Light your own way (you deserve more than waiting)

It’s May in the city. I’ve come down the mountain because I got fed up with the fog and not being able to see anything. As I write, not only is it mid-week but we’ve just passed Beltaine which is the midpoint between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice and a glorious Celtic festival celebrated on the 1st May. Similar to what many of us know as Halloween, Beltaine is thought to be a time when the veil between earthside and other is thin, a liminal space. However, rather than focusing on the spirits of the dead, Beltaine celebrates the fae (fairies) and other nature spirits, who are believed to be particularly active during this time. It’s tradition to leave offerings of food, flowers, or milk for these spirits to ensure their favour and protection. GIven I’ve always believed in magic, miracles and possibilities, it feels like my kind of festival.

This and a full moon with us this coming Monday 12 May, it’s a potent time! This month’s Flower Moon, which is also a super moon, is thought to bring stability, wellness and job satisfaction as well as abundant changes to life. If 2025 already feels like it’s passing you by, ancient festivals, rituals and moon moments are the perfect excuse to slow down and reflect. We can use this time to take action, to light our own path, to ignite our own inner flame.

I spent too many years waiting to be chosen, waiting for the right job, the best moment, waiting for some unguaranteed time in the future to do all the things and to enjoy the light, to know with surety my path. And that ‘waiting’ comes with a weird kind of energy that also says ‘not now’ to all the things we’re hoping for and dreaming of.

The ancient yogic text, the Bhagavad Gita teaches is to take action for action sake, to not seek the results or rewards from our doing but to find bliss within action itself. It’s advice I come back to over and over again when I’m in a funk or I’m waiting or I’m in between. Take action and just keep going and watch the magic of your life unravel before you.

These four practices ALWAYS make me feel like today is my day. So if you’re looking for some of that get moving, dancing and breathing and I promise you today is indeed your day.

Practices for igniting your inner flame

I often find May a little bit like an end of winter hangover (think summer hangover if you’re on the other side of the world). This is the month where it’s impossible to even know what to wear when you get up in the morning. You’ve put your snuggly winter coat and boats away but you’re bikini’s still sitting on the shelf waiting to be chosen. It’s easy to feel dull and heavy in this month of in between seasons even when you have good weather. Here’s some of my favourite practices to ignite your inner flame and keep the vibes high.

Wake up and dance to your favourite song - I even made you a play list so you don’t get lost on Spotify choosing your music  just press play and dance! No special sequences, just you and the music moving in whatever way you choose. Involve kids, partners and fur babies for even more silliness and high vibes.

Try some Kundalini breath work to get you going. I love spinal twists on repeat, breathing in through the nose left side, exhaling right side to create space and balance. Here’s an energizing 15 minute class with three of my favourite practices. Be mindful if you’re feeling overheated physically or mentally to practice more slowly than in the video so that you keep cool (whilst igniting obvs!)

Get outside as soon as you can even if that just means watering your plants on your balcony, or taking a lap around your neighbourhood. Being outside and knowing what Mother Nature is up to before we start work, school or appointments, puts us in a state of awe and wonder before the day even starts. Make this a regular practice and you’ll find yourself feeling like you’re pouring from a full cup all day long.

If you want some yoga to light you up and get that inner flame going try holding each of the Warrior poses (virabrahdrasana I, II and III) for 5 -10 breaths, then practice a few high and low boat poses (navasana), take a seated twist and then relax in a blissful savasana. That’s a 5 minute practice right there so put it on repeat whenever you need a boost.

I often imagine it's the last day of my life...

A winter in the high mountains has shown me the tenuousness of life. But once we finally realize we don't live forever, well....that's our moment of liberation to really start living!

My neighbour, the incredible Swiss artist Helen Güdel is 89, soon to be 90. On Thursdays I walk down 100 stairs from my eagle's nest here in the high mountains of Switzerland and I take German lessons with her. She's not an official German language professor but Helen is an amazing teacher - exactly the right amount of discipline and praise. My two hour lessons generally involve second hand chain smoking, one hour of learning German and one hour of listening to wild stories from Helen's youth, her travels, her life as an artist and a lifetime that existed long before I was born. Did I mention she's almost completely blind?

I realize that while I feel more alive living in this stunning high place, so close to so many of Switzerland's 4,000 metre peaks, life also feels less permanent. Just a week ago we received the biggest snow dump in 40 years and spent two days with no electricity or internet (yes it was bliss). And today half the mountain slid onto the road down in the valley, a result of said snow melting. This combination of Mother Nature's wrath and Helen, still so full of energy and wit and yet also having lived so long - most days I can't help but think about life being tenuous.

So I often imagine a future when it’s the last day of my life….

I always visualize myself in a vast meadow of wild flowers, face turned to a bright blue sky, sun warm on my skin, all my favourite people and best dogs around me.

In this moment I’m not thinking of all the hours I didn’t work, or the emails I never checked, or the people I chose not to waste my time on. Nothing I didn't do matters.

I imagine it's my last few moments and I’m feeling so grateful for a life well lived, a life of freedom, of deep love and soul connections with incredible humans, a life spent dancing with wild abandon every morning and singing loudly and off key, decades spent walking the planet in awe of Mother Nature, so many women’s lives changed, me a loud voice always for those who the world tried to silence.

And in these moments I think, if that’s what I have done, if that's who I have been at the end of this one wild and precious life, it will be enough.

Helen reminds me that not only do I get to choose the life I live, but that I have a responsibility to other women to help them choose for themselves as well. As a woman of 89 , she has lived through an era where she had no right to earn money for herself, where she couldn't own assets or make choices without her husband's permission. And yet she defied society entirely - including choosing love over everything and creating an entirely new life for herself her in our little mountain village (that's an entire story in its own right!)

Despite the world's horrors I very much hope to live a very long time - but the bottom line is, all I get to do, all any of us get to do, is be alive right now. So I'm making this moment, and every one after it, exactly the moments I choose them to be. Because I can think of nothing worse than arriving in that meadow, sun on my face and a life time of regrets in my heart.

To find out more about Helen and enjoy her stunning art visit the Hosennen Museum in Törbel, Canton Wallis, Switzerland, where you’ll find her gallery and more information on her love story with mountain man Bruno.

Living in abundance in a world of loss

I often write about the brutality and bliss of life and how if we can only realize that there is no end game, no moment where we arrive and everything is perfect all of the time, that we can let go of the constant pursuit of happiness and enjoy each moment of bliss as it arrives.

It’s hard work and rather energy draining in my experience, to be in never ending seeking mode. Not to mention that when we are so busy working for something better, we miss out on the goodness of right now.

And so this month as some brutal memories and moments cross my path I surrender. I don’t fight them because I know they are not to be fought. They are not mountains to be conquered or experiences to be overcome. Side note - have you ever noticed the masculinized language of dealing with hardship? Instead, I welcome in the brutality of my human experience, the messiness and imperfection of being alive. I am grateful that I have enough years behind me to know that the waves of brutality that sometimes wash over us, are a precursor for more bliss being on the way - even if right now feels hard.

Not only is this month a remembering of almost losing my own life 11 years ago in the jungle of Laos (more on that right here), it’s the month when our beloved friend Hanna Lahoud was shot and killed in Yemen. Just weeks before his life was taken, I had hugged him hard in the Red Cross hallways and told him, ‘be safe, happy Easter and I’ll see you soon’. 

Two weeks ago my darling niece Denvah Star was born into this world sleeping - we both welcomed her and told her goodbye in the same breath. A perfect angel and a loss so great for my step-sister that I don’t know how she survives, except I do know because she is one of life’s living goddesses. 

Just last week a friend’s husband left her earth side - he was the same age as me. As his brain bled, he slipped into a coma, then into death with his family and his favourite music surrounding him. ‘He passed peacefully,’ they said and I could not help but wonder what that felt like - did he know or feel his own passing from one world to the next?

Every day we are experiencing so much loss. Thousands of innocent children to war, thousands of women to domestic violence, thousands of trees to corporate greed, the great loss of biodiversity due to the destruction of our planet.

How do we live in a state of joy, connection and abundance at a time of such profound loss? 

The answer is so simple and yet it’s like we have constant memory lapse. They are the two sides of the same coin. Without loss there is no replenishment. Without separation there is no craving for connection. Without inertia there is no need for action. Without sadness, there is no requirement for joy. Without brutality there can be no experience of bliss.

The wisdom of Mother Nature, of Ayurveda, of yoga, knows that we live in cycles, around us and within us. But we too often try to operate our lives in straight lines, a timeline of achievements and accomplishments. We are born at the beginning and in the end we die. When instead we can choose to experience this one wild and precious life in a state of circular motion, vinyasa, flow - failing, falling, living, loving and growing. Rather than spending all our energy resisting our discomfort, we instead make friends with it, suddenly discovering that it’s all part of who we are. Our losses are the flip side to our unlimited supply of love, our incredible capacity to feel so deeply, the profound connection we have with ourselves, each other and the planet. We rarely realise but we already have everything we need.

Let our losses, the hardship, the brutal moments, be our reminders of good times coming, and of the glorious multiplicity and breadth of our human existence and welcome everything in. Because when we begin to live like this, in flow, we also stop living for the future and start living right now - and that dear ones, is actually the key to living an enlightened life.

The language of our bodies

Today my heart is full full full, more than I could ever have imagined. What did it take? A leap of faith and a willingness to continue following my dharma (life’s purpose) even when there was no reason to follow this particular path. Sharing the ancient practice of yoga is the place where time always stands still for me, where I feel fully in flow, when I know without a doubt I’m deeply connected to source. It’s the place where I can share the most of myself with others, with no second guessing, no filter and no pretending to be something I’m not.

If you’d asked me five months ago if I’d be teaching yoga in German, a language I don’t speak, in a tiny village, high in the Swiss alps I would have said great idea but how can that possibly work? It’s thanks to the open hearted, open minded women of Törbel that today, at the end of my first season of yoga with this incredible community that it all worked - somehow, in some magical way.

These five months together have reminded me of the universal language of our bodies, an entirely human experience that cannot be bypassed when you put people together in a room and breathe and move with synchronicity. Thursday morning yoga in Törbel has reminded me how little verbal guidance and information is actually needed to practice this ancient science and how real and authentic connection can be created without words.

I’ve been to many yoga classes over the years in languages I don’t speak and it was all good fun - the will to just turn up and move and breathe, greater than the need to understand all the words said out loud. The patience, understanding, welcoming and joy that this wonderful group of mountain women has offered me is beyond anything I could have imagined. And it kicked my butt to take a few German lessons with my 89 year old neighbour Helen, whose mind is not only as sharp as a tack, but who is an exceptional teacher with the perfect combination of discipline and reward. A lifelong artist (for real), Helen has perhaps missed her calling as a German teacher! After just four lessons with her I can teach yoga in German - as long as you have a good sense of humour and don’t need me to make a full sentence! And my absolute favourite word that I’ve learned so far in Swiss German (Canton Wallis dialect) - pfiffoltera - butterfly - perfect for describing badhakonasana!

After our last class of the season we joined for cake and coffee in the beautiful treasure trove that is the Hosennen Museum Shop, our makeshift cafe, created on the fly but nonetheless full of steaming fresh coffee, home made cakes, breads, sweets and more. With our dogs sniffing around for left overs and cake crumbs, the conversation a mix of German, English and French, laughter light and genuine with stories flowing, I am content. People think yoga is those crazy shapes you make with your body, but this - this sitting around with a deep sense of joy and gratitude in our hearts - this is yoga - the language that needs no words.