Take a stand for Yoga today

A great article I would like to share with everybody.  I couldn't have said it better myself - bring on the happy body, happy mind and happy nervous system for a happier world to live in.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-hardy/201305/take-stand-yoga-today

On that note, came across this marvellous quote in Pema Chodron's book, "Living beautifully with uncertainty and change", in which she writes:

"There's a story that Ed Brown, the Zen chef, tells about his early days with his teacher, Suzuki Roshi. Ed was the head cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Centre in California in the 1960s and was well know for his volatile temper.  Once, in a fury, he went to his teacher and complained about the state of the kitchen: people didn't clean up properly; people talked too much; people were distracted and unmindful.  It was chaos on a daily basis.  Suzuki Roshi's reply was simple: "Ed, if you want a calm kitchen, calm you mind".

"If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive.  That quality isn't inherent in the place, but in your state of mind. The warrior longs to communicate that all of us have access to our basic goodness and that genuine freedom comes from going beyond labels and projections, beyond bias and prejudice, and taking care of each other."

I guess it comes back to the fact that it is all mirrors out there, staring us back, the challenge comes in catching ourselves, in that moment, and being conscious of the decisions we are making rather than reacting and it all coming back. Needless to say a regular Yoga and indeed meditation practice can help us enormously to become more accustomed to the present moment experience of life, and the asana and pranayama really help us embody this experience too.

On that note, happy bank holiday, time to go practice on this beautiful Sunday morning!

xxx

Happy camping and full moon on its way x

We went camping in Herm at the weekend.  Not convinced camping and 26 weeks pregnancy go hand in hand, well not in the wind and rain in any event, but still it is always lovely to enjoy the Herm energy.

We took E's Mum along with us, which meant I was able to chill a little on my own, much needed, activity is becoming a little more challenged with the pregnancy, and with office and yoga work both busy, peace is certainly something my spirit craves at any opportunity.  It is a marvellous camping space, probably one of the best you are going to find anywhere with views of Alderney and the northern tip of Herm, all the swallows swooping around the field and 5 baby pheasants eating all our crumbs, stunning really.

We were able to enjoy a stunning sunset on the Friday evening, wow, beautiful skies to end the evening.  So too views of the moon, building to a full moon.  I guess there pros and cons to everything, in pregnancy you tend to need to go to the toilet far more often, which meant lots of in and out of tent in the night, and yet provided an opportunity to witness the stunning night sky, the tracking of the moon and the star shining brightly above.  Wonderful.  Even if I was a little exhausted the next morning!

Yoga asana practice has become a little more of a challenge too.  Bean is most definitely growing in there and my tummy is getting rather huge, which does limit somewhat the ability to move quite like I would have done in the past.  Still, it is wonderful to be pregnant and I am enjoying all the changes this brings.

Full moon tomorrow, another Aquarius one too, time to come together collectively and bring change to the world (see the Be inspired Yoga facebook page for more on this).  I am all up for that, however challenging it is to sometimes to unite, as we are all so used to our culture of individuality that coming together collectively is not always as easy as it sounds - a good place to begin is on our Yoga mats and for that very reason I am eternally grateful for the local Be inspired Yoga community and all the students who make the effort to come together on a Monday and Saturday evening during these wonderfully bright and sunny summer days.  It makes such a difference to the spirit to spend time with all these marvellous energies.  The gift of teaching Yoga is indeed one to be treasured, and one for which I am gracious every day.

So more beautiful weather, evening high tide, aren't we lucky, time to go give thanks through a practice.

Love and light

xx

Yoga class at St Germain Nature Reserve

Great class at St Germain Nature Reserve last night, thankfully the weather held up and whilst it was not the warmest of evenings, it was still wonderful to teach outside up there in nature with those wonderful views and the sounds of the birds in the background.

Amazingly we were left alone, no dog walkers, although we practiced dog pose ourselves.

We made the most of the soft grass with some fun Yoga poses, parsva Dhanurasana (sideways bow pose) for example, no fear of hurting hip bones!

And some core strengthening balancing poses like Vasisthasana.

And of course the joyful boat, Navasana, my Mum's favourite (well one of them).

And one of my favourite poses, Trikonasana, looking up towards the thumb with views of the clouds above.

Everyone was amazingly balanced, we were indeed the trees blowing gently in the wind.

It really is a joy to practice out in nature, seeing the clouds rather than the ceiling when you are lying on your back, or the field in the distance when you are bending backwards into Urdhva dhanurasana.

And of course being so close to the earth, rabbit poo and all!!

Thank you to everyone who came along and joined this special class - there is a whole album of photos for those of you who did attend, just drop me an email.

Have a lovely weekend.

Love and light

Emma xx

The perfect loveliness of sow

I have been reading a beautiful book by Cyndi Lee about women's relationship with their bodies, which is not always that kind, in fact we really can be our own worst enemy at times.  It reminded me of the whole concept of embodied awakening  where we become present with the life that is given to us, respectful of what the Tibetans call "this precious human form".

There is a lovely quote from Tibetan master, Tsong Khapa, who says, "This human body is more precious than the rarest gem.  Cherish your body; it is yours for this one time only....a thing of beauty that passes away".  Indeed we should be embracing, respecting and blessing our bodies, exactly as they are, in this moment.  There is a beautiful blessing described by Galway Kinnell in "St Francis and the Sow":

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within , of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words, and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of her tail...
the long, perfect loveliness of sow".

Enjoy the sunshine

xx

Carrot cake and not hanging on too tightly!

I have been meaning to share the low fat, moist carrot cake recipe with those of you who enjoyed this wonderful cake at the Yoga "class on the grass" a few weeks a go now.  It is Delia of course and you can check out the recipe, which is dairy free if you don't add the topping, at http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/low-fat-moist-carrot-cake.html.  Happy baking!!

Also, following on from my posting the other day, I wanted to share this wonderful story with you from Cyndi Lee's marvellous book, "Yoga Body, Buddha Mind", which further addresses the whole concept of letting go...

"Julia Butterfly-Hill discovered how to do this during her two-year residency in Luna, a thousand-year old redwood tree in northern California.  Julia was committed to living in the treetop for as long as it took to convince the Pacific Lumber Company to stop destroying old-growth forests and causing disastrous environmental problems throughout the region.  In early 1998, more than sixty days since she had touched earth with her own two feet, she heard radio warnings of seventy-mile-per-hour storm winds coming her way.  her survival instincts told her to climb down, but she was afraid that if she left Luna, the tree would be cut down.  She recounts her experience in her book, The Legacy of Luna...

...I was trying to hold onto life so hard that my teeth were clenched, my fists were clenched, everything in my body was clenched completely and totally tight...I knew I was going to die...Had I remained tense for the sixteen hours that the storm raged, I would have snapped.  Instead....as I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me.  The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect.  They allow themselves to bend and to be blown with the wind.  They understand the power of letting go...Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are those ones that break...Learn the power of the trees.  Let it flow.  Let it go.  That is the way you are going to make it through this storm. And that is the way to make it through the storms of life".

Have a lovely weekend.

xxx

Letting go again and again and again

Dare I say that it has felt autumnal the last few mornings.  I am not sure about anyone else but I was surprised to find that actually, the feeling felt okay inside.  I thought perhaps I may want to hold tightly to summer, and I suppose a part of me does, really, but actually there is also much joy in moving on and letting go and opening to the wonderful seasonal changes ahead.

This concept of letting go has arisen quite frequently in my life recently.  Perhaps that is the nature of pregnancy, such a huge transition from one way of being to another, that I am frequently faced with the task of letting go of how things have been, of getting away with late nights for example, of drinking wine when returning from a busy and chaotic day in the office to unwind, of calming all the ideas buzzing in my mind for Yoga workshops, classes and Reiki attunements and also for that endless desire to travel and attend courses myself - I thin of Nepal and ,my heart literally feels sad, sad that once again I won't be able to visit this year.

It would be easy to get caught up in all the letting go, in fact I know I have done, there has been frustration and weeping, the very process encourages both, but I also know that you need to let go to let the new enter, and the new, albeit quite unknown (and perhaps that is the problem, fear of the unknown) looks very promising indeed.  I can't wait, ,my whole life I have been waiting, so of course I can wait, but you know what I mean, I am very much, incredibly in fact, looking forward to a new way of living with E and the bean, because it is so full of potential and love and joy and all those marvellous things, albeit taking me far away from my comfort zone!  But perhaps I need to be letting go of that too, of the idea of what is next.  Perhaps it is all a process of letting go.

Letting go is an interesting one, and I am very thankful for my limited - yes - Buddhist practice and my asana practice, which have both helped enormously with the concept but also the process of letting go.  To me this is the joy of the spiritual practice.  It is not easy, never easy, would be easier to run away from it indeed, but if you go through it, raw and open as it encourages you to be, well it offers so much to you, to the spirit, to life, to your experience of life, it helps to enlighten you, literally, lighten and then enlighten, shining spirit, clarity, clearer mind and essentially a greater strength and connection to the truth.

Let's face it, everything changes.  The greatest joke is to imprison ourselves in the understanding, the mental formation, that we stay the same.  We don't.  Life doesn't.  I suppose it can, but are we truly alive to the moment?  Everything changes, the weather, the seasons, nature, everything ebbs and flows, there is movement, energy, transformation.  And how about how we see ourselves, how we place ourselves in this world, as "success" or not, as this or that, as mothers, fathers, children, managers, workers, wealthy, poor, successful, how do we define all this, and doesn't this all change too, at some point we have to let go of our parents, of our children, of what we do when we retire, of our ability to move in the same way we may have done as a child, well Yoga may help keep us agile though of course, but you know what I mean, it all falls away eventually. Life is series of letting go moment.

I have been truly inspired by Jack Kornfield's book, "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry", in which he quotes one Western lama who came out of seven years of silent retreat to travel and teach for seven more: "The biggest surprise for me was how much I still needed to trust.  For years I thought spiritual life was about some special state of perfection or enlightenment.  It is really about releasing attachment. Life doesn't depend on what you do. The big illusions we strive for, whether in the world or our spiritual life, turn out to be false.  When you learn to let go, you find tremendous faith in the ground of all things, that which is true before and after all our plans.  Everything arises and passes - this is the true perfection.  I found I could trust this."

So we can take comfort in the fact that everything does arise and pass.  In those moments of darkness, when we feel we have been given a rubbish hand, well we can sit back and breathe and remember that this will pass too.  It all passes.  The breath is a constant, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, so sit with your breath, and practice, take to your mat and practice, the body is a marvellous tool for helping us to feel connected, helping us to let go, helping us to be present and helping us to awaken to our heart and every moment.

To quote Jack Kornfield, "Wise letting go is not a detached removal from life.  It is the heart's embrace of life itself, a willing opening to the full reality if the present.  This is the wisdom of the Tao:

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Therefore the master takes action by letting things
take their course.
She remains as calm at the end as at the beginning.
(tr. Stephen Mitchell)."

So with that in mind,  I shall take myself to my mat to sit with my breath for a while, before moving a little and being open to what arises, and what passes, the pain in my sacrum, the stretching of my stomach muscles as the bean grows inside, his/her gentle kicking when the singing blow resonates its sound, and then out into the world, an August morning with rain cleansing the earth and feeding the garden outside. - this too will pass, well let us hope so anyway, high tide this evening would be wonderful with the sun shining!!!!

With much gratitude.

x

Happy hips!

WOMAD festival was wonderful.  For anyone who enjoys a more relaxed and family-friendly approach to festival going then this is the one for you, helps if you like world music of course!  We thoroughly enjoyed the experience, wonderful music (well in my opinion, but then I like the Sitar and folk and all that kind of stuff even if E did struggle a little!), fantastic shopping, great vibe and lots of lovely people especially the ones we joined!

The trouble is, being 23 weeks pregnant does make things a little tricky in terms of energy levels.  Being anaemic does not help, nor the fact that we ended up camping in a really noisy place so that sleep was challenging and by the end of the weekend, well I was certainly feeling it!  Still the bean kicked his/her way through the weekend so clearly gained some benefit from the energy of it all - especially in the wonderful Arboretum, what wonderful places these are with the large red woods and those fabulous Himalayan birch and the Japanese paper barks maple.  Inspired by trees again.  And yes, I tried hugging the red wood, so soft indeed!!

Back here I am now 24 weeks pregnant and feeling it a little, the energy levels are tested and the scar tissue from a previous operation is being stretched to full capacity so sitting at a desk can be a little challenging! I had this wonderful cranio osteopathy treatment this week to release my sacrum, no idea how it works, it is indeed magic, but gosh what a release.  I do find it all fascinating how pregnancy and all the changes going on in the body throw up so much old stuff, especially when you have your spine manipulated and hips opened too.

In fact hips has been the major focus in class this week too.  Approached from the ground of non-harming, or Ahimsa, we have been practicing hip opening sequences in general and private classes.  There is this wonderful extract from Cyndi Lee's book, "Yoga Body, Buddha Mind", in which she writes, "Yoga and meditation invite us to see who we are right now.  The very first step on the path of yoga is found in the yamas and niyamas, the ethical "do's" and "don't" set out by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra.  It is ahimsa, which means non-harming to self or others.  the first step is also referred t0 as the ground of the practice, or the foundation from which all our choices evolve.  When you commit to practicing ahimsa, you flip the habitual approach to your entire situation, including your attitude toward your own body.

In "The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness", Pema Chodron writes, "Practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.  It's about befriending who we are already.  the ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are".

"Your back tightness, your squishy tummy, and the irritation and discomfort that arise from your wishing they were different is known as dukha, or suffering.  The only way to reverse the claustrophobia of dukha is to acknowledge it.  It's the same with our bodies.  if you pretend your legs are loose when they are tight, you will end up straining a back muscle.  Your legs will not open more, they will tighten up more. Your pain will increase until the point you cannot ignore it anymore.  This is not ahimsa."

"You begin to reverse the pattern by letting your mindfulness practice and your physical sensations help you understand your body.  Letting ahimsa be your guide means, at the very least, don't be a nuisance.  We don't often think of ourselves as nuisances to ourselves, but if we take a closer look we might see how we get in the way of our own happiness, how we create our own suffering, through habitual pulling and pushing.  This tendency to engage in personal tugs-of-war shows up frequently in seated poses, especially forward bends and hip openers".

Seated forward bends and hip openers fascinate me, not least in my own practice, but also witnessing the shift in others when they are practicing in the class environment, indeed the shift in the energy of the room.  For some, seated forward bends are a true joy, where one can be with oneself in the yumminess of the introspective nature of such poses, for others they are a constant reminder of the pain in hamstrings and back and the sense that one is never quite progressing enough.  Hip opening poses can throw up all sorts of things, for some there is indeed an ease that sees them falling gently into that quiet space within, for others there is intense discomfort, the mental urge to run away, the pain, the heat, the sweating and the grimacing on the face.

Cyndi Lee talks beautifully about the hips and pelvis, "Our pelvis is home to a lot of movement: digestion, elimination, reproduction.  Add on walking, sitting, and breathing and you get the ordinary activities that keep us involved and circulating in our world.  Restrict those activities and your entire existence shrinks...there are lots of reasons - societal and personal - that each of us has for minimising our pelvic and hip movement."

"Everywhere we look, advertisements, TV, and film tell us that there is only one good body shape for women and one good body shape for men.  No wonder this area is so full of emotional baggage for us.  My yoga teacher friend told me her mother lives in her right hip and her father in her left.  Almost everybody wants to change what's going on in there - as if that would make us happier."

"Fashion may dictate that we all look the same, but yoga and meditation invite us to be our most authentic, genuine, unique personal self.  When we go to a garden, we don't consider only two of the flowers to be beautiful and expect all the others to look like those two.  To find our personal balance of earth and heaven, heat and heart, is an individual journey that requires ahimsa, befriending our own being inside and out".

So it is too in our practice, that we befriend what is present within us, in that moment.  Hip opening poses and seated forward bends can teach us so much about our relationship to ourselves, the attitude with which we practice, the pulling and pushing, the fighting against the resistance, or the gentle surrender, the grace as we softly and gently allow the unfolding to begin, the acknowledgment and letting go and of course the acceptance.

So you see it comes to pass that once again we are reminded of how beautiful we already are, tight hips or loose hips, skinny hips or larger hips!  It is what it is and all things come to pass.  Ahimsa, let us be kind to ourselves and sit on the floor and walk on the earth and get those hips moving!

The sun is shining, the tide is rising, what a glorious day for the beach!

Happy practicing.

xx