As part of the work we do to unite people with their soul, I lead them through journeys into different experiences.

Some of these journeys are called guided visualisations, though I’ve known for many years that not everyone can visualise clearly and I’m continually adapting how I create these experiences to powerfully work for people who hear, feel or know instead of see.

Despite that, a year or so ago, when guiding my children to meet different archetypes, I was shocked to discover that whereas my daughter is hyper-visual like I am, my son has aphantasia – which means he has no inner images. He says he just knows something is there in his mind’s eye and can feel it but can’t see it at all.

It’s a pretty rare thing, only around 2.5% of people have it. Interestingly, several notable people who have it are creatives, several are authors and a couple are in animation such as Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar!

This month, my children and I have agreed to embark on training in Silva Ultramind. Silva is called dynamic meditation but really it’s more like self hypnosis and much of it involves visualisation.

I just hadn’t considered that when inviting my son to take part and it’s a lesson of its own for me to witness him find his own way to work with the practices.

When Vishen (Lakhiani – it’s the new Mind Valley version we’re doing) says “Now six feet in front of you, picture…” Whilst my daughter and I are busy visualising in full technicolour, my son is describing to himself what he wants to visualise and then instead of seeing it, he feels it in his body – both emotions and sensations. So much so, when he was visualising passing his driving test in today’s training, he kept nudging my thigh – I looked down and realised he was so deep in the experience of driving the car, he was actually changing gears and the gearstick was next to my leg!

When we compared our experiences afterwards, it was clear he had had just as powerful an experience as my daughter and I – possibly more so as he’d felt so much.

It seems to me that the many forms of neurodivergence all have beauty, potency and necessity, even if we don’t yet understand what or why.

Vishen quoted Napoleon Hill earlier “Spirituality is nothing more than physics that we have yet to find the equation for.”

I would say that neurodivergence is a way that Spirit is working through different souls for the greatest good of us all. And in a culture largely bereft of a knowing of soul and Spirit, it’s no wonder we have yet to understand that, let alone find the equation for it.

Thankfully, it’s working through us anyway.

Today is the first day of my month-long sacred pause… no teaching, no podcasting, no guiding… instead I will be devoted to my family, my home life and my own shamanic practice.

I’m beginning the month by re-reading my teacher, Jez Hughes’ first book.

It feels poignant as the woman I was when I first picked up this book five and a half years ago, on Jonathan’s insistent recommendation (who knew who I really was, years before I did,) was a very different woman to the one sitting here now.

Back then, despite working in the spiritual field for many years already, I was still terrified of my own openness to Spirit and the way it had played havoc with my mental, physical and emotional well-being since I was a child.

Although I related to so much of Jez’s description of his shamanic sickness, I still wasn’t ready to admit to myself what that meant for me and my path.

It took getting to a point where I was being terrorised by hallucinations several times a week, despite (or really because of) trying to keep the door to Spirit slammed shut (or shut to anything other than “Oneness”, which felt safe), before I spoke to a shaman and asked for help, telling her I was scared I was losing my mind.

After that one conversation, I made the first tiny step of intentionally opening to Spirit, pleading “Go gently with me”.

The continual hallucinations stopped and the journey to becoming my medicine began.

It feels apt that when I was commanded by Spirit – yes, commanded, I don’t get subtle suggestions about these things – to find a teacher, of the many shamans I knew, I found myself guided directly back to Jez.

So I sit here now, five years later, reading the book that I now finally understand was an important catalyst of this journey and feeling so much appreciation for everyone and everything that brought me here, supporting, guiding and loving me along the way.

And especially Spirit, who has been more gentle with me than I ever could have dreamed of.
♥️✨🌹

One of the most important things I teach women is how to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with their menstrual cycle.

That requires they get up close and personal with their blood which though isn’t the point of this post, is vital to say because any menstrual practice that isn’t based on full intimacy with blood will only be perpetuating the very disconnection that the vast majority of women already have with their beautiful body and its sacred cycles.

One of the menstrual practices I teach is writing a list of all the things their Wild Woman, the pre-bleed archetype, is a NO to.

This NO will be felt as:

Sensitivity
Tears
Tension
Anger
Irritability
Cravings
Headaches
Tiredness

Notice how this list sounds exactly the same as the symptoms of PMT/PMS that we mock, dismiss or make wrong?

In doing so, we mock, dismiss and make wrong the powerfully protective, instinctual aspect of ourselves, the wild part of us that knows what is no longer right for us to tolerate and is ready to say NO.

As I’m lying in bed sinking into this bleed, I happened to read back over my list of NOs from a couple of years ago – it’s like reading something a completely different woman wrote.

The NO my Wild Woman growled back then, rippled deep into my womb and psyche, then out into my life… none of the things she was a NO to are now present in my life.

So much so, I hadn’t been keeping a regular practice of writing down my Nos, I hadn’t needed to, my Wild Woman was calm and content, and just asked for a little more time alone and for more wanders in the wild.

But this month my Wild Woman has been howling.

It turns out that as I’ve reclaimed my power over the past two years, and then as I integrated from my last shamanic initiation which has been particularly gruelling physically, there’s suddenly now new things she is a NO to.

Saying NO will be…

Inconvenient.

Indulgent.

Dangerous.

And honour her I will.

I honour the Wild Woman’s NO by entering the Red Temple to meet my Wise Woman, the archetype of the bleed time, to hear her gnosis about uncomfortable truths, to be told what I need to let go of, no matter the sacrifice, and for my blood to carry it away.

The ancient wisdom of the cycle is calling us to become our true wild, wise soulful selves, we only need to be courageous enough to heed its call.
🩸

“When you take the medicine of the Baba Yaga, dark Shamaness, it changes you. When you plead with her to show you how to get back to your wild aliveness, to the state in which your rocking hips effect the shining sea, you’d better be ready.

Because your life will change. You will travel through realms of suffering to pick up the shining gems of your soul, on your way through the Forrest of Bones. You will sacrifice what you fought for because it is not the treasure you thought it was, and you will follow the chicken feet, left on the path under the moonlight to the wide open spaces you fear to tread, because you don’t know how to be free, yet. No one in your family has been free for generations.

After living in captivity for many lifetimes, the roar of the wild world will make you tremble, all the while its howls stirring your ancientness deep in your belly, compelling you to create something so new that it seems as if the sky is making it happen.

The Wildness is no place for the faint-hearted, so come, but bring all your might with you. And maybe, just maybe, you will get a chance to taste your freedom.” ~ Alison Nappi, Author

Tonight is a good night to meet her… 

I’m naturally a leader and teacher, even though it took decades to fully accept it, meanwhile simultaneously (because shadow often works like this), for most of my life I have struggled to submit to someone else’s authority.

This used to be a more obvious refusal, my school years were particularly challenging because of this trait – at one point, I was banned from four different classes (PE, art, maths, and even my form class) because of my disruptive behaviour in the face of dictatorial teachers.

This refusal to submit to authority continued into my adult life, railing against and resisting even teachers I’d chosen.

A particularly fine example caught on video was me shouting to my martial arts sensei “Stop telling me what to do!” He was leaning on the ropes, advising me how to fight the man I was in the ring with.

And then 10 years ago, when I was blasted open to spirit upon the death of my father, and didn’t know what was happening or what to do with it, I felt the call to learn from people who seemed to be speaking about the things I was spontaneously experiencing – what might clumsily be described the eternal connection between all things.

I realise now that most of those teachers only had a theoretical knowledge of the perplexing terrain of oneness that I was floundering around within, they could hand me a map of sorts but couldn’t join me there to guide me.

And despite my choice to submit to them and their teachings, I still subconsciously resisted, and it would take a particularly astute person to see beyond the enchantment of my honesty, intellect, receptivity, devotion and charm.

Most couldn’t.

Even as I’ve become aware and worked to integrate so much of that resistant shadow, my nature still bedazzles and blocks people from really seeing me.

People tell me I could sell sand at the beach without even meaning to, just by reclining on it looking delighted to be there. I’ve been told that I make being buried overnight look like a walk in the park.

Even when I want to be a good student, my mesmerising disposition makes it a challenge.

As my shamanic teacher said only this week “You unintentionally hide in your openness.”

Thankfully he’s so perceptive (no coincidence his organisation is called Second Sight) that over time, he’s learned how to see me anyway. It’s such a gift to be truly seen that I cried when he said it.

This is the kind of person who I value beyond all measure, someone who can see past my luminescence to my unseen edges and call me beyond them.

I think I may have just found another… the female elder I consciously called in late Thursday night, I found her on Saturday morning – a British shaman with the same Devonshire heritage as mine – and I arranged a call with her immediately.

No “what if”, no “how”, just acting on what was aligned.

The old me would be astounded at my willingness to submit to another person.

This me knows it’s nothing to do with the human, it’s about submitting to the path that my soul came here for and that Spirit is placing in front of me, one ego-shattering, shadow-triggering step after another.

This me has finally learned that the only true submission is to Spirit.

And submit I will.

No matter what.

What or who are you being called to submit to?

Will you?
♥️

Art: Luis Royo