Blog

The teaspoon, the dishwasher and the husband

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I had a beautiful client yesterday who had recently received 'No's' to things that she had asked for. She was feeling blocked and frustrated.

"I guess I just have to accept it" she said when every aspect of her body language was shouting the opposite.

It led us onto a discussion about acceptance and change. When do we accept what is happening and when do we try to change it?

There is the Serenity Prayer of course - "God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to chang…

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Free will, the universe and traffic jams

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We had a conference call yesterday, me and my wonderful 'pod' mates on the Super Coach Academy Course.  It probably didn't help that I joined the call after sitting in the Mallorcan sun for an hour with a large glass of wine but by the end of the call I wasn't sure whether I was completely insane or didn't exist or was absolutely insane and did exist or a combination of all four.

So - this blog is a way to  fathom my way to the few things that (besides a wine glass) I can hold onto as real.

Here w…

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ASH - After Steve Hardison

Yoga woman exercising, ocean and sunset

 

I spent two hours with Steve Hardison and I have absolutely no idea how to describe it. I wrote everything that was in my head as soon as I got to the airport but reading it again I realise that it doesn't even slightly sum up what happened or why I feel so different.

We talked about mind and thoughts and how we can only experience the world through what we think of it. That I can never experience it in any other way than through 'Clare' but that I can expand the perspective that is Clare. He pu…

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BSH (before Steve Hardison)

 

This won't mean much to anyone who hasn't heard of Steve Hardison. Anyone who does know him will know exactly what I am experiencing right now.

He is the ultimate coach. I have travelled for 18 hours Marlborough to Heathrow to LA to Phoenix to meet him today for 2 hours. I meet him in 1 hour 20 mins. The fee  and the travel costs are more that I earn from my yoga classes in a year. How on earth do I make sure I make it worthwhile?

I asked him. He said 'Just BE here.' so I guess that is what I wil…

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Nap

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Do you remember that old advert for the Guardian newspaper? The one where we look out from the perspective of a woman in the street who sees a skin head running towards her. (This was the early 80s when a shaved head was a symbol of a youth who would bring down society. Now it is the sign of a middle aged professional man.)

Then the perspective switches to that of an elderly man. He sees the skinhead run past the woman towards him. The man puts up his briefcase to defend himself as the skinhea…

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Breathe

tasche11

One school day I was getting ready to cycle my kids to school. One of my favourite parts of the day is the ride in. Whatever the weather. The busyness of getting ready for school, the tired grumpiness of my kids, all of that evaporates once we get on the bike. It's a lovely time. We chat. Wave to people we know. Point out changes in the high street or in the fields as we cycle through into the countryside.

That day I was going to do some writing in a cafe (well someone has to) after dropping the …

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Creating reality

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Recently I've been wondering about what in my life is fixed and unchanging. There are the walls of my house. There is the physical reality of gravity keeping my feet on the ground (literally, at least, if not metaphorically). There is the fact that I have a body and a husband and two children.

But beyond the material facts, anything beyond an objective description of protons and neutrons is based on meaning and interpretation and this is subject to my perspective at that moment. My perspective ch…

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What do you believe?

"Beyond our own galaxy lies a vast expanse of galaxies. The deeper we see into space, the more galaxies we discover. There are billions of galaxies, the most distant of which are so far away that the light arriving from them on Earth today set out from the galaxies billions of years ago. So we see them not as they are today, but as they looked long before there was any life on Earth.” www.nasa.gov

Are we experiments in a cosmic Truman Show? A version of the matrix? A creation by an omnipotent God…

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What do we want?

I read an article yesterday about ‘Wantologists’ in America who help people identify exactly what it is they want in their life (link below for anyone wanting to read it). Wantology originated as a process to help businesses make purchasing decisions and is now offered by consultants for individuals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/the-outsourced-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It is easy to scoff at the idea of course and at the ways we are increasingly relying on buying in help fr…

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Stillness or change?

I was teaching yoga to a group of beginners in Amsterdam and about four weeks into the course I introduced a 10 minute meditation session. For all of them, it was the first time they had ever done any meditation. At the end of the lesson we discussed what it had been like. A couple of people said that is was the first time they could remember not having constant mental chatter going on in their minds. This silence only lasted a minute or so of the ten minute session but it was a revelation that …

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