During this time of lockdown, the introvert in me has taken a huge exhale.

Lockdown has put me through my paces, there’s no doubt about that. Letting go, holding on, making peace, resisting. There’s nothing like a global pandemic to shine a light on your shiz in a wonderful, undeniable way. It’s just whether we stay attentive to our shiz rising to the surface or we let it call the shots.

Maternal Mental Health Week…my story

The two big personal enquiries I urge you to ask yourself when you want to create a vision for an empowered, healthy future…(but you think you have no idea what you want yet)

1. What do you value?

AND

2. What do you need?

There are 5 principles of personal practice in yoga: Saucha, Tapas, Svadhyaya, Ishvarapranidhana and Santosha. But one rings truer to me than ever at the moment: Santosha = contentment. The practice of appreciation of the natural perfection everything as it is right now.

I spoke to a client this week and she asked “When I feel so far away from loving myself, from accepting myself, even truly wanting to get to know myself…where do I even start?”

Start with little pieces of love. That’s where you begin.

Working therapeutically, breath is where we begin. It can show where energy is stuck, where pain and protection is held. It also brings one of our most powerful and empowering tools to soothe, to feel safe, to access a space of clarity and insight…

How to not only find it, but maintain it? Because a balanced life is subjective…so get clear on YOUR version of what a balance day/week/life looks like? From the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep? How do you eat, move, rest, commute, keep in touch with people, plan your week?

When I sit down to meditate, move on my mat, or when guiding a class, …I ask the questions, delving beyond the surface, beyond the tight shoulder or niggly knee (these are important to acknowledge of course) but to find that flavour of what is truly needed…

My ‘practise’ has become a path of asking why and receiving the answer with acceptance and love. It is a process of experiencing something, fully, with every layer of myself, being curious of what arises and seeing - whatever my understanding, my interpretation or my emotional response of it - as being valid and helpful and interesting… gold dust in assisting to move forward with a little more clarity and lightness in my step.

Is it ok to not be ok and my feelings to be big and messy, to rise up and disperse in an unpredictable confusing wave never quite knowing whether Im at the crest or tumbling into the foam?

Now is the time for humanness… a connection of heart to heart, patience met with patience, compassion met with compassion, clarity mutually met with itself having been cultivated by the holder.

We look out to the sea ahead and that space for resting, family, dancing, sandy toes, play, bbq's, weddings and drinking something delicious out of a pineapple perhaps?

It's right their on the horizon - it is soooooo close!

But to make that space, these can become the preparation weeks ... clearing the decks, getting your ducks in a row, "Insert saying about getting your shizzle together here"...