Now is the time!

I believe in the magic of the moment; no such thing as a coincidence. I feel the uprising of love as I connect more deeply with myself, in doing so connect more deeply with you and the meaning of this incredible life. 
I taste the flavour of freedom as she expresses herself through me, dancing in delight of every breath, feeling, thought and action I make.
I hear the singing in my heart and bow to raising my own energy vibrations and love, to serve and honour others, purely, authentically.
I see my dreams manifesting every step-of-the-way, alight, guiding me; knowing they will meet me as hands meet palm-to-palm before the cathedral doors of my heart.
No need to rush a process… I am here, inhaling into my heart, exhaling into yours.
I sense dreams revealing, witness love unfolding, life unfurling, everything has meaning. My life means the world to me.
…so, may the sunshine in my heart balance the tears when life brings pain. I allow myself to light my brightest dreams and live my wildest life that stirs the oceans of my soul with infinite gratitude in the sweetest moments of every breath, here on Mother Earth. Most of all, I am grateful for the remembrance, the gift, to fully live Alive.

Love,

Wendy

Recognising that teaching in a school was not Wendy’s ultimate career choice; she now weaves and expresses her life story through the joys of teaching yoga. Wendy draws her inspiration from the academy of life with primary influences coming from travelling the world, her environmental science and sports science degree, skills learnt as a teacher, being a mother, wife and ultimate student of life. Nowadays, her teacher is everyone she meets, including the darkness and lightness of her inner world. Wendy’s yoga teachers reflect abundant love and encouragement along her path. Infinite gratitude goes to Sianna Sherman, Bridget Woods-Kramer and Jayendra Hanley for safely guiding her through the depths and understandings of herself, leaving her empowered to express her creative freedom in the inspirational world of Anusara yoga, love and life. Wendy’s hometown is Milton Keynes, England, UK and she is very young, 38. She believes love is always the answer!

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Dear New Year,

We haven’t met yet, but I want you to know that I think you’re going to be awesome! Therefore, I’m making great plans for you! I’m intending to enjoy every single day, appreciating them along the way. I plan to endure any challenging moments with grace and dignity and beg forgiveness in advance for any mistakes I may make in the academy of life. I’m grateful for the opportunities you will afford me and deeply value the people who will accompany my journey. I hope that together we discover wisdom and love and happiness abound. Please let me be a kinder, gentler, more patient and accepting version of myself and help me to empower other souls to discover their beauty. Let us learn whatever lessons we need to make the world a better place, giving us courage to take steps in the right direction. I hope you will be a year that people remember fondly, as one that lit the imagination, inspired gallant action, promoted peace and integrity and is associated with many happy memories. Well, I’m looking forward to greeting you in when the clock strikes twelve, but meanwhile may I express my love, appreciation and gratitude for my many blessing of 2011.

Thank you, for the sweet uplifting support of my wonderful family and our beautiful home. Gratitude to all of my friends for sharing our life and stories together- I can’t wait to see how your journey unfolds next year. Thanks to all my friends and family who got married this year: such beautiful memories we share. The places I’ve visited and new friends I made in Paris- you are all imprinted in my heart and what better place than Paris could it have been. Geneva and John Friend – WOW; so full of love. Humble appreciation goes to all of my teachers, (formal and informal) this year has been incredible, my learning elevated to the stars above! Thanks to my dog Buddy and his boundlessly brilliant character, for stepping out into nature on our own front door- for making me put one- foot- in-front-of- the-other and experiencing ‘the now’ together! I bow to each and every one of my Yoga Boutique Page friends, your love and support means the most! ♥ My twitter friends this year, you rock! Thank you to everyone and everything so far, I don’t even know where all this came from but this year has been about having the trust in myself to step into the currents of my own heart’s desires and TRUST they are right, let them guide me. And that came from ‘all’ of my experiences in the world so far. 2011 you were the year to remind me of this very powerful teaching!

Just so you’re aware, there’s a special wish on the top of my list, the one that’s written in my heart, so although I’m trying to be patient , if you could make that a priority I’d be extremely happy and thankful ♥- I’m holding that space for you!

…so 2011, what is assumed lost is rediscovered, what is assumed forgotten is remembered, and what is true is rejoiced. Any darkness we perceive as we journey 2012 is simply a backdrop for a growing radiant inner luminosity for which there is no vaccine. Thanks so much for this!

In this light we sparkle. Shine in, shine out, and shine on! 

Learn it. Live it. Love it with love, light and laughter in your heart

♥ Wendy xxx

P.S Here is a beautiful poem for the end of our year:

At The End of The Year

The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the Soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A steam of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination
John O’Donohue
♥ ♥ ♥

Every day I take the same walk. I choose my preferences based on instinct, temperature and our dear friend, good old habit. I always walk to the left around the huge fields, I like to think I’m stimulating the creative hemisphere of my brain but let’s face it, I’m just going around in circles,repeating the same pattern over and over.

Life is about choices; not this but that, not that but this. Sometimes trial and error leads the way with a whole lot of repeating – patterns happening over and over again…if we let them.

Thoughts and feelings are in constant flux and we are as much a slave to them as they are to our body.

We ‘think’ a feeling is only experienced through the thought-provoking mind but, feelings are experienced on many levels of our being- our emotional body feels, the physical body, our heart, our mind, our consciousness and the unwavering soul is imprinted.

Negative emotions, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, misperceptions, blame, sadness,tears, and the like … can move through your body like a virus trying to escape.

Yoga teaches us balance. I’ll say that again. Yoga teaches us balance. Whatever we do on one side of the body we replicate on the other side too. Living yoga off the mat should be the same. Otherwise, what’s the point? All the practice on the mat is just that, ‘ practise’. The real yoga happens as soon as we step off the mat.

Taking me back to my repeating patterns, do you ever feel like you are going around in circles? Doing the same thing over-and-over? Meeting the same type of people and wondering, how could that have happened…again? WELL If you do, great because you’ve just noticed a behaviour pattern (it took me forever to notice I kept on walking the same way around the fields!)  Perhaps not forever, but just, maybe, a very long time of repeating patterns is what it takes to ‘be the change.’

We must recognise a pattern before a shift occurs. I did begin to walk around the right side of the field and in fact, even all different directions and paths, around, across and diagonals too – oh yes, I’m a crazy cat sometimes! This change (although small) brought about greater balance, literally a fresh direction, my eyes opened up, I noticed new things and gained clear insight.

Our bodies, mind, heart and nervous system take a note of all these repeating patterns in our lives, storing them somewhere… for later. Eventually, this can translate as dis-ease in the mind, the body, the heart, the nervous system and possibly… all of them.

If you imagine a bowl of water all calm and still.

You can see through the water to the base of the bowl. Add a pebble and ripples start, first small but … increaSING, inCREASING, INCREASING, until the water is murky and totally distorted. Our mind is just the same.

We have around 50,000 thoughts per day- HELL, yeah I know, crazy; no wonder we go around in circles sometimes.

Spring is here. DETOX, RE-fresh, RE-vive but how do we not RE-peat? Let the thoughts and emotions run their course, run through you. Observe them, be their witness not their slave.

So what can you do?

• Walk in the fresh air and give your thoughts an airing (be sure to go in all directions and off the beaten path)
• Step onto your mat and sweat your thoughts out
• Step onto your mat and breathe your thoughts until the tension is eased
• Step onto your mat and twist them away
• Meditate on your mat, cleansing your mind like you do your body when you take a shower
• Relax on your mat taking back your full power, your  authentic , carefree and creative  Self
• Write those thoughts down without effort or a care-in-the-world so you can ‘see’ what your thoughts are saying to you. Write whatever is in your head and notice what’s playing on your consciousness. Even if it makes no sense you will feel much lighter, a bit like I’ve done here really

Spring is time to unravel and unfold, from the mystery ‘within’ to the freedom ‘without’.  No more going around in the same circles, meeting the same type of people, patterns and situations – wondering why is this happening again…and again…and again… Break free.  Notice. Stop.

‘Be the change’ and bring harmony to your mind and body, heart and soul. You never know, we might just meet up if we choose a new route.

‘Out beyond the fields of right doing and wrong doing there is a field, I’ll meet you there.’  ~ Rumi

Rumi – out beyond ideas …

Spring really is very RE…freshing.

Hope you enjoyed! … please feel free to share my thoughts with others using the links below.  After all sharing is caring!! x

LOVE <3 LOVE <3 LOVE <3

Wendy xx

tumblrbot asked: WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

Yoga!

Please take a moment to come up with some of your own answers to my question. I’m sure there will be many valid and varied answers.

The Oxford dictionary definition:

• relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things
• having a relationship based on a profound level of mental or emotional communication
• a place in which one feels a strong sense of belonging: I had always thought of Italy as my spiritual home
• the quality of being concerned with the human spirit

The Bhagavad Gita meaning of spirituality: diving deep into inner self and realising our true identity…our soul …the spirit within!

This last week I’ve been contemplating the meaning of spirituality to me.  In several conversations, I have personally been referred to as ‘spiritual’ even ‘too spiritual’ and it got me thinking…am I? How can we gauge spirituality? What is ‘too spiritual?’ What makes one person less or more spiritual than another..? Can people be at different spiritual stages or is this a false perception? Yoga definitely brings up more questions!

Then I started to think, what makes ‘my’ spirit come alive? This was a helpful question

• Great music
• Good company
• Exquisite food
• Sweet smelling flowers
• Being in nature
• The stars, the sun, the moon, the ocean, the landscape, the breeze
• Practicing yoga
• Interesting conversations
• Walking, jogging, riding my bike
• A tidy home full of beauty
• Learning new things

…You get the idea

Another good question I asked myself was how can I intuitively describe the most ‘spiritual’ person that I know? They are (in my opinion) honest, intuitively switched on, humble, dignified,  a seeker of truth, kind, have integrity, a role model, fair, emotionally balanced, courageous, follow their heart, always practice being a good person, look for the good in others, demonstrates wisdom, faith and vulnerability. This person is highly conscientious and knows the role of the ego.

I see spirituality not as a separate practice like going to church, temple, synagogue, mosque, following blind faith, even sitting on a meditation cushion, or… you fill in the blank…Although, to some, this may be exactly what spirituality means to them. For me, being spiritual is how I live my day. Spirituality is everything.  Every day I consciously engage in lifting my own spirit.

My senses play a huge part in this. I take delight in eating healthy, bright and interesting food. I enjoy the sound of beautiful music and the birds singing, I feel the breeze against my face, I see the sun, stars and beauty all around. I listen to the voice of my heart. I care about how I interact with the environment, my friends, family and anyone I connect with and when I sense a lack of connection with another, my heart directly feels that. Anything that takes me straight to my heart connects me in the conversation of life and expands my awareness. Whatever brings me deeper connections with myself and ultimately greater happiness is to me, a spiritual revelation.

Yoga definitely taps into my spirit. It enlivens me. My mind and heart begin to open, we could say soften or we could say connect me to my true essence or we could say, make me feel more free-spirited. Now we’re talking. I’d like to think of myself as a free-spirit, deeply connected to the truth of my heart.

Part of my job is to help people connect more fully with themselves, to listen to their heart.

Teaching yoga is my commitment to me and to you, to always look for the good in any situation, whether we perceive it as good or indifferent (sometimes that’s super hard so I practice yoga to help me out!) To see the good, to learn the lessons, surely, I must walk-my- talk. The more I look for the goodness in me and raise my SPIRIT, the more I see the goodness all around me and definitely in you.
A key element to Anusara Yoga, which I teach, is the philosophy, its truth, wisdom, viewpoint and values. Anusara Yoga has a tantric vision of intrinsic goodness, irrelevant of gender, preferences, colour, culture, age, size… There is a deep goodness that resigns in the heart of ‘all’ beings – yes, I said ‘all’ beings at the core of the heart have a deep goodness. I totally buy into ‘choosing’ to see more goodness and beauty in the world and in everyone I meet. I choose to consciously engage in revealing my own goodness, likewise recognising it in you. I choose to believe at the heart of all beings is our true and authentic Self. No matter how much people build up walls of protection around their heart, underneath it all is a pulsing goodness, free and full of Shakti, creative energy. Your spirit knows itself and wants to be expressed through you. It is supremely intelligent and consciously invites us to engage. I choose to listen to this goodness.  I choose to engage. I choose to look for the goodness in me, the goodness in you and the goodness in us because that uplifts me and hopefully your spirit too. I choose the truth no matter what.

We chant an invocation. In English, we are acknowledging the goodness within ourselves, honouring our own present and peaceful consciousness, we are chanting, singing, saying that our own spirit is free and luminous and we commit those words, that feeling to ourselves every time-that’s healing.

Anusara teachers teach with themes which invite you to connect to your heart and ‘spirit’ more fully.

The yoga poses are expressions of you in beautiful art-form and those feelings are expressed from the inside-out, through your spirit.

We align our bodies to feel better in how we move and think, that feels pretty divine. We step more fully into the flow of our practice and ultimately step more fully into the heart of who we truly are.

As we practice Anusara Yoga the true understanding or Re-member-ance(Chit) about who we are really can awaken, if we let it – we Re -member again, realise, and rediscover ourselves a little more. Every time we are on our mat we express ourselves creatively (Ananada) because let’s face it, we enjoy feeling free, we enjoy feeling love for ourselves and seeing greater goodness in life … our SPIRIT lifts.

Am I spiritual? I hope so. Am I too spiritual for you? NO because all of the goodness I see in me is also in you too. We are all reflecting each other.

I fully believe in all of the qualities I have mentioned above.  Is Anusara Yoga a spiritual practice? I’d say yes because when I practice it, I feel a far greater connection to life in general. Life is good. Goodness is the absolute nature of the universe.

Our birth-right is joy, peace and love and whatever brings you closer to this state is bringing you closer to your true spirit; that’s Spiritual. There are so many ways to connect to our spirit:

• Read a book that inspires you
• Take a walk in nature
• Dance naked under a waterfall  if it brings you closer to your spirit
• Go fishing
• Sing
• Laugh, smile, connect with a friend
• Go to your special place

I choose to see spirituality in all things. I’m always learning to be happy because that makes the world a better place. Seeing the goodness all around, living by example is the ultimate gift that we can give to humankind.

Ultimately, I practice being a good person and that takes me closer to my true spirit. When I ‘m closer to my true spirit that feels Spiritual. I feel connected more fully to me and my life which in turn, makes life more enjoyable for me, my family and all of the people I meet along my way.

Completely following my heart is enough to make my world spin in a different direction. My spirit always tends to lead me towards freedom and expanded consciousness. The soul is the individual expression of spirit and the spirit is the universal expression of soul. Through raising my individual spirit and you raising yours too, consciousness in the world expands. That is a gift to the world.

When I feel detached from my body because I haven’t stepped into my spirit for a while I become dreamy, off centre, less grounded, more mind ‘thinking’ and more heart emptiness yet capable of great journeys. The greater connected in my body I become through my yogic practices (both on and off the mat!) I have a dynamic energy flow throughout my entire being-this is how my spirituality becomes embodied. I literally plug-in, like tuning a radio, I feel more tuned in with me and my Spirit LOVES that!

Metaphors are figures of speech which try to describe something hard to grasp as something else more comprehensible. The word ‘spiritual’ can be tricky to define because we all have our own meanings, interpretations and even experiences for some words. The following are a few metaphors taken from the book Essential Spirituality -Roger Walsh:

‘As nature transforms the caterpillar into an exquisite butterfly, so too do spiritual practises transform us.’

‘The beauty of the rose may be hidden but is already present within the bud. Likewise our transcendent beauty and potential are hidden within. The spiritual practises help us unfold and blossom.’

‘In our spirituality, we reach for consciousness, awareness and the highest values; in our soulfulness, we endure the most pleasurable and exhausting of human experiences and emotions. These two directions make up the fundamental pulse of the human life, and to an extend they have an attraction to each other.’ Thomas Moore

…so am I spiritual? Are you spiritual? Are some of us more spiritual than others? We are all on our journey, our own path and how we travel is our choice. What we seek is our choice. My observations are: we all love to feel good and experience life in the most uplifting ways that our spirit desires. Some may express that through jumping out of a plane; others through taking a walk in the park, while others may need to step fully into their body and climb to the top of a mountain; some may dive to the bottom of the sea. Whatever it is that makes your spirit soar and take you closer to your bliss (we call that Samadhi in yoga) to fully experience your heart’s desire and make your spirit feel alive; that’s spiritual. Spirituality is all around, in everyone I meet, everywhere I go and everything I do.

Am I a really spiritual person? Yes! I do whatever I believe to live my life in the highest possible way, to feed my soul and enliven my spirit, to feel fully alive. One, of a whole range of ways I do that is by stepping onto my yoga mat and listening to what my body and heart want me to do.

What do you do to make your spirit feel enlivened?

The invitation is always for you to come and join me on the yoga mat…and maybe begin to notice the light of your spirit shining through.

Shine in, shine out and shine on!

Love Wendy xxx

‘The body heals with play, the mind heals with laughter and the SPIRIT heals with joy.’ Proverb