Letting go of the ‘online’ world…

So here I am, sitting in my little hut, hearing the noises of flies, or maybe they are mosquitos and contemplating whether I should put my mosquito net down or wait until a little later… I have arrived at Atsitsa Bay on the island of Skyros. A tiny bay, with a house (that apparently they host weddings at) and a retreat centre comprising of several outdoor areas for activities, around 48 wooden huts in what they call ‘Hut Land’ and a house where guests can also choose to stay.

This is my home for the next 2 weeks. Separate from the world, teaching 2 weeks of retreats with the guests that are here.

Strictly speaking this isn’t just a yoga retreat, guests can come and partake in a range of different activities or courses. They range from making mosaics, to acrobatics and silks to novel writing. With some yoga thrown in.

I have been getting myself together trying to complete my lesson plans in time for the classes that I will teach, I am sharing the Yin & Yang of Yoga, and taking those who sign up to my course through a little bit about Patanjali’s eight limbs of yoga and how this can be integrated to take yoga home with everyone to fit into what ever their schedule might throw at them.

Funnily enough I’ve been spending a lot of time reading, refreshing & contemplating the ‘yin’ part of yoga. Most people maynot realise that our very ‘yang’ asana practice is only one part of what ‘yoga’ comprises. It is in many ways a union of the yin and the yang, of movement in order to be still, of acknowledging the darkness in order to find your way back to the light. And yet the moment I found out that there would be no phone reception and very little internet access whilst here I lost my cool, and kinda freaked out.

To bring in this year I went away with absolutely no reception, for 4 nights, and was absolutely fine, in fact I was very much looking forward to spending a few days without social media, without the internet and without access to the outside world. But this time it has hit me a little harder. I’ve just finished teaching my first ever week long retreat that I ran and organised in Croatia, I’m currently organising 3 more weekend retreats to take place in October and November this year and need to finalise all of my workshops and classes that I’ll be sharing for the final 2 months I’ll be in London and on the Isle of Wight when I return, so I kind feel like this is bad timing. I guess it was also a shock. I didn’t know until I was in transit in Athens that this beautiful, tiny island was known to be without phone reception and internet, and to be honest am still mentally calculating how I will get some access in order to finish my business planning that I so desperately need to catch up on.

So here I am, no access to the internet, no reception, no way to let anyone know I’ve landed safe. I have attempted to get wifi at a local café which is a 20 minute walk away and that too has not provided me with any connection to the outside world. I guess it’s a sign. I think I need to take a deep breath.

It’s interesting actually because before I came here I was reading Rachel Brathen’s newsletter and she spoke about shutting off from the world, that although social media provides a great way to connect it is not the only way in which we should interact with the world. 

What’s also difficult to balance is what I perceive to need vs. letting go. I run a small business, I need to advertise, to keep in touch with my followers and with those who attend my classes and workshops. It’s hard to be out of touch but equally I need to let that go. What will be will be, and hopefully those who do attend my classes will look out for the updates as or when they are able to be shared.

So for now… I am letting go, I am grounding down I am finding my space and am allowing myself to be less distracted, more present in order to better manage my own expectations. 

Why you should read the Twilight Saga (I'm being serious)...

Ok, hear me out. You probably read the title of this blog and thought “here we go, what is she on about now” but seriously, I’ve been thinking a lot about self worth and self love lately and it all came back to me when I started to tell someone my experience with the Twilight Saga.

Firstly, the books came into my life at the end of a bad break up, the kind of break up where there’s 5 years of history, connected families, lots of pain and suffering and love – in fact this was my high school sweet heart and I absolutely believed that he was the only person for me (at that time in my life). But allegedly (I say that with a heavy heart) he wasn’t so faithful to me, and whilst we tried to sort things out, I think reading the Twilight books was my turning point in knowing what I needed and what I was going to do next.

Having done some work in this past year with Shine From Within I have been lucky enough to meet groups of beautiful tween and teen girls who are looking for their thing, who are experiencing those first moments of lighting up when they hear something beautiful or find something that they are passionate about. The flipside of that is that they are still learning how to love themselves, in fact, I believe that all of our lives we continue to learn how to love ourselves and without some history or experience in the matter it can be difficult to truly know how to do this.

Our first reaction is to look outside of ourselves, in particular some of us will find a ‘partner’ a girl or a boy who is our person, someone who helps us to light up and to feel beautiful, and because we are so vulnerable and eager to please and learn we become attached. Sometimes it’s a beautiful thing, two young / middle aged or otherwise people meet and they build the other person up to support them to find their best versions of themselves. In some cases, that happens for a little while and then we forget why we began that relationship and lose ourselves in the attention of others, or even lose ourselves in the other person which makes it awfully hard to walk away when something truly isn’t working.

Take my relationship for example, I was in love (or was I?), I didn’t know anyone else but him as my partner and the final straw was not the only time I had put up with rumours of being unfaithful or tears cried when he wouldn’t talk to me for absolutely no reason. Our relationship was serious, and it was the first ‘proper’ relationship that I’d ever had so I didn’t know where to draw the line. He treated me well for the most part, I can’t complain about that, but I didn’t really know what it meant to be treated like I was the most precious piece of cargo in this whole wide world, at least not from him.

This is where Twilight comes into play.

We broke up, my friend took me to the movie (the first one was already out by the time I started reading the books) and I was in hermit mode where all I wanted to do was to be tucked up on the lounge chair reading until 1am to tire my mind so that I could sleep.

I fell madly in love with both Edward and Jacob, I couldn’t decide between the two because the main thing that they both had in common was that they loved Bella so much that they would do absolutely anything in this world to protect her, to make her feel loved and to ensure that she was treated with the respect that she deserved.

In the books I’m sure you could get a million different messages but this one hit home for me. It was the first time that I stepped back and thought, I deserve this. I deserve to be treated like a princess, like I’m the only woman in the world to my person. I deserve to be loved, wholly, not only by myself but by any significant other that I choose based on their ability to love me in the way that I need.

At that moment, when this message clicked with me, I knew that my ex and I were over, for good. There was no turning back, no trying to make it work, in fact I couldn’t even look at him the same because I realised he couldn’t treat me the way I needed him to. And if I weren’t willing to ask him to love me like I deserved then how could I possibly love myself?

That didn’t mean to say other men didn’t come into my life at times that I knew would not be able to give me what I needed, but they served a different purpose, someone to have fun with, someone who I could enjoy their company but knowing that they were not ‘my’ person.

I made a pact that I would wait until my Edward or Jacob came to me. That I would treat myself with enough respect to know when it was time to walk away from one of my flings or to not even go there when I knew the person couldn’t or wouldn’t give me what I deserved. It was hard, but I was lucky enough to be at a point in my life where I didn’t really care or need a significant other to make me happy, I was enjoying being my own boss, the creator of my own destiny and enjoying my independence. This is a hard thing to do, particularly when we feel young, or vulnerable (we don’t have to be young to feel this way), it takes a lot of courage to KNOW and stick with what you want and I feel like that may mean for some of us that we need to accept that it’s going to take a little while to find the significant other that lights us up, sometimes it’s months, sometimes its decades.

I waited two years, and then…

I found him, my person, the love that no matter how tough things got still always found the time to make me feel like I was the most important and special person in this whole world to him. The man who wasn’t afraid to tell me so, every single day. The person who connects with me to a level that I never thought was possible who lifts me up and brings me back into reality seamlessly. The man who isn’t afraid to love me like I deserve. My Edward or Jacob (I still can’t choose). 

So the moral of my story, and what I hope you find through reading the Twilight Saga is that Edward and Jacob are not just passionatee or protective about Bella because they’re a special breed of vampire or werewolf, they’re the type of men who know how to love a women like she deserves. And Bella, in turn knows how to love them, with her whole being, through this she also discovers just how amazing she can be and transitions from a girl who isn’t sure where she truly fits in to knowing exactly who she was meant to be in her life and how she was going to get it – because she learns how to be loved and how to truly love herself in turn.