Samskāras - those tricky habits and afflictions that keep us stuck

Let’s talk about samskāras, those tricky habits and afflictions that prevent us from making permanent positive change in our lives.

It is difficult isn’t it. You have seen the pattern. You know the changes you need to make. You have the intention. And it starts off really well. You try and make different choices, avoid the pitfalls. But before you know it, you’re back where you started all over again.

Life is sometimes like a game of snakes and ladders.

But, equally, we can make changes, so that the choices we make result in a different outcome and we experience greater inner freedom, less bound by what has happened previously - we take more ladders, less snakes.

It is important to remember though, that there are no mistakes. Often we give ourselves a really hard time for thinking we have messed up and/or failed, and we live with regret, wishing we had made different choices. But the realty is, we chose as we did, because of our level of consciousness and discernment at that time.

So we need to let ourselves off the hook and appreciate that - at least from a Tantric perspective - our perceived mistakes and failures become advantages when regarded as growth opportunities. However this is not to say that the process isn’t painful and it is understandable that we may wish to try and refine and improve our ability to make more beneficial choices from the outset and move more easily along our path.

So why is this so difficult?

Well our intellect and discernment (known as buddhi in yogic philosophy) - our ability to make more empowering and aligned choices - is impaired by samskarās, otherwise known as the subliminal impressions of past experiences.

Put simply, a samskāra is an impression, like a well worn track on a dirt road, where the wheels of the vehicles have made a very clear indentation from repeated use. Or a deep footprint in the sand at the beach.

With the first example, when it rains, the water will follow the same path and collect in the indentations along the path, it doesn’t drain off consistently along the track. In the second example, when the tide comes in and the water flows over the footprints, it will flow differently than if the sand was perfectly smooth.

And so it is that when the energy of the world flows through your mind - when life happens - it is affected by the deep impressions of past experiences (the tracks and footprints) that are lodged there, and this will have an effect on your experience of life in any one moment.

This is the reason we each experience the same situation differently, because it all depends on what has happened to us previously and the nature of our dirt tracks or footprints.

Caution is therefore required, because based on our past experiences, we formulate projections and make assumptions that are more often than not misaligned with the reality of the present moment. That is to say, we don’t see reality clearly because it is tainted by what has happened to us previously - we add bias and create stories that are not actually based on what is really and truly happening. In fact we can create such crazy stories that we can send ourselves quite mad in our misperception of reality.

You see, our brains are really good at pattern matching, too good at times, because even a very superficial resemblance of the current situation to a past situation will cause us to unconsciously assume that the present is like the past in most of its details.

This act of unconsciously projecting the past onto the present is the main reason that we taint our perspective of reality, that we don’t see clearly the present moment, and are unable then of making good choices - we slide down the snake rather than climbing up the ladder.

Thus, the presence of samskāras impairs the natural ability of the buddhi (capacity of intellect and discernment) to discern what is beneficial for is and what is not.

And just to make it clear, this is the reason that we don’t always make choices which are in our best interests. Because we don’t see the situation clearly and accurately, we often react, based on past experience and the trauma and discomfort we have felt previously, and are keen to avoid again.

And the trouble is, the more we keep on making the same unhelpful choices, the deeper the track or footprints become, and the more we keep getting stuck.

As Christopher Wallis writes, “The spiritual path is very much about developing clear vision and cultivating the ability to see things as they really are. In classical yoga philosophy, the practices of yoga (especially meditation) have the primary purpose of dissolving the samskāras, these impressions, in order to bring about this clear vision, and the clear discernment that results from it”.

Imagine a dirty mirror. When, through yoga, the mirror of the mind becomes clear - our buddhi is clear, our ability to see things actually as they are, without being tainted by past experiences and impressions (samskāras) - it can perfectly reflect the light of our divine self.

Thus, the more we practice yoga, the more accurate our intuition and discernment becomes.

This is because when we come up against our patterns, we might find a tiny pause, and start to notice them for what they are, before we get caught up in them. We might call this ‘being triggered’.

We all get triggered at times. Something happens and suddenly you don’t feel so good. Your mind has recognised a pattern. This is what the mind does. It tries to keep us safe. So it is constantly scanning for signs of unsafely. It is keen to avoid what has happened previously.

Some have lived in households where communication and emotional intelligence has been poor and life has been lived through volatility and attempting to read people’s moods and emotional states, to avoid confrontation and aggressive outbursts. This can lead to hyper vigilance. It can also cause us to see things which don’t exist.

Furthermore, some have suffered trauma to the extent that the mind can be hyper vigilant, and cause an underlying feeling of anxious fairly much all the time. The mind is constantly scanning for trouble, for a repetition of the causative factor to the trauma whether that be violence, injury, accident, bullying the loss of someone loved and/or betrayal etc.

Then life happens and we get triggered. The water collects in the track or turns murky over the footprint. Then we don’t feel so good. So we do what we always do. It is a path well travelled, a track and foot print well trodden. We react to the situation based on our usual patterning.

It is this that we need to change. But it takes work. And life will keep triggering us until we get it. This is the reason we sometimes feel like we are playing a game of snakes and ladders. We feel we are making good progress, then something happens and we react the way we have always done and we are back where we started all over again. Or just as worse - we feel stuck.

This is the reason that we keep ending up in the same dissatisfying jobs and relationships, that we keep stumbling up against the same old mindset of not liking ourselves and feeling insecure, and the reason we keep eating all the foods we know we shouldn’t, or drinking too much wine, or whatever it is that we do, have always done, that we keep repeating our old patterns in all different situations over and over again.

Until we don’t. Until we work with our samskāras to positively change them. But before we can do that we have to know what they are = to understand the foundation of our triggers - to be able to recognise them and choose differently.

Incidentally, we cannot fill in the tracks or the footprints, but we can make new tracks and new footprints that take us in a more conscious and positive direction. This is the bit that requires effort.

Sometimes people think great yoga masters can read minds and have other psychic abilities, but the reality is that they just see life much more clearly than most - they have less obstructions in their ability to see reality as it actually is, untainted by past impressions.

Thus someone with a purified buddhi free of samskāras, can always see the most beneficial course of action in any given situation, giving s/he power to change situations.

So the key, other than getting on our mat and practising yoga, is to figure out our samskāras, our patterns, and to work with them.

For example, many of us have a fear around rejection and abandonment, and thus any time we feel even slightly rejected, we get triggered, and this might cause us to close down, retreat, or the opposite, get loud, shout out and defend ourselves in some way. This behaviour isn’t always helpful. It can close our hearts and create suffering - causing us to ironically reject a part of ourselves.

Furthermore, many have suffered the break down of a relationship because of betrayal, so in each relationship that follows we are constantly seeking signs of betrayal and seeing it even when it doesn’t exist, to the extent that we drive our partner away with our need to control and our hyper vigilance because of not wanting to feel the pain of betrayal again - but we create pain for ourselves anyway.

Others are constantly worried about what others think about them and over personalise everything, so that they are hyper vigilant to other people’s facial expressions, moods and communication, assuming that because someone looks at them ‘funny’ or doesn’t return a smile, then there is an issue - their inherent insecurity causes them to feel anxious and on edge, worried if they have offended the other person or even worse, being aggressive towards them, when the reality is, the other person is just busy getting on with their day and didn’t notice that anyone else.

In another example, someone doesn’t respond to an email in a timely fashion and we immediately personalise this and create a story about the other person’s rudeness or become anxious, worried we have done something to upset them, or we may even feel rejected/abandonned by them. This, when the message has gone to the person’s junk box and they have no idea we emailed them in the first place!

Yet another example might be that we are due to join an online session and our WIFI goes down. It is beyond our control and this triggers a feeling of helplessness and also a concern about what the other people might think of us. We get stressed and angry and lash out at our nearest and dearest and become even angrier at ourself. In reality there is literally nothing we can do to change the situation but this feeling of helplessness and reputational concern causes us to create our own suffering as our imagination runs wild - the irony is, we judge ourself more than anyone else is judging us, about something quite beyond our control!

All these examples hopefully highlight how brilliant us humans are at projecting and creating situations in our head that are not real, and creating all these false stories about reality. It is this that creates our suffering and it is this that we can change through our spiritual practice and by working with our pattens and tendencies.

So next time you get triggered, try not to react as you have done previously, creating the same old story in your head. Instead take a few deep breaths and thank your mind for trying to keep you safe. Then tap into buddhi (intellect and discernment), and make a different choice of how to be, rather than just reacting unconsciously as you have done a million times previously.

It may well take you to a place of vulnerability, but it is a place worth visiting - this is how we open to greater love in our life and deeper connection to our true Self beyond the ego. You can work with the sankalpa (resolve or intention), such as “I open to greater love and intimacy” , in your Yoga Nidra practice and see what happens, see how it begins to change things, when you open up to vulnerability and allowing things to be different.

I’m running a series called Opening to Self Love, which will include a Yoga Nidra and various other Tantric practices to try to positively change some of the samskāras, which are not helpful in your life. To find out more, click here.

But otherwise just keep working with the samskāras, to free yourself from them, unsticking yourself in the process, seeing reality more clearly and enjoying more love, energy and freedom.

Love Emma x

Setting ourselves free of false ego identity

The moon has gifted many insights this cycle, but the one that has struck me the most is the reminder that we are not broken and don’t need fixing and that we need to shift this mindset if we truly want to thrive and appreciate our true divinity.

I have also been reminded that our mind is our worst enemy and creates our suffering through our forgetfulness that we are neither our thoughts nor our feelings. However, we have this self-depreciating tendency to allow both to run riot, getting caught up in, and stuck, the same mental and emotional patterns over an dover again, and creating our reality from this limited perspective.

We are not our thoughts and we are not our feelings. They come and go. You only have to ask your mind, “what thought is coming next”, to realise that you are not your thoughts. And you are not your feelings, because emotions are simply energy in motion. When we stop their motion and cling onto them, then we stop their flow and mis-identify with them as who we are - “I am sad”, I am depressed”. Not, you’re not! You are merely feeling sadness and depression. But they are not you. It is important to realise this.

Same with your thoughts. Did you know that ego simply means , “What you think you are”. So it’s just your ego that says, “I am fat”, “I am thin”, “I am a victim”, “I am clever’, “I am stupid”, “I am unloveable”, “I am ugly” and every other “I” statement. The collection of these thoughts creates our ego identity, so the ego is nothing more than a raft of self images bound together by your belief in them. Thus the way you identify with yourself is nothing more than fictitious construct, consisting primarily of self-images that exist because of your belief in them and attachment to them.

What is crazy is that each self image is based on a particle moment or moments of past experience that created a mental construct, “a story”, that was taken as static reality. For example, the moment you were praised or punished for something, told you are this or that, you believed it to be so, you bought into the story and by buying into the story, you acquired a self image to add to your forming ego that became a static reality - you believed it so and in believing it so, you made it so.

I have lost count of the number of clients who are stuck in mis-identification, believing they are this or that, usually something negative because of what has happened in their past. Not only does this keep them locked in the past, but it prevents them from expanding because they have limited themselves to the thought, “I am unloveable”, “I am unattractive”, “I am fat”, or whatever it is. The more we keep buying into these false identifications the more we make them so. We believe them into reality and create our own prison bars in the process.

It doesn’t have to be like this! Every moment of every day offers us the opportunity to remove the prison bars and set ourselves free. We choose how we relate to ourselves. I cannot tell you how liberating it is to bat those thoughts away, like they are tennis balls, to challenge every single idea we have about who we are, and to let our feelings flow, see them quite literally as the energy in motion that they are.

Yesterday we had an incidence at the beach where a very important person got annoyed at us for dumping our bags near to her shoes and towel. We’ve spent hours at Fort Grey this summer, hours an hours, and everyone has been really friendly, it’s one of the reason we love it there so much, let alone the opportunity for jumping, kayaking, paddle boarding, rock pooling and just absorbing it’s sacred energy, so it ws quite a surprise. It wasn’t until we got home, E told me that the lady in question, who actually accused us of intentionally leaving our stuff near her stuff to annoy her, is a reputable lawyer on the island, recently returned.

I realised then the reason for her reaction - she has over identified with her job title and believes herself better than everyone else, she has that entitlement that certain occupations encourage. This is not to say she isn’t divine, she is. We are all divine. But her ego has made her believe herself to be better than everyone else. But one day she will retire and what then? What identity will she take on. The lawyer that was? This is the reason so many company directors have heart attacks following retirement - they lose their job title and with that their identity and they no longer wield the same level of power that they did in the organisation.

So we have to be careful. One day we will die and we will become nothing more than dust or compost. There’s this lovely bit in Hamlet, in scene 3 of Act IV, when the King asks Hamlet where the late Polonius is, Hamlet replies, “At supper”. The king, knowing that Polonius is dead, asks Hamlet what he means, to which he curtly gives this riposte:

“Not where he eats, but where ‘a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end…A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm.”

Hamlet is very clever as he skilfully catches the audience off guard with his initial reply, “At supper”. This because we tend to think of the phrase, ‘at supper’ as, as meaning a person eating a meal. However Hamelt is referring to the person being eaten and emphasis with force the upheaval of hierarchies - the fat kind (and the lean beggar) serve the appetites of the imperial worms, “two dishes” end up on “one table”.

I’ve always thoughts this quote really interesting, reminding us that we are essentially all the same, and all part of the whole - of the continual cycle of life and indeed death on planet earth. Also a reminder that we are no better than each other. In death and indeed in life, we are essentially all equal. Admittedly some are more evolved than others, born with different karma and special qualities, but in terms of our treatment of each other, it is only our ego that says we are better, or indeed worse.

Anyway my point in all this, is to remember that we are not the stories we create about ourselves. Which is the reason I have some concerns about our over identification with labels, because we then make it so and again limit ourselves in the process. We over identify with our states of being too and continue to perpetuate the story, buying into victimhood at times, and keeping ourselves stuck.

At some point we have to realise that we are more than our thoughts and feelings and the stories we tell ourselves - or the stories others tell us. We have to remember that other people’s opinions of us - which they share readily with us, especially when we are children - are just thoughts. They are just someone else’s perspective. They are not true. They are not based on a divine reality but on someone’s judgement which is based to their conditioning and way of seeing the world and our place in it.

I have lost track of the number of people who suffer simply because of being told they were lazy at school, or sloppy, or whatever it may be, that they have taken with them into adulthood and believed it to be a truth. Who cares what other people think?!

It’s our conditioning actually that needs shifting. We have layers and layers of it and much of it patriarchal and christianised. This is something else that has really struck me lately. As women especially we talk of being empowered, yet we are still subjected to our conditioning that tells us we can only be empowered if we dig into our masculine energy and do it like the men. We still buy into the idea of power and money equalling success. We still pedestal masculine traits of achievement, outcome, rationality and consistent and linear ways of being in this world over the feminine qualities of empathy, intuition and cyclical ways of being.

We still pedestal science as if this is King. Nothing is believed if it hasn’t been proven by science. Yet science in itself is so limiting. The ancient Rishis knew the workings of this universe and the teachings have been shared for thousands of years. But unless science proves it so then we are not to believe it. Of course science has its place, but our intuition cannot be proven, nor our empathic feelings, but that doesn’t make them any less meaningful or important. We also have this annoying habit of reinventing the wheel and then commodifying it.

We strip the sacred out of everything. We are hell bent on externalising our view of the world. It doesn’t become about your meditation, it becomes about the cushion you are sitting on and the room you are sitting in. Even yoga has become less about recognising our divinity and more about how your body looks in a certain pose. We have to be careful what we buy into. In my day you didn’t need a particular water bottle to remind you to drink water. You drank water from a water fountain when you felt thirsty and I am still here to tell the tale. I’m actually honoured by the many ways we buy into commercialism.

Furthermore, so many women I see are still beholden to feelings of guilt and shame for wanting to step into their sexual energy. This because the christianised concept of purity runs deep in our DNA. We hold ourselves up against values which were forced upon our ancestors. They didn’t have a choice. But were do. We don’t need to keep perpetuating the story that we are good or bad, pure or dirty, virginal or whore, pretty or ugly, success or failure. All this duality kills the soul and keeps us trapped in our ego identity.

We are EVERYTHING. Our spiritual practicer can be anything because everything is essentially a manifestation of the Goddess. One of my friend’s loves playing AirSoft. He takes his spiritual practice seriously. Seeing an AirSoft gun hanging on his wall, someone made the comment, “well that’s not very spiritual is it!”. but actually why is yoga spiritual and playing AirSoft not? What differentiates the two. If they both serve to take us deeper to the truth, and into this present moment where we realise our divinity, then why is one good and the other bad?

It is from this understanding that the Tantric tradition arose. Tantra teaches that even the most mundane actions like washing the dishes and hanging out the washing are opportunities for experiencing the joy which flows from being truly present - of being in full Presence. We don’t limit ourselves then to our spiritual evolution, our recognition of our divinity, arising only on say our yoga mat or meditation cushion. For me this is incredibly liberating, to realise my deeper Self by being immersed in the world, rather than separate from it, of being deeply in the body, not denying it, of feeling pleasure and pain and not making one good and one bad.

The other point here is around evolution. My use of that word is perhaps not helpful as it implies moving outside ourselves and leaning into our existing conditioning that we need to do more/acquire more/fix more/future orientation “to be ……”. We have to remember that we are already perfect in our divinity and that all our spiritual practice is doing, is helping to remove the layers which prevent us from seeing this clearly. Our suffering arises because we have forgotten our own true nature and we buy into our thoughts and feelings as real.

This moon is gifting us the opportunity fort greater freedom by acknowledging all that has been and letting it pass into the ether, loosening our attachment to it. What is done is done. We have all suffered trauma - the trauma of incarnation is felt widely, for example. We have all made senseless decisions at one time or another. We have all held false views and perspective which we have shared with others. We have harmed and been harmed. But at some point we have to let it all go. We have to wipe the slate clean and realise our inherent divinity and allow more of this to shone forth in the world. We are EVERYTHING. Our playing it small, our not loving ourselves, our giving ourselves a hard time is really pointless. We have one life. Let’s live it well - kindly, loving and compassionately.

I could continue, there’s a theme around pain and suffering bubbling through but I will leave you with a quote by Christopher Wallis, a Tantric scholar, which is food for thought on this full moon:

“The great master Abhinava Gupta suggests to us that if you practice from the perspective that you are not good enough as you are, or that there is something wrong with you that needs fixing, then your yoga cannot fulfil its ultimate purpose because it is a practice founded in wrong understanding. It can only go as far as fulfilling the limited purpose that has been conceived by your limited ego-mind. However, if you undertake the practice of Yoga with the right View of yourself, that you are doing yoga to realise and then fully express what is already true, then you have empowered your practice to take you all the way”.

Happy full moon!

Love Emma x

But it is more than that. We have to stop believing all we have been told about ourselves and buying into it as if this is a truth. Our teachers, caregivers, friends, family members, general public, all will have had an opinion about us at one time or another, but it doesn’t make them real or concrete, they are just someone else’s thoughts. Yet our whole life can be based on these thoughts, because we ignorantly take them on as a truth and then make them so - creating our own reality in the process.

My other concern is our over identiifcation with

The joy of Reiki

There is no doubt that Reiki saved my life. I had been suffering depression, PMS, disordered eating and anxiety for a good while by then and had run the London Marathon in an attempt to change things.

The running had certainly helped, but now my body was a mess and so I sought yoga, on the recommendation of a friend. The yoga was life changing in many ways, so too the nutritional therapy I also undertook with Carol Champion in an attempt to shift my perspective on food and appreciate that ‘we are what we eat’.

But it was Reiki that really changed things. I had started attending an ‘escape from stress’ meditation group, led by a lady called Ali from the yoga group and it turned out that she was a Reiki Master and used Reiki to help lead intuitive life coaching sessions. I didn’t put the two together until I came across a flyer in the kitchen at work advertising her services. Whether I saw it as a sign or not I can’t remember, but there was something about it which caught my attention so I took the leap and booked in.

As Carol has already told me, people spend more on their cars than on their health and this has always stuck with me – we undervalue our health and wellbeing and I wasn’t prepared to do that anymore, after all we only have one chance at life as we know it and I didn’t want to live an unlived life.

The session involved lying down fully clothed on a treatment bed while Ali laid her hands on me. My mind was very restless at the time, I had a tendency to over-think to the extent that the unrelentless nature of my thoughts were tortuous at times. As with yoga, the Reiki offered me a momentary break from my thoughts and I disappeared into what I now call a liminal space of neither being here nor there, which is a very healing state and restores the mind as much as the body.

Reiki also helped to lift my spirits and it was this especially, which I have found so helpful with Reiki as it offered me a shift in perspective and I started to feel hopeful for the first time in years. The Reiki also connected me to a part of myself that I had neglected and with Ali’s help I started to make positive changes in my life as she fed back to me her findings and helped to validate how I felt, also helping me to see that there is more than one way to view a situation.

Following a course of regular Reiki intuitive life coaching sessions with Ali, and becoming attuned to Reiki myself, life changed. I finally gave up the permanent finance job, which had caused so much of my angst, and I started to believe in my dreams again – even recognising that I had dreams changed things. This to the extent that I sold my house, left my boyfriend and went travelling on and off for a few years immersing myself in yoga around the world, and training as a yoga teacher in the process – this before the explosion of yoga in the West.

I set up Beinspired in 2006 to help share my passion for yoga, Reiki and Ayurveda, which I had also now discovered and adopted as a lifestyle choice. I was keen to share all I had experienced so that others may benefit. I finally managed to publish a couple of books too, my latest book, From Darkness Comes Lightshares my journey with depression, while the earlier one, Dancing with the Moon, shares my IVF journey and Namaste, my experience of trekking to Everest Base Camp. I also published The Family Yoga Book, to help families practice yoga at home.

During this time I have also attuned hundreds of people to Reiki, many of my students going on to set up in practice and offering Reiki to others, helping to spread the light and hope.

One such student, Natasha, who now offers her Reiki through Beinspired, said, “Reiki came into my life due to curiosity, not because I was in pain, and that's how my journey through spirituality has started, however it became an amazing support during the dark times, where I've expanded my knowledge and studies on it. Having this tool to support my body through stress, burn out and grief became paramount to my self-care. It gave me the opportunity to meet my Self and to learn about love and care to self, which eventually I was ready to share from a secure and loving place in my heart. Meeting Emma has been a gift and it's a treasure to be a student and a friend.”

Another student, Grace, who also offers her services through Beinspired and manages this very website (thank you Grace!) said, “Reiki has enabled me to live a more conscious, loving and authentic existence. This has supported me through life’s challenges, providing clarity and comfort when needed most. It’s like a warm hug!”.

It is incredible how life can change if we open to healing and other ways of perceiving our reality. I am keen to do all I can to help others in this regard and as well as offering Reiki treatments and attunements, I also offer Spiritual Life Coaching to help people as Ali once helped me.

To learn more please see here.

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Pesticides and all things killing us

Pesticides have very much been in my orbit lately.

I heard a rumour that we have a higher concentration of people experiencing MS, Parkinson’s and MND on Guernsey, than in other areas of the UK. Some will say that this is due to the overuse of pesticides on the island although there is, as yet and as far as I know, no concrete evidence.

I was then reading Nigel Jee’s book, The Guernsey Cow, and in it he references the concern of some farmer’s about infertile cows in a field near the airport. Some argued that this was due to the petroleum from the aircraft, some believed it was due to the move to artificial insemination and others felt it was due to the pesticides used in many of the island’s greenhouses, which circulated into the general environment through the open windows.

Then someone was telling me about the PFOS scandal, where PFOS was used by the airport fire services following a fatal plane crash in 1999 and how this led to the contamination of soil along Forest Road, and the concern that this has contaminated the island’s water supply. PFOS was previously used in firefighting foams but was banned by the EU in 2008 because it was found to be dangerous for the environment and human health with prolonged exposure causing cancer, while repeated exposure by ingestion can cause stomach upset, liver toxicity and effect on the thyroid hormones.

And the, to finish it all off, an organic farmer friend was telling me how glyphosate, a herbicide which is used extensively on wheat and maize, also contains antibiotics. Therefore, if you are consuming non-organic products such as breads and cereals grown with the use of glyphosate, then you are not only consuming pesticides but antibiotics too.

What’s more, I was told that while there is a limit to how much glyphosate can be used on edible products such as grains, fruits and vegetables, no such restriction exists for flowers and plants. Thus gardening centres selling plants which have been covered with pesticides are actually really harmful places to spend your time. Furthermore when you fill your home with beautiful flowers sold in shops, you are actually making your home toxic. Lastly many of the plants marketed as ‘bee friendly’ are actually so toxic they will likely kill the bees!

Incidentally, herbicides containing Glyphosate are only available to use in Guernsey for those holding a relevant National Proficiency Test Council (NPTC) certificate of competence in the safe use of pesticides from 31st December 2022. Apparently, these measures are also to protect our raw water supplies as the majority of the island's surface is being used for water catchment….and to think I used to swim regularly at Petit Bot with all that farm run off…

Oh it’s a scary world. not only are we bombarded with toxins in the food we eat and the water we drink, let alone the sea we swim in, but in the air we breathe. And let’s not forget what’s happening above our heads with the dreaded cloud seeding, and all the WIFI and 4G circulating the air, to say nothing of increased vaccination programmes and Big Pharma, and I haven’t even started on the mobile telephones. I used to think a lot of this was conspiracy theory until I started reading the smaller print and realised that much of this isn’t hidden from us, we just don’t want to know.

I certainly didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to accept that not everyone has our best interests at heart, that this isn’t a fair and just world, that not everyone has a conscience or cares about the plight of the common man and woman. I didn’t want to think that greed gets the better of people, that women were encouraged to work, not because of women’s empowerment movements but because the powers that be recognised that women spent the money and if consumerism was to flourish then women needed to have more money to spend.

I have been reading this fantastic book called Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman, which looks at the psychology and attitudes of the modern woman, and how much our cultural conditioning favours patriarchal values such as productivity, goal orientation, intellectual excellence, spiritual perfection etc, at the expense of the more earthy, interpersonal values traditionally recognised as the heart of the feminine.

There are so many ah ha moments that I cannot do the book justice just here, but one thing it has made me realise, is that until we change our minds, and let go of our patriarchal conditioning, which has us seeing the world in black and white, all of the above will keep on happening, our obsession with money and power at the expense of life and a healthy life at that will continue to be compromised.

I’ll share this quote with you though as it seems pertinent:

“It is part of our culture’s prevailing attempts to establish security with concrete objects until we are buried alive under our own piles of riches or junk, depending on the perspective. The mothers’ sons who became Nazi murderers believed that they could concretise Nietzsche’s “superhuman” ideal and threw this planet into a maelstrom of suffering attempting to do it. Negative masculinity cannot think in metaphor. Everything has to be concrete, serving the temporal rather than the eternal. Again the paradox surfaces. it tries to make the temporal as perfect as the eternal it rejects. The addiction to perfection is an addiction to unreality which leaves little room for the feminine”.

All of this pesticide chatter did cause me to consider my toxicity, not least from what I ingest, but from my environment - every action has a consequence; I like to cycle to enjoy nature and fresh air but that does mean I am subjected to the exhaust fumes, and while I avoid tap water and use a Berkey at home, elsewhere I might drink bottled water, which likely contains micro plastics.

Furthermore, people still talk of vaccine shedding and the effect this has on all of us, vaccinated nor not. None of us are immune to factors beyond our control, which means we must do what we can with factors we can control, such as the food we eat and the immediate environment within which we live and our use of chemicals both in our home and on our body.

As luck would have it I discovered that a friend has started selling Zeolite, which helps to clear heavy metals and toxins and balances the body’s PH. You can read more here:

“Despite our best efforts, it is challenging to altogether avoid the toxins and pollutants present in food, water and the atmosphere. A highly concentrated form of liquid zeolite, Zeolite Plus, is perfect for incorporating into a cleansing regime such as a detox. It helps absorb heavy metals and toxins and balance the body's pH: essential foundations for supporting good health.

• ●  Potent

• ●  Clinoptilolite form

• ●  Contains fulvic & humic acid

• ●  Over 70 trace minerals

  Available locally in Guernsey for £37.50, 59ml glass bottles containing 120 servings (one serving = 10 drops). Mix with water and ideally consume between meals.

  To place an order or for more information, get in contact via email: zeolite.gsy@yahoo.com or follow us on social media: zeolite.gsy”

I am hoping this is all helpful. I highly recommend both Nick Jee and Marion Woodman’s books.

Love Emma x

Health is your Wealth - Ayurveda

‘Health is your wealth’ as we say in Ayurveda. We can have all the money in the world, but if we don’t have our health then we can’t get to enjoy our financial wealth. Thus in Ayurveda we see health as fundamental to our experience of life on Planet Earth, and strengthening our immunity is therefore paramount.

Furthermore, one of the things I love about Ayurveda, other than it is from the Vedas and therefore tried and tested over thousands of years, is its focus, not just on the body and the mind but also on the soul – the whole being therefore. This of course is very different to the allopathic take on things where we still separate the body and mind - the body is treated in the PEH, for example, and the mind is treated at Oberlands and as for the soul…

Not only that, but one of Ayurveda’s main objectives is the prevention of dis-ease (lack of ease, disharmony then) by strengthening the immune system, which makes the immune system a significant element of Ayurveda. As we all know, our wellbeing is dependent on the body’s resistance to dis-ease and the immune system plays a significant role in the prevention of disease and therefore recovery from disease.

What we also know is that some people are more prone to disease than others. For example, among people living in infected surroundings only some of them are found to be affected while others are left without any effect. It shows that the pathogen (bacterium, virus or other microorganism) requires particular favourable conditions and susceptibility of the individual in order for disease to form. Without these conditions, the pathogen will be destroyed by themselves. Thus the stronger the immunity, the greater our protection from disease.

In Ayurveda, the focus is not on prevention of disease, per se, but on strengthening the immune system as a whole. In this way we can maximise ‘ojas’. Ojas is a Sanskrit term which can be translated as ‘vigour’ or essence of vitality. Essentially, ojas is the vital energy that governs our immunity, strength and happiness – three things we want in abundance. If our ojas is weak, then our health, our spirit and our energy decreases.

Like any hereditary characteristics, immunity is also inherited and is greatly influenced by several other factors such as diet, environment, way of living, age, mental state, development or growth and pathological conditions of the individuals.

What is Ayurveda?

Ayurveda is a holistic approach to healing, which focuses on the root cause of any loss of wellbeing rather than merely treating the symptoms. Originating in India thousands of years ago, the word Ayurveda is made from two Sanskrit roots ‘Ayu’ which mean life and ‘Veda’ which means knowledge. Therefore, the term Ayurveda means the knowledge or science of life. Ayurveda uses a combination of diet, herbal medicine and lifestyle choices to promote wholeness and vitality.

Essentially, Ayurveda is a lifestyle, which offers a path to greater consciousness. Indeed a certain level of consciousness and self-responsibility is required to bring Ayurveda into your life, allowing you to move beyond habits and behaviour patterns which do not support your nature or indeed health and wellbeing.

In Ayurveda, factors which lessen immunity include:

·      Mental stress such as fear, anxiety, grief, anger and rage

·      Poor diet and nutritional disturbances

·      Lack of sleep

·      Excessive physical exertion/exercise

·      Alcohol, drugs and smoking

·      Severe infection

·      Injury, accidental or surgical

·      Excessive loss of bodily fluids

·      Wasting

·      Season, environment and age

·      Severe constitutional derangement.

In Ayurveda, factors which enhance immunity include:

·      Balanced diet appropriate to the constitution

·      Mental peace

·      Proper exercise

·      Favourable climate

·      Characteristics of race and generation in which birth took place

·      Genetics of parents

·      Constitutional characteristics (vata, pitta, kapha)

·      Adolescence

·      Proper mental stimulation

In the ancient Ayurvedic texts we are told that features of a healthy person include:

Dosha – the doshas (one of three biological energies circulating within the body) which are present in the body and mind (vata, pitta and kapha) and must be in a balanced state in order to keep a person healthy. When the balance of the doshas is disturbed, then this can lead to a state of disease and impact on the immune system.

Agni (fire) – in order for an individual to stay healthy, his/her digestive fire must be balanced and effective. When the digestive fire is weak, this can cause many diseases. It is well known that the health of an individual is dependent on the strength of their digestion.

Waste products – the excretion of faeces, urine and sweat must be balanced.

Tissues – the seven tissues of the body must be in a balanced state and able to function properly.

Senses – the sensory and motor organs and mind must be in equilibrium and able to discharge to perform their duties properly.

Mind – the state of mental health is more important than physical health. Look after your mental state!

Soul – awakened consciousness, unifying body and mind for eternal health and happiness.

How is this achieved through diet?

Eating for your constitution, being aware of the impact various foods/drinks have on your digestive capability, and resulting mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. Avoiding foods/drinks which don’t support your wellbeing on all those levels. Lots of vegetables and fruits. Avoiding cold or raw foods as these can be difficult to digest properly unless your digestive function is brilliant! Nourishing soups using coconut milk and light spices, white rice, chicken, white fish, pulses, cereals, soft cheeses, pitta bread, that sort of thing. Think nourishing and warming (but not spicy).

Pitta - Those who are predominantly pitta (fire and water), need to be mindful of excess heat in the body, especially if suffering with stress, migraines, infections, acidity, stomach ulcers, inflammatory conditions and loose stools, tendency to anger, impatience and intolerance, and should therefore absolutely avoid chilli, tomatoes, vinegars, citrus fruits, red meat and fish and red wine.

Kapha - Those who are predominantly kapha (water and earth) inclined, being mindful of excess mucus, especially if you are feeling sluggish, lazy, sticky, heavy, cold, digestion I slow, feeling unforgiving and having a hard time letting go, should absolutely avoid dairy products and heavy foods such as creamy pasta dishes, fried foods, rich curries and puddings etc.

Vata - Those who are predominantly vata inclined (air and ether) need to be mindful of feelings of anxiety, insomnia, nervousness, cold hands and feet and constipation (like rabbit droppings) and should avoid excessive bird foods such as nuts, seeds and dried fruits and other light and crunchy food such as crackers and crudities.

Anything else which helps?

·      By maintaining proper function of the digestive system, only eating when hungry and avoiding excessive snacking.

·      Yoga for promoting mental, emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing. Practising gently and consciously to nourish and support the constitution, not creating further imbalance or exhaustion 

·      Taking adequate rest – Yoga Nidra (guided relaxation) can help and there are a plethora of free ones on my website.

·      Appropriate exercise such as walking and swimming.

·      Socialising with friends and family whose company you enjoy. Avoiding the company of anyone who adds stress to your life.

·      Avoid ingesting anything which depletes you such as alcohol, smoking, drugs, junk food, social media, news channels etc

·      A clean and clear environment – throughout junk and clutter!

·      Getting out into nature when you can. Walking on the beach and cliffs. Noticing the sun and moon cycle, watching the stars at night, listening to the birds etc.

·      A positive outlook. Reducing exposure to negativity, including places and people.

·      Engaging in activities which make you feel happy such as reading, writing, artwork, singing, watching feel good films etc.

·      Connecting into your heart and smiling and laughing as much as you can.

·      Wearing/holding crystals.

·      Taking Ayurvedic medicine where needed.

In short, only we can make the difference that we seek with our health and wellbeing. We have to take responsibility – it is no good waiting for someone else to do it for us because they can’t, we have to do it for ourselves. This is an empowering experience and once we take responsibility, we will wonder why we didn’t do it earlier.

For anyone wishing to explore Ayurveda further then pleased contact Emma at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk.

Is your Pitta out of balance?

The Pitta dosha consists of the fire and water elements. It is responsible for digestion, metabolism, and energy production.

Tell me about Pitta people

Predominantly Pitta people are likely to be passionate, fiery, intense and goal orientated. Their body will likely be of moderate weight and height, with good flexibility, muscle strength and athletic ability. In theory, a Pitta person has a lustrous complexion, perfect digestion, abundant energy and good daily routines established.

Pitta dominated individuals have a strong intellect (often in the gifted/talented areas of learning) and have good concentration skills. Thus, Pitta types make excellent academics, scientist, leaders, entrepreneurs and pioneers. Good decision-making, rational processes with the ability to lead and teach are all therefore qualities of Pitta dominance.

When out of balance, you might find the Pitta person is outspoken, bossy, controlling and/or domineering. Pitta imbalance can also lead to someone becoming judgemental, jealous, impatient and angry. The excess heat in the mind can cause a Pitta person to be in constant conflict within their relationships, and find it hard to see another's point of view – this can create a rigid outlook on life and lead to controlling and paranoid behaviour.

What aggravates Pitta?

The Pitta dosha is aggravated by excessive amounts of the pungent/chilli, sour and salty tastes. It is also aggravated by excessive use of alcohol and caffeine. Furthermore, irregular daily routines i.e. shift work, and excess exposure to hot environments (including the sun) will disturb Pitta.

Pitta is also disturbed by doing things to excess, such as eating excessive amounts of red meat, red fish,oily and heavy foods, leafy greens, raw vegetables, meat from wild animals, vinegars, mustard and fermented sauces and pickles, chilli and turmeric, root vegetables and raw vegetables. It can also be disturbed by excessive consumption of hot drinks (hot in temperature and in quality such as caffeine, mint and green teas.

Furthermore an overly luxurious and hedonistic lifestyle can disturb Pitta, as well as sleeping all day, eating meals too frequently or too many meals in a day and/or eating while feeling angry, hatred or frustration.

When experiencing a Pitta imbalance, people will crave cooling foods, a cooling environment and cooler clothing. They might experience excess salivation, excess thirst and hunger, burning sensations in the body, and general excessive body heat and/or sweat.

What conditions indicate a Pitta imbalance?

Excess Pitta may manifest as skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, cellulitis, and/or fungal or bacterial infections.

Furthermore, when Pitta is in excess, a person is more likely to suffer from hyper acidity, heartburn, ulcers, IBS, bleeding conditions, menstrual or hormonal imbalances, UTIs, migraines, mouth ulcers, hot flushes, disorders of the mind such as depression, schizophrenia and destructive/violent behaviour, or eye conditions such as conjunctivitis.

Also, Pitta is connected to any form of inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis or an acute injury like a sprain.

How can you tell you have a Pitta imbalance?

An increase in body temperature, craving for certain foods, irritation of the eyes, excessive sweating, increase in desire, hyperactivity, quick temper, anger and frustration, night sweats, nightmares, excessive desire for luxury lifestyle and fear of loss of such lifestyle, being excessively goal orientated, feeling of dissatisfaction and depression., excessive self-criticism and judgement, desire for excessive control of food, activity and desire, being increasingly impatient and intolerant, also erring towards rigidity in mind and being very self-righteous.

General guidelines for balancing Pitta

 Balance work, rest and play: A Pitta person will tend to overwork and overdo and therefore struggle to place importance on rest and recovery. This must be made a priority, if only for a few moments a day.  Yoga Nidra can be really helpful in this regard.

Pitta people define the word “hangry” and will become agitated very easily digestively and within the mind too, if not eating regularly enough (every 2-3 hours is ideal).

Spending regular time in nature can be extremely helpful. The natural environment (especially around trees, running water and mountains etc.) cools and softens the Pitta character and is the ideal space for rebalancing the Pitta elements in the body.

Gentle walking, swimming and yoga can be ideal.

Being out in the full moon and embracing cool breezes will calm a Pitta dominated person.

Pitta types need more sweet, bitter and astringent tastes added into the diet and have foods that are moist and easily digestible.  Foods which have a sweet taste and cold potency) which doesn’t mean they are cold to eat - avoid raw and cold foods. Sweet and wholesome soups and stews are ideal, rice, pulses, sweet fruits, coconut, white fish and chicken.

Encourage a good laugh and a lightness to life. This will help the pitta person now take themselves and their purpose too seriously.

Spending time with friends who are not controlling and small children, family etc.

Pitta dominated people tend to favour clothes that are dominant in blues, greens and silver, which will help them stay cool and soothe their energy field.

 Aromatherapy oils such as sandalwood, rose, jasmine, mint, lavender, fennel, and chamomile are all great for pacifying Pitta.

 Holding pearls, Rose Quartz, Moonstone and Amethyst can help too.

 Is there anything else I can do?

You can book in for a session with me and we can look at your diet and lifestyle together to see what might need tweaking. There are medicinal herbs which you can take, which will help to restore balance, especially for women subjected to the hot flushes of peri-menopause and those who are currently experiencing infertility. But really, the herbs can help with all disorders, just trying to bring a balance to the digestive fire will help. Please email me at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk for more information.

Love Emma x

What is a dosha in Ayurveda?

Dosha in Ayurveda means the energies, which are formed by a combination of the different elements of air, ether, fire, water and earth.

These energies fundamentally construct and govern the workings of our entire bodily system. Additionally, the doshas can be observed in the very essence of all other sentient beings and nature itself.

As humans, we have all three doshas present in our bodies, Pitta, Kapha and Vata. These are made up as follows:

Pitta – fire and water

Kapha – water and earth

Vata – air and ether

What makes each of us unique however, is every individuals ratio or unique combination of the doshas. Some of us are dominated strongly by one dosha alone, while others share bi-doshic, being equally dominant in two doshas and for some, there is an equal balance between all three, making a tri-doshic body type.

Our doshic make up is made up from a combination of our parents genetics, our mothers pregnancy and health, our family history, time of conception, extrinsic environmental exposure and karmic factors too.

If you observe within your family, you will see that everyone is unique in their own way, despite sharing genetics. I am conscious that within my immediate family, our body frames, weight, hair colour and structure, skin, metabolisms and health susceptibilities all vary to some degree, albeit I can also see commonalities in dosha.

I am also conscious that as a mother, if my dosha is out of balance, if I am too fiery for example, because my Pitta is out of balance, then this will influence my children’s doshas and my youngest son, who is also Pitta-Kapha, will show more signs of fieriness too. If I am displaying a Vata imbalance and feeling anxious, then this will enhance my eldest’s tendency towards anxiety. This is the reason, as a mother and caretaker, we might take our own doshic balance seriously, because any imbalance affects those around us.

Ayurveda - an incredibly intelligent science - acknowledges our dosha individuality as the key foundation for lifestyle, well-being and healing strategies, not least for the individual but for the whole family.

If you are keen to explore your doshic imbalance then book in for an Ayurvedic session with me. During this session we will talk at length about your state of health and concerns, so that I can be clear on your imbalance and treat to this. It is only once the imbalance has been balanced that we may gain insight into your true constitution. For more information please click here.

I am biased of course, but working with Ayurveda since 2006 has been life changing. It is thousands of years old and has a philosophical underpinning, and offers a way of life that leads to greater consciousness as well as healing.

Belonging

There is a theme at the moment, around belonging. Where do we belong?

I feel it’s very simple. We come into this world on our own and we will leave on our own. Our sense of belonging begins and ends with our relationship with ourselves and with the Earth that we live on.

Yes, it can be helpful to feel a connection to our community - certainly I take pleasure from spending time with people in the Beinspired community, and I love the community down at Fort Grey, but I can survive without both; I don’t need either to define me or make me feel whole.

I believe it might be a conditioning of ours to believe that we need to feel part of something to experience a sense of belonging - the whole, “who is my tribe?” question, which often circulates among new age circles especially. Maybe also, we need to re-define our idea of friend, and how to be in relationship (in harmony) with others.

Certainly when we step out on the journey to know thyself we can find ourselves feeling quite alone. We don’t fit into the world we left behind, we might struggle to relate to friends, family members and colleagues, for example, and we haven’t yet reached a point of acceptance of our place in the world - so we long for something concrete to hold onto, some recognition of familiarity, so we don’t feel quite so alone.

But the truth is, when we do step out on this journey, it is one of aloneness. It is a solo journey. No one else can do it for us. Sure it can help to have friends and family we love who might buoy our faith and give us the courage to keep walking our path. But more often than not, they won’t understand us. Following a path of heart makes little sense to anyone else - at times it doesn’t even make sense to us because it has not been lived previously and the heart is not linear.

So yes, it can then be helpful to have people who understand, who know what it is like to tread this path, to live differently from the heart, to increasingly let go of the rational and intellectual take on things, to prioritise love, well-being and freedom over power and money in the patriarchal and capital sense, to step outside of mainstream and the comfort zone of conditioned living.

But even then, we have to do it alone.

We have to leave behind the comfort of the known and the certain, of all that we have believed and bought into - of all we thought we were to step into something much more authentic and real and yet unscripted and therefore unknown. There is a lag then between the person we were and the person we are becoming and it is this which causes us to cling for something which may give us a greater sense of belonging, because the aloneness can be scary, the unknown brings with it fear.

But to belong, means to know ourselves.

We cannot find it outside of ourselves. That was the old way - seeking validation of worth from others, people pleasing, sacrificing our sense of self to fit in. We can’t keep doing this. The path of heart, of greater authenticity, demands that we celebrate ourselves and all our differences, and settle more fully into an increasingly comfortable and wholesome relationship with our self, which is where we will find our true sense of belonging - not outside ourselves, but deep inside instead.

We will question it of course. We will wonder whether we have made the right decision to opt out of the mainstream, and we might consider a return. But we know that this won’t bring us the joy that we seek, that we will once again have to dumb down to fit in. For a time we are caught between a rock and a hard place, neither here nor there but somewhere in-between. This is a wonderful space to be if we can settle into it, a cauldron of potential, an opportunity to strengthen our faith, to cultivate greater trust and to lean more fully into our own true self, to find a greater sense of belonging deep within ourself.

You see, this journey teaches us trust, not only in ourselves but in the universe. It also offers us the potential to really know our own truth and to own and indeed celebrate our differences. We realise that only we can truly meet our own needs and we learn to forgive and let go of blaming others for not having met them previously.

We tighten our boundaries and take our energy seriously, protecting ourselves in the process. In short we take responsibility, not only for our health and wellbeing, but for treading lightly on this earth, while meeting our various obligations and earning an honest livelihood in the process.

There is this wonderful quote from Mary Angelou:

"You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great."

This quote does seem counter intuitive - how can you belong when you belong no place? Author Brené Brown (who wrote Braving the Wildness, about belonging) was asked this question in an interview with Lewis Howes and she said:

"I feel I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I'm with as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I become who you want me to be in order to fit in and make sure people like me is the moment I no longer belong anywhere."

It is not easy as I know from my own experience. It’s much easier - and yet much more painful - to be less of who we are to try to fit in, betraying ourselves in the process. It takes courage to be true and stand in our own power, even when this goes against the grain of friends, family and society. But actually following our path also gifts us courage and gives us our power back again; this is the paradox and the path to greater freedom in our lives.

It is my wish and my life mission to help others create a life on their own terms, without feeling the pressure to betray themselves and give up their authenticity and indeed joy, just to be accepted by others. We need to shift the perspective and learn to celebrate our differences, rather than giving ourselves a hard time for them. Anything which takes us towards greater freedom should be encouraged, not feared.

We need to keep breaking free from the binds of patriarchy, capitalism and consumerism and finding new ways to be, that help us to recognise that true belonging is found within each of us - it is never too late to become the person that we truly are, that truly belongs to each of us individually.

For those keen to step up into greater authenticity might benefit from my spiritual life coaching. This really helps people to love and accept their true self, gives them the courage to live their dreams - it doesn’t serve any of us to stay dumbed down and unhappy.

I am also intending to run a course on self-love this autumn as it seems such a travesty of our times for so many to waste this one precious life on planet Earth being their own worst enemy and constantly giving themselves a hard time - we need to shift the collective into something much more positive and heart felt. Keep an eye on the website for more information. You can also email me for more info at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk.

Have a wonderful week.

Love Emma