The birth of Luka Astill

A few days before the birth

At this time one year ago, in the full throws of labor, I was being bundled up by my midwife and my partner and loaded into the back of the Tarago. After about six hours of 'inconsistent' labour ( some big contractions, some small), some time in the inflatable birth pool set up in our tiny living room and lots of heavy breathing, I was still close enough to giving birth for my midwife to recommend we make the move to hospital. In truth, Jan and I would both have liked to have stayed exactly where we were to labour but having had a c-section with my first baby I was categorised as 'high risk' and a hospital birth was recommended.

Contracting in the back of the car didn't really appeal to me so not surprisingly I arrived at the hospital appearing to not be in labour at all. We were ushered into a large and comfortable birthing suite. It felt cold and unwelcoming to me though as the sun rose, especially after leaving the warm and softly lit cocoon of my living room. I insisted the blinds be drawn to try and hold onto that cocooned feeling. Jan sent Julian and I into the bathroom for some passionate kissing to try and kick start labour. It worked perfectly. A little while later my waters were broken to overcome my inconsistent contractions (caused because the baby's head was slightly turned and as such not putting enough pressure on the cervix) and then it was all happening. I was on the verge of birthing my own baby with the power of our combined bodies.

There are so many aspects to this story that were so acute and troubling to me at the time. A year later with my beautiful son keeping me up nights and filling every minute of my day I struggle to recollect them.

I was determined to have a natural, drug-free, vaginal birth with my second baby. Finn's birth was a dramatic true emergency c-section. The cord prolapsed when they broke my waters to induce labour and I was ushered onto my knees to keep the pressure of the cord, and the oxygen flowing to my baby, as the siren rang throughout the hospital and the voice on the loudspeaker declared 'code green'. A minute later around twenty medical staff swarmed around me as I was wheeled on a gurney to the operating suites, still on my knees, naked from the waist down with a doctor trying to push the baby back in! Finn was born 7 minutes after my waters broke. I was under general anesthetic. I awoke two hours later asking if my baby had made it.

I really wanted things to be different this time. Jan Ireland was the lynch pin around which my hopes of a natural birth hung. As I entered transition within moments of my waters being broken Jan was the single point of light in the fog that I had entered. There were hospital midwives, my beloved, my mother all there but not one of them did I hear. Jan's voice and her clear and precise instructions guided me through the fog from which I thought I would never emerge.

You see, when you tell a maternity hospital that you are planning a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesaeran) they politely smile and say that they'll let you 'trial' labour. What they mean is that they will place such ridiculous restrictions on you that the chance is you'll fail to meet them (no more than 20 minutes of pushing for example), and then they'll intervene.

Jan, knowing all this, understood that we were not there to dilly dally. We had a baby to birth and we needed to do it as efficiently as possible. As intense contractions hit one on top of the other, Jan was expressing milk from me to increase their intensity! She knew what was required and more importantly what I was capable of.

I spent my transition time in the shower with two jets of hot water on my back. Everyone supporting me was soaked but I was oblivious. I used the powerful toning technique my yoga teacher Jesse Neave had shown me and I 'OM'ed' my way through the contractions. I was very, very loud and I did not notice nor care. The waves of sound carried me through and brought me to the point at which the baby was ready to be born. Jan and my beloved maneuvered me to the bed and ultimately onto my back (a position I never thought I would give birth in).

My confidence dissolved as I started to push. I was certain I wouldn't make it if I pushed this baby out. I cried out, 'I can't do this'. Suddenly I heard my beloved at my side. He hadn't spoken in over an hour after I had yelled at him for shooshing me mid-contraction (of course he had only been trying to sooth me rather than shut me up but in my particular condition I hadn't been very pleased). He gently said, 'You are doing it'. His words picked me up out of my despair and I yelled out, 'I am doing it!'

Twenty minutes later our baby was born, perfect of course. He was placed straight onto me. I was awake ( a pretty big deal after last time) and he was awake and alert, both of us free of drugs. Jan quietly collected her things and slipped out of the room as my mother took over my care and my beloved gazed at his new baby son.

We were, by some little miracle, moved into the family birth centre for our first night together, double bed, warm and cozy private room, the place I had wanted to be able to have my baby but had been excluded from because of my 'high risk'.

I spent just one night in hospital, so very keen to have my family altogether, so very proud of my body and my baby for being born in the 'natural way'. For years I had carried the scar and the fear that I was unable to labour, somehow faulty in design. It was truly liberating to know I could climb that mountain, that I could give my baby the best possible beginning.

We named him Luka Astill Adams Simmons. Luka because I heard it as though someone had spoken it out loud when they placed him upon me. Astill for my beloved's grandmother. Adams for me. Simmons for his dad.

First touch

Weighing and measuring several hours after birth

Day two - tired daddy and baby

Returning home

My boys

Tired, happy mama

Miracle baby

You may or may not know this, but conceiving Luka felt like a long and arduous journey. In reality it took less than a year but there were lots of hurdles, mostly emanating from my body, and several diagnoses from doctors who said that getting pregnant without IVF just would not happen. My fertility, or supposed lack there of it, was connected to a much bigger picture of my life that included not knowing how to manage stress. I turned to food and alcohol rather than healthful means at a particularly crazy time in my life. I put on lots of weight and stopped ovulating. I could literally feel the stress attacking my ovaries.

Anyway, I really, really wanted to avoid IVF and so determined to turn my life around. I lost weight, practiced heaps of yoga and changed my diet. There was medical help as well. I had a laparoscopy to confirm and remove endometriosis, and that made a big contribution to the return of normal ovulation.

There was also a lot of time spent in meditation and visualisation. Of course, when all these techniques are combined there is no way to claim that one method or the other was what worked. But everything that I tried contributed to a greater sense of well being within me and that was essential on this path.

It was a journey in every sense of the word, but the outcome, well he is a true wonder. So when I found out that an organisation was seeking good news stories of natural fertility, I was thrilled to be able to volunteer.

Luka and I are featured in this mini-doco, filmed just before Christmas. Cute baby!

A room of one's own

The year continues to progress slowly and steadily in our home, as my beloved gently reclaims his health, but outside the the world is buzzing by. Finn starts back at school in a few days, the same day I begin a new job.

This is also the same day Luka starts regular care in the arms of a wonderful French woman named Priscille. The same week that I decide I will try expressing breast milk for my baby, something I never did for Finn. The same week that we brought a cot into our bedroom and have very sincere plans of encouraging Luka to use it. All little steps away from attachment parenting, a model I so strongly wanted to commit to without hesitation.

But the thing about life is that it doesn't always, if ever, meet your expectations. I didn't expect that my beloved would develop a chronic illness and take months to recover. I didn't expect that this would bring up all sorts of delightful fears for me that I am, slowly and gently, now allowing myself to deal with. But that is for another post.

Today, I want to show you my newly discovered island. It is such a little thing, my new desk, so generously given to me by a dear friend. It colonises the corner of my son's room but as we have but a wee apartment at this point in time, it is the most space I can find. I plan to share it with him, but it is really mine. Such a little thing, but in the sea of my life right now, it feels like a genuine place to retreat to, an island of calm with the radio tuned to ABC Classic FM and my laptop always at the ready. It isn't a whole room, as Virginia would have liked, but it is a corner and feels every bit as precious. It has shored up my mental, emotional and creative health like nothing else has in months.

And I just wanted to share it with you.

Are you viable enough?

I send my son to a school in Melbourne's inner north, a tiny little collection of terrace houses with only 60 children from prep to year 6. The school has three aims for the students. The first is happiness. The last is academic excellence. And in the middle is the rather strange notion of 'viability'. I have often wondered what exactly is meant by this although I know I am seeing it in action when I see the confident, friendly, busy, creative kids so at home in their school.

I would describe the students as robust. Just recently the principal commissioned a mini doco to convey what is meant by viability. Although specific to this school I love the idea of what they are trying to impart and certainly think we could all do with a bit more viability.

Check it out...


Viability

Today, motherhood is kicking my arse

Oh, there are a million thoughts colonising my brain today! I want to write lyrical and deeply insightful prose about the end of the year and the trouble with resolutions. I want to make grand, beautiful, world encompassing plans. I want to offer insight into this most recent Cancer full moon and the watery depths it conjured. But I cannot. I am spent.

Today, motherhood is kicking my arse.

So instead I am seeking counsel from myself, from things I have collected in the past to sooth my weary soul. 

There are two.

One is this most insightful article published in the New Yorker in 2010 entitled All Joy and No Fun - Why Parents Hate Parenting. It is so good and so helpful. If you are feeling bone weary and sort of MIA from yourself because of the awesome task of being a parent then I recommend this.

The other is this. A poem by Mary Oliver that so powerfully brings me back to myself. I've included it as a video as well in case, like me, you are too tired to read it for yourself!

When Death Comes

When death comes
 like the hungry bear in autumn;
 when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
 when death comes
 like the measle-pox:

 when death comes
 like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering
 what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 And therefore I look upon everything
 as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
 and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
 and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 and I think of each life as a flower, as common
 as a field daisy, and as singular,

 and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
 tending, as all music does, toward silence,

 and each body a lion of courage, and something
 precious to the earth.

 When it's over, I want to say: all my life
 I was a bride married to amazement.
 I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 When it's over, I don't want to wonder
 if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
 I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
 or full of argument.

 I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

-- Mary Oliver

Trusting Finn - a post in pictures

A few weeks ago I took my family to the beach for the weekend. Finn wanted to watch the sun rise over the water. Finn has just turned six. I explained that we were in the wrong part of Australia to do that, but from our geographical spot we could probably see the sunset.

I was tired. I didn't want to drag my sorry self out of the house and down to the beach. But Finn knew that we must. We also had half a bucket of pipi's left over from dinner. The boys had caught them that day down at Venus Bay and we hadn't used them all in our dinner. They were stretching and swimming in their little plastic home and my heart was breaking for them. It was their time to feed.

Resolutely I shook the tiredness from my eyes, took the boy by the hand and we headed to the water, just me and my little man and our bucket of pipi's. In that moment I loved them as much as my own new baby.

We made it to the beach in time to see the sun sliding behind the sand dunes. The tide was high and Finn joyously threw the pipi's into the water. Immediately they began to burrow deep into the sand. I was in tears. Finn danced on the sand and exclaimed again and again, 'This is so beautiful mum!'.

We waited until the pipi's were deep into the sand and we slowly walked back to our car. Not since the birth of Luka had we done anything, just the two of us. It felt so good to be honouring the close of the day, the cleansing ocean, and my son's profound and deeply self-assured instincts to be there in the first place.

It took a little more effort but the reward was great. I could see the love pouring out of my first born for he had been heard and recognised for the great wise being that he is.

Smiling at the washing line or where does joy come from - part 2?

Just lately, I have found myself smiling at the washing on the line. Whilst doing the dishes. Seriously. My heart  suddenly becomes so full of joy that I am smiling at the laundry.

Yesterday, as my son scooted along in front of me, and I pushed the baby in the pram, we made our way home from the corner store. Watching my little boy confidently navigate his scooter one handed, holding his icy pole in the other hand, I thought my heart might burst with the sheer delight of it.

What is this thing called joy? And where does it come from? If you've read this blog before you'll know this question is often with me.

At the moment, joy seems to happen to me in times of peace. But then you could just as well say, where does that peace come from?

For me, right now, peace comes to me from moving slowly. From stopping and staring in wonder every single time the baby smiles, taking an extra long time to hang out the washing just to be in the sunshine for as long as possible, from watching the dusk light illuminate the change table. Oh, and coffee. Definitely coffee.

The Little Children - Part Two

This is the second part of the post by guest blogger, Angelique Adams. I am lucky enough to have Angelique as my mother and nonni to my two boys. Angelique's compassion, patience and dedication to her three grandchildren is without comparison. She is profoundly connected to them intuitively and is truly able to feel what they feel...all the frustration children feel as they live mostly powerless and misunderstood.I strive to be as good a mother as my own...

Protect your little ones from pain and suffering and demonstrate that who they are from their birth is a wonderful and joyous being encased in the light of creation. Respect and honour their way forward.  Discover the things that will support their beauty and their joy and immerse yourselves into a passionate life.

Even while you gently guide and teach them, they will also teach you, share with you their wondrous knowingness of things divine and joyous. You job is to keep your mind and heart open to the possibilities they have to offer you. There never was a more gracious gift. The little ones remember from whence they came and for the most part, you have forgotten. They cannot take you there but they can show you, demonstrate to you what this place feels like. Look into their eyes, listen to their sounds and feel their love. Watch them at play and marvel as they have great adventures. But also observe their trust in you as they give themselves totally into your care. Learn the power of your own unconditional love. There is no greater gift. Honour their trust above all else. You will never have a more rewarding or important task.

Love them, unconditionally, love them! They may or may not meet your expectations but love them for who and what they are. They will grow to achieve many things and they will learn from all of their experiences but the most valuable gift you may give to a little child is to love it for what it is.  This is the most powerful underpinning for the rest of its life. From this place of knowing love a little one may build a healthy life with healthy and joyful relationships. And, of course, go on to perpetuate the cycle!

The Little Children - Part One

Today's post is from guest blogger, Angelique Adams. Angelique is a master channel and life long devotee of the Christ Consciousness...This is the first part of a channeling regarding the sacredness of children in our lives.

The Little Children

Blessed are the little children! They are filled to overflowing with innocence and expectation. They are the beauty of which we refer when we say to you dear one that the children will show the way forward. They will show the way forward because they expect to be love and to be loved, because their innocence says to the people of the world I AM THAT I AM. Let them demonstrate to you the excitement of being alive, the absolute joy of being. Let them show you trust in the Mother / Father principle and learn to respect and honour their divine perfection above all else. Nurture their divinity and learn to re-awaken this in yourself. Their expression of this truth is your gift when these little ones come onto the planet. Nothing comes between them and their acceptance of their divine perfection and they willing share this beauty with you. This is a gracious gift.

Observe the child; emulate the child in its natural and joyous behaviors. Honour the little one for its purity of heart, for its connectedness to the Divine. Let their unconditional love flow freely and remember. Remember how to love unconditionally and with great respect for all life. The little one learns how to be other than pure love by its experiences and eventually it forgets the truth of self and begins to emulate the life it observes.  And so we begin to loose the beauty and the innocence and the wisdom of pure love yet again.

The fourth Trimester

"Dr. Harvey Karp urges parents to adopt the role of “a walking uterus” for the first three months after baby is born"

I came across a term this week, courtesy of my yoga teacher, the divine Jesse Neave - the fourth trimester. I had my baby strapped to me as Jesse and I chatted and explained that my chest was Luka's favourite place to be. She said casually, 'Of course, it's the fourth trimester'. I nodded, knowingly, but in reality I hadn't heard of it before.

It peaked my imagination, however, and I am so thrilled to discover, as many new mothers must, that my natural instincts towards my tiny baby are exactly what the fourth trimester is all about. You can read more about it here but the basic theory is keep your baby close to you. Dr Karp first theorised this concept:

'Dr Karp was among the first specialists to put forward the theory that the more we mimic the womb environment the happier our newborns will be. He affectionately calls it "womb service". In more primitive cultures the needs of a newborn are considered differently and mothers spend more time carrying and nursing their babies.

"It's no coincidence that in culture's like Bali, where colic is virtually non-existent, parents gives babies much more of a fourth trimester experience than we do," he says.

"Unfortunately, many parents in our culture have been convinced that it's wrong to cuddle their babies so much. They have been misled into believing that their main job is to teach and educate their newborn".'

It has been a total joy to surrender to this way of being with my little one. I spend hours with him sleeping upon me, even though the outside world is clamouring. I know all too soon that he will begin the life long journey of separating from me, as it is only right that a child should do. I will try to nurture his sense of freedom and curiosity as much as I nurture his need to be one with my body at this time. 

I know too, that his great soul is learning to be in human form (again) and that by body is his safe harbour as he adjusts to the frequency of this world he newly finds himself in. I try to spend time every day checking in with his energy body, and my own, especially if we have been out in the world, to ensure we are feeling balanced. Breast feeding is a wonderful to do this for both of us. I have always thought of breastfeeding as entraining to the Divine for babies, for tapping into the energy they have only just left full consciousness of. I reminds me to nurture this place in me also.

This is such a gift to me right now

An incredible affirmation of life...
Theo's Birth video from hailey bartholomew on Vimeo.

A firey update

The outpouring of love since my last post, and general boost in my overall health, has been enough to kick my sorry self into a joyful state. So thank you! All is very, very well. In but a few days (July 4 at the very latest) I get to have a baby. What a blessed woman I am.

I've heard lots of mothers say that these last few days of pregnancy are as much a mental effort as anything else. I have really needed some fire in my belly and have felt the energy of the Celtic goddess Brigid close to me. You can read more about her here.

Now, as the energy shifts within me (and also Universally - can you feel it?), I feel ready, relaxed, willing. I look forward to meeting this new little life, who as it turns out will be a water sign just like her mama.

Blessings on your day and to all the joyous gifts waiting to meet you as this energy of joyous abundance surrounds the planet.

Admitting this is really scary...

A snotty cold has been making itself at home in my body now for about a week. Not exactly the ideal birth lead-up that I had been hoping for. I am now 39 weeks pregnant and very teary.

Combined with the utter exhaustion of late pregnancy I have been feeling downright shirty and irritated most of the time. I am finding the energy of my nearly six year old confronting and overwhelming. My beloved is super busy trying to finish everything up at work so he can take a magnificent 6 weeks off after the birth of our baby. But all of it leaves me feeling unprepared somehow for this new arrival. It is not how I imagined I would be feeling or thinking at this amazing point in our lives.

So instead of soildering on, I am sharing. I don't want to. I don't want you or me or anyone to know the truth. Yet, I am opening up to my feelings of vulnerability, my fear that I won't ever go into labour because mind, body and soul won't synch. I am admitting my utter exhaustion.

And even as I do, support comes flooding in from the Universe. Just this very minute my mum calls to say she will fly down at a moments notice, my beloved calls to offer to come home from work to take me to my hospital appointment, I hear a song on the radio that I haven't heard for years that always makes me joyful (I've included it below), a friend shares a powerful image of a pregnant woman that makes me feel strong and brave (above), and text messages start popping up in my inbox from dear friend's letting me know that they are thinking of me.

I begin to feel ready. I begin to feel body, mind, soul uniting. I accept the nurturing and promise to offer it to myself as well as allowing it to flood in from the world around me. And now we have just returned from the doctor and he says that he would be surprised if the baby doesn't come this week. And as a final affirmation of all the beauty and support and wonder around me, a feather flies in through the car window on the way home and flutters around us - even the angels want me to know they are nearby.

Thank you for letting me share (I say this to myself as much as to you). Now I feel like I have come home.

Technicolour Dream Pants or where does joy come from?

Late pregnancy, I am discovering, has me spending lots of time thinking about lots of things.Thinking too much is never a good thing in my experience and yet the mind charges on unrelenting in it's list making and fact finding and guilt inducing task.

This image for example, which I love, has been staring back at me from this post, in draft form, for days now. I really want to share it with you. I don't know why. It just makes me feel... The mind has been looking for a clever way to package it, to attach it to a theme, to make it universal somehow. I've been overthinking it.

During my last pregnancy, what seems like a lifetime ago, and in many ways was, I was in a constant state of what I can only imagine was hormone induced bliss. My external circumstances were certainly far from ideal and sometimes downright scary. Yet I was freakishly relaxed, calm and joyful. This time round could not be more different. I have my beautiful man, our home, domestic bliss, a gorgeous boy so excited to become a big brother. And my moments of joy are few and far between.

What the hell is going on? What is this thing called joy and where does it come from? More importantly, where does it go? 

I have this theory that happiness and joy are different things. Happiness is attached to external circumstances. You feel happiness because of thins thing, or that person etc etc. Joy, on the other hand, is an internal experience.It wells up from within you, often unexpectedly and is not reliant on any external stimuli to engender it. As a result it is often fleeting. It is perhaps the secret to why we are alive - to know joy at all times regardless of the circumstances.

In my last pregnancy I moved much more slowly in the world, I meditated more often, I worked less and I certainly didn't think as much. I was much more present to my interior life than the outside world. The circumstances were rotten but the feeling of joy was abundant.

Suffice to say, this time round I am busy busy busy. I am out in the world in one way or another most of the time. The world I inhabit is wonderful and I am surrounded by love. But the world of my soul, my inside life doesn't get much of a look in.

Aha, I think. Or better yet, aha, I feel.

So here is an image that I want to share with you for no particular earth shattering reason. Other than it makes me feel joy from right down deep in my very big belly. 

Lessons on the path to peaceful parenting

Lesson #3

CRANK UP THE JOY!

Lesson to the Self #2

Abandon everything, joyfully, to chase after ice cream trucks

Lessons on the path to peaceful parenting

Lesson to self #1

Adventure is often messy. The amount of mess created is an excellent measure of the intensity of joy experienced. 

Ways to play (when you're not a natural player)

It was with some amusement that I opened The Sunday Life mag yesterday to find a column by Mia Freedman about the dread she feels when her kids ask her to play with them. Only the night before I had been espousing the soul benefits of being more playful and playing more with my son.  But her article rang true for me.

There will always be a thousand other things I want to do other than play like a four year old. And I am also not naturally gifted at playing. Which is precisely why I took myself off to learn to play last week with Sherry and Donna, and to arm myself with an arsenal of play 'tools' to keep it interesting for both me and my son.

Most adults don't want to play like little kids. But I do want to participate fully in my son's life  And he wants to play. So this weekend we tried more creative acts of play. 

We tinkered on Sunday, taking apart old remotes and torches that don't work and cords that have been homeless for years. I left it out on the table all day and he returned to it endlessly, both with me and without me. Starting something off with him and leaving it set up is often enough to encourage independent play (just as important as me playing with him) and gave me time to read the paper.

Then we played hide and seek, which was hilariously funny. Especially as he is not entirely certain of the game, and with unsupressed exuberance he would launch himself from his hiding spot squealing and giggling, 'Suprise!' even before I had started looking. I haven't laughed so much in a very long time.

To play: Parenting in the light Part 4

Wool maze

So then, how to show my son all the grand philosophy I want him to know?


Lots of earnest, inspired ideas came to mind as I thought about how to bring the sacred into our day to day lives; how to support us both to be peaceful beings. But the first thing I asked myself is, 'what does he want to do most of all in his day?'


The answer is terribly simple. He just wants to PLAY. 


And when I thought some more I realised I am the one to have forgotten how to do this. It seems as if this very verb, to play, might be the thing lacking in me (and so many other adults), and of which if I had more life would be much sweeter. I might forgive easily, judge less, like more, laugh often, and even cry when I needed to for as long as I liked. 


So like the researcher that I am I attended a workshop entitled Engaging Boys. I was the only non-educator in a room of kindergarten teachers, but it made little difference. I got what I wanted. I learnt how to really play with a boy who is learning about who is in the very act of playing.

I want my son to know he is a joyous, joy-filled being in a world full of potential joy. I want him to be playful with life. I want him to be light of heart and spontaneous and flexible and quick to smile. It is I that needs to bring that. He already is it. But every time I fail to be playful with my life, and especially with him, I take a little bit of joy out of our lives. 

Today, my son and I took a ball of shiny blue wool into the garden. And he ran from tree to fence to agapantha to post until he had made his very own web. He hissed like a snake the entire time. Then he invited me in, and we wove our way through it, and tangled ourselves in it and wound our way in and out. We made ourselves human catapults and we watched the light dance off this mighty maze that he had created. And I loved every moment of it. I played for the sheer delight of it. And now I really wanna make my own.

Things I want my son to know

In thinking about my relationship to parenting I found myself seeking to articulate the essence of what I wanted to achieve as a mother for my child.


Having recognised my inconsistencies in bringing my spirituality to bear on my role as a parent, I also realised that the soul part of me was and is yearning to communicate some soul truths to my child. Ultimately my frustration with myself about not being in the light as a parent is not about me but about what he may miss out on if I don't get my act together.


These are the things I want him to know and experience everyday:


That he is dearly loved


That he is a precious and connected part of all that is, and to think of the trees as his brothers is a perfect way to get to know his own true nature


That the Universe is benevolent - there is neither good nor bad but different concentrations of light (sometimes so little light that it might look like the dark) in the world, and 


That he can actively choose to hold more or less light around him just by focusing his intention and actions. The Universe doesn't judge it merely serves.


That life on this planet is sacred and finite and thus should be enJOYed. Being in tune with the natural rhythm of the day, honouring the sunrise and the sunset, making a peaceful time to eat and to sleep, witnessing the cycles of the moon, the changing of the seasons, are just some of the wonderful ways to embrace this reverence for life.


That everything is energy and the imagination is the key to experiencing this, for what can be seen in the mind's eye is as powerful as what is witnessed with the eyes.


And finally, that nothing is ever out of place. It is unfolding just as it is meant to. Know this and you can deeply relax into the warm embrace of the ever loving Universe.




In the next part of this series I will post some of the ways in which I can bring this knowledge into daily, ritualised, playful experience. Stay tuned...