Exploring the symbolism of summer herbs, flowers and ritual. Soul to Soul Yoga summer solstice practise.

Recently I found myself returning to the phrase ‘sweetness, sweetness’, words that carry both tenderness and ache. It conjured up the opening lines of Big Mouth Strikes Again by The Smiths, the frustration for Morrissey that his sharp humour was often misunderstood by the music press with his words always being taken out of context. Or the art of putting your foot in it by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, how often have we found ourselves there?

Welcome gentle souls,

There is a beautiful understanding within the Japanese Shinto tradition that all things carry spirit or Kami within them. Also known as the god of 8 million things. 8 million was an arbitrary number as infinity wasn’t known at the time and 8 is a lucky number in Japan.

Yaoyorozu no Kami is the full expression. What a wonderful and tender way to view our world and the interconnectnedness that lives within us all. Divinity resides not just in temples or rituals but in our ordinary life as well. The changing weather, the paper we write upon, the objects we hold, the ideas we dream into being, god or spirit exists everywhere, even within us all.

Everything starts as something else, the raw materials for your phone started as the minerals in the earth. All transformed through human touch, imagination and intention.

This perspective finds spiritual meaning even within industrial processes, suggesting that engineering is simply the rearranging of the inherent potential waiting within the physical world. Nothing is truly separate, only transformed.

‘To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.’ William Blake

Until next time,

Blessings,

Stephanie

This month’s yoga I really wanted to focus on matters of the heart. May is Hawthorn season and the Hawthorn is the medicine of the heart, so we will be focusing on a heart opening sequence, a space to soften, to heal our emotional heart wounds and honour all that life places before us. It’s important to make room for life’s challenges too, but we can trust the lessons and opportunities in those to grow.

 This is where we can tap into radical gratitude which can be even more potent, inviting us to experience our lives with vulnerability, respect and authenticity. We can be thankful for everything that life offers, including the challenges, the pain and the unfulfilled desires. We have a steady well within us, a quiet wholeness that is always there. From this radical place of acceptance and unconditional appreciation we can feel whole and connected to ourselves and to live life as it is and as it unfolds.

‘The best way to show my gratitude is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.’  Mother Theresa

Blessings kind souls,

Stephanie

It’s All In The Perspective    

Welcome gentle souls,

I managed to practise some yoga this morning, outside in my back garden. As I lay down ready for my savasana, I looked up at the blue sky with the moving clouds. They were shape shifting and being quite dynamic with their manoeuvres, their slow dances in and out. Some clouds with their expanding 3D shapes looked like they were coming down to meet me. It was all in the perspective. This was my view of the experience. I remember in our art classes being taught to put things in perspective, with that disappearing point moving into the distance. I thought about this and couldn’t stop looking at this shifting scene above me, such a great perspective, safe from the ground looking up. I wonder how the perspective changed for the crew of Artemis II with their viewpoint from the higher realms gazing back at earth, that would be a strange, unreal and singular outlook. How different and surreal to witness life from such a place. It’s all about how you view the situation, rather than the situation itself. It can shape your personal reality and your life outcomes.  Marcus Aurelius noted ‘Our life is what our thoughts make it.’ By making an intention to change how we look at things, the things we look at, and our resulting life can begin to change.

‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’ Henry David Thoreau

Or Marcel Proust said, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’

Perhaps that’s all we’re ever being invited into, to meet the same view again, but with fresh eyes and an open heart and a willingness to see anew.

I saw an interesting and relevant post by my friend and yoga teacher Selena Garefino talking about aesthetic repression, which I wanted to explore a bit more. James Hillman an American psychologist who wrote The Souls Code, amongst other book argues that we need the anima mundi, the soul of the world, we need that profound sense of beauty, to bring us back into intimate relationship with the world.

We had a lovely restorative practice last week, an hour dedicated to calm and peace and regaining a moment of clarity. Difficult to do inour fast-paced life. But with some bolsters and blankets and the soothing sounds of the gentle rain on the yurt roof and the sweet voiced birdsong…

Rebirth… a revival… a renaissance (love this word, a renewed interest in something or Beyonce’s album)… Well, spring is the perfect time for realising new ideas. Let’s start small and plant a seed, could be a physical seed or a mental seed, or why not both, plant that mental intention alongside your chosen seed…

Today, I noticed one solitary beautiful camellia poking over the top of mine and my neighbour’s fence into my garden. So gorgeous and delicate and happy and vibrant. My garden is very green with a new lawn and without any pops of colour as it hasn’t had a chance to establish itself…