Yummy and energising chocolate fridge cakes

These are just amazing...healthy...and yet kind of amazing to think that we can have "healthy" bars like this, still compared to Cadbury's...

I am told by Medicinal Chef (Dale Pinnock) that these bars are good for preventing depression and stress, high blood pressure and high cholesterol and constipation...

Fabulous fridge cakes are sweet, delicious ad so dense in nutrients that one of these (or two in my case) will keep you going for hours.  They are super yummy and I am eternally grateful to my Mum who makes them regularly for Ewan and I!

Makes 8 pieces
8 tablespoons mixed seeds (such as flax, pumpkin, sesame or sunflower)
3 handfuls of goji berries
1 handful pitted dates
4 tablespoons cacao powder
1 teaspoon desiccated coconut
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon nuts, such as brazil nuts chopped
1 tablespoon dried fruits, such as dried apricots or cranberries, chopped.

How to make

Okay so place all the ingredients except the coconut oil, nuts and dried fruit in a food processor, reserving about 1 tablespoon of the seeds and goji berries, and pulse a few times to start creating a stiff, coarse mixture.

Place the coconut oil in a heatproof bowl, then sit the bowl in some freshly boiled water. The oil will melt in a matter of seconds.  Add the melted oil to the rest of the ingredients in the food processor. Process the ingredients at full speed until they have combined thoroughly into a firm paste.

Line a 20cm rectangular cake tin with baking parchment, turn the mixture into the tin and press down firmly to completely fill it. Sprinkle the reserved seeds and goji berries over the top., along with the chopped nuts and fruits, press down lightly. Place in the fridge for 3 hours, or until set firm. Slice into about 8 even pieces.

And then enjoy!!!

xxx

The nature of relationships

I have just read the most fascinating book by Stephen Cope called "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self", which has so many pages I would like to share with others, but this bit is particularly interesting.  Quite a few times recently I have found myself talking to people about relationships - are they here for a season, a reason or a lifetime?  Obviously there is far more to it than that, we are mirrors after all, and I like what Stephen writes about this...

"Freud's most brilliant work was in discovering how to bring observing ego to these areas of unconsciousness. Over the course of his career, he explored three different strategies to accomplish this. His first strategy was to work directly with memories of traumatic events that had been "forgotten" or repressed. he understood these "forgotten" areas to be pivotal to curing neurotic symptoms.  Freud found that he could, to some extent, open these areas of repression through the use of hypnosis, which bypassed the ordinary defences and brought the repressed material into awareness. This dramatic early psychoanalytic work of Freud is still locked into our contemporary cultural imagination, through a whole host of novels and films. Many of us are still think of psychotherapy as the process of searching for that one crucial memory that will unlock the puzzle of our lives. In fact Freud's thinking evolved far beyond this stereotype.

Freud soon found that the defensive structure of the self offered a formidable amount of resistance to his direct probing, and he moved on to explore other techniques for penetrating the unconscious. His next explorations were with the use of free association, dreams, and slips of the tongue, working with the very language through which the unconscious communicates. Instead of assaulting defences directly, through hypnosis, he found that he could wait for the unconscious to reveal itself.  This strategy proved to be extremely effective. It also, however, proved to have its limitations...

...There are certain aspects of our experience, then - usually the most painful and conflicted - that can only be seen within the field of relationship. Indeed, they don't exist only within us, but within the relational fields we create. When we carry a heavy load of repressed, hidden, and unintegrated experience, we are constantly seeking out relationships that will help us hold this experience, to reveal it in the actual dramas if our lives, and, hopefully, eventually to bring it to a more successful conclusion - to heal it. Much of our manoeuvring in and out of relationships is driven by these very needs - strivings for wholeness and completion that are for the most part completely out of our awareness.

Freud unwittingly made an important contribution to our contemporary understanding of witness consciousness. He saw that consciousness is sometimes a "third force", the creative product of two individual awarenesses working together to understand and integrate experience.

Matthew Arnold makes precisely the same point in his poem The Buried Life in which he attempts to wrestle with precisely those "hidden" incognito aspects of the self.  In Arnold's rendering, the voices of the "buried life" only reveal themselves with utmost clarity when opened to the consciousness of a loved other...

...It is a point that mariners and explorers of all kinds discovered: reality must be, in a sense, triangulated. It takes two sets of eyes, not just one, to accurately locate the third point in space. The "third", becomes a powerful still point, constructed out of the interaction of two minds and hearts.

This really does help to explain the nature of the "mirrored" aspect of relationships, and the comings and goings and the various encounters we have during our lives.  Really it is a rather fascinating world in which we live!

x

What a beautiful summer we are having

What a full moon - we really are supported by the Universe, even if it doesn't feel like in the midst of life's challenges.

Only a few weeks ago I realised that it had taken me a whole 8 months or so to fit into my new role as a mother, and another few weeks on top of that to realise that of all the people in the world, my little boy and his Dad should be the ones I serve the most.

I knew something was going on, because I have noticed over the years that I have been working on myself, that before every new realisation comes the breakdown of the old and with that a dying of the part of the ego that holds on so tightly.  It is hard work at the time though, because you are right in the middle of it and cannot see the wood for the trees and have no idea what is happening, only that something isn't quite right and there are lots of tears.

And then something comes to mind and then there are signs everywhere - in my case last week, an article in a magazine that my Mum handed to me, the words of wisdom of a yoga teacher at a class at Indaba Yoga in London, a studio I have not visited and a teacher I have not met previously, the chapter of a book I have been reading and the arrival of a wonderful Jivamukti DVD (with transformative in the title, funny that!).  Funny too how these things come together at once - it is true that the angels leave signs all over the place, you just have to notice them (and I probably missed a few!).

So I have now come through the other side, so that there is clarity about the niggling sense that something was afoot and with that a change, that seems rather natural now (and yet how I have fought it that last few months, despite praying for it!).  You see this is the problem - us, we are the problem, sometimes we don't know when to get out of our own way.  So desperate are we to control a situation or try and create an outcome that we don't allow grace to enter...the Universe works in much more fluid and magical ways that we can ever imagine (and that really is the problem, we think too much!).

We loved London last weekend.  It was my parents' treat, and for Mum and I especially as we got to go and watch the Mariinsky Ballet's rendition of Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.  Wow.  Such a joy to witness such grace in action, and such poise and strength and stability and balance and patience.  I am in awe if these ballerinas.  Incredible. 

We did some other cool stuff, we walked from Regent's Park along the Canal to Little Venice and then took the boat back along the canal to Camden. I have visited Camden a ton of times but this was my Mum's first visit and as a shopper she showed me a whole new side to this wonderful place, wow, it really is a shopper's heaven (it made me into a shopper, albeit for 40 minutes!).

I managed a Yoga class at Indaba Yoga studio in Marylebone, a first for me in both studio and location, and indeed teacher, Erik, a Jivamukt teacher.  I just LOVE Jivamukti and Erik is wonderful, such great adjustments and practice, so that I was present in my body and in the moment, it is true that the body offers a gateway to the soul, I floated out and enjoyed a much needed lunch with the family in the wonderful le Pain Quotidien in Marylebone (this chain of eatery is wonderful, just love the green juice and the goat's cheese salad, let alone the chocolate brownie!!).

We walked a ton too, I just love this about London, that you get to walk so much and see so much in the process.  And one of the highlights was spotting my first Banksy (Ewan LOVES Banksy) before Ewan, in its original state, just literally opposite our lovely hotel in the City, just amazing, Ewan was fairly happy too!!!

Back here in Guernsey life has been action packed, as the realisation tried to break through, we managed Elijah's 8th trip to Herm since he was born, with my friend Jo who was visiting from the UK.  I lived with Jo at Uni for 3 years and while I have not seen her for about 4 years it felt like only yesterday - true what they say that friends come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime!  Strangely one of our other Uni housemates gave birth to her first child while Jo was visiting - congrats to KTQ and Sim on the birth of Roan Finn.

We have swam in the sea a lot too.  It is so warm, just amazing, so good for the soul.  We have walked on the cliffs as well - nothing like spending time in nature to process whatever is going on in your life - those cliffs work it out of you!  We went for swim down at Divette with Jo, a first with me, so too a swim at Albecq this evening,.  What a blessed life living in such a beautiful place like Guernsey, I am eternally grateful.

And now, well the realisations find me working with Elijah and Ewan to finally attempt to establish a routine, something I have been fighting from day one, and yet now find myself very much enjoying, so grounding, I hadn't realised.  The added bonus that Elijah sleeps better, what a revelation.  See, should have gotten out of my own way.  It is all very well praying for change, trouble is you have to change to allow the change to happen - it comes back to that fabulous quote, "if you have always done what you always do then you will always get what you always got".  Ha, of course!!

So on that note I am off to bed and taking a much needed two weeks off to spend time with the family, to practice Jivamukti yoga and to allow the dust to settle - oh and to get in the sea and down the beach as much as possible!

Om shanti.

Much love, gratitude and light

xxx

Elijah's Naming Ceremony

 

Elijah's Naming Ceremony was just wonderful.  Neither Ewan nor I are religious so a christening was never going to be an option for us, but we wanted to do something to celebrate Elijah's arrival into the world, and to acknowledge his name and plant a tree, with my placenta, in his honour.  So a Pagan Naming Ceremony seemed like an ideal opportunity to do this, at home, in the garden and with our family and friends.

What a day!!  We had experienced seemingly endless sunny days only to find that the weather was due to be rather rubbish the morning of the Ceremony.  In fact there was not only torrential rain but also hail and thunder, which is quite some weather to experience in the middle of summer when you are about to be named!  We were obsessed with the weather that morning, we even sourced satellite images in the vain hope that the rain would pass.

Which it did, fortunately, about 10 minutes before our first guests arrived!!  We had about 60 guests in total and we live in a small cottage, so it could have been a little interesting if the rain had continued!  Still, luck was on our side and the afternoon was glorious, bright sunshine so that we forgot all about the earlier rain!

My Dad led the Naming Ceremony, which found three of the four spiritual parents reading poems, while the fourth one helped Ewan to plant the tree - a Sorbus, chosen because it produces lovely white berries in the late Autumn (Elijah is a late Autumn baby) and flowers in May - me explaining the reason we chose the name Elijah and Ewan leading the actual ceremony itself, which went a little like this...

Ewan says:

We gather today to bless a child,
A new life that has become part of our world.
We gather today to name this child.
To call a thing by name is to give it power,
and so today we shall give this child a gift.
We will welcome him into our hearts and lives
and bless him with a name of his own.

The parents turn to the guests, and say:

To be a parent is to love and nurture,
to lead a child to be a good person.
It is to guide them along the right path
and to both teach them and learn from them.
It is to rein them in, and to give them wings.
It is to smile at their joy, and weep at their pain.
It is to walk beside them, and then one day allow them to walk alone.
To be a parent is a great gift we have given ourselves.
and the greatest responsibility we shall ever have.

Ewan then turns to the appointed spiritual parents, and asks:

You stand beside us, for the love of this child.

Do you know what it is to be a child's spiritual parents?

The spiritual parents should answer:

It is to love and nurture,

to show guidance and counsel.
It is to help the child make choices
should he need assistance.
It is to be a second mother and father
and to be there when called upon.

Ewan says, while Emma anoints oil on Elijah’s forehead

May the gods keep this child pure and perfect,
and let anything that is negative stay far beyond his world.

May you always have good fortune,
may you always have good health,
may you always be joyful,
and may you always have love in your heart.

You are known to the gods and to us as Elijah Iain McInnes
This is your name, and it is powerful.
Bear your name with honor, and may the gods bless you on this and every day.

I honor you, Elijah Iain McInnes

The spiritual parents should then say:

Welcome, Elijah Iain McInnes to our family and to our hearts.
Your parents love you, and we thank them
for giving you the gift of life.
We ask the Gods to watch over you, Elijah Iain McInnes
and over your mother and father,
and we wish your family love and light.

Finally, the parents may hold the baby up to the sky (hold on tight!) so that the Gods can get a good look at the new child.

Really it was so lovely, especially the blessing that my Mum read right at the end of the ceremony:

"May the strength of the wind and the light of the sun, The softness of the rain and the mystery of the moon Reach you and fill you. May beauty delight you and happiness uplift you, May wonder fulfil you and love surround you. May your step be steady and your arm be strong, May your heart be peaceful and your word be true. May you seek to learn, may you learn to live, May you live to love, and may you love always."

We asked everyone to think of what they wish for Elijah and to write it on a label to hang on his tree, he now has a collection of lots of inspiring words from our friends and families - my Mum takes credit for that idea!

 

As for the name, well we had a feeling from the very beginning of the pregnancy that we were having a boy and I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to call my son Elijah.  It seemed appropriate somehow.   I didn’t have to persuade Ewan as such, he did look at other names but agreed that Elijah was the one, especially as we also agreed to follow it with Iain, in honour of Ewan’s Dad who is sadly no longer with us.

As for the name Elijah, well there is a reason for the name resonating with us other than simply the fact we like names beginning with E!  You see Elijah was a Prophet from the Book of Kings in the Old Testament who we understand performed miracles and was a miracle himself.  And while we appreciate that all babies are miracles, we felt that Elijah really was a miracle because for one reason or another we had to have IVF and Elijah was conceived on our first attempt.  This was even more of a miracle because at the same time we were going through the process in the UK, Ewan put his back out and on the night following implantation I spent a long evening with Ewan in Southampton A&E as he was checked out for the second time on the trip – not quite the chilling out in the hotel room that the clinic had suggested!

Furthermore as it turned out I ended up with full grade placenta previa, which means that the placenta blocked Elijah’s entrance into the world and if he had been born naturally and before the time of scanning, me, Elijah or both of us would have died.

So you see really he made it against the odds. There is a 20% success rate for women of my age using IVF becoming pregnant on the first try, and there is a 1 in 1,000 chance of grade 4 placenta previa (which is the most severe) but he stuck in there until my planned c-section date despite all those crazy Yoga positions (or perhaps because of all those crazy Yoga positions!)!

The name itself means The Lord is my God, and Elijah is our little  Buddha that is for sure, he likes his food and is a shining light in our lives and we are delighted to welcome him into this world, our little pickle, Elijah Iain McInnes.

 

 

 

And then the party!  My Mum and brother put together a wonderful salad buffet, which everyone enjoyed in the sunshine with champagne and laughter helping to create happy memories.

I was blown away by all the support - it is no easy feat entertaining about 60 people in your home when you have an 8 month old, now that was  a shock, and I am quite sure we could not have done it without all the help - especially from my parents and my brother and Star.  I was blown away by all our visitors too, spiritual mamma, Hannah, came all the way from New York and two of the spiritual men came from the UK and my brother all the way from Oz, my cousin from UK and Ewan's aunt from Switzerland, with my cousin Nick taking professional photos, what a lucky boy Elijah is, all that love surrounding him on his special day.

Elijah Iain McInnes, I love you, my miracle baby xx

With so much gratitude to everyone for such a magical day, many happy memories were made.

xxxx