Tag: Kundalini Yoga Teacher

A Pretty Bad Year…?!?

Published on by Sara-Jayne Edwards3 Comments

2021. It has not been an experience of reality that I will not, in the broadest sense, look back on with a huge fondness.

It started with the inherent stressors that came with the lockdowns… namely, for me, keeping up with everything relative to work and home when the homeschooling of my three children landed on my daily to-do list. It was in no way unpleasant, in many ways it really was very lovely, and I do, I really do, feel fortunate to live where I live and to have the family that I do… but it wasn’t easy. Not at all. At the same time, my best friend and dog companion, Rebel, was diagnosed with Lymphoma and on 16 weeks of chemotherapy… or would have been. It would be easy for me to begin listing all the other stressors here, at this time… things… things that went wrong in my house, my job, with the minutiae of my small human existence … I will not.

I do not usually write this way. I do not tend to post huge amounts of my life relative to the personal aspects of it… but I reflect back, as we stride toward the end of the year, in our face masks, with one hand grasping our smart phones, refreshing news apps, and the other, hopeful, at the end of an outstretched arm for a (still cautious) hug, that I had some really hard times.

Loss. Loss is so much. So hard. I had a family loss in February that really is too personal to post about on my website. And then, after the treatment did not work, I also lost my Rebel, my Rebel who I can call my best friend without a moment of questioning relative to the childlike nature of applying such labels to anyone, let alone a canine-companion.

She really was my best friend, a non-judging, funny, forever grateful, forever loving, adorable, clever, friend. Who I spent so much time with… most hours of my days and nights. Who got me out in nature for hours, gave me comfort when I felt lost, and loved to be with me in my classes, curled up by the fire out of view. I miss her so much. So much. I cried today, again, when I saw a dog that looked just like her trotting past me in the street. Losing Rebel broke my heart. It will never be quite the same.

Beyond that, I had a malignant melanoma diagnosis, a couple of operations and some awkward biopsies… a tricky thing, for me, relative to specific parts of my anxiety history, and a real test of my ability to regulate and stay present. I can say that this was especially true when awake, face down, hospital-gown glad, on a cold operating table with a face mask on for what felt like a very long time. 

Lots of hospital visits and waiting for results. These things that we all, as humans,  go through at times. You know, I’m sure, if you’re reading this, what it is like….

And all of this, every part of it, within only the first months of the year.

I sound like a real misery here, I do know. But, to be clear, I am not miserable. Not at all. I have not been miserable, as such, through any of it. Sad, yes, so sad. Tired, certainly. But soft with it, generally, all of it. And I have been proud of that. Other than in the occasional, hugely overwhelming, moment where I trod on a Minecraft creeper whilst tidying away the toys, or Uber Eats cancelled my ‘Giant Doughnut’ delivery (this happened today, no lie… I was furious!)… where I have fled to my room to scream into a pillow or allowed past behaviours to surface in my professional life (terse emails afoot)…

…these moments aside… I have been shocked at how I have held myself.

I stayed sober.

I stayed with my practise.

I didn’t take a single day off ‘sick’ and I stayed well, physically, too.

So many wonderful things happened to me, for me. I had amazing opportunities for teaching. Teaching this thing called Kundalini Global that I so love. So adore. Feel so passionate about.

I deepened connections with a few people who have come into my life in recent years. I let go of others. I laughed. I laughed so much this year. So much of that laughter in yoga classes. I learned. I trained to teach breath and I trained, again… more… on working with addiction and anxiety. I set my sights on new goals, new ambitions, new projects… new qualifications that I will start working through next year. I launched my zine (don’t ask about issue 3… it is on the way… it’s a long birthing process) I took on new jobs and roles at work… I read SO many books, I kept creating, I kept teaching, I kept going and I stayed on the right side, just, of sanity.

I love my life. On workshops I have done with Carolyn Cowan she encourages us to say ‘I love my life’ 11 times and ‘My life loves me’ 11 times before bed and on waking. I always do my homework and so I do this. I have for some time. It’s pretty epic when you start to realise that it becomes more and more true.

What I have managed, through 2021, is to keep working on what I have come to rely on… allowing emotion, noticing how I feel, landing myself into presence, being gentle, kind, soft… all of these things. Embracing my faults. Embracing my humanness. My imperfection. Some days it all falls apart and I have a moment of ‘oh, fuck, I remember this…’ … the anxiety the stress, the thoughts like maggots… they can creep in still. But how lovely, how very lovely, that I can notice now, only because it is no longer the ‘norm’.

Some of my practise has been about conscious, daily choices that have formed into habits, others have been a real challenge for me. Truly. I’ve worked really. Fucking. Hard.

I will not look back on 2021 with huge fondness. But I will look back on it with a beneficent smile and with gratitude for how it endlessly showed me my edges, encouraged me to make change, made me step up and out of so many aspects of ‘being me’ that I thought were impossible to put down. . .

If 2021 has been tough for you too then I am sorry. But also I do hope that, like me, you walk toward the end of it with an awareness at how badass you are at holding yourself through it all…

We are amazing in our ability to shape how we experience our reality. I think that is what I mean by the quote I have now put front and centre on my website homepage ‘Life is not about finding yourself, It is about creating yourself…’

I plan to create something even more amazing going forward. Even more amazing, if possible, than this very moment, this lovely moment, where I sit, writing this for you, at the end of a work day, warmed by my log burner and tea, curled up in the world’s comfiest chair that I was gifted for my birthday from a junk shop that I love, and with my oldest child photographing curiosities on my mat at my feet

‘I need to photograph some really weird stuff for art homework so… I need your things…” They said.

Haha. That made me laugh. This moment is lovely. Every moment can be so.

Before I go, earlier today, Kundalini Global shared a post about music. It got me thinking that you may enjoy listening to, or nosying through, some of the music that saw me through this year. An eclectic mix taken from what Spotify told me were some of my ‘top tracks’ of 2021. I am almost certain that none of them are actually from 2021, or even anything close to… it is one realm in which ‘living in the past’ seems acceptable to my new-found, more present, sensibilities.

You’ll find snippets here and it should link you through to it on Spotify too.

If you enjoy that, you must be as peculiar as me. Do let me know.

Sending you all so much love for this festive season.

Sara-Jayne xxx

PS  – I have plans for a blog post about my favourite books of the year coming soon… if you have anything else you’d like me to write about or share do let me know! And take care. 

I CAN CHOOSE

Why we find it so very hard to choose…

Published on by Sara-Jayne EdwardsLeave a comment

Hello lovely humans

It has been a little while since I posted on the blog. Life has been good to me, I have been going through a period of huge reflection and change and it can take time, I find, for things to recalibrate and for the all to come back into a natural order.

It’s Halloween, today, I am dressing up as Jeff Bezos strapped to his penis rocket. I’ll share photos next week.

It’s an interesting choice of costume, perhaps.

I have been thinking a lot about choosing.

How are you with choosing? Do you find it a simple thing? Second nature? If someone asks what it is that you want are you able to answer without a necessity to frantically filer what comes to you through a ‘what will they think?’ machine inside? To throw it back to the asker? To always say ‘I don’t mind’ ‘whatever you think’ ‘I’m easy’…

I hope so. That choosing is easy for you.

I have been working with choosing for a year, almost exactly. ‘Working with choosing?’ Perhaps that sounds weird. But it has been fascinating, enlightening and pretty cool, for me. Let me explain.

I realised I was not comfortable, often, with choosing. That things that had happened meant that I didn’t feel I deserved the choice or that if I was brave enough to choose what I wanted that I would be punished in some way. The things we do with what happens to us can manifest in all kinds of curious ways. This just happened to be one of mine. And if I was to be the teacher, the human, I wanted to be, knew I could be, I needed to begin to choose.

I started small. Choosing what I would eat for my breakfast, early in the morning, before the rest of my family woke up. I had this hilarious few months where I found the easiest thing for me to choose was what fruit I would like… so through this period I steamed and stewed a lot of fruits for breakfast time. I tried all kinds of fruits I’d never come across before and ate them in a variety of ways that made me happy. Choosing what I wanted, needed, each day instead of quickly grabbing a piece of toast in the chaos of the school run was a daily treat that it was quite easy to turn into a habit. I also chose to take time to eat and to make it a mindful practise.

It is one of those things that I didn’t really notice the impact of for a long time, but like building muscle, this small practise of choosing began slowly to unfold in other areas of my life. I notice, now, how much easier it is to choose ‘on to spot’, so-to-speak, to be more decisive and more able to recognise my own needs in day-to-day life and interactions.

As a yoga teacher, offering choice is something I believe to be extremely important in creating safety in classes. Why? Because many of us have had experiences where choice was, at least in our perception, taken away.

The births of my children are an example of this for me. Trauma has been described as “an experience of having no choice,” and to me it is key that in opposition to that, my yoga classes always invite all to have different physical experiences, where eveeyone can make a variety of choices about what to do with the body.

Offering choice feels kind and inclusive, To offer options (variations, for example, on a posture, not with one posture as the ‘ideal’ and the others as poor cousins, but as equal variations) whilst eliminating judgment, “If you’d like to try something different, do this…” is so kind and invites those in classes to begin working on choosing too.

When I go to classes, I find that It’s incredibly powerful to be handed permission to rest or modify postures because so many of us struggle to give that permission to ourselves. Over time, when we’re offered the permission to choose ourselves, we may just find that this begins to change. We work toward ‘I give myself permission to choose.’

So, how do you feel about choosing? I really would love to know.

Sending you all heaps of love

Sara-Jayne

xxxx

Don't be a dick...

Be An Original (And Don’t Be A Dick…)

Published on by Sara-Jayne EdwardsLeave a comment

I’m feeling rebellious, inspired and incredibly energised by life right now.

I feel electric.

I love how creative I am. 

I am creative.

I can affirm that with absolute certainty, needing no reinforcement, praise or encouragement.

When you are creative (and you are, too, we all are). And when you have something original to show to the world (you do, we all do). It’s a pretty cool thing if you can find the courage inherent in ‘putting it out there’ in an effort to reach others. In service to others, to inspire others, or… hell, to earn yourself a living doing something you were born to do.

But it can have its downsides too. 

When you truly are in touch with your creativity, when you are stepping up to be YOU… what I notice is that other people don’t necessarily like it too much.

Some people…

*whispers* …Some people will want what you have…

And they want it so very much, so desperately,

that they will try and take it for themselves.

Sometimes they will take only a breadcrumb at a time. Barely noticeable, at first.

Others will swoop toward you and gather up great big greedy armfuls of you without a backward glance.

I know, I know, it’s shocking, right? But it is true.

It’s something that happens in my world more and more. And I am not alone. 

Sometimes it’s just plain old creepy…

Having invested hugely in myself in a variety of ways in recent years I am not too keen on hacking off huge parts of myself to hand to others on a silver platter to feast on in gay abandon… but what can you do… when you’re feeling inspired, energised, and electric, some people just really want a piece of you for themselves.

Some of this happens unconsciously, and it can be quite easy as the creator of something to let that slide on by.

Other times it’s more blatant. Huge chunks of text copied and pasted from your website to theirs. Uncredited. Classes copied, from the intention to the music to that thing you said about Tiger penises. Haircuts, clothing choices, the way you have chosen to present your ideas. Some feel it all is fair game. Artwork, born of your own very personal relationship to yourself and the world. Creations that huge money, time, creativity and love was poured into… just copied. Blatantly. Often badly. And passed off as someone else’s original idea.

It can feel exhausting.

I’ll be honest, sometimes it feels quite threatening.

Once or twice, for me, it’s been just plain old creepy.

But what can you do? I can’t build an electric fence around myself and hammer a sign on my head that says ‘Danger. High Voltage’. Or can I?

Well, until I decide on that, I will say it again.

I AM CREATIVE.

Hey, if you want to congratulate me on my art or my words or my dress sense that’s lovely. Thank you very much. And if you disagree and think I’m dull, uninspiring and flat then… excellent.

Your opinion will unroot my feet from solid ground no more than the feather from a baby sparrow floating from the heavens to land on my shoulder. How sweet. *Brushes feather off, picks it up, and sticks it on a canvas depicting neon sparrows exploring a supernova explosion*.

If you think that sounds arrogant. Well, it is, a bit! We all need a healthy amount of narcissism to feel pride, hold self-esteem and realise our own self worth. That I can hold my head up so high and say ‘I am creative’ is hugely important to where I am in my relationship to myself. I would not have been able to shout it loud and proud a year ago.

Through my adult life, what I do with my creativity has more regularly private than public. Be it playing, painting, building, photographing, decorating, writing or decapitating dolls.  None of you (unless you’re related to me, my neighbour or knew me well 20 years ago) have heard me play the flute. But I do it every day. Creating is not about the other. It is about exploring and expressing my feelings experiences and ideas, filtered through my own completely unique brain… 

To put some of what I create out into the world since becoming a yoga teacher has been rewarding. I am proud that what I have created is both authentic as a reflection of my inner and outer relationship to the universe and in being unlike what is most commonly seen in how yoga is presented… particularly online. 

I don’t strive for originality, I strive to be me. Originality is what comes from that…

Originality… It’s a terrific thing.

To be original, to hope to be… it can be a bitch. It can feel impossible, unreachable, when we’re out of whack with our own potency. Not sure who we are. What we want. What we think.

Who we are.
What we want.
What we think.

They sound like pretty basic elements in experiencing a human life.

But what we want,
what we think
who we are…

for many, they are lost. Lost in the noise. In the contractions in body and mind that they are not even aware exist, so familiar are they to their experience of what life can be. Comparing, despairing and searching for something, anything, to temporarily ease an uncomfortable sense that something is wrong.

All that is left is to spin around in a metaphorical blindfold with a shaky, pointing finger… a kind of  existential spin the bottle… and to land on someone who seems to own some semblance of what you perceive that you should want, think, and be and think ‘I’ll take that one. For me’.

Life is noisy.

We’re all continually taking in stimuli from our environments… how things look, what we hear, what lights us up, how people react, what turns us off… we take inspiration from nature and television and music videos and art and from other people we see who are cool and interesting, charismatic, funny, magical or strong …

Whether conscious or unconscious we take on aspects of what others say, think, do, create…

Last week, my own teacher, Carolyn, taught an incredible Kundalini Global class where we did a yoga series called ‘Be An Original’ and Carolyn explored the idea of what it means to be you. Your true, authentic, human self.

It struck a chord for me.

I realised how much that I do it too, unconsciously taking without doing the work to make it energetically elegant. And I’ve taken myself on in this. I would encourage you to do the same.

Take Carolyn, I’ve done pretty much all of her trainings.  And I would do them all again. She’s brilliant. Hilarious, exceptionally clever, unique in her thinking and extremely charismatic. She explains things in such a creative, distinctive and authoritative way…

It has been on a regular basis that I use words, idioms and ideas that I would NEVER have considered using before meeting Carolyn, because I have taken them from her… and it’s just not on.

I wouldn’t dream, ever, of stealing Carolyn’s written words, artwork or class plans. But both consciously and unconsciously I have been guilty of stepping beyond ‘inspired by’ into ‘taken from’ in how I teach.

It’s a shitty thing to do.

You could say it is hard to avoid copying. But it is not.

It is not hard to avoid copying. Just don’t do it.

Whilst it’s not hard to avoid copying other people, it’s really easy to not bother doing the work inherent in being yourself. Because it really is work.

It is so easy not to reflect on what someone has said, written, created … and consider how that can be translated into your own universe, for your people, through you, your lens, your lived experience.

But when you do that part, that’s when the magic happens.

Whilst we can be inspired by those we look up to or who hold positions we see as hierarchically above us in realms in which we walk, to be able to consolidate and percolate and really learn from them, to be able to make manifest what they have taught to us, to transform the ideas they shared, ideas that lit us up, into something that truly serves us and others, we have to run them through our own internal computer system and turn them into something new…

And that can take time, patience and real skill. Be patient with yourself. And don’t rush it. Focus on becoming you and the percolation will happen along the way.

Of course we are all influenced by things outside of ourselves, be they the moon or Harry Styles’ penchant for amazing trousers (something that inspires me, endlessly). But don’t be a dick.

If you buy some pastel flares, Harry Styles won’t care. Probably. Unless you’re Zayn Malik. But if you steal someone’s artwork, when the original was born of 15k of therapy, some very late nights and sixteen hours of introspection, it’s just not cool. Stop it. Be you.

It’s not always easy to stay ‘true to you’… but nothing truly magical and potent is easy.

You’re never going to find yourself the spaces between the ctl+c  and ctl+v commands on your keyboard. Try the whole qwerty spectrum instead.


Full Class Recording: Reprogramming The Human Psyche

Published on by Sara-Jayne EdwardsLeave a comment

Here you will find the link to a video of a full, 60 minute, class recording of my favourite yoga series: Reprogramming The Human Psyche.

Reprogramming Recording

As you will see, the video recordings of full classes are all password protected. This is, in no way, to limit access but because for insurance purposes I have to keep a record of who has access to full classes. 

To access the full class recordings sign up to my email newsletter to be given the password for all videos. By doing so you will also be able to get the links for free live classes that I run. If you hate email newsletters, email me and let me know you want the password just so I can keep a note of your name and contact details. Otherwise, you can signup here and will receive an email with the password right away:

By clicking submit, you agree to share your e-mail address with the site owner and MailChimp to receive marketing, updates, and other e-mails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those e-mails to opt out at any time.

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I hope you enjoy the class recording and let me know if you have any questions. 

I always love to hear from you – you can send me an email (info@sarajaynekundalini.com)

Full Class Recording: Conscious or Unconscious You Do Affect Your Life Number 3

Published on by Sara-Jayne EdwardsLeave a comment

Here you will find the link to a video of a full, 60 minute, class recording of a really fun series called Conscious or Unconscious You Do Affect Your Life Number 3:

Conscious or Unconscious 3 Recording

As you will see, the video recordings of full classes are all password protected. This is, in no way, to limit access but because for insurance purposes I have to keep a record of who has access to full classes. 

To access the full class recordings sign up to my email newsletter to be given the password for all videos. By doing so you will also be able to get the links for free live classes that I run. If you hate email newsletters, email me and let me know you want the password just so I can keep a note of your name and contact details. Otherwise, you can signup here and will receive an email with the password right away:

By clicking submit, you agree to share your e-mail address with the site owner and MailChimp to receive marketing, updates, and other e-mails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those e-mails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

I hope you enjoy the class recording and let me know if you have any questions. 

I always love to hear from you – you can send me an email (info@sarajaynekundalini.com)

Blossoms, Bones, Divine Life, Divine Trees, Christmas Heaven and a Gift From Me to You: What I Have Been Up To This Week

Published on by Sara-Jayne EdwardsLeave a comment

Happy Sunday lovely humans

Before I get to anything else, I would just like to mention that I am offering a free class on Wednesday 30th December at 2.00pm, UK time. A post Christmas gift. If you would like to come you simply need to make sure you have added yourself to my email newsletter. If you haven’t done that already you can do it here:

Free Class

I would really love to see lots of you there.

How are we all? I’m feeling extremely Christmassy today. I think it might be time to put on The Pogues and bake some mince pies. Before my morning practise I lit a fire in my yoga room and then went around switching on all of the Christmas lights on the trees. Yes, trees, I really am one of those people who has more than one Christmas tree. The year I moved in to the house I live in now, which was about 4 or 5 years ago, I took on a range of other people’s discarded fake trees and had, I think 8 huge Christmas trees in the house. It was absolutely magical. However, when it came to pack it all away in the New Year I decided it was, perhaps, a little excessive, even for someone who loves Christmas as much as I do.

This year’s offerings a much less abundant but fill me with equal amounts of joy.

I have this little tree in the living room that has ALL of my favourite decorations on.
In the kitchen I have this glorious monstrosoty.
This skeleton, hanging on the door to the cellar, jump scares my kids multiple times a day. I think they are glorious.
And in my children’s playroom this beast. 12 foot and absolutely magical. This is where Father Christmas leaves the gifts.

I planned to take something of a break this past week but, in fact, I have somehow let myself be as busy as ever. I have put myself on a contract for this coming week to actually let myself be still. I really do need it. It’s incredible how much we allow ourselves to keep going despite our bodies and minds screaming at us to slow down.

One thing I do always make space for is my practise. Both personal, in the early hours of the day, and also to attend classes whenever I can.

Tonight I am incredibly happy that I have the gift of the second of the Christmas Prayer Workshops with Carolyn Cowan. My second time doing this series of Sunday evening sessions which are truly magical. I believe Carolyn plans to run this again at Easter so if you would like to check it out do go over and join her mailing list. Last week we considered the practise of asking, in prayer. The stillness that comes from sitting in this space is pure bliss, to me. It does truly feel like being wrapped in a warm cosy blanket for two hours. Extremely soothing. And fascinating too.

Join us for This Life Divine

This Life Divine is coming up in the New Year. From the 2nd-4th January. This 3 day event has some amazing yoga and breath teachers as well as psychotherapists, all coming together at the start of a New Year to help anyone who is moving through anxious or addictive behaviours. It’s going to be wonderful. Any money raised from This Life Divine is being shared between 3 equally amazing charities that help those moving through addiction and if money is an obstacle to booking a place then you can book on the website for free. It’s an amazing offer. The opportunity to experience three fantastic workshops with Carolyn Cowan would be enough to get me there – with bells on! And beyond that we have so much on offer. Lots of it from my very fantastic Kundalini Global colleagues.

I’m really looking forward to this, both as someone who plans to attend the entire event, and as a teacher who is involved. You’ll find my class on day 3 of the schedule. And loads more information, as well as booking, can be found on the This Life Divine website.

Head over to This Life Divine to book your place.

Blossoms and Bones: What I Have Been Reading This Week

I’ve been a fan of Kim Krans for a few years now. I discovered her through a gift given to me 2 or 3 Christmases ago of her Wild Unknown Tarot Deck. But it was her Archetype cards (my goodness they’re incredible!) that I fell in love with. So when I saw she had a book, a memoir, that was hand drawn and written, and then when I saw the sub-title ‘Drawing a Life Back Together’ I had it in my hands almost immediately. 

In Blossoms and Bones, Kim Krans shows huge amounts of vulnerability and openness as she takes us on a journey through, what you could describe as, her complete evisceration of her relationship to herself. And then, with great joy, the reconstruction.

At the start she has taken refuge from herself in an ashram for 30 days and for those 30 days she takes on a practise of drawing her feelings.

Stepping through these 30 days with her is quite humbling as we truly witness a deeply personal unravelling.

With each day that passes it feels as if she comes closer to the parts of herself that she has been most avoiding. It was fascinating for me as it mirrored so closely my own story of this year as we were encouraged to embrace our story – to see it as our gold – on my Kundalini Global Teacher Training. In that work we begin to look at some very hard truths.

Then enter a skeleton (could this book be any more perfect for me) who offers its hand to be her guide through her subconscious. To follow the skeleton on a journey within herself – to the darkest parts of her internal relationship to herself. 

It was poignant to me that the memoir includes some really very beautiful prayers. Short, simple. But so touching, some of them made me cry.

It’s an extremely engaging book to read. You have to immerse yourself in it, turn it round, lean in closer, squint your eyes and figure out where to take your attention next. It’s just exquisite. I don’t want to give it all away here but I would truly recommend you check it out.

A tale of a human totally deconstructing themselves and the power and exquisite sense of self that comes when, having done that, they piece themselves back together. 

Blossom and Bones

That’s about it from me today, although I plan to check back in before Christmas Day.

Do let me know how you are in the comments, or by sending me a message. I love to hear from you.

Sending you all LOADs of love

Sara-Jayne xxx