Watering our inner garden, Lammas and a Cancer Research Fundraising Evening!

Welcome to August! I hope this blog finds you well and happy in the sunshine?

It has been a long hot summer. Out in the garden the grass is dust, the cats come in covered in seeds and dead grass from their shady spots in the garden. They are being so lazy, and who could blame them when they have that much fluff, once they have found their cool spot they do not move until the temperature drops. I am sure that even they are a little bit bad tempered in the heat! Out in forests and wooded areas the undergrowth is dying back, wilted, parched. The trees showing signs of stress, leaves changing colour already, some dropping leaves to protect their core as the heat and lack of rain takes its toll. The ground is rock hard, in some places utterly solidified into the divots and bumps of the wet season – remember when it didn’t stop raining for 2 months solid at the start of this year? Now it feels like I cannot remember what rain looks, feels, sounds or smells like, it is like a distant childhood memory. Nature is really struggling in the prolonged heat, the prolonged dry.

Rhubarb the Cat in full floof next to one of the few living things in the garden - a pumpkin plant.

Back to the garden my fruit trees are over-fruited or no fruit at all, but they are still green, as is my precious wisteria from a cutting from my Mums beautiful wisteria in my childhood home. And for some reason the pumpkins are bountiful! Nothing is really flourishing, but some things are surviving. Why? Because those are the things I am watering when they have to be watered, sparingly, lovingly doling out splashes of h2o as and when it is needed. Those are the plants that are getting the extra care, the extra love – the plants that feel too important, too significant for various reasons to ignore.

The thing is, we too are a part of nature. Yes, we are better sheltered than the trees and grass and flowers from the elements, we can move out of the direct sunlight, we can seek hydration whenever we need it, and yes, we are often so removed from nature we forget that we are part of it. But still, the prolonged heat and dryness we have seen this year takes a toll. Any prolonged extreme situation takes its toll – be that a harsh winter, a drought through summer, or all the responsibilities we juggle in life, the hats we wear, the times when everything happens all at once, work stresses, family commitments, just living in this very chaotic era of humanity – all of it can leave us depleted and parched.

Taken at Greys Court - even National Trust gardens are looking dry!

And so, in any extreme situation, ideally we need to find the time, space and means to nourish ourselves, to keep ourselves going until such a time that easier windows appear. And honestly, if you are not a fan of the heat even just existing right now can feel a bit much. A friend of mine has taken to saying that its been August since May – in other words it has felt like the hottest month for 3 months already! Poor sleep, not being able to get things done because you are too hot, a bit of extra grumpiness in interactions because hot sometimes does that….It can get draining. I have started to feel as though we need to choose what to water in our own lives, in our own inner gardens - choose what to keep nourishing and what we let drop for a while.

I know this is exactly why I first fell in love with yoga back in my early 20s – a window every week where you nurture your body, quieten the mind and nourish the soul with breath, movement and rest. A space where there is only you where your responsibilities are put to one side for a short period, maybe just enough time to mean that you have watered the important parts of your inner garden to help you get through a tricky time.

Custard the Cat wondering what is wrong with the grass this year!

However, all things come to an end, eventually the hot spell will end, eventually we will see rain, however much it feels like a distant dream, and then how we care for ourselves may need to gently shift and change again, I am predicting that the start of autumn will see me slightly speeding up for a while - getting out and doing the things I have been too hot and bothered to do - before we start the gentle quietening into winter.

The start of August saw the cross quarter celebration of Lammas; the midpoint between the Summer Solstice – the longest day and the Autumn Equinox – the day of equal light and dark, the turning point towards the darker half of the year.

Lammas oracle cards

When Meteorological Autumn sets in at the start of September it is the 5^th Birthday of Emma’s Yoga Hut! I felt like I really wanted to mark the occasion, and wanted to make it a fundraising event. So, as a birthday celebration I am offering an evening of yoga, meditation and sound which will all be in aid of raising funds for Cancer Research.

There are several people in classes who have been touched by cancer in some way, and as many of you know in December last year my Dad had an operation to remove remove 2 large cancerous tumours, a kidney and an adrenal gland. He is doing well and they are keeping a close eye in case it reappears. One in Two people are expected to get cancer at some point in their lives, and funding research to help prevent this feels like a very important thing to do.

So! Drum roll please – I would like to invite you to our…….

Friday Night Out for Cancer Research!

At the moment there is space for 12 people, I am covering the hall hire and expenses myself too so every single penny goes to charity. Now, if it transpires that more people would like to come then I might be able to ask to hire the whole hall, and if so we can go up to 20 people.

The evening will look like this:

6pm, arrive - settle and be grounded with a short, soothing meditation to help you leave the week behind.

We then move into some beautiful, gentle, inclusive yoga. If you have never in all your days practiced yoga then I promise you this yoga will be accessible and hopefully even enjoyable for you! It is also possible to do this yoga from a chair, in fact in our previous Nights Out we have had a handful of people joining us as we practice the yoga from chairs – so if you are chair yoga person this is also for you!

After this we will settle in for a yoga nidra with sound healing instruments – this is a very beautiful, deeply soothing guided meditation which works through the layers of body, breath, mind and soul to ease you into a peaceful state….this will then effortlessly move into a mini sound bath with crystal singing bowls, chimes and other lovely soothing sound healing instruments.

After our Yoga, meditation and sound we will enjoy some home made treats, fresh fruit and seasonal oracle cards before floating out into the night at 745pm

Our previous Friday Nights Out have been a really very beautiful evening of community, connection and calm. I would absolutely love it if you could come along, support an amazingly good cause and join us for some beautiful early Autumn calm on the 5^th Birthday of Emma’s Yoga Hut!

Sound baths are a wonderful way to enter a deeply meditative, calm state.

For our weekly classes, term restarts the week of 14^th September – a little later than usual simply because I am trying to fit classes around my daughters gcse mocks week in November! I will send out emails to everyone later on in August with all the details.

Going forward into Autumn/ Winter there will be some lovely additions to Emma’s Yoga Hut offerings, including new moon luxury gong baths, solstice and cross quarter offerings, and sleepy time sound baths; later at night and finishing with a sleepy tea and homemade cookies - made with ingredients which support sleep - to take away with you. For these sleepy time sound baths you are very welcome to come along in lounge wear or pyjamas so you can simply slip back home and head straight to bed!

More on all that later!

In the mean time, enjoy August! I look forward to seeing some of you at drop in chair yoga next week, and at our August Rest, Summer Restorative and August full moon sound bath events!

With love,

Emma xx

(Emma runs Emma’s Yoga Hut in Earley - a garden studio for nurturing holistic small group yoga, which is nearly 5 years old! She is a yoga student and yoga teacher and has practiced yoga for nearly 30 years. She trained with the Traditional Yoga Association right here in Reading between 2016 and 2018 to achieve her 500 hour yoga teaching accreditation. She has additional teaching qualifications in Yin Yoga and Yoga Nidra. She is an Internationally Accredited Sound Bath Facilitator and specialises in singing bowls. She teaches Chair Yoga classes at local community centres where there is almost always a coffee and a chat after class. Emma is passionate about getting the beautiful benefits of yoga out to as many people as possible, and she tries her best to practice yoga every day, and this summer is taking a very quiet, slow approach to yoga so she does not melt!)