Dear Intuition…

On Tuesday, we reach the end of a series of classes exploring Intuition.

It is a topic I have been exploring for myself a lot in recent months. It is not one I will be letting float on by when the classes end.

It’s been really cool to discuss the topic with others over the last 5 weeks.

The classes will remain available, as recordings, so you can still join if you would like to. You could come to the final class live and catch up on the other 4 via the recordings in your own time.

To mark the end of the series, and to mark the latest project that forms part of our newsletter art gallery, I have written a letter, with my words and yours, if you shared some, to our Intuition.

Here it is:

Dear Intuition,

We want to hear you.

We so do. 

But your voice has become quiet. 

Quiet and, for many of us, out of reach. Perhaps that’s because we cannot find you within the shiny landscapes of our digital lives. Perhaps that’s because you’re bored of us, our decisions, our lives, our speed, our noise. 

Or perhaps that’s because we’re not listening for you at all. 

I asked others what they thought of first, when they thought of you. 

They said that you are listening and trusting, that you are an inner vision, a gaze of glory. Instinctive. Always there. Hidden. Whispering, Without form. That you are ritual and rhythm, creative and alive, that you are imaginative. That you are peaceful. That you are calm. 

They described you as Knowing without knowing, as personal, unique to each of us, and as softer, so much softer, than our thinking minds, that you ride on the pathways of our breath. 

You bring to mind magic eyes and owls, pure white cats, dingos, ferrets and bearded dragons. 

When I said intuition someone said back this word: WOMEN. That made me smile. 

What came to me most was that you are a very quiet voice among a lot of noise. That you are foggy and far away.

Yet that you never stop whispering when we become still. 

We will listen, now, to the whispers when they come. Commit to being still enough for your words to land. We will notice the synchronicities in our day,  acknowledge the pastimes that allow us to move in a state of flow and, from there, do them more.

We will notice intuition in our bodies, when the body signals ‘yes’ or ‘no’… and allow reflection on that to guide our thinking mind. 

We will. 

We hope. 

Because one thing that is true for every person who I spoke to about you… you’re important to us. Really important. So thank you for sticking around. 

xx 

A Pretty Bad Year…?!?

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. 

Why we find it so very hard to choose…

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

Swaying to stillness and the exquisite bliss of longing for…

Lovely humans,

I’ve been caught up in longing.

Longing – a “yearning, eager desire or craving,” It comes from the old English langung  a “…weariness, sadness, dejection…” but no definition gets it quite right, for me.

To sit in longing is an interesting space.

Longing for someone is entirely different to ‘missing’  them, in my awareness.

We ‘miss’ with our mind. Longing, it seems, is an experience that encompasses the entirety of our being.

I’ve been on a journey with being able to notice and name emotions. To name longing took time, “perhaps this is sadness?”  “feeling weak?”  “A curious and quite lovely type of pain?!” But knowing, in my reflection, it was something far more than my words managed to touch.

I like longing. Is that a strange statement to make? I believe that longing comes from an encounter with something magical enough that this (to me, peculiarly beautiful) emotion is evoked.

The universe we exist in places endless expectation on us to find and satisfy our hungers and desires as instantaneously as we possibly can. That the outcome is never, in the least bit, satisfying is what keeps us in a loop of consumption… be that of sugar, carbs, porn, fast-fashion or whatever lands on the doorstep in one of those too-familiar brown cardboard Amazon parcels.

Perhaps, I reflected, that is why to sit still, with longing, feels so unusual. So welcome. 

I find that sitting with longing, which can be considered a pretty melancholy emotion, is extremely lovely.

But why? Really? Can it be as simple as it being so at odds with a fast-paced, ever-scrolling, society that seeks reassurance from ‘buy now’ buttons and navigating Porn Hub with a well-trained thumb?

My love of longing feels like more than that. It feels like connecting to an entire new universe.

Swaying to stillness…

To long for something is to feel its lack. And to exist with longing is not easy.

In the world of yoga it seems that many who come to the mat have an awareness of a certain, dark, untouchable space… you could call it a void… that exists in us. Perhaps the awareness comes from some experience of sensing that space and becoming curious about what it is, and where it could lead us. Down the rabbit hole…

I mention this as, for me, there is a connection between that space and the feeling of longing.

We have a certain posture that we work with in Kundalini Global yoga classes… to my knowledge the posture has no name… born of ‘neck rolls’… it involves a gentle swaying from side to side. I believe it is the brain-child of Carolyn Cowan. If it is not, then that is certainly where my experience with the posture began. And where I fell head over heals in love with it. I share it here because it is what truly awoke this longing in me… and what I turn to when I want to sit with it once more.

You could try it if you haven’t… we sit cross legged, spine straight, hands on the knees.

The breath is gentle. Quiet. We inhale in the centre and exhale as we begin to sway. Move to the left first. Ear moving down toward the shoulder, swaying gently to the left, coming back up to gently inhale, then exhaling and gently swaying, ear toward shoulder, to the right.

Gradually, with each breath, each exhale, moving a tiny bit lower.  As we slowly descend the arms can come to the side, on the floor either side of us, to offer support. Rocking slowly, slowly, lower and lower. We take just as much time to descend as to slowly come back. I’d start with 3 minutes… so 90 seconds to descend as you sway, and 90 to come back slowly to tall and straight.

And then, not lying back as we commonly do after a posture, just sit in stillness. Really soft in the body. And notice…

What Carolyn brought my awareness to is a pulse. A pulse in the spinal fluid. It is called the lumbar cerebrospinal fluid pulse. And the rhythmic, swaying, motion of the posture allows us quickly, gently, to being able to tune into it. I find my body still sways a little with the pulse. So gently it is like being rocked in the weightless arms of an angel.

Cerebrospinal fluid is a clear, colourless body fluid found within the tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord of all vertebrates. When we are entirely present and still and when we are landed in our bodies, we may be able to become aware of this pulse. When we do, when we can, it is, or has been for me, an experience of myself that is otherworldly in its gentleness, in its perfection. I do not use the word perfect often but it really is. Perfect bliss.

Yet. Yet. In this perfect bliss I seem always to find a paradoxical longing. An ache.

How is this possible? To be entirely accepting of the moment, blissful, and yet the experience is one where longing is the word… Before gentle. Before calm. Before present. The only word I may place before longing is this one… Divine.

Carolyn teaches that the lumbar cerebrospinal fluid pulse is the Divine within the body.

How beautiful is that?

To me it feels exactly right.

Utter Perfection

The stillness that comes from the posture I describe above leaves me sitting with an emotion that feels so much more than ‘happy’. It is an aching, longing, blissful pull that feels like … a calling?!? Words. Words. Sometimes they fail.

Whatever the words are, I’ve felt this bliss before. Along with its accompanying, paradoxical, ache. One instance in-particular springs to mind, owing to how entirely unremarkable the moment was that it came. At least from the outside…

It was after my usual clockwise run around my local park on an Autumnal evening last year. It came as I walked home through an extremely ‘rough’ area of my city as the sun set. My trainers had rubbed my feet and my hair was wet with sweat. Cars passed. People shouted between windows in the flats lining the street and kids wove around me on scooters, giggling. The sky was beautiful. Purple, pink and orange. A huge flock of geese flew noisily overhead. Of course, after my run, I was flooded with endorphins. But nothing was unfamiliar. Nothing was noteworthy. Yet, all of a sudden, I had this sense come over me. I stopped still and looked up.

Utter perfection. Utter perfection in every cell of my body and… again, that deep deep longing.

It is so lovely when we can have such moments and consciously think ‘I will not forget this moment.’  And we don’t.

…something you cannot explain or know

When reflecting on this sense of present longing I, of course, needed to research, to dig into it and see what others may have taken such a feeling and experience to be or to mean.

In my reading I came across a word I like. It’s a German word: “Sehnsucht.’’

The dictionary tells us that ‘‘sehnsucht’’ is an “intense, mostly bittersweet longing for something remote or unattainable that would make life more complete”. Like a really intense yet infantile crush, then? Where you imagine complete perfection and bliss would come to all aspects of life with the first, passionate kiss? No. Not that. The translations of this word are tricky in English, but roughly it is, yes, a longing, but no, not like a crush, it is a deep yearning for something that you cannot ever explain or know.

I love to find a word that feels in alignment with the incommunicable. Not perfect. But close.

A yearning for something we cannot explain or know. Perhaps that is a definition not only of sehnsucht but of an aspect of devotion. Of a longing for the divine without. The external divine of our awareness. Whatever, whoever, that is. I think it is that. And I think it is a beautiful thing.

If I told 99% of the people in my real life that I was sitting in stillness with a yearning for God they would think I had lost the plot. . . but that is what I have come to.

I’ve been reading a lot about St. Augustine. I cannot go into his life here but do look him up. Quite a character. I have come to believe he was probably neurodivergent in some way. We share the same birthday. I did think once, ‘I hope we share little else…’ But of course we do. And not only this longing, this “Sehnsucht.” Although this is an aspect of human existence I am certain that we both have touched.

Holy longing?

In  Augustine’s sixth homily in his Homilies on 1, John states that a distinctive quality of Christian living is to learn to live into our longing:

“The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. What you long for, as yet you do not see; but longing makes in you room that shall be filled, when that which you are to see shall come.”

It’s such a curious thing. I love seeing an empty room inside me. A space. In Augustine’s thinking it is as if we are to be trained by longing. Not an arbitrary longing for our fuck buddy or a pair of cheap trainers. But by a holy longing.

A holy longing that creates a space, a ‘room that shall be filled’. I do not know if I want it to be filled. But I like sitting in that room and waiting in stillness. I like that a lot.

Most of us never sit in it.

So often, through a vast array of means and methods – returning to the list above of fast-food, fast-sex, fast-fashion – we work to soothe ourselves with anything other than… other than what? Other than the Divine.

I do not think these things are ‘bad.’ If we can be present to any moment, any experience, even a show we consume on Netflix or a cheap glazed doughnut… they can all be Divine.

Perhaps some aspect of longing comes when we forget the giver. Whatever or whoever we imagine that to be.

I believe that I have no satisfying way of ending this post for you. Perhaps I want to leave you in longing for an answer that may never come.

That is where I find myself. Happily.

I still sit, and sit still, in longing. And yes, I move between the experience of presence in it and seeking understanding of what it is.

I have come to realise that to sit in this longing is excellent for giving birth to artistic expression.

But I also reflect that, to go back to the ‘void’ inside that many in yoga, in ‘spiritual’ circles, seem to have become aware of in some way,  whatever the thing is that we believe to be a missing part of ourselves… perhaps is not a space that needs to be filled but one that is perfection as it is. If we can sit with it, in it. 

The longing for…

I don’t feel it needs to be named. 

What happens when you stop giving your power away? A Barbie doll massacre, a neon crucifix and gold leaf flakes over all of my life forevermore…

Lovely humans

I am feeling especially creative. As if I could transform my universe with nothing but an orange felt tip pen and my fertile imagination. As if my fingers leak glitter, birdsong and gold leaf flakes in every moment I am forced to be present to a task that does not lend itself, naturally, to creative expression.

Perhaps I can assign the joy this brings outside of myself to the full moon, to a teacher, or to the fascinating book I am reading by an extremely clever man. I find that I do not want to do those things, though. And that feels like progress.

I’m working on not giving my power away. On noticing when I do. The more I do this, I find, the more creative I feel. The more I have to give. The more clarity I find in what it is that I should channel my energy into. 

Becoming Dangerous…

The less power we give away the more dangerous we become. It is a practise of summoning our own salvation. And we become dangerous to the ‘shoulds’, to the expectations, to the systems that we exist within that do not want us to know how powerful we are when we can bear to be present enough to notice all that we give away.

Giving our power away… we all do it. Mostly unconsciously. When we allow something ‘they’ said, how ‘they’ looked at us, feeling left out, something horrid (I find, often about animals or children) that we read in the news… there are a million things I could list… but when we allow these things to tarnish any moment… to take us out of presence, to create contractions in our bodies and make our thinking short and fast… this is giving away our power. Our potency.

I have been robust in my insistence that my power should not be my own. Eyes darting around constantly, frantically, for anyone who will take it off my hands when I become aware that I have such a commodity in any aspect of my self.

At least now I am aware.

Something that has enriched my life enormously over the past 18 months, since I began teaching Kundalini Global, is to observe how my creativity inspires the other. The energetic exchange this facilitates is phenomenal. I find, again and again, that being aware of any creative endeavour I played a part in inspiring, in turn, inspires me a thousand-fold. Which, perhaps, inspires something else in another again…

I was touched to receive something in the post this week that was inspired by a practise from one of my classes. Touched is an interesting word isn’t it? It is for me, as I have always said I don’t like being touched. Perhaps I do. The etymology of the word ‘touch’ is telling in this… from the old French tochier which meant “to touch, hit, knock; mention, deal with” and from Vulgar Latin *toccare “to knock, strike” as a bell (source also of Spanish tocar, Italian toccare). I particularly like the concept of being ‘touched’ to be like a bell being struck. That feels correct, to me.

Anyway, I digress (something I am good at…) this post, this artwork that landed on my doormat at a moment when it could not have been more welcome, it inspired me.

It inspired me musically. In terms of picking up my flute. Which I have fallen back in love with after years of neglect. And in terms of finding myself in need of the comfort and inspiration of the music I love.

These little earthquakes…

I’ve written before about my love for the utterly fabulous Tori Amos. Next year her debut album, Little Earthquakes, my favourite album of all time, turns 30. This week, as I played the record on repeat, I smiled as I realised that it never, ever, stops unfurling for me. The emotion it releases, the ways in which she inspires, the pain it brings… it moves with me. It’s like every song speaks to me in the moment, whether than moment exists within the bright yellow bedroom walls of my teenage years, adorned with stencilled stars and moons, carpet burnt by incense sticks as I sit on the floor applying black kohl liner badly, or as it blasts out from an Alexa in my airy kitchen as I cook a meal for my children, patio doors open to the summer heat…

I love this album with every fibre of my being. And I decided this week that I need to create something from this love.

This led to a whole host of incredibly fun and inspiring moments, and the world’s most peculiar ever Amazon order.

And this is how, last night, I found myself massacring a ‘Made to Move’ Barbie with a breadknife by candlelight whilst covered in gold leaf flakes.

My children think this is fabulous.

I know… I know…


Why do we, crucify ourselves, every day?

I started, what is to become a bigger project, by creating something inspired by the first track on Little Earthquakes. A song called Crucify.

You can listen to it. I will embed a YouTube video here, although I fully recommend you check out the remastered version via Spotify or similar on good speakers to feel it fully. 

Crucify is a song about abandoning ourselves. Yes… about giving our power away.

It’s a song that makes me sad and empowered in equal measure. I must have listened to it 100 times this week. As I wrote not too long ago in an Instagram post, sad feelings evoked by music are pleasurable to us when sadness is perceived as non-threatening, when listening comes with psychological benefits such as emotional regulation and when the sad songs bring recollection of/reflection on past events that bring feelings of empathy.

I believe this to be true when I look at my relationship to Crucify. It evokes empathy for me. For my self. It evokes other emotions too. Rage, fear… but in a safe way. A way that facilitates release.

And if that release comes with the death of a Barbie doll? Well, I don’t judge myself. I’ve given up on that too.

You really can feel Tori’s rage in the piano in this. And her lyrics, as always, are incredible. Incredible.

Tori’s father was a preacher and has recounted how, when her father held prayer meetings she masturbated upstairs. Crucifiy is, I suppose, about freedom from the religious dogma imposed by her family and in society. Freedom that she looked for by abandoning herself on the ‘dirty streets’ and beneath ‘dirty sheets’ but ultimately found only within herself.

If you’re easily offended you may not want to see what I created. I don’t make such things for anyone else. I just, on occasion, find I have to make manifest how I feel in the form of something that makes me horrified, and hysterical (in the positive way) in equal measure.

Here it is, if you would like to see… it’s probably not finished. I am not too good with endings because they make me cry and crying… let’s just say me and crying have work to do.



I hope you all have a glorious day… week… month… life… until we meet again.

Sara-Jayne

 

Full Class Recording: Reprogramming The Human Psyche

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.

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:

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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

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:

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:

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

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Acer Tree Endorphins, Aphrodisiacs by the Kilo, and the Beguilement of Angels Invading in Raindrops: What I Have Been Up To This Week

Hello everyone.

I’ve decided I need a little bit of a social media break this week. My mind needs soothing. To be cleansed of the agitation of algorithms and the senseless stream of scrolling that comes to my mind when I try to drift off to sleep. I so love creating the content for my Instagram account, it’s become a real joy for me. I see my account as an alter, and what I put on to it is reflected on hugely. Made me love. This is gorgeous and beautiful and all that stuff. But it also eats my time. Time time time. I never have enough of it. And, as a result, I am EXHAUSTED!

So, before I get to a point where I need to be scraped up out of bed with a giant spatula every morning I am going to activate self-care mode. I am taking on something of a personal challenge to find more silence in every day, and doing a social media detox feels like a good thing to take on at the same time. So, if you don’t see me popping up quite so much on Instagram this week, you will know why. I’m going to catch up on several books I have been desperate to read, take more baths and, I hope, find a few more opportunities to get out for a run. Running through the autumn leaves is my ultimate feel-good pastime. Every year. And I feel as if I’ve been missing out on that this autumn so far, and it’s only on offer for a few weeks a year. I cannot miss it entirely! If you’re local to me, then running through West Park when the rainbow of Acer trees are at their peak levels of wow is just so incredibly uplifting. Its a huge gift to yourself to do it. Then do a walk around the park at the end. Flooded with endorphins. The best!

Aphrodisiacs by the Kilo.


When I opened the door to my postman a few mornings ago and he handed me a huge, soft and bulging envelope addressed to me I was a little perplexed, having no idea at all what I had ordered. My days of late night eBay regret, I believe, are long gone (letting go of that particular habit along with alcohol – funny that!) So what had I ordered that was so enormous? When I saw the label on the package I laughed. It was herbs. A lot of them. A lot more, in fact, than I had intended.

As part of the series of Prayer Workshops I recently attended with Carolyn Cowan, we explored many different tools that may aid in facilitating prayer, presence, connection. And one of them was a magical herb I have never used before: Damiana.

Damiana is said to produce a small emotional uplift that can last for up to ninety minutes. It is also said that, if taken before bed, Damiana promotes pleasant dreams. It’s been traditionally used as an aphrodisiac – for which it is commonly smoked. My interest is in how it can induce dream states. Lovely ones.

We used it to make tea, and not only did I really love the taste, but, for me, the stillness, softness, dreaminess, it helped to fascinate was quite magical. So, when I ran out of the supply Carolyn had provided us with for the workshops I decided to stock up. Perhaps just a little too much… when you consider that the instructions are to use one heaped teaspoon no more than 4-5 times a week, I somehow ended up ordering a kilo. It didn’t sound like too much at the time but, on reflection, considering how light a dried herb is, it really is a lot. I’ll be bathing in the stuff for years, I think.

Classes this week

As always I am teaching my three classes at the regular times this week. Monday evening at 7pm, Wednesday morning at 10am, both online, taught via zoom. For these online classes the first one is free.

I am also back at Bantock House Museum and Gardens in The Coach House at. 10:15am on Tuesday. Pre booking is essential for this class due to COVID restrictions so make sure you fill out the booking form if you’d like to come so I can ensure I can contact you for the screening questions on Monday.

The Invention of The Self

I can’t remember, actually, ever being called to read a book more than I was to read this one.

I have been lost in The Invention of the Self by Andrew Spira for three weeks. I am not usually such a slow reader but, quite honestly, this book opened up so much for me, so many interesting rabbit holes to jump down, so many new ideas to consider, read around, explore, although I finished reading last night, I am not done with the book. I absolutely adore this work.

The Invention of the Self, Personal Identity in the Age of Art is a completely magical examination of personal identity. When I read, in the preface, about Andrew Spria’s beguilement at the at a Cathar concept of Angels invading earth in raindrops, I knew I was going to be taken on a exploration that would fascinate. I find that idea most beguiling too. In fact, I haven’t been able to let it go, at all, since.

I feel as if this book has in many ways shifted how I think about history, particularly considering my study of cultural history at University, radically. To consider how we construct the sense of ourselves through art is something I am now completely obsessed by. The idea that our personal identity is a social construct may not be new, but to look at this concept through the lens of how our sense of self has been unconsciously left behind in art, in paintings and sculptures and furniture and sundials and… I just find the entire concept resonates with me in a way I am struggling to put in to words right now (perhaps I should paint my response! In fact, I think I will!)

Whilst this is an academic text, published by Bloomsbury Academic, I found it to be extremely accessible. I do not know a lot about Art History, but that just made it all the more wonderful. I had so very much to explore. So much, still, to learn, to read about to reflect on. This will not be the last time you see me write about this book. It’s one of the best books I have ever read. Fascinating beyond words. It has lit up my brain so much I wish I could take a month off just to go deeper in to it all.

Exquisitely well written, with just the most magical images, illustrations… beyond words. Just fantastic. And a very beautiful object too. Will be treasured.

Do leave a comment or send me an email to let me know you’ve been here and what you’ve been up to too. And I look forward to seeing some of you in class this week.

Remember the first online class is free. If you have any questions or feedback or just want to say hello you can always email me.

Huge love

Sara xxxx