We start The Village with a fairly chunky topic: how does our identity shift and change when we become mothers? For the purpose of the WhatsApp community, I will try and keep these weekly posts succinct, so that where possible you can read them in a couple of minutes on your Monday morning. As recently…
Body Lessons 7: Loss of Faith
This is not the piece I had anticipated writing, when I woke up early one July morning, knowing that I was pregnant with our second child. In that sunlit moment, it felt almost identical to how it had been with Ella, and I assumed a similar journey was about to unfold. The pandemic ensured that…
Coco de Mer
In one breath A total and complete state change: Your life dropped inside mine As a pebble into still water. And in its ripples I know you I love you I am your Mother. In this hover space Suspended briefly In the place between two worlds After the Ego Before the lethargy Before the nausea,…
In Defence (but not completely) of Ashtanga Yoga
I practise Ashtanga yoga and have done for around eight years. The majority of my yoga peers are not ashtangis, and my love for the practice is often met with negativity – whether supressed or overt – and sometimes with a knowing twinkle in the eye that seems to say: ashtanga is something you will…
Body Lessons 6: From the Ground Up
When I stand, my left ankle joint collapses inwards slightly, tugging at the delicate structure of my knee joint, a referred tension that travels up to my sacrum and causes the occasional dull ache in my hip. I’m not sure that this happened before. It feels new. I don’t think about it much, until I…
Lockdown Rave Culture: A Capitalist Production
These days, at the weekend I wake up to an Instagram feed full of lockdown rave culture. Secret forest raves, boat raves, people weaving their slalom six-am way through fields in the countryside surrounding London, private party lock-ups in unused clubs, above-board socially-distant outdoor club nights that descend into socially-un-distant after parties. Visually, atmospherically, this…
Learning to Be: 6 Tips for Starting a Meditation Practice
Recently I wrote a lengthy piece that touched on the topic of meditation. You can read it here. I wanted to accompany it with some more practical, brief tools and advice, on how to begin a meditation practice. Here are my top tips for getting started: Be Long-Term Meditation has a less “instant” effect…
At the Speed of Dreams: Contemplation in the Between
“Tibetans discern six ‘betweens’: the intervals between birth and death (‘life between’) sleep and waking (‘dream between’) waking and trance (‘trance between’) and three betweens during the death-rebirth process (‘death-point’, ‘reality’, and ‘existence betweens’).” Robert A. Thurman introducing his translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, otherwise known as The Great Book of Liberation…
Body Lessons 4: Know Your Power
I have a five-month-old baby girl, and winter is setting in. The dark November evenings are long. The sun is always low. I am indoors a lot. I am that strange kind of alone-but-with-a-tiny-baby a lot. Few things are quite so intensely ‘up and down’ as motherhood has the capacity to be. There is no…
Body Lessons 3: Flesh and Blood, Heart and Soul, Muscle, Bone, and Milk
Before I became a mother, I was able to use my body for specific and delineated periods of time. I would get it out for my morning yoga practice and my walk to work, before sliding it into the background for the next few hours, putting my mind in the driving seat as I answered…
Body Lessons Part 2: Ella’s Birth
I have thought a lot about whether I should share Ella’s birth story. It involved almost everything that I had not wanted to happen, and a few things I had long considered ‘my worst nightmare’. Despite this, I don’t consider it a negative birth story, nor was it traumatic in any way. I do not…
Body Lessons Part 1: Yoga in Pregnancy
This piece is purely focussed on yoga; I am writing a separate piece about pregnancy that is more general. I hope that my gratitude for the fragile luck of our fertility and conception is evident. I have never taken it for granted. “Throughout pregnancy, your body is your unborn baby’s universe. You are the…
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