Looking over my scrapbook

I’m very excited that I’ll be launching my new website very soon. This one’s been good for me; it’s just time for a little pre-Christmas tidy up, complete with new shoes and hair.

What’s been so fun is going back through all of my content over the last couple of years. I get to immediately associate where I was at that time and what was going on in my life, a bit like looking back through a scrapbook.

It’s true that when we’re on this journey that we often don’t take time to look back and admire the view. That’s because we’re always thinking that we have to move forward, to get further, higher, deeper, whatever. I am very guilty of this particular desire. It’s almost as if we have to “schedule in down time” as my friend likes to call it.

That in the end is a bit like skipping Savasana. It feels like it shouldn’t really matter, however, it’s the thing which matters most, the pose which is most challenging and most transformative. Plus, it is so honest to goodness de-lic-ious.

Spinning the wheels...

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be taking a journey through the chakras. It's a journey I've taken before, yet with each review more is revealed in this very ancient wisdom. Chakras are said to be vortexes of energy, each having their own special feeling. Like those moments when you've been sitting in a room and someone says the most inappropriate thing. The energy suddenly changes. That's how you know you're tuned into your perception, we can all feel that awkwardness.

Once we begin to understand the chakras and how they work individually and in relation to the other chakras we can start to interpret why we seem to get stuck in certain situations. So if we can't hold down a job or are always short of cash, that's our body telling us that something is out of sync. Because chakras can be either too open or too closed, we're looking to fin balance. We can also note that they are not linear in nature, our crown chakra may be well balanced at the same time as our heart chakra is sputtering like a Catherine wheel which hasn't got going.

My understanding of the chakras first began after I was involved in an experience in which I felt as if I had literally been uprooted. That's honestly how I felt, like all of a sudden everything which I felt was solid, wasn't and I had to find a new way. In that moment I had a choice. The choice to go and plonk myself where I had always been or to go and find some soil which would nuture and support me in a way which would give me the zip and life I want.

Purifying pulsation

I’ve been feeling under the weather for the last couple of weeks, it’s ok, it’s just a cold, I’ll live! What I found interesting is that we have this expression “under the weather”, as if we equate our inner experience to the outer by way of communicating this message. It reminds me of one of the Upanishads, one of the seminal works of yoga philosophy: what's inside is outside and what's outside is inside. Essentially, we carry a microcosm of the universe within our bodies.

I love to think of myself in this way, to draw the parallels between myself and nature. To understand that there are constant cycles, pulsation, what the Tantrikas call Spanda. Day follows night, summer follows spring. These things are all so familiar to us and returning to them time and again regrounds use into our essential nature, the earth. It’s only with a solid foundation that you can build a house, the same goes for our bodies.

When we honour these cycles, when I rest, do restorative or pranayama (breathing exercises) because I’m sick or tired, I find I’m much more able to expand out from a place of solid foundation. It feels really good J