Reminiscing over a cup of tea

Looking back at the year gone by is THE thing to do on a 30th of Dec, at least in my life. Some people make big plans for the year ahead and hope for 'better' things to come, whatever they may be. I have always been rather nervous about a new year, not been a great fan of the unknown as it makes my stomach twitch. This year I feel more upbeat about what is to come.

Having a cup of tea with a younger, but nontheless wise (and utterly charming) friend of mine this afternoon we chatted about 2012 and all the things that shaped us this year. Her sharing those major experiences made me realise that more of us daredevils are out there, driven by the urge to do things differently and looking for ourselves along the way. Not conforming and questioning the status quo isn't the easiest things to do and may alientate some people we have been close to over the years. However, once we can let our guard down and speak our hearts (which is a pretty scary thing to do) it opens something up. Being frank and bold in combination with the best intention (e.g. speaking from the heart) has so far been a pretty good ride. I like what I get in return a lot. My attitude has pathed the way for others to share their views and intimate thoughts, which I am grateful for because I feel I get to know friends that bit more. I am looking forward to more of that in 2013.

With that thought I wish you all an exciting 2013!

Much love,
Your Urban Yogi

Spotting an Urban Yogi

Today I made the best of an otherwise dull day at work... the wee boy I work with still spends most of his time sleeping off a bug, so I spend time doodling away. I LOVED it. Time flew by and I am feeling great. There is even a smile on my usually tired face marked with deep black circles around my eyes after a long day with sleepy bear.

Most of the afternoon I felt inspired to follow up an idea that came to me a few days earlier. I thought about what a 'happy' me would look like, how an Urban Yogi behaves and what behaviour would give a person is living in the heart away. Appartamento (an everyday interior design magazine, issue No 10, Dec 2012) provided the ideal medium to develop my sketches. The creative minds who out of love for design and people have birthed this magazine have provided my ideal base to start this tiny project. Man, this has made me really happy today and I was so living in my heart... :D

And without further ado me babies:

Let me know what you think!

Grinning,
Your Urban Yogi

Don't worry - Trust.

This is a tricky one. During an ordinary day worries keep creeping up on me in a rather sneaky fashion, so unnoticed that I sometimes wonder where the heck they came from in the first place. Clearly I have become immensely brilliant at worrying, so much so that I don't even realise I am doing it. I worry about that Jaffa cake I picked up and its content; later I feel a little anxious about the boy I work with being poorly; at the end of the day I catch myself wondering how long I will manage to maintain this beautiful soothing energy I soaked up in Mexico.


The moment that I became alert of our habitual worrying was when I listened to my mother in law from the heart. She was sincerely worried about me going to Mexico, doing 'odd' things there with 'weird' people (her words, not mine!). Even my father, who by any standard is open minded, practising yoga and reading esoteric books ever since I was a little girl, had written an email with a slight worrying undertone. 'Stay yourself', was the message in short. As if I was not to be trusted, or those organising this trip, or maybe even the people could brainwash me. Well, this trip has changed me fundamentally but this is because in the course of my reasonably long lifespan I have plastered myself with layers of 'should do's' and 'must not's' that alienated me from who I truly am. All I want to be is me again.


I appreciate their messages though as they come from a caring place in their hearts. Yet those words have a great dose of anxious thoughts stirred into them. And I know those thoughts. These nagging little annoying thoughts that we are not even aware of most of the time, but actually influence our lives so much. Occasionally I notice them paralysing me from the inside out, especially when I worry about potential future problems. When I predict what might be happening in the future, taking off into a place of 'what if's'. At this exact point I am so far away from living in the heart that the fear of losing the connection I worked so hard for to re-establish takes completely over. Not being in the heart, the here and now is what sucks.


Most of the time I do realise I have this wee voice(s) in my head that automatically tune into this invisible bubble of anxiety that seems to hang in the air influencing us all day, every day. One way of dealing with them - when I notice - is to sweep those thoughts away (to the left if one follows imagery techniques). But thank god we got our fellow humans to act as a mirror, right? It is so much easier to pick up on those 'bad' habit of worrying in others!


For this reason I am grateful to have loving people surrounding me to show me, that I still worry too. I see it more clearly when someone else does it and I can accept the learning lesson far more readily. I step back and attempt to view the situation from the heart. All I want to say is 'trust me', but I refrain. I love them and I try to hear through their anxiety the message behind the worries. What they mean is: I love you and I want the best for you.


Yes at this point I some of you might gag, it is cheesy and it is oh so simple. However, I tend to forget that actually I have got to trust myself; trust that what is happening takes place for a reason and that I am guided in what I am doing. Rather than feeling insulted when my friends are referred to as 'weird' and commence worrying about rejection, I got to trust.

Your Urban Yogi

by Philip Clegg

I'm NOT normal.

These days inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. I picked up a book for teens because I liked the cover (designed by my fav illustrator Oliver Jeffers) and thought it might be interesting for a boy I work with to read. 'The terrible thing that happened to Barnaby Brocket' turned out to be a right page turner. In a day I finished the book.


Anyway, the book is about a boy who is not considered 'normal' by his parents because he floats. The parents decided it is a terrible habit and that his selfish behaviour is appalling as all they ever wanted was to be 'normal'. Barnaby feels guilty for being who he is until his parents get rid of him, releasing him into a world of adventures on which he figures out that he is in fact pretty special and awesome. A sad, funny, insightful and magnificently told story everybody who felt 'NOT normal' at one point in their life!


Now, I never floated, no, but I can identify with Barnaby. All I ever wanted as a child is to fit in, be the same as everybody else. At one point I was convinced my parents were malicious aliens that change the building, that was acting as their secret headquarter, hastily back into our flat as soon as their surveillance cameras spotted me coming home from school. A little paranoid on my part, I admit, but the point is that I felt so alone, different, wrong, unwanted and frankly a burden to my family when I was young. I was different, I was sensitive and I was frequently misunderstood.


I am beginning to accept that I am different. This comes after years of desperately trying to be part of society. Especially during my teenage years, that had a fair share of ups and downs. I tried to be loud, I managed to be offensive, I embodied the role of a know-it-all, I drowned myself in sorrow and cut everybody off. I regret pushing some dear people out of my life for good.

In the end I decided to fight for myself, beginning with a family constellation workshop. The woman leading the workshop got through to me by telling me to 'Stop being a drama queen!'; Heide (http://www.starflinger.de/) was right. This statement opened my eyes. The onward journey was a bumpy one, full of self-loathing, bad relationships and me STILL feeling endlessly sorry for myself. That was until I began to unravel all the plays I put on, lay down the masks of pretence and stripped bare.


All in all it has been a 10 year road back to myself. I arrived in my heart in Mexico, at the workshop thanks to all the people, meditations and my guidance. When departing to Mexico my faint hope was that I might be able to let go of disliking my physical body so much and fully inhabit it for the first time in a long while. I cannot even grasp the magnitude of the changes that took place yet as I learnt so much more than to accept my body.

Don't get me wrong, I still fall back into old habits and beat myself up for things I do or say. However, I manage to sweep those thoughts away now. I love myself for not being normal. I actually enjoy my quirkiness and at last I have the guts to write about myself, feeling my viewpoints count too without needing to convince anybody else of my beliefs. The thing is that once the ATIH group of outstandingly open and strong people 'saw' me for who I truly am I realised that they liked me (despite my loud and in your face nature) and I could smile again. I was silly without self-censoring (too much), I was loud without being embarrassed by it, I could be around men without trying to appeal to them, I was sad, touched, happy and ecstatic - and it was all fine.


I am NOT normal, but I figured nobody else is neither. When I felt we are all ONE during a particularly special meditation we had on the 21/12/2012 I knew I am okay, and that everybody else is too - just the way they are.


Having bared my soul I now go out onto the busy streets of suburban London, brimming with bargain-hunters and christmas-gifts-returners. These days are novel cause I feel fine and supported by a meditation I do in the morning, which Catherine Shainberg (http://schoolofimages.com/) thought me and I would like to share at this point. It is quite simple really... once in meditation I see, sense and feel myself on a beautiful, rich meadow. I spot the sun and look at it. With permission I take rays of the sun and weave myself into a cocoon of light. It is simple but powerful and protective.

I feel on top of the world! :)

With a big smile,
Your Urban Yogi

Careful what you wish for!

During the farewell party the last evening in Merida it dawned on me that this 'Living in the Heart' business is going to be a tough one in London. The group had been such a pool of inspiration as well as an anchor; getting several hugs daily was normal, people seeing who I really was beyond looks and the ego made me feel so accepted. I am aware that I will draw on the support of those fellow heart-lifers during the next few months/years(?) until this becomes second nature to me.


But what means 'Living in the Heart'? An anecdote of my first day back in the London reality might clarify this. Before leaving to go on this trip (http://www.ireneviglia.com/#!journey:-passage-to-ascension) I had made efforts to balance my life better. Thus I spoken to one of the families I work for stating my desire to maybe cut back on my hours in 2013 and not work on Wednesdays anymore in order to attend to my (secret) passion - writing and illustrating childrens' books. However, on the inside I was also worried to lose out on income and I somehow believed that I was too 'irreplacable' to the mum to really cut my hours. So when I got my new contract with reduced hours handed the first night back to work I gulped. The thought of less income made my stomach twist, my jet lagged mind started to rationalise - how silly was I to cut hrs, childrens' books are not (yet) making up my income, was I mad?


I took a deep breath. This was worrying as I knew it before, my mind creating a drama where there was none. While breathing out slowly, calming down I sensed that my heart made a leap, that actually it was good, I was on the right track, following my truth. I wished for time to attend to my passion and it was granted. The mind might struggle to accept that the best decisions not always have to be the rational ones, but the ones that ultimately increase happiness in your life. This is what living in the heart is about. So I signed the new contract and saw myself working on my stories and illustrations every Wednesday from January 2013 on, which made my face smile big times.

Though I shall be careful what I wish for in 2013 ;)

Much love,
Your Urban Yogi

My version of Alice meeting catperillar

Why this blog?

'Living in the Heart' has been an ideal I was introduced to in Dec 2011 in a meditation workshop (Awakening the Illuminated Heart - http://www.ireneviglia.com/#!awakening-the-illuminated-heart) I took part in. Although this meditation changed my whole worldview and I was so, so, SO determined to practise it every day to alter my lifestyle accordingly, I got sucked back into my hectic London life pretty swiftly.

 

Only when I joined a bigger group to take the workshop in Mexico/Yucatan did I fully immerse myself into this work. Spending 12 days with a fantastic group of people looking to becoming happy, seeing beauty, living truthfully, feeling grateful for life and genuinely experiencing being ONE changed me and I cannot imagine living my life from anywhere else (mind for example) than the heart anymore.

 

Previously, much like Mr Rossi I have been waiting for my 'luck' to change, happiness to finally come once I lost weight, get the right job, make my relationship better, bladi bla,... but now I have begun to find happiness inside of me. It may sound corny but I felt it. Now the tricky task commences - staying in the heart despite my hectic London lifestyle and enduring the natural 'high' of happiness that filled my body and boggled my mind!

 

Like one of the organisers said it is about becoming an URBAN YOGI now that we wallowed in the uplifting energies of Maya land and plant this seed in London!

 

However, on my first day back in London - Christmas Eve - I realised this will be a much much harder mission than anticipated and hence I created this space to share my experiences, note my reflections for later and have a good old (English) moan about my struggles. As I learn to make this feeling of honest happiness a permanent one the challenges will surely vanish into thin air! :)

 

Your Urban Yogi

by Phil Clegg