphasised that an enormous effort must be employed in order to elicit and maintain knowledge as a total certainty.

“Why is it so hard for us to admit something that is so truthful?”, I asked, bewildered by the magnitude of our internal contradiction.

“It’s really not man’s fault”, he said in a conciliatory tone. “Someday, I’ll tell you more about the forces that drive a man to act like an ass”.

As a note, Carlos is an anthropologist and he has placed an anthropology lecturer, Professor Lorca, on a pedestal. We all know how easy this is to do, the yoga world is rife with examples of people who have placed themselves on pedestals in the form of the (false) guru and of those who place others on that pedestal, be it their teacher or someone they have never met, imagining them far more evolved than themselves.

But it isn’t always helpful in our lives, because we are sometimes blinded to their truth and to acknowledging our own power. Don Juan’s advice to Carlos has been to get to know the professor, “don’t admire people from afar”, he said, “This is the surest way to to create mythological beings. Get close to our professor, talk to him, see what he’s like as a man. Test him. If your professor’s behaviour is the result of his conviction that he is a being who is is going to die, then everything he does, no matter how strange, must be premeditated and final. If what he says turns out to be just words, he’s not worth a hoot”.

I would say the same to anyone wanting to study with a yoga teacher, get to know them, make sure that they are walking their truth, and conscious of their impermanence and place in this world.

“It’s no great feat for me to assess your professor at a distance”, don Juan went on. “He is an immortal scientist. He is never going to die. And when it comes to concerns about dying, I am sure he has taken care of them already. He has a plot to be buried in, and a hefty life insurance policy that will take care of his family. Having fulfilled those two mandates, he doesn’t think about death anymore. He thinks only about his work”.

“Professor Lorca makes sense when he talks”, don Juan continued, “because he is prepared to use words accurately. But he’s not prepared to take himself seriously as a man who is going to die. Being immortal, he wouldn’t know how to do that. It makes no difference what complex machines scientists can build. The machines can in no way help anyone face the unavoidable appointment; the appointment with infinity”.

“Sorcerers…do have the upper hand; as beings on their way to dying, they have someone whispering in their ear that everything is ephermal. The whisperer is death, the infallible advisor, the only one who won’t ever tell you a lie”.

This is a concept I have embraced in my life and with my clients at times too, using death as one’s advisor - if you knew you were to die tomorrow, what would you do differently?

Using death as a an advisor is very helpful. It stops us putting off for tomorrow what we could change today. It helps us realise that everything we do in this moment has an impact on our future being.

“Svarasavahi-Vidusah-Api-Tatha-Arudhah-Abhinivesah”, II.9 in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras tells us that the desire to live is deeply ingrained, even in the wise. This, from a simple worry to complete panic, these forms of anxiety are only expressions of fear. The consequence of ‘abhiniveśah’ is an inflated instinct of self preservation, a very deep seated attachment to the body, which makes us want to survive at any cost. However, this doesn’t mean that we always act in a way that assumes we want to preserve our life.

We don’t always look after ourselves as we might if we realised our impermanence. We sometimes live as if we are invincible. It is only when we get sick that we may begin to take greater responsibility for our health and wellbeing. From an Ayurvedic perspective, there are six stages of disease, which i find fascinating. It’s a reminder of the importance of trying to maintain balance so that any imbalances do not progress into disease:
1. Initial stage
Imbalance is situated in the gastrointestinal tract and is best treated with diet. This stage is relatively minor and often the body’s own wisdom (if we allow it) corrects the imbalance.
2. Build-up stage
If balance is not restored, toxicity (ama) spreads into the circulatory system. Symptoms at this stage are a sense of being mildly uncomfortable. Most of us ignore these symptoms or suppress them with over-the-counter medications.
3. Spreading stage
Toxins journey through the main circulatory systems of the body causing additional symptoms. These symptoms often become chronic.
4. Accumulation stage
This is when toxins, after moving through the circulatory system, find a weak spot and settle. According to Ayurveda this is the beginning of actual disease. This is when most people finally visit the doctor hoping for a quick cure.
5. Manifestation Stage
At this stage western medicine will likely give a patient a clinical diagnosis. The actual structure of the tissues begins to break down making it difficult to reverse the progression of the disease. This is when most people finally visit the doctor hoping for a quick cure.
6. Complications Stage
The tissue is severely damaged and may begin to affect the surrounding tissues resulting in additional complications.

This is also another reminder to get to know thyself, to understand our mind and body and to be aware when we are living out of baiance to the extent that our health begins to suffer. We have to appreciate that just because society encourages us to live a certain way - or friends, family and our culture for that matter - this doesn’t mean that this will work for us individually. There is neurosis about being different, yet to me, we should be celebrating these differences. Many of us are neurodiverse and sensitive and are not meant to be living the mainstream way.

However, many reject ourselves because of not “fitting in”. which is often the greatest harming we can do to ourselves. It is an insidious within our society to not love or accept ourselves - this is the main issue facing my clients. They feel that they are not good enough because they don’t live up to the expectations of others, or indeed our idea of ‘success’ in society. They are down on themselves, loathing their body because it doesn’t resemble the idea of ‘beauty’ per social media and the latest fashion within society. They reject parts of themselves that they consider are ‘bad’ without realising that such concepts do not exist, at least from a soulful level.

At times we can be our greatest tyrant, harming ourselves with our internal noisy self depreciating and negative voice. Of course there are other factors. We live in an increasingly busy world, it is very difficult to find peace, we have to fight for it, to have time away from the demands of others, even if those are friends and family, to contain our energy. Our society is currently set up to distract us from knowing ourselves on a deeper level, the phone is one of our greatest enemies in that regard, not least because of the frequency it emits, but because of its constant distraction, which keeps us locked into the material and superficial world of comparison and ‘not enough’ mentality.

Furthermore, from an environmental perspective, life is noisy. We are surrounded by 4 and 5G, we have wires running throughout our houses, under our roads, over our heads, planes frequently filling the skies, some involved in cloud seeding, creating the ‘chem trails’, pesticides, vaccines, we are bombarded by all sorts of pollutants that have become normalised and yet all play a role in impacting our health and wellbeing. We have to fight to protect ourselves in this regard, to breathe fresh air, drink clean water and eat foods which have not been tainted by chemicals and poor soil conditions. Tight finances means that we struggle to shelter ourselves, to provide for our most basic needs. Life has lost its balance and mainly because of our ongoing separation from nature.

Furthermore, we may keep making the same mistakes and therefore receiving the same lessons over and over again. We may over eat or under eat, we may laze around or not be able to stop, we may keep falling for the same destructive relationships, or shy away from them entirely, there are many ways we deceive ourselves, ignore our truth, keep on doing what we have done previously and yet hoping for a different result. It is very easy to numb ourselves from our reality and hope for the best, put it off for tomorrow - the “I’ll get to it at retirement” mentality, without appreciating that there is no guarantee we will actually make it to retirement.

This is where yoga and Reiki can help us enormously. They help to shine the light into our shadows, so we can see more clearly the lessons and learn from them so we don’t keep repeating them. These practices help us to come to know ourselves - to understand the workings of our mind, to appreciate our body as a vehicle for this lifetime, to connect with our soul, to find a way to be in this world where we celebrate our differences, are kinder to ourself, see more of the bigger picture and step away from the slave mentality that permeates our world - it’s an interesting enquiry - what are we a slave to in our life?

Ultimately though, we begin to realise our impermanence and we orientate towards an increasingly moment to moment existence. We may begin to look after ourselves better, taking responsibility for our health and wellbeing, not believing all that we are told by politicians, scientists and media, finding our own truth and living authentically in the process, making decisions which will help us to thrive and allow us to live well.

We might stop caring so much what others think, so that we don’t expand huge amounts of energy masking and trying to be someone we are not and never will be. We stop trying to live like others because that is how we are told we should live. We stop people pleasing. We stop trying to be all things. We let go of the false conditioning that has been put upon us by our society, our culture, our family, our teachers, our friends, our religion, our traditions. We let go and become more of who we are, beyond what we have been told.

Ultimately though we begin to recognise our impermanence and we live increasingly in the present, healing our past and not putting off today for tomorrow. We learn to increasingly let go of all we thought, so we can realise more of who we are at essence.

Yet there is still fear about dying. Fear because we literally have to let go of all that we have cared about - our body, our world possessions, our loved ones. Our whole construct around money, power, prestige and status becomes irrelevant. A generation later and we will be forgotten, a name on a gravestone, someone now resting in peace. Or so we hope. The idea of losing our identity is terrifying and hence why Patanjali calls fear of death an affliction, one of the Kleshas then.

Yoga helps us to strip back the false layers of identify, until we can access Purusha, our eternal self, the part of us that lives beyond time and space, that is not subject to the kleshas or the gunas, that is an all pervading presence that continues from one lifetime to the next. Essentially yoga - and Reiki - helps us to let go and to let go and to let go. And let’s face not, the ultimate letting go is one of death, so the more comfortable we are with letting go in life, the more comfortable we will be in letting go at the end.

But really it isn’t an end. Death may cause an end to our body, to our connection with loved ones, to our worldly possessions, but it does not kill the soul. It is this connection that it eternal. Yet so many live with a complete disconnect to this part of themselves.

Many are awakening to their greater potential however. Realising that we are more than just our body and our mind. More are beginning to realise that we have the potential to know ourselves better than anyone else can ever know us.

My yoga teacher always says that our yoga practice is preparing us for a good death - because death is the ultimate letting go, so we let go during our practice increasingly so, it is familiar to us, this notion, and the easier we let go, the gentler our passing will be.

Increasing numbers of my students are considering this passing. There is an interest in becoming a death doula. I am asked about this because one of my friend’s already works in this capacity, is a death doula, albeit not in name. She has been gifted with an ability to help others pass peacefully. There are increasing numbers of courses available for people to train to be a death doula, to bring more light to dying and release some of the fear. if you are interested then read this link.

Which brings me to death itself. One of my friends sent me this link to an article about two people who died and came back to life again. The message is quite clear - Are you doing something that matters with your life?'

Are you doing something that matters with your life?

If not, why not?

What gets in your way? What are your obstacles?

More often than not we are up against our own mind and its limitations. We don’t feel we have the strength to make changes. We struggle to take responsibility. We worry too much about the notion of failing. We let imposter syndrome take over. Our ego can be ever so debilitating if we let it. Sometimes we have to feel our fear and do it anyway. We have to keep walking our path despite that little voice telling us we are not good enough.

At some point we have to elevate the perspective. To step away from our small self and realise more of the greater Self, that voice that knows that all is OK, that we each have gifts to bring forth into this world, to help and make a difference, to do something with our lives that truly matters, beyond our need for external validation. At some point we have to turn inwards.

Which brings me back to don Juan and his teachings:

“I left don Juan’s house more confused than ever. There was a voice inside me that virtually demanded that I end all endeavours with Professor Lorca. I understood how right don Juan was when he said to me once that the practicalities that scientists were interested in were conducive to building more and more complex machines. They were not the practicalities that changed an individual’s life course from within. They were not geared to reaching the vastness of the universe as a personal, experiential affair. The stupendous machines in existence, or those in the making, were cultural affairs, the attainment of which had to be enjoyed vicariously, even by the creators of those machines themselves. The only reared for them was monetary”.

This to me is a fabulous reminder of the way in which science and technology is merely a distraction from us going deeper inside ourselves and recognising our impermanence and living therefore with greater meaning in our everyday existence - being grateful for each day and the life that it gifts us.

We are impermanent.

Our greatest gift to ourself is to truly realise this.

Love Emma x

Emma Despres 05/06/2024 Emma Despres 05/06/2024

Tell me about yoga

What is yoga?

At its roots, yoga is a spiritual practice, which helps to stabilise and contain the mind so that we may realise more of our true self, the eternal self which never changes, which is called purusha. This is not our true potential in so much as our job title or salary, but in terms of our deeper sense of self – our connection to soul essentially. Thus yoga is a discipline, which helps to link us to various parts of ourselves, whether that be our body, our breath, our mind or something higher, in which we may have faith.

It is worth noting that yoga postures (asana) are only one of various practices available to us which help us establish a state of yoga. Other practices may include breathing exercises (pranayama), the use of sound (mantra), the use of visualisations (yantra), meditation, and actually anything that takes us in the direction of a state of yoga, which essentially means being fully conscious, and can therefore also include activities such as gardening with awareness, walking mindfully, enjoying a sunset etc.

But what about yoga postures – how can they benefit us?

The most obvious place to begin yoga is with the body, because it is something tangible, which we can see and compare between yesterday and today, so we can notice how it is changing. This means practising asana, which are body positions that we might not ordinarily use in our daily life. As we begin to relate to our body through these postures, we might become more interested in our breathing and how this affects how we feel. Over time we might start to notice our mind and how it is becoming more focused and contained, and as a result we might begin to experience less mental suffering and greater freedom on all levels of being.

Furthermore, practising yoga postures helps us to heal our relationship with out body, and provides many benefits to our overall health and wellbeing, from lowering blood pressure, to calming the mind, to easing anxiety, to healing depression, to strengthening our bones, to helping our grounding, to increasing our overall stamina, to encouraging greater focus and ultimately to freeing the spine and indeed the mind, which leads to greater freedom.

For me this is the joy of yoga. With consistent and regular practice, we are offered freedom. You simply cannot put a price on this. The best thing too, is that it’s free, at least if you manage to establish a daily home practice.

How do I establish a home practice?

Personally, I found this easy simply because I appreciated very quickly the benefits of a daily practice, and in part because I was competitive back then and wanted to improve quickly! I bought myself a yoga book called Yoga in Practice by Katy Appleton and I basically taught myself from this, while also going along to regular classes. After a year, I threw myself into yoga and travelled on and off for a good few years, spending lengthy periods of time in Australia and Nepal as well as in India and Canada, immersing myself in yoga.

Nowadays you don’t need to travel to access a variety of different yogic teachings as You Tube is awash with free yoga content. There are a number of free videos available through our You Tube channel too, which you can access from this website, and while they no longer reflect my current style of teaching, I know that they have been very helpful to my students in establishing a regular practice at home.

Ideally though, yoga should be practiced with a teacher who understands your needs and can help you to establish a practice that benefits rather than hinders or keeps reinforcing old habits and unhelpful ways of being.

It wasn’t until I met my teacher, Louise, in 2019 that things really changed for me. Until that time I had moved from one teacher to the next, depending on my location, and while this was helpful in so much as I explored a myriad of yoga styles, spending much of my time practising and indeed then teaching vinyasa or dynamic yoga, it wasn’t helping me to go deeper and shift some of my core Samskaras (habits, patterns) which were unhelpful ways of being, not only in my body and my mind but also in my daily life – as Henry Ford said ”If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.

How soon will things change for me?

We have to remember that it takes time. Yoga is not a quick fix approach. We have to move away from the allopathic mindset that says we can take a tablet to heal ourselves. This is often only superficial, merely treating the symptoms without getting to the root cause. Like Ayurveda and Reiki, yoga tries to take us to the root, to free us from whatever it is that is causing our loss of wellness or anxiety or depression, or knee issue etc.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is the first ancient text solely about yoga, tells us that to overcome obstacles in our life, we should choose one practice to focus upon, which should be a steady and balanced practice (an equal amount of both) practised with a certain amount of effort. Furthermore, the practice should be for the long term (again, no quick fix approach), without interruption, with a positive attitude, with enthusiasm and thoroughly.

Do I have to commit to yoga

If you wish to experience the many benefits of yoga, then yes, there must be a certain discipline and therefore commitment.

I work best with those who are willing, committed and ready to take responsibility for themselves and their practice. Many people tell me they practice yoga, but when prompted it turns out their yoga mat has spent the last six months in the boot of their car. There has to be clear intent and the discipline to get on your mat and to class regularly.

An open mind and heart works best, from me too. When it comes down to it, I truly want the best outcome for you and your life and love to share yoga for this very reason, because it absolutely positively changes things.

What style of yoga do you teach

For me, yoga is about freedom and this is what I hope to share in my teachings. I have been inspired in recent years by the teachings of Vanda Scaravelli as imparted to me by my teacher, Louise Simmons. The emphasis is on freeing the spine and therefore freeing stuck energy and ultimately freeing the mind. In this way we can link with a deeper aspect of self, and our lives begin to change in ways we can never have previously imagined as we begin to realise more of our potential – essentially we come to know ourselves much better, which improves all our relationships including our relationship with ourselves. Ultimately this is a Tantric approach to practice, free of dogma and limitation.

And what about breathing and meditation

In theory, the yoga postures allow us to establish sufficient stability and ease in our body to enable us to sit, without discomfort and distraction, so that we may focus on our breathing, which may ultimately lead to a state of meditation. The breath is probably one of the most useful tools we have at our disposal, and it is always there and always free! The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali references the breath a number of times, especially lengthening into the exhalation, as a quick way to stabilise and calm the mind.

In my humble opinion, it is absolutely pointless attempting to meditate unless you have managed to create a certain focus and centredness to the mind. If your mind is all over the place, it is likely to get worse when you try to sit still and observe it. My suggestion is to do something grounding first, such as preparing food consciously with love, or getting your hands in the earth gardening, or going for a swim, or a long walk, anything which helps you to feel more grounded and centred before you begin meditating.

How do I deepen my yoga practice and increasingly move towards a state of yoga – freedom?

Through regular and committed practice with a teacher who can guide you and ensure that you are not bypassing or creating more of the same through the reinforcement of existing and unhelpful movement patterns - and let us not forget that movement patterns in the body also contain a thought and emotion, so once we change the pattern, we free ourselves on all levels of being. Furthermore, a practice aimed at you personally can help you to overcome the various obstacles and afflictions in your life.

What’s the difference between a general class and an intimate class

While I do my best to attend to each student’s needs, this is perhaps more challenging in a general class environment as students present with such different bodies and there is only one of me! In an intimate group there are less students (usually about five), so I am able to get my hands on each student, making the experience more personal.

Furthermore, while my general classes are friendly and interactive to an extent, in an intimate group we can be more interactive, so that we might observe other students practising a posture so we can see how their body moves, which helps us to understand more of the movement and potential of the body and embody this ourselves.

Also, while the general classes follow a familiar structure – dropping into the body, breath awareness, postures, relaxation – the intimate classes do not follow any set structure, and will generally focus on only a few core postures, so that you can take this learning with you and start to integrate into your regular yoga practice. The smaller group and the nature of the hands on experience may encourage a greater therapeutic benefit.

An intimate class costs £28 per student and lasts 90 minutes. There are usually only 5 students in each session. A general class costs £60 for 5 tokens payable in advance, or £13 drop in.

How about a private session

Private sessions are of course much more intimate and tailored to your body and your needs. The sessions are hands on, I give Reiki where I can too. There is no set structure and we will generally only focus on a couple of postures. Thus it is a not a class where you might establish a set routine to copy at home, it is more so a therapeutic approach to practice, where we can seek to establish new movement patterns which you can start to integrate into your yoga practice and in daily life. Please bring a notebook if you wish to record what we are practising ad I do not provide notes following the class.

Private sessions can be taken for 30 minutes (£40), 45 minutes (£60) or an hour (£80). Please email me to book in at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk

I have never practised yoga previously

No problem. No one is excluded from yoga, everyone can gain something from yoga, regardless of age, physical ability or illness.

What happens if I have injuries or patterns of unwellness

With injuries or loss of physical wellness, yoga offers an opportunity to help you get to the root cause and will offer the opportunity for healing and understanding yourself on a deeper level. We have various tools available to us and a myriad of postures, to make the practice accessible. You will feel undoubtably better from practising yoga, and whatever your problem is, it will not overtake you; yoga will help you to take care of your body, your mind and your breath and you will likely have more energy.

What do I need to bring with me?

From a hygienic perspective you might like to use your own mat, but I do have spare mats which you can use if needed.

Do you offer other classes beyond yoga asana?

Yes, I offer Vedic chanting, pranayama & meditation and the study of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This is offered in small groups of 5 or privately. The website contains more information, please email to book at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk.

Anything else ?

If something has gotten your attention and you are feeling drawn then honour that inner nudge. I remember what it was like to attend my first yoga class and if it hadn’t have been for my brother attending the class with me then I doubt I would have entered through the door! We all have to start somewhere and let’s not forget that yoga is non-competitive and I encourage you to close your eyes as much as you can so you can begin to internalise the practice, which is essentially what yoga is all about – going inwards.

Love Emma x

Emma Despres 05/06/2024 Emma Despres 05/06/2024

Thank you from my heart to yours!

For a while now I have been keen to expand my yoga offerings but as with everything in life there is a timing. I have had the amazing opportunity of studying directly with my asana teacher, Louise Simmons, in Findhorn twice already this year, with a further trip booked for September and this has made a huge difference to my practice and indeed my healing and confidence.

During the pandemic I took it very personally that people stopped practising yoga. It didn’t help that it coincided with my style of teaching changing to the softer, more introspective and somatic approach, namely Scaravelli inspired yoga, which has for me been absolutely life changing. Until that point of being re-directed I was always drawn to the more active and indeed masculine approaches of vinyasa and dynamic yoga, which sadly fed my pitta and masculine tendencies towards achievement and striving, which ultimately kept me trapped in this rather hardened pattern within my body and therefore in my mind.

In short, I was merely feeding my existing imbalances and so Louise entering my life was not only synchronistic but a true gift and the universe once again bringing me what I needed. I did fight it initially though. The Scaravelli approach is challenging for someone like me who has always lived life rather quickly. This approach slows me down and brings me deeper into my feminine energy.

Life has changed enormously since I began practising this way, helped by my meanderings into Tantra through Shakti Tantra, albeit the Scaravelli inspired approach is Tantric by its very nature, and the embodiment of some of these teachings, which also connected me to my feminine energy and helped me heal some core woundings around my sexuality from previous trauma.

The Scaravelli approach is extremely intimate and is magic in many respects - being completely honest and personal here - but shared because its might help some of you - for many years, because of trauma I was unable to feel pleasure in my body, and the Scaravelli yoga has gifted me this pleasure again, helped by all the other work I do to heal - it really positively changes things on all levels of being.

However, like I was saying, it did take a good while to get to a point where I was comfortable with the Scaravelli approach. When I first started practising with Louise, I fairly much continued with my old ways, to the extent that even after an online session with her, I would then feel to do my more demanding and aggressive practice because I didn’t feel I had practised yoga unless I had pushed myself into tension - ironically - in my quest to release tension. Now I realise that all I was doing was creating more tension in the body and indeed mind and while I did become more flexible over time, I was essentially training my body to be a certain way, which wasn’t allowing any body it’s own intelligence and kept my mind stuck in unhelpful behaviours and ways of being.

I now realise that the body is incredibly intelligent, we just have to get the mind out of the way. This is the reason that the Scaravelli approach is not systemised and even calling it Scarevlli inspired is a difficulty in itself, because as soon as we try to define or describe something, or make it a certain way, then we limit it, which does against the very grain of yoga in its quest to take us towards freedom. It is probably this which has taken me a good while to get my head around, because I have been very mind based in my need to understand everything, I can blame our education system perhaps and our societal need - especially from a scientific perspective - to break everything down into parts, it creates a certain mind set and way of relating, which is actually unhelpful in terms of our spiritual development and leaning increasingly into freedom.

But as I said, everything has a timing. We cannot leap from one way of being to another and the more we open to freedom and become more intimate in our body and understand more of the workings of our mind, the more were feel we are unable to live as we did previously, which usually means we increasingly move away from the mainstream, which is not without its challenges, as people are triggered by this, especially those closest to us, and wonder if we are losing our mind, and in many respects we are, slowly, at least the controlling ego-driven part of our mind. It doesn’t give up without a fight though and I am sure some of you have experienced a healing crisis when it fights back, fearing annihilation, but essentially that is what has to happen if we have any hope of living more in touch with our soul and that eternal part therefore that never changes - not the false self, but the true Self, purusha then.

Thus it did take quite a few years to let go of the vinyasa approach as this was such an ingrained habit to feel that unless I was pushing the body and ‘exercising’ then I was not practising yoga. Now I realise that the opposite is true, that yoga is not about pushing or exercising, but about containing the mind and being super kind. This too - as always -is a work in progress.

Anyway, I lost a lot of my confidence because of the manner in which people turned away from yoga post-pandemic and suddenly my once busy classes were now strangely quiet. It didn’t help that my finance job had also dropped away and while this was my choice, sadly the nature of my mindset at that time was to feel that this was because I wasn’t good enough. This was a very old pattern of mine, and was triggered again. What’s even more sad in many respects is that it took me an awfully long time to realise that this way of personalising everything was an unhelpful pattern in itself and that actually people moving away from yoga was nothing to do with me, that life had changed for so many, that the yoga boom had essentially ended and what an honour it was to have been teaching during that time.

What I also hadn’t appreciated was that my loss of confidence in teaching yoga also caused a loss of passion for yoga and it took me a good while to realise this too. I kept practising of course, I have always been very disciplined about that, getting on my mat every single day for almost 21 years now, bar the day after my boys were each born, but even then I took my yoga mat into hospital and post C-section found myself lying on my mat in Loveridge ward (maternity) breathing, at least I could do that, and very gentle (mad when I think back!) movements!

Since the pandemic I have continued studying online with Louise, as well as with my Vedic chant and philosophy teacher, Helen Macpherson, who is based in Sussex. Studying Vedic chanting has helped me enormously in finding my voice and I am sure this contributed to me finally writing some books, a dream I held since age 10. However, studying the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with both Helen and her partner, Andy, has been hugely helpful. Even though this text is 5,000 years old it is still relevant now and actually much needed now. It is a guide for living life and I take much comfort in it and enjoy reading it over and over again.

However, it wasn’t until i visited my teacher, Louise, in January that I regained my confidence and - more importantly - my passion for yoga and felt that maybe I should be sharing these practises with others, so that they could also benefit.

At that same time, I re-connected with my pranayama teacher, Emil Wendel, through his partner, Anouk. I met Emil in Byron Bay many years ago now and travelled to study with him in India and Bali as well as meeting him on trips to Nepal, this all pre-children. Being honest again, one of the greatest challenges for me in having children has not only been the demands of motherhood and my ability to parent, but has been coming to terms with the perceived loss of freedom and ability to travel to study with my teachers directly. I also very much miss Nepal as I used to spend months at a time living out there and immersing myself in yoga and all things spiritual. But alas, this is how life is and I am of course eternally grateful for being gifted such beautiful boys with such wonderful souls.

Emil and Anouk stepped away from the yoga scene during the pandemic because of the manner in which yoga has become industrialised and in many respects sold out on itself - it has certainly become something it is not, in so much as an exercise regime rather than a spiritual practice. But at the beginning of this year Anouk felt to start offering their teachings again and I joined her online pranayama and meditation sessions along with a group of dedicated practitioners from around the world and this re-inspired my love of these practices to the extent that I felt confident in sharing these with others too.

So all of this - thank you universe - has helped me to re-discover my passion and love of yoga, and with that my confidence, and I am keen to share what I can with you so that you may all benefit and hopefully experience greater love , intimacy and freedom in your own lives too - peace and stability as well.

Yoga and Reiki truly saved my life. I arrived at them when I didn’t really know that I wanted to be alive, my inner light was very dim, and they brought me back into my body, back to my heart and gave me the strength and courage to make changes in my life so that I could live more authentically and with much greater connection to my heart and soul. It has not always been an easy journey, but at least I feel alive and increasingly connected to my heart and soul and aware that this is a wonderful world filled with magic, if only we allow it.

As I navigate the demands of motherhood with two neurodiverse children who choose to be home schooled, co-habiting and co-parenting with their lovely dad, who is one of my best friends, but no longer (as you many of you already know) my romantic partner, I am given much strength from these various practices. Life is not easy. I too am sensitive and yoga and Reiki make us increasingly sensitive so my way of living is often different to the norm, not for the sake of it, but because there is no other way for me to exist on this planet, but to live increasingly quietly, gently and indeed lightly, retreating when I can.

My work is my passion and I love nothing more than the intimate group sessions I have been running more recently in the beautiful conservatory at the healing space, studying the Sutras, Vedic chanting and pranayama and meditation with some of you really lovely people. I am grateful for the peace this gifts, not least the environment, but the practices and of course your wonderful energy, especially when we come together like this.

I love my Monday evening and Friday morning classes too. The Friday morning ladies (and sometimes Andy!) have been committed for a good while now - you are all amazing human beings, thank you for sharing your Friday mornings with me, I always look forward to seeing you - and I have so loved witnessing the changes in their bodies as I share my practise with them, increasingly freeing the spine and indeed the mind in the process. We have a good laugh together sometimes too, I love that humanness in our interaction and the groaning that sometimes fills the room! The Monday evening class is also finding it’s way into it’s own thing, and we are beginning to have more interaction and community feel - thank you to those of you who stuck with me after Jo left, I really admire your courage too.

I have also thoroughly enjoyed helping some of you find your way with the spiritual life coaching and of course my other passion is Reiki and I am always so honoured when people choose to become attuned with me or come to me for treatments, again in the lovely healing space which fairly much heals you without me actually having to do anything! Ayurveda I love too of course, because it has helped me in infinite ways and I am always keen to share this with others, while appreciating it does take a certain level of consciousness to be open to this ancient approach to diet and lifestyle and the use of medicinal herbs which is very different to our western mindset around nutrition and healing and the quick fix approach.

My intention has always been to share these passions with others so that we can all positively benefit, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the wider community and indeed the planet. The more we can positively shift our vibration, then much like the butterfly effect, the more we positively affect all those around us and the world at large. We need to be the change we wish to see in the world. We also have to remember that if we keep doing what we have always done then we will always get what we always got…

So thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting Beinspired, for helping me to establish a Beinspired community where we can be ourselves without judgement, another one of my intentions when I established Beinspired back in 2006, and for having the courage to open your mind and heart and explore new ways of being, both in your body and mind and in your life generally. If it wasn’t for each of you I wouldn’t be able to share my passions and my life would not be quiet so joyful and I would not feel quite so free. So thank you, truly.

I will be sharing in my next blog more information on yoga and my latest offerings. Do get in touch if you are keen to explore these offerings and I will add you to my list.

With love and gratitude

Emma

Emma Despres 26/05/2024 Emma Despres 26/05/2024

The magic of Findhorn

I spent the full moon up in Findhorn, about 40 minutes drive east of Inverness, home to my yoga teacher, Louise Simmons and her partner, John, and the famous gigantic vegetables.

So the story goes that back Scotland 1962 a man called Peter Caddy was fired from his job as a hotel manager in the nearby town of Forres. Losing his job also meant losing the hotel room that was home to his family, and it had to be vacated within four hours. With nowhere to go, Peter, his wide Eileen, their three boys and his colleague, Dorothy Maclean, packed a trailer and eventually found themselves at a sandy trailer park on the edge of a windswept garbage dump near Findhorn beach.

With little money, no prospects and winter vastly approaching, the future seemed bleak for the Caddy’s but, luckily for them, they had a connection to spirit.

On the first night at Findhorn - which is an amazingly special place btw - in meditation, Eileen received guidance guidance, which said, “Although it may seem to be the worst day of your lives, all is very, very well and where you are will become a place of great beauty which “thousands upon thousands” will visit”. Not knowing what to think about this “guidance” they simply just tried to get through the bitter winter.

When spring approached, Eileen intuited further guidance, which basically told her “You are to start a Garden, which will become a center of light that reaches the four corners of the world and it will become a model for the troubled planet.”

Despite the harsh conditions, the Caddys toiled working the land and with nothing more than a deep desire to feed their family and guidance, the Caddys were able to transform a sandy wind swept garbage dump to an vibrant other worldly garden. As their connection to the land and spirit grew, so did the vegetables until they were multiple times the size of their common garden counterparts.

People would flock to Findhorn by the thousands to see the garden with giant vegetables, and would leave touched by the very atmosphere of the beautiful energy that now encompassed the entire area.

Interestingly, when scientists would later come to test the soil conditions they would find that it contained no organic matter and retained little moisture. Renowned soil expert Professor R. Lindsey Robb was quoted as saying “The vigor and health [of the plants] could not be explained by known scientific, organic husbandry”.

Needless to say, the incredible garden at Findhorn brought the Caddys world wide publicity and while the vegetables eventually returned to normal size, the phenomenon had by then captured the world’s attention.

Inevitably, other people came to join the Caddys and Dorothy in their work and soon the original group of six grew into a small community, committed to their spiritual path and to expanding the garden in harmony with nature.

In 1972 the community was formally registered as a Scottish Charity called the Findhorn Foundation. In the 1970s and 80s it grew to approximately 300 members.

In an interesting turn, the Foundation purchased the hotel from which Peter had been fired, and used it as a centre for workshops and and accommodation. In 1983 it purchased the caravan park in Findhorn, which is now known as The Park Ecovillage.

To this day the Findhorn Foundation continues striving to co-create with the intelligence of nature and to take inspired action toward a vision of a better world.

From my experience, there is indeed something very special about the land and energy here at Findhorn, which resonates with me hugely. I have been lucky to get to know many little pockets of magic around the world, such as Byron Bay in Australia, Pokhara in Nepal, Glastonbury in Somerset, UK and of course our own little spot of magic in the form of Sark, but never have I felt energy quite like Findhorn. It is ethereal, calming, healing, inspiring and uplifting.

Not only that, but while the land may be sandy, it still gifts vibrant and beautiful life. Louise’s garden and allotment is abundant, absolutely abundant, in produce. I couldn’t quite believe how alive the whole place felt, and how much further ahead the veggies are in their growth than here sun warmer Guernsey. It made my moon garden seem rather pathetic this year!

It’s not only the land though, but the general welcoming feel of the community, this in the actual village of Findhorn, let alone in the Eco Village of the Findhorn Foundation itself. The village itself is marvellous, it only has two shops but one of them, the Bakehouse, is a gem, selling organic produce and products and offering a plethora of very yummy home made food, such as soups, dhals and humous etc, and all sorts of cakes and bakes. I wish we had something similar here on Guernsey, it is much needed!

I find Louise’s teachings so inspiring, her knowledge of the body is astounding, and the way she shares this, with imagery and poetic language speaks to my heart and soul in a way that not other yoga teacher has managed to touch. I love attending the small group sessions that she offers, both in the village hall, but also in her own space within her beautiful home. I have met the most lovely people, many of whom share a passion for growing and working intuitively and gently with the earth.

This is a place where people are trying to live lightly and consciously and the whole energy reflects this. There is a gentleness, which is extremely healing, especially when visiting from the often manic and material energy of Guernsey, albeit I am conscious that if Guernsey could just be left to be, there is a magic and healing that arises from the land here too.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the yoga and it has inspired in me a need to bring more yogic offerings to the Beinspired community, with more options for small and intimate group work and privates too, so that you too can have the opportunity to delve deeper into your practice and into your body especially. More on this another time…I also managed to get to a Reiki session with a local Reiki practitioner reminding me how incredible it is to receive Reiki - bliss!

Of course there are other benefits that Findhorn provides, not least a seemingly endless and beautiful coastline of natural beach and the sea, which wasn’t anywhere near as cold as I anticipated, but I had sat in a mobile sauna at the top of the beach before venturing into the sea for a swim this time, so I have no doubt that made a difference! In fact it was a magical way to end the trip, the sun wasn’t setting until just after 9.45pm so there we were about 9.30pm, swimming in the sea with the sun dropping one side and a rainbow another, as if ending my trip with yet more magic!

This because the other pull for me, is the plethora of stone circles which fill this jaw dropping landscape, especially out in Aberdeenshire, maybe 90-120 minutes drive away to see the really amazing recumbent stone circles, but there are other circles closer by, and I made the most of my time to visit four of them despite the rather wet and misty weather.

I managed to find both Druid’s Temple and Thorax stone circle which I hadn’t been able to find on my previous trip. I also returned to Rothiemay, which was quite funny because I parked up in the entrance to a long drive and went to the field only to find it had lots of cows in it who ran to the other side of the field initially so i started climbing the gate, then the cows ran to me at the gate so I quickly jumped down again. I concluded I wouldn’t be able to get to the stones but when I went back to the car the owners of the property were taking their dog for a walk and they assured me the cows are super friendly and wouldn’t hurt me.

So I plucked up the courage…and all the time was communicating with them, not to freak me out and come too close, they literally followed me around like children. I lost my nerve right at the end and flung myself on the gate, only to drop my car keys in the field so I had to sheepishly go back into the field, to retrieve them. It was worth the effort, the recumbent stone has cup marks and I am obsessed about them!

The cows and Rothiemay recumbent stone circle

The famous Clava Cairns are a 45 minutes drive away from Findhorn, towards Inverness and I managed to get here again too, to soak up the energy once they had been charged by the full moon. It was much busier than January when I had the place to myself. Clava is the supposed Stonehenge of the north and with good reason because this is another uplifting place, very calming and centring and yet more cup marks and some of those beautiful thin menhirs that you find up on the Scottish islands.

By the end of the three nights I was definitely in a different place to whenI arrived, the combination of all the yoga, the stones, the Findhorn energy, the sea, the full moon, the nourishing food, the space, the silence of living on my own in Louise and John’s healing annex, the light, all of it, had worked some magic into my being and I was most definitely left on a delightful high!

Fortunately for me, my practice demands that I check in with my teacher as often as I can. There is nothing quite as helpful to take you deeper into the body than a hands on approach and practising in person is of course much more helpful than practicing online - although that is better than not practising with Louise at all. I feel very honoured and privileged to have found this amazing spot on planet earth and look forward to my next visit, with the boys this time, in September.