Breathworks

It’s a strange time of year for many people. A moment where families gather to celebrate….

But what exactly are we celebrating?

For most of the western world the festive period has been turned into a frenzy of gifts, indulgent food, alcohol and strange family ‘traditions’.

If find this odd and in stark contrast to what Christmas Day celebrations are supposed to be about according to the Christian faith – the birth of a man known as Jesus, approximately 2000 years ago.

Certainly his appearance on the planet has made a huge impact since that time. For good and bad. I say that because the interpretation of his teachings by man has caused significant and long lasting harm. 

The essence of his teachings however are filled with love and truth. 

So I’m pondering…

What if people decided to put just 1% of the energy that is directed towards celebrating Christmas into living the principles of love?

Towards treating our neighbours as equals, with love?

To revering their humanity as our own?

Across all colours, genders and countries?

There is so much pressure to maintain traditions that don’t make sense or have zero moral foundation, and not just at this time of year. Most of these ‘traditions’ are not ‘ours’ but passed along from our ancestors and enter us by default.

It’s ok to question the default. It’s ok to desire something different.

But I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take a huge dose of courage. There will be a forcefield of energy attempting to suck you back in. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it though. It usually means you should.

So even directing just 1% of our energy to living in truth, love, humility and faith….That really would be a cause for celebration. 

Don’t you think?

Remember,

Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

One reason we spend so much time ‘busy’ and distracting ourselves is to avoid the truth of what is happening in our lives and the reality of what we have created. 

If we took a moment to slow down, tune in and open our eyes to our surroundings and our creations, we might have a moment to ponder if it is really what we desire or not. In that moment we have a huge opportunity for reflection and revelation, or we can avoid it entirely and continue with being busy. 

The thing that usually pulls us away or out of such contemplation is fear. The discomfort of discomfort, and the squirmy uncomfortable feelings which arise with seeing the truth. 

However, just because we choose to avoid looking, doesn’t mean what exists is not real. We can attempt to avoid reality but eventually it will catch up with us.

I’m recognising that one of the reasons I have resistance to journalling, meditation or any form of contemplative practice is fear – and specifically fear of change. Fear of action, and fear of the truth. 

The irony is that the only antidote to fear is truth. So if you want to live a life in alignment with what you actually want you will need to confront your resistance to truth along the way. If you don’t you will remain stuck. If you do, you’ll actually come to the realisation about what you ACTUALLY want to create and begin the first steps.

Resistance is ultimately the avoidance of feeling. The feeling of whatever the truth reveals. And the actions required in response to such revelations. 

Change isn’t easy but it is the natural consequence of being alive in an ever expanding and evolving universe. Humans were never designed to stand still. 

When you seek the truth, you will simultaneously change. 

If you avoid the truth you will stagnate.

Love wants us to expand and flow. Truth is the antidote to fear. The acceptance of truth helps us grow and mature.

Remember,

Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

The ‘personality’ we show the world is not the real us. It is a constructed facade that we create to fit into and conform to parental and cultural expectations and demands.

This creates a challenge when we desire to discover and express who we really are. The outside world knows us as something different and may reject us or seek to place us back in the familiar role they believe we occupy.

The truth is most of us don’t know who we really are. We are pretending, hence the prevalence of imposter syndrome. We are waiting to be ‘found out’.

Our true self is very different to the masks we wear. We often have many facets of our false self which we wear with different people and places in our life. One for work, one for our family of origin, another with our partner etc, the list goes on. The differences can be subtle or extreme.

One of our biggest fears is being our true self. The gentle, inspired and loving child that underlies it all. We are terrified that if we show the world who we truly are we will be rejected. The worst part is that we will be rejected  for who we really are. For many this feels akin to death, and is one reason we create a fake persona to begin with – because our early environment DID reject our true nature.

So when you show this trick to the world don’t be surprised when they fall for it. 

There will be resistance when you decide to change and express the real you. It might feel painful and vulnerable at times. 

Yet my feeling is that it’s better to be rejected for who you truly are that be loved for who you are not.

Remember,

Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

P.S. If you’d love to re-establish the connection to your true self, I’d love to invite you to the next retreat day on Saturday 23rd April – details here.

O

h my love you played the game again.

Shrunk into your shell and forgot who you are.

A giant memory lapse of the magic and majesty that lies within.

Lost to the swirling currents of shame and doubt.

It’s OK. You need not linger there any longer.

Once again you’ve recognised the trap and begun to climb out.

A binding of your own choosing, based upon the false premise that within powerlessness lies safety.

Dimming your light to avoid potential threat from others is like slitting your own throat.

Dialling down your magnificence to sidestep the discomfort and transformation that ensues in the spotlight.

No more.

The time has come to cast off your childish games and step fully into the fray.

Eyes wide, heart open and full of faith.

You have ventured through the fires of hell to reach this moment.

It’s time to burn the old house down and rise like a phoenix into the new dawn.

Step forward into the deepest dreamings of your heart and soul.

It is time.

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

T

hink about it for a moment.

DO THIS.

DON’T DO THAT.

STAY STILL.

BE QUIET.

DON’T TOUCH.

THAT’S STUPID.

YOU’LL BREAK SOMETHING.

STOP IT.

DON’T INTERRUPT.

IT WASN’T THAT BAD.

STOP BEING DRAMATIC.

GIVE IT UP.

PLAY NICE.

DON’T CRY.

MOVE ON.

DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD OR ELSE.

CAREFUL, YOU’LL BREAK IT.

DON’T BE A BABY.

YOU’RE OVERREACTING.

I PROMISE IT WON’T HURT.

IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

Oh and

SANTA IS REAL (or was that satan?)

The caps lock is intentional. I am shouting. We are being shouted at, just like in childhood.

Get the connection? Wonder why you’re so paralysed with fear?

The government is now playing the role of your parent. Do you feel safe now?

Our trauma is being hijacked. The repressed childhood fear is fully activated.

DO AS YOU’RE TOLD OR ELSE….

For most people the threat of punishment is enough – to stop, silence themselves, sit in the corner and be quiet. Don’t upset anyone, be a good little girl/boy.

Wondering why you feel oppressed and stuck? Welcome to the replay of your youth.

Now it’s:

DO AS YOU’RE TOLD OR ELSE YOU’LL…

LOSE YOUR JOB

BE OUTCAST

GET ATTACKED

BE LABELLED AS A DANGER TO SOCIETY

LOSE YOUR INCOME

HAVE YOUR CHILDREN TAKEN INTO CARE

BE IMPRISONED

BE PUNISHED

FOR NOT COMPLYING WITH OUR SELF RIGHTEOUS AND FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED RULES.

The fact that they’re flawed doesn’t matter. We will just change the rules and censor all dissent until you break. END OF.

DO WHAT WE SAY OR YOU WILL BE DEAD TO THE WORLD.

—————————————

This is evil. The reason it works so well is because we have been conditioned since childhood to do what we are told. Tyranny had a good platform on which to be installed.

Opting out is the work of my soul. Ceding your free will to anything outside of you will cause the death of your heart. We joke about zombies, but look around.

Freedom comes at a cost. The cost is the work and effort required to liberate yourself from the spell your parents and society created. Whilst we are stuck in childhood attempting to pacify and get the approval of mummy and daddy we will never grow up.

Doing the work means the ‘emotional work’ necessary to release everything and anything you’re carrying in your mind/body/soul where you’re not truly free. EVERYTHING. So you can be self-determined and sovereign. It also requires taking bold action in alignment with TRUTH as opposed to meekly existing in a jail of lies.

Nobody is going to do it for you. You’re the prisoner who is holding the key to the cell door. The decision is between captivity and wild freedom.

When you’re ready, you’ll find me in the jungle.

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

B

ut there’s one place that it’s deadly to let fear enter.

Your heart.

Good people do bad things when fear enters their heart.

Fear and anger turns people into serial killers, rapists and all manner of destructive beings.

Fear corrupts the intuitive knowing of the soul. It creates barriers between people,  creating ‘us’ and ‘them’.

A fearful heart is a divided heart. A divided heart is a cold heart. A cold heart is a closed heart. And a closed heart is a dangerous thing.

The good news is that an antidote exists. However it’s a rare precious substance that is increasingly difficult to come by these days.

The antidote to fear is truth.

Truth dissolves all falsity leaving a pristine knowing.

It moves beyond the mind and touches the most tender parts of the soul.

But just to clarify, I’m not talking about just any old ‘brand’ of truth.

I’m referring to God’s truth.

The truth which can’t be ‘bought’ in stores, but is freely available to every person in all of existence.

The truth that REALLY sets you free.

So “how do I get hold of some of this magical truth?” you say….

Quite simply.

By asking.

With a genuine longing – a passionate feeling of desire in your heart. Those who are sincere will be gifted the truth every time.

The power was yours all along. It’s time to reclaim it.

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

If you would like support to overcome your fears please reach out.

It’s time to stop fearing and start living.

A

common misconception when people come and find me and engage in my work is that I’m going to make them feel ‘better’. Let’s bust that myth right now. I’m not.

Firstly not because that’s not what the work I do results in. It actually does. More so that firstly I cannot ‘heal’ anyone or ‘do it for you’ if you don’t actually want a change for yourself.

Ultimately you have free will and get to choose if you stick or twist. Free yourself or dive further into discomfort. Nobody else. Others might have created the conditions where you are in some way traumatised or hurt, but you are the only person that can now resolve that and reclaim your life.

Please take this as a positive thing. It means ultimately that you’re in control of your destiny and not reliant on outside sources for your happiness. It is definitely helpful to seek external support, in fact for many it is highly beneficial and necessary. Especially when we are speaking of deep trauma the most effective way to begin unravelling it is with a trusted person by your side. When you get stuck, confused or overwhelmed they are there as a lighthouse to guide you back to the resources you already have within. Especially when it gets messy, because it does.

Many people are seeking relief from their symptoms, yet unaware that in order to heal and become healthier they will be required to change.

I listened to a talk about emotional release last week and the presenter made a great point. They shared a client asked how many sessions they would need to start feeling better. His reply was this – it’s not about the number of sessions but how willing you are to take difficult actions in your life. Essentially to change the toxic environment that you’re living in. All the healing in the world will bring you back to ground zero if you’re not prepared to change your circumstances. I don’t mean moving to the other side of the world and living in a cave whilst you figure things out. Some people might need that but what I’m referring to is – leaving a toxic relationship, having a difficult discussion with a family member, changing your job, engaging in an exercise routine, cutting addictive substances out of your life.

Healing and health is both an inside and an outside job. If a plant is not thriving we don’t blame the plant! We change the soil, water, position etc. That’s to say we change the environment. With humans this is slightly more complex as we have both our inner and outer environment. The outer is a reflection of what is going on within you at some level. Much of our inner environment is restrictive and not really reflective of our truest nature. This includes our deepest beliefs, thoughts,  self image, traumas and negative experiences. It also includes all the emotions we are not willing, able or prepared to feel and release. Hence they remain bottled up beneath the surface like a bomb waiting to go off. It might be an unwitting passerby that’s on the receiving end, or it might be detonated and aimed at yourself (i.e. self criticism, judgement, toxic shame).

Almost every human on the planet has this bomb inside of them. The older you are, the bigger it tends to be. This is because humans are fundamentally ‘feeling’ beings. We are having an experience, we feel e-motions – energy in motion. Can you accurately describe in words to another person how you feel right now? No. Language is not sufficiently complex to describe our feeling sense. Only we know what is going on inside. Many of us have become numb to emotion, believing this is a good thing. Actually it’s not. Being numb to emotion is actually being numb to life. If you shut down your feelings, good or bad, you are suppressing your very life force energy. You are suppressing your soul. That never ends well.

The reality is that the majority of people are suppressing their soul and believe it’s normal to do so. Numb is not normal.

Living a full and vital life REQUIRES feeling. Feeling everything, not feeling nothing. Wondering why you feel half dead? It’s for this reason. Shut down. You might be physically alive but you’re marching one day at a time closer towards death. Depression is the final phase of shut down. It’s a signal that all of your energy is going into repressing who you really are. And who did you learn that from? For the most part your parents. Your feelings and emotions were too ‘big’ and they weren’t allowed, so they got shut down. Then you ingrained that behaviour into yourself because, well, that’s how life works.

Unfortunately life simply DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY.

Feeling numb, detached, ‘ok’ is not how we are designed to live. We are gifted the entire range of emotions by creation. Our bandwidth is unlimited but we have chosen to live  in a microcosm, and most of those ‘chosen’ emotions are not really the ones we want!

Do you want depression, sadness, grief, pain, imposter syndrome, fear, doubt, anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, panic, numb as your regular life experience?

I’m guessing not, but that’s where most people are calibrated to and it saddens me. The more unwilling we are to feel, the more pain we will experience. It’s a vicious cycle that my work is here to break.

We either live in our past (and old emotions) on a daily basis and wonder why we are in so much pain or lacking fulfilment, or we begin to address the root cause.

Yet resolving emotional baggage does not mean you’ll feel ‘better’. It means you will get better at feeling. Through that process, incidentally, you WILL feel better. However the only way out is through. You take one step towards what you desire and it will take one step towards you.

Through millennia of cultural conditioning we have been misled about what the human experience entails. We are not automatons but living, breathing, feeling beings. Love is a feeling. How can I know and experience it if I cannot feel? Desire is a feeling – how can I know what I really want to do if I’m numb? Short answer is – you can’t.

Emotions are the navigation system of life. Isn’t it time you turned on the GPS of the real you? 

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

Please reach out if you’d like some 1:1 support.

I

’ve been pondering this today as I get myself back to the gym.

Let’s take a poll of some of the most important jobs out there.

Doctors? No.

Lawyers? No.

Politicians?….

It appears to be a resounding YES. I find this incredibly concerning. What do you think?

How have we built a culture in the UK (and let’s face it – globally) where the people that are nominated to run the country – are compulsive liars?!

In no other profession would this be acceptable, let alone part of the remit.

Why do we allow the people in power, who are supposedly responsible for bringing law and order to our democratic nation (questionable) to lie? And not only a few white lies here and there, but big FAT FIBS and untruths at that.

It’s even called ‘playing politics’! If that doesn’t sum up the theatre show that marauds as government I don’t know what does.

Is it progressive? Is it making our world, country, life a better place? NO. So why do we allow this?

I can think of a few reasons.

Because:

We are all lying to ourselves at some level, so we believe that someone else lying also is acceptable.

We don’t feel it’s our job to be involved in making our life /town/world a healthy and functioning place – that is the job of someone else we employ to take on that responsibility for us.

We naively trust those in authority because we have unresolved emotional trauma with our parents and expect those in power to take care of us and hold the misguided belief that they have our best interests at heart.

We disown responsibility for our lives and compromise our values and integrity for the false illusion of safety and security.

Lastly, if we dared to look behind the veil we would be petrified.

We choose fear over love.

Lies over reality.

It’s time we grew up and had the courage to look at the monster under the bed. Only then can we do something about it.

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

You’ve woken up to the lies and deceit. The realisation that the world is not quite what you thought. That you’ve been conditioned to see things, not as they really are, but as someone else with a different agenda wishes you to see them. 

The shadow games. The manipulation. The control. 

Overt and subtle, now you can’t unseen it. Everywhere you go you realise things are different. Not as they seem. Underlying messages. Hidden agendas. Deception.

It can feel like an overwhelmingly hopeless place. Confusing. Challenging. Crushing. 

I know it all too well.

If you’re here I empathise. 

Waking up is a painful process. It’s like having the rug pulled from under your feet and there is no solid ground. More than ever we are being pushed to the limits to conform and comply with procedures and practices we don’t believe in. It’s easy to feel the pressure and cave in. That’s what the powers that be want. Control. To break you down. To make you go crazy. To make you believe you’re truly losing your sh!t. 

You’re not. In fact you’re probably one of the sane ones. Those that see beyond the smoke and mirrors are often outcast and ridiculed by those who cannot see.

As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

Now you can hear the music. Others cannot. They may in time, or they may not. It’s not your responsibility to wake those who still wish to sleep. 

So what do I do, I hear you ask?!

Live by example. Address your shadows. Resolve your emotional baggage.

Go within. Get still. Decide what you’re here to create and how you want to live your life. 

Do it. Without question. Follow through. Live like you mean it. 

Others will take notice, they will want some of your truth medicine. Some will think you’re insane, but at the same time won’t be able to look away. You might get ridiculed, dismissed, judged or outcast by those in your circle but I guarantee there are more people like you than you think. By living and breathing your truth you will find them. 

Authentic connection with yourself will serve you well on the awakening path. There is no option of going back to sleep, no matter how attractive. There is only living, expanding, and growing in truth and love. Other approaches will be painful, inviting you to return to the true path, the way. 

Clear your sh!t. Face off with your emotions. Have difficult conversations. Get real with yourself. Trust yourself. Follow your inner guidance.

Awakening is a process that doesn’t end. Strap yourself in for transformation. And yes growing has pains, if you accept that and embrace them when they arrive you’ll move through discomfort much quicker and easier. It’s the resistance to being broken open that hurts.

So you’re awake, now what?

Now my friend the journey starts. Now you start living. It’s all in your hands.

Remember
Breathe the change you wish to see in the world.

Philippa xo

Into the depths of darkness I go.

Will I return? I never quite know.

But every time I know that I must.

It’s never desired but I always choose trust.

Finding the ground means losing it first.

Only total surrender results in rebirth.

Down, down down, beyond the mud and dirt.

Through hell and high water, with the devil I flirt.
​
But I know it’s not the place to dwell.

My visit is purposeful – to release the spell.

That keeps me stuck and in separation

From myself, my heart and entire nations.

The depths are dark, malevolent and scary

At times the path is treacherous and hairy

But those who wander and dare to roam

Are always guided safely back home.