New Classes

I am currently looking to set up new classes in South London – so if you have the perfect location contact me.

Mind Body Spirit Festival, London May 2013

I am teaching at the Mind Body Spirit Festival which runs from the 24th – 27th May 2013 at Earls Court. Click here to go to the festival homepage where you can book online. My classes are in the Mantra Lounge at 11 am on Friday the 24th on Mastering the Kundalini and, at 2pm on Mantra and calling in Angels. Then on Monday 27th at 12pm on removing Karmic blocks. Come and join me there.

The Mothers Journey. January – June 2013

There is a new Mother’s Journey Teacher Training starting in January 2013. 5 weekends over 5 months, building up to an exam, after which you qualify as a Pregnancy Yoga Teacher. 
Open to mothers, mothers-to-be, yoga teachers and Health Carers, the course is based in London and upon completion, certified by KYTA. Insurance is then available through DSC Insurance.

For more information click here. 

But it is time to write again and the subject is a badly behaved one…………..Anger.

An interesting topic and one that is very challenging to deal with.
Ask a room full of women “who is angry?” And I kid you not, the whole room will raise a hand. Ask the same question in mixed company and a different result will transpire. Most of the married women will look down and most of the men will laugh, uncomfortably.

Anger is an inappropriate emotion for women to express. The responses are many and not very varied, mostly along the lines of bitch, cow, slag….. an angry woman is seen as a frightening creature, one that is shunned, vilified and largely, ignored. We are taught, and propound this odd reality by not expressing anger appropriately, nor are we seen as angry in the media, that an angry woman is a bad thing to see, experience, know, be in a room with.

I had a phase of looking at the newspapers to see the images of women, how we are portrayed on a daily basis and it is not good.  Anger is expressed by soldiers, Muslims, footballers, politicians (who are mostly male apart from the stunningly angry and out there Australian Prime Minister), and all women shown are either Angela Merkel, bikini-clad or incontinent and selling Stanner Stair Lifts.

We, those of us who admit to anger are few and far between. Personally, I am often extremely irritated, frequently annoyed and at times, down right furious. I have learned not to rage, though. Such unpleasant after-shocks, I have no truck with it in myself or anyone else. And having lived with a rager for 20 years it leaves me cold.

So now an interesting combination of realities: divorce, selling my house because of a court order, single parent with precious little maintenance, mother of a teenager and Oh, yes, running a business under the aegis of a Conservative Government in a recession…. I have a sense of humour, clearly, but boy, do I get irritated.

Of course the short circuit is “oh, you must be menopausal….” So I looked it up.

Symptoms, anger, irritation, mood swings. Seems that being female is actually a diagnosable pathology and if I choose to, I can let it all get swamped in the umbrella of “The Menopause”….

I thought those were the side effects of being female in the 21st century. I did not realise they meant I was unwell. Does it help that my anger can be justified and swallowed by menopause?

No, and actually, why can’t I be angry?

The banks are bastards, the law is an ass and a female mid-life crisis does not seem to lead to a bright red sports car, but hours in run down National Health clinics waiting for blood tests and doctors to say yes, you are old and grumpy. Oops, sorry, menopausal.

Now where am I left at the end of this? Honest, open, aware that I am talking heresy here, and actually not saying don’t be angry, get cured, take HRT, but I can lead you to interesting meditations, and practices that make the feelings bearable, give good boundaries so you can be angry without it making you feel morally reprehensible, and all are tools for empowerment.

Frankly I think a lot of anger is highly appropriate right now towards all of those mentioned above, the soldiers, Muslims, footballers, and politicians who are behaving in ways that are seriously affecting all of us.

So the empowerment lies here: A good meditation to calm anger is Sitali Pranayam.

A meditation for Conquering Inner Anger 

The 4 stroke breath

Clearing the Emotional Past.

My Youtube Channel is a vast resource. There are loads of meditations, techniques, yoga sets etc there….

Easy to say Insane, but I choose to be here. I like the softness of the place, love listening to the language and endlessly watch my desire to be able to speak in such expressive ways, but like a lizard in the sun, I do nothing to further my ambition.

The people are kind, from a distance. I only get to relate, from a distance, in the main, and meet endless assumptions about how one should be, who one is, what one wants and my use of the impersonal is just: they know nothing about me, my life, my longings or my desires so none of it is personal. And it can be mirrored neatly back: I know nothing of theirs, either, apart from all that I see around me and can so swiftly judge but choose not to.

I love the dry heat. It is like a wall of blazing, unflinching fire so intense that at times it makes me gasp. I have the utmost respect for it, I see evidence of the power all around me in the destroyed paintwork, artwork, nature and faces. The dust, the sun, the dryness, the heat…. All is merciless and at the same time everything is still. Effort is futile, all is desultory and measured against the heat. God is Great.

Adding to the sense of powerlessness is the dryness of Ramadan. No one can eat or drink, smoke or chew gum, no sex and lots of prayer during the day. The shop keepers are tired and grumpy, everyone is longing for Iftar, the evening meal, the moment when the fast can be broken, which is at 6.31 precisely, changing each evening.

In the build up to Iftar the roads are insane, with everyone madly heading home to break the fast with family. The darkness, the lights of cars and the sodium lights in the streets all add to the drama with black shadows and a curious denseness to the atmosphere.

I choose to walk each day in the midday sun. It is so extreme, so mind-blowingly hot, too bright to see without sunglasses, and not a drop of perspiration can survive on the skin. The shadows are hard and surprisingly cold to look at, but sitting under a tree to settle to banging of the blood in the head is not cold, nor cool. There is just the sense that one can take a deep breath without scalding the lungs. Trust me, it is an illusion.

I ran 2km yesterday evening. I was surprised that I could, but the sun was on it’s way down, there was a slight breeze and I was determined. Not a trace of sweat anywhere on my skin until I lay down inside to re-balance my blood pressure and I was awash. The air had been absorbing all moisture from me.

I like to take photographs in the high, bright light of the day. The sense of extreme is magnified, intensified, heightened.
As usual, I used a Sony Cybershot….

I taught a yoga class for the addictive Personality today at Alchemy on this topic and it was potent and powerful.

I talked about seeing an intention all the way through, the duality of the word: that it can be a desire in the future “I intend to ……” but that it can also be that you empower posture, yourself, ambition and desire with intention and in this aspect it is a very life changing experience.

I invited the class to join me in my intention to generate change and create structure in their life by committing to a 40 personal practice.  I did not count hands but I think most of the class were with me and I took them through the daily routine.

The intended intention behind the 3 postures is to build grit, heat in the body, creativity, projection, will and strength. It may sound like a tall order but I know from previous commitments to this practice for 40 days I have achieved all that I set out to do and more.

So join us. Starting tomorrow, for 40 days, ending on June 12th, find a quiet time that you can give 7 minutes to yourself.

Lie on a mat or folded blanket. Wear loose comfortable clothing. Eat after, not before.

10 sit ups. Knees are bent, feet on the floor, fingers at your temples so you don’t pull the neck. Inhale up, exhale back 10 times.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 leg raises. Head up off the floor to keep the lower back strong, fingers on temples, raise legs on the inhale, slowly, and lower on the exhale, slowly. Do not let the feet touch the floor in between.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 sit ups as before.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 leg raises but this time head up, arms out wide and as you raise the legs your arms come up to touch your toes and open back out again on the floor as you exhale and lower the legs.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 sit ups as before.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 leg raises, keep the head up, and this time as the  legs raise up keep going up and lift the pelvis up as high as you can off the floor towards the ceiling. Exhale and lower pelvis and legs.

Take a few deep breaths.

Now turn over and do, or aim for and build up over the days, 10 press ups with only the hands and toes on the floor. If this is impossible do from the knees, keeping the body straight and making sure the elbows go back, not out.

Take a few deep breaths.

10 more press ups.

Sit back on your heels, close your eyes and slow the breath down, feel the heat and energy in the body and visualise what you want to project, create, change and manifest.

You will build strength very fast. Take your time, make a set time each day and let me know how you are doing! I want to know how it feels, what changes.

I am an unabashed feminist, a single parent, recently divorced, ex-drug addict and ex alcoholic…. Swearing is part of the programme, or at least it has been for me for a long time. I can honestly say that given the last few years’ experiences, swearing felt completely justified.

I have done so much work to stay centred, present, focused, de-stressed, calm and aware, yet swearing has just been one of those things that I gave myself permission to do.

I do not judge myself for it and my children who are used to it, do not judge me either, and rarely swear themselves unless “fucking arsehole” is completely appropriate to the situation.

I had no reason to think about it until recently. A fundamentalist yogi was staying with me and with a sneer, commented on my “nasty little habit” and then a friend mentioned it twice within a two week period.

These moments made me stop and think about it. Attempts to have an intellectual conversation about swearing with several friends were thwarted by judgements and the main thrust of why I wanted the conversation was lost in the melee of me trying to say I did not need the judgement, nor was I interested in their thoughts in my verbals, I just wanted a dialogue about swearing…. What it meant, why not, why, etc.

So I sat back and thought about it for myself. After a few days of mulling I decided to try life without swearing. No fanfare, no Lent-based support of Christ in the wilderness, just a casual attempt to see what it would be like to manage my vocabulary along with no drugs, alcohol, sugar, wheat, cigarettes, caffeine….

At first I was surprised by how much of my swearing was unconscious. I could put a gate in front of most of my swearing, but there was a surprising amount that I did not notice until it had galloped out, and I am happy to say that I can put my hand up and say that I am the queen of alliterated swearing. The amount that escaped before I had even noticed was quite extraordinary. So the next learning curve was to stop that happening.

Two weeks in and I am astonished. I am. I have reduced my swearing by 95% and find that my stress levels have also plummeted… So my expulsion of expletives was expanding my experience of what drove me to explete in the first place. A new verb: I explete… No longer.

Well,  just 5%……. Must try harder. I will report back when I get to 100% no swearing. I am currently looking into Elizabethan expletives. Some are hilarious. If I sound out of time and place, you will know why….

I have strong feeling about a lot of things and the feelings are getting stronger.

It would be easy and snappy for you to judge this as me being menopausal and in doing so the lid of the box would be closed and I would be disposed of by that sweeping statement. In a flash all my individual relevance, experience, history, wit, sexuality and strength would be dismissed and I could be quietly relegated to a shelf in an endless storage facility in a long dark basement… I can see it, like a scene from a Terry Gilliam movie…. With either a really dumpy, ugly, sweaty man having the authority to put me away or a young woman, a perfect size ten, texting whilst nonchalantly chewing gum, whilst listening to headphones, whilst pushing the trolly with my box on it, along a dimly lit corridor……

Insane thinking? Surely not….. It is rife, it’s rampant, sexism and ageism, everywhere. Even the “oh, so PC” Guardian does it….. It is everywhere and we are inured to it…

Sadly not me. I am not in any way menopausal. Regular as clockwork, to the day, I still could go on to procreate again. Trust me, it is on the end of a long list of experiences I have had enough of. I love my children, I do, but to look back at the pit of hell that is early motherhood combined with a lonely marriage, and no thank you.

Women over 45 are completely invisible in the media. How did that happen? Why did it happen? I use my own image to sell my clothes. I get a really good response, and armies of women then go on to talk to me about how invisible they are in the media. The most fascinating,witty, elegant, intelligent women lost in the maze of corridors that we started with:  inch your way past 45 and bang, box closed….. None of us see ourselves reflected back to us. We just get to look at miserable anorexic models portraying some bizarre image of femininity that owes it’s roots to the swaths of vampire movies and shows that we are all drowning under. Why? I don’t want to look or dress like a vampire…. I want to be me with the smile lines, the grey hair, the body that bore children… All my experience written all over me.

I am now 52 and have changed more in the past two years than I managed to change in the last 20. I tore a staggering sweep through dogma, assumption, expectations and pointless commitments leaving me clear, calmer, more empowered, but damme and blast, the lenses are off, my view is clear, and at some ungodly hour in the morning I am sitting in Heathrow’s Terminal 4, looking around me at the sparkling shops selling the illusion of luxury, watching the mass of life trying to find its way forward to the next adventure and I am not enjoying what I see. 

Apparently it is relaxing to have really loud, really awful music playing all the time. Men straining their vocal chords to tell me how much they want to love me in the most awful rhymes.

And then there is the notion that because I have paid a fortune for a ticket, and then a fortune for the journey here, that I want to buy generic crap… Why? It is plastered everywhere, the mad illusion of wealth, luxury and difference, and you get it by paying over the odds for something that was made in a sweatshop in china, by underpaid humans in appalling conditions, in the millions… Not just the number of underpaid minions but the number of luxury items, too. Somehow the keyring, the scarf, wallet or pair of shoes will magically elevate the wearer out of the dross of their daily routine and transform them into someone with taste and style. Pray tell, how will this magically happen? Ah, by the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome which is now at epidemic proportions.

I can go on like this around all sort of things: the lack of Internet connection I am promised by some dork with Richard Branson’s beard stuck on his face and so locked into a two year contract which the engaging and kind seller of said contract failed to mention. Or the voice of the woman who welcomes me to Orange…. If I used that voice to speak to them, and I kid you not, I can do an excellent mimic, they would think I was insane, yet that is the voice that drove me so crazy I had to turn off the answer machine on my phone: I still have to hear her if I call orange but I have created a damage limitation zone. And the voice of the woman who comperes Masterchef…

Facebook! What is this? I have 1300 friends. Fantastic, all delightful, but do we really want to look at endless posters commenting on how positive we should all be. A friend, James Delingpole, write recently that the way to get rid of swathes of friends on Facebook is to post something negative…. Suddenly it is the new PC to be stupidly positive or post endless YouTube clips…. Why?

Or Hipstamatic. Arghhhhhh! A loud scream of boredom. Look any of the millions of pictures, and think oh, Hipstamatic. Not, what a great picture, just oh, another iPhone turning life as we know it into a very tiresome photo opportunity and the pictures are all rendered homogenous. 

Somewhere it has all gone awry, very quickly, and no one seems to have noticed

Wake up! Live! Get real…… Please…… 

I am coming back into working as a photographer again and I love it. I cannot describe how much I love to take photographs…. There is a line in the film Billy Elliot, where he is auditioning for the Royal Ballet School. It is all going really badly, and just as he leaves, despondent and rejected, a woman examiner asks him what it feels like when he dances. His reply brings him to life and is word-perfect for my experience of taking photographs.

I have been privileged by some extraordinary sitters recently: I have been doing a series on Make Up, and another on Scars, plus other personal portraits, and each one, each portrait, each Divine Human that sat in front of my beautiful Hasselblad, was an utter delight, a treat, an extraordinarily personal moment and I feel so happy to be back behind the camera again. 

I have made a new photography website, www.carolyncowanphotography.com, and although I have an excellent past history, my vision, my view has changed profoundly and it is great to be gently and with great commitment, building to the portfolio again.

So apropos of all of this, if you would like to be part of any of the current projects listed on my site - do please be in touch, but I am also very excited by having just entered the first photography competition for years! I won one ten or so years ago, the prize was an unusable weekend for two in Libya or somewhere equally sprung loaded…. Let’s hope this one is more fruitful…

I have put three images into the Memory category of the Renaissance Photography Prize. All recent images, all of them I am very pleased with.

http://renaissancephotography.org/launch/index.php 

This piece is inspired by an article in Runners World, November 2011. 

Running protects your heart, slows down the ageing process, and generally improves your health in many ways, some unexpected….

Running gives you a mental buzz that makes you believe you can achieve your goals. Running raises self-esteem, your expectations of yourself and of life. This in turn lowers physique anxiety. 

Running lowers your risk of diabetes type 2. 

A 30 minute run sharpens your mind, improves reaction times and reasoning ability. This benefit shows a marked effect in older runners. 

If you regularly run for 45 minutes your metabolism is boosted for 14 hours subsequently. So you continue to burn fat over and above the excess removed during the run. 

Running is a great way to deal with negative feelings and especially to fight depression. 30 minutes, 3 – 5 times a week helps people to stay calm. Clinically depressed people who exercise are less likely to relapse than those who rely on pills alone. 

Contrary to current thoughts and general comments made about running, the impact of regular runs builds bone density. 15-20 miles a week has a major impact on long-term bone health, protecting the body from stress fractures and the negative effects on bone density from the menopause. 

Short sprints can drastically reduce the frequency of asthma attacks. Lung function is boosted by fartleks. 

Both distance runners and sprinters who do 30 second bursts of speed have a lower risk of heart disease. Also pregnant exercisers give birth to babies with better cardiovascular profiles. 

Another myth is that running is bad for your knees. A long-term study from Stanford University has concluded that runners who regularly clocked 5 runs of 60 minutes each week suffered drastically fewer joint problems in later life. The process of tightening and strengthening the joints starts in the first week of running, so no need to wait for these benefits. 

6 hours of running a week will burn a pound of fat! 

40 minutes of running a week for 12 weeks will get rid of long term constipation issues. 

Running lowers your blood pressure. 

3 runs of 45 minutes per week for 4 months will boost your muscle mass. 

Running reduces cholesterol. It is the most effective exercise for this issue. 

Runners have better sex lives according to fetcheveryone.com. Inactive males have a higher incidence of erectile dysfunction, 71%, and an hour of aerobic exercise 4 times per week improves quality and quantity of sexual encounters. I feel a lot could be inferred here and I leave it to you to interpret this one as it works best for you. 

Running slashes your risk of silent strokes by almost 50%. A silent stroke is caused by tiny blockages in the blood vessels in the brain which damage the brain tissue but do not leave the same devastating outward signs of a stroke. 

And back to Stanford’s research which is a wild read, and proves that runners do live longer……. 

Tis a full moon in the next few hours and apparently I have to make serious, conscious decisions which will profoundly affect the next 28.5 years of my life.

Added to this potential reality there is a Chinese curse which says: may you live in interesting times.

So I feel pressure.

There are lots of varying reasons for the pressure: the economics created by rafts of Hedge Fund Managers run wild, unchecked bankers, laws which allow those with money to divest the rest of us with impunity, I am a parent of two kids, I run a small business under the abstracted eye of Mr Cameron, plus I am going through divorce.

When I instigated the process I was met with no resistance to the petition by my ex-husband and have had the decree nisi for over a year one. The decree absolute is another experience entirely.

After a year of fruitless attempts at settlement met with ridiculous demands by the ex-husband I now find myself turned to the charms of the Court.

It feels potent and the right choice of routes forward but the process is wild, unknown and impossible to explain by anyone other than those who have trodden the path before me, stressful and very expensive.

I stand on the threshold of changing case law which adds an interesting flavour to the process, (but in reality is not as exciting as it sounds), and bids me to tread with firm feet and steadfast resolve.

So I have a massive learning curve going on 24/7.

I thought I knew a lot about stress management and have a lot of tools. But my body reacts to the current reality in ways that astound me. Ulcers, back aches, dislocation of joints, trapped nerves, styes…. The list is long and unattractive.

If I had not been teaching spiritual practice on a regular basis for the past 18 months and been forced to walk the walk and talk the talk I would have been in serious trouble. But I have been held high and strong by my practice, the teachings, great friends, new friends, an emerging relationship, my creativity and a rock steady belief that I deserve to have all that I am fighting for.

So this full moon I have been advised to be utterly present and now in my desires for the future. To be completely clear about how the future is, not how I want it to be. To make certain in my mind, that all my desires and longings are already manifested in how I move forward over this huge full moon. This means that I affirm my life, as I desire it in the future, to be my reality now.

Hey, the world is an insane and crazy place right now. Why would this not work? Why would I not leap on an opportunity for personal and world peace? The only person I can change is me, no one else, just my reality, my attachments, my reactions, beliefs, my attachment to suffering and drama. Go Ghandi,

I think it is a great idea and I am going for it, now, sitting on an aeroplane, 35,000 feet above the Alps. Please may the concepts and determination come with lots of glue to make it stick into the future as my resolve can sometimes lack fervour.

But then this is important stuff, this is the rest of my life, this is me, my kids, my future, and the validation of 18 years of excessively hard work emotionally, physically and financially. I will not walk away, I will not give in, I will stand and fight.

Bless me please whoever you are that bestows beneficience. I need it now.