I wanted to wish you a good start into the new year!
During these darker days of the year make sure to be gentle with yourself, this can be an intense time that brings up so many emotions- good and difficult.
Take some breaks and stay tuned into yourself, check in with yourself- what is it that you need to get the most out of these moments?
I also send you greetings from India, where I just completed an incredible sound healing course. For two weeks we learned how to ground, centre and uplift a person by using sound.
I will soon introduce these healing sounds to my practice, so that you can benefit from this beautiful curative art that transcends us to the core, permeates each cell to release what needs to be let go of. Sound can thereby be deeply restorative and uplifting.
What I so much love about it is that sound is universal in its transformative powers- no words or explanations are needed, everyone can be transported, touched and healed by it. What a gift to humanity.
It also feels very special to have studied it in India, which more than any other country I know, lives, enjoys and celebrates spirituality in its day to day life. No house without shrine, no street without a temple. In smaller towns the women draw beautiful and intricate mandalas on their doorstep- each a different one- to safeguard the spirit of their house.
Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Christians and many other faith groups live side by side and unless politics get in the way, peacefully so.
To me this journey has been like a homecoming. I had worked in India as English teacher for a year, more than twenty years ago. At the time I travelled throughout the country and learned to love it.
Returning here I was worried that the country I had known had changed. It has become more prosperous, which is welcome. But apart from that it is still the same untamed, beautiful, magical and at times tough and merciless place with its extreme polarities.
Life is consequently much more alive, as life and death are more present and therefore everything is conscious and awake.
You are incessantly reminded of this beautiful thought that we are in fact not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.
It seems clear where we all came from and shall return to. India can capture this infinite vastness.
I take it as an invitation to live life to the fullest.
Sound is a way of harvesting the infinite and returning it to our core.
What melody would you like to play in the next year? What small change can you consciously introduce to your life to raise your life force? Perhaps during the winter break you can take a moment to reflect.
However, before turning to the preparations of the new year and setting new intentions, I invite you to pause and pick up a pen to write down ten reasons you should be proud of yourself looking at 2023. What adversities have you overcome, where were you kind to yourself, what struggles did you pull through? Pausing to celebrate- yourself- anchors, grounds and heals you (raises your dopamine levels) and gives you a feeling gratitude, to launch you into the new year with a sense of inner abundance.
A big hug to everyone, I very much look forward to seeing you again, ready for new adventures!
With love, Irene
