Working With The Energies: Full Moon

There's a big and powerful full moon coming up this Sunday. The full moon is always time of letting go of things that no longer serve us, things that are not healthy for us, things that are not in our highest good. It's a really beneficial practice to actively work with the energies of nature; we are one with nature and we feel the effects whether consciously or unconsciously. Think about the effect of the moon on the tides and the ocean. Our bodies are something in the order of 70% water - we too, are affected by the moon.

So yeah, letting go. Life moves in cycles, and there are always things coming and going from our lives, big things and little things. People, situations, emotions, feelings, physical items. We are in a constant dance of energy, things moving in and moving out, the give and the take. The bringing in of the new, and the letting go of the old. It is impossible to bring in anything new when we're clinging on to the old, the things that no longer serve us. And the time of the full moon is the best time in the month for letting things go.

On the physical side of things, it could look like doing a space clearing in your house. Or a spot of decluttering, cleaning, sorting. It's always good to get into the spaces that don't see much movement - in the corners, under the bed (particularly around the bed head area), behind furniture. Even cleaning out the fridge, or at least tossing out the really sad looking bits. Taking all items from surfaces and cleaning, thinking carefully about what to put back and what can go. Burning sage to clear the space is beautiful and ceremonial and brings a freshness to the home.

When it comes to people, places, situations, substances, it can be helpful to take a good look and think about what needs to go. Not that I'm saying kick people out of your life (unless you really need to!) but more about circumstances with people. An ongoing disagreement or irritation, an old emotional pattern that isn't helpful anymore, a situation where ingrained patterns are the norm and you can see the need for change. That sort of thing. For those things, there are many ways you can let go, a good one is to cut the cords of energy going from you to that person/situation/feeling). Just close your eyes, and let your body, your mind, show you where the cords are. Then you can visualise cutting them yourself, with scissors or the like, or you can call in higher powers, like Archangel Michael who can cut them with his sword. All very powerful stuff, any which way you do it.

And for the body, holding the intention of letting go of anything that doesn't serve you over the coming days will work. A dip in the ocean, in the salt water, is a wonderful way to clear the energetic space of the body, and if you can't get to the ocean, taking a sea salt bath at home works beautifully too. A time of eating well, eating fresh foods that nourish the body, avoiding harsh foods or those that get the body all wound up. A time for detoxing.

This is what the full moon is wonderful for. That and sending emotions a bit all over the place. Carrying a piece of Moonstone helps with that emotional stuff.

I'm feeling this full moon energy building quite strongly. Over the past year I've gotten pretty good at letting go of stuff, not always entirely comfortably. So I'll be taking it pretty easy, being gentle with myself, knowing that I'm closer to my emotional edge than I'd like to be. And holding that space with the intention of letting of all that no longer serves me. I'll be doing yin yoga and having sea salt baths if anyone is looking for me.

Have a great weekend!

And Then I Discovered Yin Yoga

I could just sit and watch them grow.

I was reading a book not so long ago, called Don't Let Anything Dull Your Sparkle by Doreen Virtue, and she talks a bit about yin yoga in the book. A yoga practice that is slower, softer, feminine and gentle. Holding poses (I suppose I should start to use yoga speak, asana's) for quite a long time, just sinking into the body, abiding in the stillness of the pose and finding the quiet within. It all sounds blissful and in my experience, it is.

Anyway, before reading her words, I had not heard of yin yoga and I'm new at the yoga path in general, having taken it up only 6 months ago. But, I knew very early on that yoga was going to be part of my everyday life as I was instantly taken with how these simple body poses are so calming, so cleansing, so life altering and yet so simple. So yes, yoga is here to stay for me. But this yin yoga thing was all new again.

As soon as I read her words about it, I knew exactly what pose I needed to be in. The one that my book even says to hold for 3 minutes and I hold for, ooh maybe 30 seconds. Pigeon pose. That one. Hmmm. So that evening, after reading this book, I got out my mat, warmed up a little, spent some time in child pose and then went into deep long holds each side for pigeon pose. I stayed there through the resistance, my body wanting to move, demanding to move, screaming to move and then sighing and giving in to the pose. And I stayed a little longer again. Beautiful. I already knew I loved yin yoga.

Anyway, about 3 hours later, I woke up in bed with a powerful energy shift. It was like something from my abdomen was literally torn apart with two flashes of light, one heading to my feet and the other to my head. I knew instantly it was because of that yin yoga, the pigeon pose. The one I had been avoiding. The word that popped into my head was purging. And then the nausea struck. And shortly after that, the purging began.

I spent the next 10-odd hours being incredibly ill, completely incapable of parenting so nana was called in (thankfully) and wondering when it was all going to end. But at the same time, I knew that this was a huge, massive energy shift for me, an extremely powerful and physical release, and I was immensely grateful at the same time. That nausea, I had carried it around with me for over a decade. Probably two. And it was finally shifting.

It's funny the way we store 'stuff' in our bodies. The things we haven't dealt with, don't want to deal with; the feelings that are too hard to feel so we stuff them down and pretend they aren't there. I don't even know what was held in that nausea, but I knew it was there. Many years ago, more than 10 and well before I was ever on any truly spiritual path, I did some Chi Gong classes, and that's where I first confronted my nausea. Crazy, that these strange poses could leave me knocked out on the floor feeling sick as a dog. And the nausea was still there years later when I did my first Reiki attunement, back when I was pregnant with my boy. Excruciating, and in all honesty I'm glad it didn't shift too much under those circumstances, seated in a group circle and all (I had a spirit guide standing behind my chair throughout that one, holding me up, bless her). And in more recent times, the constant nagging nausea, the lump in my throat, the number of times I tried to make myself sick just to shift it, I could feel it so strongly (from all the energy cleaning work I've done, I suppose, stripping away layer after layer, getting to the heart of the matter). Course it didn't budge. Not until pigeon pose.

I hope I'm not turning you off yin yoga here, but I do love this story. I love that after so many years, after so much healing, clearing, shifting energy, I finally got to experience this seismic shift. We are all so different in how we process and deal with stuff, and my story might be on the extreme end of things (I do get great big explosive shifts, and to be honest, it suits me just fine) but I cannot emphasise the beauty of yin yoga enough. Also called restorative yoga, it is truly such a gentle yet deep and profound practice, and so very simple to do. No crazy difficult poses, no working up a sweat, not at all. Just deep, gentle and healing. This is where I'll be dedicating my yoga practice in the most part this year, slowly, gently and powerfully restorative.

Do you do yoga? I was very late to get on the yoga train but I absolutely love it now. It is a life changer for me.

10 Things I Learned in 2015

I usually avoid writing anything like a '10 Things...' kinda list, but on this occasion I'm just going to go with it. 2015 was an epic year for me, kicking off with a spontaneous Kundalini awakening on 2 January. The reverberations have been pretty big and brought through some intense change and absolutely brought me to a whole new place of understanding. My inner landscape is forever changed, and as within so without, my physical reality around me is being shaped and formed by an entirely different set of thoughts and beliefs. All for the better too. Anyway, 10 things.

1. I learned that there is more, so much more, to life in this physical realm than what we can see with our eyes, feel with our hands or hear with our ears. That inherent knowing, intuiting, sensing from within, are the most powerful senses I have, and the ones I can rely on. 

2. I learned that everything in our experience, everything in our existence, is there because we make it so. The things we love, the things we don't love, the things we are ambivalent about. It is all there through our own focused creating, and it we want it to be different, we need to change ourselves. 

3. I learned that love is always the answer. Always. There are no exceptions to this. 

4. I learned that the only real relationship I truly must cultivate is that with God*/Source/Creator; and in so doing, all my relationships will by default improve and flourish.

5. I learned that the only power I am truly responsible to, the only law that I must truly abide in, is that of God/Source/Creator. And that that is entirely based in love.

6. I learned that all is there to be seen, if only we will care to see, choose to see, release our fear of seeing. We all have the same capacity to feel energy, see energy, hear guidance. It is up to us to choose to use it.

7. I learned that the energy in my body feels lighter, calmer, healthier, happier, higher, when I abstain from drinking coffee, eating chocolate and consuming any foods from an animal. Yep, heading vegan very rapidly in these parts.

8. I learned that the very best advice I can rely on is that which emirates from my own self. From my hara (my gut feel) in particular. And I learned that I can rely on it entirely, 100%, every time.

9. I learned that the soul is eternal; that there is no 'death', that fear and polarity are simply aspects of 3rd dimensional reality, and do not actually exist.

10. I learned that blogs don't write themselves. I'm planning on being around a bit more in 2016.

So, 2015 was for me a big year of shifting understanding, delving deep into the inner landscape, playing with energy and most importantly, doing fundamental work to shift then energy in my physical body. It's been a big year. I'm ready now to take all that I learned and marry that up with the parts of myself I have left aside for a while, and at the same time letting go forever of the parts of me that needed to go. Bring on 2016!

* The whole God thing. I wrote this post a while back about how uncomfortable I am with the term God. And I still am, but with more clarity now. In a deep inner place a little while back, having conversations with Jesus, I asked why is it God, a masculine energy that is the highest being. And the answer immediately came back that that is simply a construct of the physical world, an outcome of polarity. That in truth, there is no separation of masculine and feminine, that God is just a name. Which makes perfect sense to me, but I still have a bit of trouble with the term. 

See you later, Instagram.

It's official. My love affair with Instagram is now over. Yes, I know. First world problem. I know.

For a little while now, I've become increasingly aware of how my energy is spent or dissipated during my days. And I've noticed that I check in on Instagram way to often. And it's not good, not for me and not for my family. Not good for my little one.

I have followed a bunch of wonderfully talented people who take beautiful photographs. And while on the one hand I do find them inspiring, I also find it draining. It feels a little bit like my life isn't pretty enough, or something to that effect. I know that is really silly. I know that a lot of the images I look at are very well styled, and are not snapshots of real life. I start to be able to tell the difference. And a lot of beautiful real life photos are there also, and they really are beautiful. Beautiful places, beautiful people, beautiful kids. And I look at them and I wonder why - why am I looking at photos of kids of a person who I don't know, will never meet, will never actually know. Why am I looking at photos of other people's lives instead of living my own? 

Every time I pick up my phone and look at Instagram, I am for all intents and purposes 'gone'. I am completely zoned out from my life in front of me, and totally focused on other people's lives. What a waste of energy! I don't have that sort of energy to waste these days. And I tell myself that I'm having a brief moment of time out when I look at Instagram, but it's not true. A brief moment of time out would be more like sitting, doing absolutely nothing, other than to breathe and ask myself 'how am I feeling, right now, what do I need, right now?'. And I do do that sometimes. But more often than not I have my head in my phone instead. And I wonder how that  looks in the eyes of a toddler. 

I feel like looking at Instagram is like a little 'drip.. drip.. drip..' on my energy. It's not a huge amount by any means, but it is there. A little leak. And I need to stop the little leaks. I guess you could say I have been doing a lot of inner work lately, and am starting to see more clearly where energy goes. What is energising, what is draining. What supports me in my days and what drains me. And as much as I love Instagram, it is more of a drainer for me than an energiser. 

So I have decided, since I lack the willpower to just not look at Instagram, to close my account. I did the same thing with Facebook a few years ago now and it is not something I have ever regretted. The world we live in is a pretty social-media-mad place right now, especially if you do anything online. Like write a blog. But the reality for me (and I can only speak for me) is that the energy that I should be putting into my blog, would like to be putting into my blog, gets spent in other places instead - Instagram being the main offender for me. I have already realised that I'm not a tweeter, I sporadically pin things but really, I'm not a pinner, and Facebook - well, me and Facebook, we don't see eye to eye. I'm happy enough to just read blogs. I love reading blogs. I will save my energy for that instead, and for my family first and foremost.

To all the lovely people who have followed me on Instagram, and to the lovely people I have followed - thank you. I have enjoyed it very much. I just won't be there anymore. 

I'll still be here though!

(My favourite Instagrammer Joanna - I will miss following your account).