I have chosen to invest a good deal of my time to up-cycle the tetra-pacs we use in our household.  I learned this beautiful weave from a tutorial on YouTube, which has helped me to make all shapes and forms of boxes, bags, storage units.  They are utilitarian, and in my eyes, quite pleasing too.  Is this art, or is it not art?  
For me the creation of these tetra-pac boxes is a transformation of a waste material to a useful product.  I enjoy the process of making them.  There is some creativity involved, although it is more a matter of design and calculation.  I would consider these woven baskets works of craft ~ leaning towards art.  The art being the spirit of transformation, and limiting my wasteful disposal.  What do you think?

* Why do we need to learn and communicate in the language of our bodies?
​
In our post covid era we are in need of ways and means to care for our health and happiness in diverse and informed ways.  My intention by providing classes and workshops in massage is to strengthen the field and network of practitioners who are fluent in the language of our bodies.
My own experience with Esalen massage and Scaravelli inspired yoga has helped me be in touch with moments of somatic enlightenment, moments when I felt as light as a bird in flight, as spacious as a healthy forest, as delightful as a wild coast full of mystery and mischief.  These treasured embodied moments increased for me as I put my attention on my practice and learned to let go of outdated habits and behaviours.  I want to share the sense of joy, wholeness, and soft-breath I have been experiencing in my body with a wider network of friends.  I want to guide more people to the treasures in our bodies that speak a language of connectivity, intelligence, lightness.
Our natural state of being is wholeness.  Yet we learn to live with pain.  Pain is a feedback mechanism pointing to where we have fallen out of wholeness.  When I learned how to listen to the pain in my body, I could then help my body to return to its natural state of alignment with my spine and become fluid.

*Classes and Workshops
I am offering classes in the Language of Our Bodies for a limited number of people.  We will start our practice in the art of touch and massage.  We will engage in yoga movements and increase our awareness of our own bodies.  We will learn how to approach the bodies of other people needing help to release tension and pain.

*When?
Starting in January until August, most Saturdays from 10.00 ~ 1.00.  

*What is the exchange?
I offer this programme in exchange for either cash (suggested £60 per session) or work (3 hours), or a mixture of the two.

*Commitments
I ask the participants to consider these commitments :
Regular practice in between classes
Regular study of the anatomy
Caring for your health and wellbeing with regular yoga or dance

*For one or two people
The classes could work very well for couples or two good friends as you will be learning together and practicing on each other as well as on more people afield.  It also works well when you join on your own.

*Responsibility for everyone’s safety 
When joining the classes please take responsibility to for your own wellbeing and others by ensuring that you won’t pass on any nasty virus during our sessions.
​
*Get in touch
To join the classes, contact Pupak on:
hoopoesong@protonmail.com

What is clean energy?  Doesn't burning wood logs add to our green house gases? A few good questions were raised from my last blog.  I thought to address them here.
To discern clean energy from polluting ones, we need to distinguish three types of carbon.

1. ​ancient carbon in fossilised plants and animals stored deep within the earth millions of years ago.
2. carbon in the atmosphere, combined with other gases, CO2 being one combination.
3. carbon stored in plants and organic matter, such as tree trunks, even our own bones, in soil, and in sea creatures.

Our green-house gas crisis, and 350 part-per-million optimal count for CO2, reaching now critical count of 410 ppm is due to releasing fossilised carbon that should have remained below ground.  Our current global crisis has been building up from the first extraction of fossil fuels and accelerated with a fury as we increased our oil consumption like addicts.
The carbon stored in wood, and other organic matter, belongs to the cycling and recycling of carbon that goes back to the atmosphere and the total mass of matter above ground.  Burning wood logs is comparable to us eating food, and exhaling CO2 when we breathe out.   Nature had struck a balance to maintain all the elements in life-supporting ways.  We have destroyed this balance by our greedy extractions of earth resources.
In this context burning wood is clean energy because the carbon it releases goes back to the natural recycling of the earth matter.  Indeed it is one of the cleanest sources of energy as well as sunlight and wind.  The problem comes into the picture when we extract more than our share, and set out to destroy forests for our greed.  But if you are someone who has enabled more than two million trees being planted (Alan, through the charity he founded, Trees for Life), burning a tree or two a year, from a sustainably managed woodland, to heat your home will not deficit our planet. 
Coming to think of it, if we each had a part to restore a part of our eco-systems, we could all be living on clean energy, physically and metaphysically.  

Sources : 350.org
                Trees for Life

We received nearly 4 cubic meters of seasoned wood from Hinterland, a managed woodland in Findhorn.  This is our yearly supply of wood to heat our home for the whole year.   Alan (my husband) spent all day chopping and stacking the wood.  Thank God for our neighbours who came to help.  
We consider burning seasoned wood clean energy, as opposed to fossil fuels.  The reason for it is that wood stores the carbon that is in the atmosphere already.  By burning the wood the carbon is released back to the atmosphere to be recycled by living organisms such as plants and soil.  Burning fossil fuels, however releases the carbon that has been stored in the depth of the earth, or the sea, millions of years ago.  Releasing the fossilised carbon is one of our major sources of global warming.  We need to stop burning fossil fuels ~ and we knew this for at least 5 decades.
Chopping wood and living on clean energy ~ feeling grateful to the trees today.

I've been practising Esalen Massage and learning Scaravelli inspired yoga for more than four years now.  During my practice I have observed that a significant healing takes place when the body of my clients are touched in ways that connects them with their spine and allows for fluidity and spaciousness of the joints (and a lot more besides).  I am immensely grateful to my yoga teacher, Louise in Findhorn, who helps me see and experience the relationship of my body to my spine.  In turn I observe and assist my clients to have a closer relationship to their bodies and to their spine.
I've been reflecting on the question : "how could we have a wellbeing system at a village level that supports the health and happiness of its inhabitants?  My response is to have increased awareness and practice of living more intimately with our bodies.  We need increased connections and commitments to ourselves and each other to maintain a 'path of health and happiness.'  Since I live in Findhorn Ecovillage for most of the year, I decided to offer training in massage and Scaravelli inspired yoga to a limited number of committed trainees.  Regular practice is what keeps the field of wellbeing pulsing and alive.  I think if a critical number of us committed to the path of health and happiness, while we increase our education and practice, we will have a reliable network to support the wellbeing of most people living in a community.
I am offering a training in massage and yoga, starting on the 22nd of January till 23rd of April to help strengthen the field of our health and happiness. 

An excerpt from my book Sacred Passing.  The book is about healing from war and co-creating paradise-earth.  It is part biographical, part a guide-book.  Here is a little story, contained in a bigger story.
*
Freedom of Spine - elbows
背骨の自由-肘

Findhorn, 2018
*
    I was born to live the freedom in my spine.   In my yoga class, I am learning to get deeper into my spine, finding the relationship between my spine, shoulders and hips.  The deepening frees me up bit by bit, in an indirect way.  A gentle, subtle, beautiful breath arises from below my rib-cage, penetrating every cell.  My body hums with lightness.  I am learning to discover the polarity of intensity and ease, at the same time.   I am observing the delight of the vastness and narrowness of the spaces inside.
    Louise demonstrates how the freedom of spine relates to the freedom of hips and shoulders.  P and G, she calls them out, then posts them on either sides of Anna.  Anna, you are the spine.  P and G, you are the hips.  I am the dictator in your head, Louise says firmly.  “P, G, bring Anna to me,” she commanded in a terse, cold voice. As if spellbound, P and G, like two dutiful soldiers grab hold of Anna’s arms.  They start to move her towards Louise.  They are not looking at Anna.  They are just marching straight onward.  Like a prisoner, Anna walks, bounded by the two guards on either sides of her.  They deliver Anna to Louise in a straight, humourless way.  End of Story.
    Now let us change the story, Louise said.  “P, G, you are going to look at Anna.”  They do.  They smile at each other.  A bond is forming between them.  “P, G, bring Anna to me.”  P and G hold  Anna’s right and left arms, but they don’t move.  “Bring her here,” Louise said again.  They start to move, the three of them.  But they are smiling at each other.  Their steps are joyful and light.  P and G cannot walk so straight and rigidly.  They waltz forward, the three of them, and come much slower to Louise.  A bright smile on their faces.  “This is the freedom of spine.” Louise said.  “It is in relationship to the hips.”
    The simple act of looking changed everything.  Lightning struck my heart as I watched this scene.  Had they but looked at me, we would have learned to waltz.  Maybe we would have moved slower, maybe faster.  But they did not even look.  They just grabbed me, delivered me to the dictator, and cut me away.  Onward they moved, joylessly.  They delivered statements to the UN, to their universities.  They missed the point, altogether about peace in the self, peace in the world.
    What if they did look at me?  What if we learned to smile at one another and start to waltz?  Could we move onward on freedom’s way?  All we need is daring to look at each other and see.  Our bodies are signifiers of our liberation.  I was born to be free, to fly like a carefree bird in the open skies of life.  And so do you.
*
Photo by : Alan Watson Featherstone 
Gannets on a clifftop at Troup Head Reserve, Scotland

A dear friend who had been meditating in the early hours of the morning in our old sanctuary came to my place this morning.  Together we kicked off our Early Morning Meditation Practice here in Findhorn at 7 am this morning.  She walked in the dark and rain, and brought a brand new fat white candle with her.  We sat in the silence for an hour together. 

What can happen in an hour of silence?  Why do we bother to keep up the practice?

Usually I have a busy mind.  My monkey mind likes to jump from a branch to another branch of thought and feelings.  In my meditation practice I allow my mind to have its way ... to jump, run, somersault, anything it wants.  Slowly I allow a gap ~ a tiny winy space between my thoughts and feelings, and me.  That tiny winy space makes all the difference.  I can then observe my thoughts, and not be attached to them.  I can experience my feelings, and have some space to observe them.  The tiny winy space in my mind, allows for transformation.  This is a reason why a daily, or a regular practice of meditation is rather significant.  

For me tending to the tiny winy space inside my own mind helps me to turn my fear and prejudices into kindness.

After our one-hour-long sitting in silence, we hugged before she parted. With a sense of heavenly joy, I started my day.

I was introduced to the Early Morning Meditation in Findhorn by Angus Marland, a long term community member.  Angus held the focus for the Main Sanctuary in Findhorn for a very long time.  He told me, 'we are making a Field.'  I didn't know what he was talking about when he first mentioned this to me.  I started going to the early morning meditations, starting at 6.30 am and lasting for one hour in 2014.  At first I could not even sit straight for the whole hour.  But after a week or two of falling asleep, my body learned to stay awake.  At first I sat on a chair to support my back.  When I learned to stay awake, I could then sit on a 'zafu' a meditation cushion, like the one in the photo above, for a whole hour.  Then the magic started to happen.  
At first my mind was so noisy.  My head was a chatter-box of constant talk, talk, talk.  I learned to let my mind have its way, to say everything it wants to say.  Then came a moment of perfect silence, a touch of profound space.  I noticed it and welcomed it to my 'being.'  In the summer time, I went to the early morning meditation in the Main Sanctuary almost every day, five days a week.  It is easier here, in the far north (57 degrees North) to be up early in the summer, than in the winter.  With constant 'turning up' and practice the quality of the silence and my contact with the 'source' kept growing.  The practice of early morning meditation has had a noticeable impact on the quality of my daily life.  Sometimes I would grow tired during the day because of the early morning start.  I also had to sleep earlier than before.  These minor adjustments were definitely worth the exchange.  I felt like I had reached a gold-mine inside me during the long, quiet, and peaceful morning meditations.
When the fires came to swallow our Sanctuary in April 2021, I was a Sanctuary holder, which meant I would arrive 10-15 minutes before the others to light the candle, open the curtains, sit down quietly to hold the space for our hour long meditation.  I also marked the hour by ringing the bell at the start and end of the hour.  The early morning meditation is held in complete silence.  So I didn't need to think about what to say, or not to say to the other community meditators or guests.  Since that Monday morning in April, we didn't have a home for our community practice.  No early morning meditation was held for the community, although the 8.35 am meditations were held both in the Singing Chamber, and in the Universal Hall, sometimes simultaneously.
I am excited to say that we will resume our practice from tomorrow morning.  I have re-organised my massage practice room, to make it available for our golden hour of meditation from 7.00 - 7.50.  We will experiment with the time and place, until it will find a form that will work for us.  
Recently I've been introduced to Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.  I've listened to this talk of his at the London School of Economics in August 2019.  He explains the process of meditation in a humorous and easy-to-relate-to way.  It is 1:44:40 long.  A great help to re-start our early morning practice here in Findhorn.  You can think of anything except for cheese, beens, chips.  Have fun with this great teacher and your own golden hour of space and time for your mind, body, and spirit.

Polar Bear Swim is a tradition started by the Greek immigrant, Peter Pantages to Vancouver, Canada in 1920.  Since then it has grown around the world.  By now thousands of people plunge into the sea, or a body of water near them on New Year's Day.  It is a way of greeting the New Year with bravado and good cheer.
So here in Findhorn we took to the North Sea in mid-day.  We had a balmy New Year at 12 degrees centigrade.  I've never had such a hot 1st of January this far north.  There was no wind, and the tide was high.  An ideal condition for our brave plunge into the ocean!
Alan led the attunement and did the precautionary preparation for the people who were taking to the sea, at this time of the year for the first time.  I led a brief warm up exercise to wake up our joints and spine.  Then we were taking our clothes off (with our swimming costume underneath) and running to the sea.  The sea was welcomingly pleasant today.  It was cold yes, and it felt lovely to meet it.  I had prepared myself mentally before taking to the sea today.  I knew I wanted to meet it softly and allow myself to embrace the sea, and be embraced by it.  I had shared this intention with Alan earlier in the morning before we left our home.  What happened when I was in the sea was a little gift from the ocean.  I saw Ruby nearby me.  I went up to her and said 'Ruby I need a little hug.'  There we embraced in the ocean ~ a warm lasting hug.  
We walked back to the shore, embraced by the sea.  This was my 9th Polar Bear Swim in the North Sea, and Alan's 40th.  What a great way to start the year!