I feel like I’m sitting in the come down from the year I’ve had. Aware that I’m writing this a mere 5 days into 2025… so just to clarify, when I say year, I’m referring to the last 12 months for any pedantic types. In some ways, I feel like I’ve lived 1,000 lives this year—it’s been incredibly transformative and expansive. But in many ways, it has also been cataclysmic. Everything I once felt “certain” about has been uprooted. The vision that I had for my future at the start of 2024 has evaporated, and I don’t yet feel that I have a new vision to replace it with. I have ideas but nothing feels certain… broad strokes in opposed to any particular detail. 

So what has fallen away? I was soooooo blessed to travel extensively in India in 2024, complete my Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training there, travel(ish) in Thailand (more on that in another post, maybe, one day…) and complete 10-day Vipassana in Chiang Mai. But what I wasn’t expecting, is that I would fall in love with India so much that I would start playing with whether I could co-create a life for myself where I can spend around 6-8 months of the year there/hopping around Asia and also have a base in the UK. It also made me question whether I want to stay in the UK at all, or instead carve out a digital nomad life—hosting ceremonies and exploring music in spiritual hubs around the world as I go. Offering energy medicine, meditations, and other passions that call me online. 

Sounds dreamy, eh? 

Obviously the thing can feel super exciting and possible in certain moments and I think I’ve been in that moment – the excitement, anticipation of a new adventure and an inspired sunny outlook – for much of 2024. It’s been a great gift, but I think the stark reality of how long it might take to explore that way of living and potentially make it happen has set in: a light dose of reality. Peering over the rim of rose-tinted goggles, in union with winter, and all of the shadow, doubt and darkness it can evoke or bring. 

I think I get impatient with the speed of manifestation in the 3D, though I say that holding knowing and space for allowing things to sometimes unexpectedly manifest much faster than you imagine they will. 

Of course, there have been plenty of lessons amidst this foggy confusion – in the slowness, winter gloom and stark reality check. Time to reassess and ponder whether I truly want to explore living abroad/pursuing a digital nomad life, and whether I feel courageous enough to pursue it alone. 

A relationship of many years also came to an end in 2024, and there is something about being single that makes the world feel a little bit scarier. Not having someone to fall back on or look out for you can feel exposing at times, especially when you’re at the beginning of trying to build an income for yourself through self-employment. What adventuring in 2024 taught me though, is that we often show up in ways that surprise us when we’re travelling or encountering out of the ordinary moments. So you often think you can’t, but when you’re in the moment, and you have to – you almost always can. 

I’ve also been paying more attention to my life in the UK. I guess I’ve been silently conducting market research—assessing what my day-to-day life here gives me, how challenged or inspired I feel, my connections, communities, and how much time I spend outdoors. I really feel that my excitement lives overseas in sunnier climes at the moment. I’m very drawn to exploring communal living and have noticed just how busy life in the UK can be and how this can sometimes leave me feeling disconnected from people who I don’t end up getting to see as often as I’d like to. 

There have been things that have happened in my life health-wise that have meant that I haven’t gone back to India in January 2025, as I’d hoped and planned. So I think now that I’ve arrived in January, still unclear of when I’ll head away and still with a few health niggles, it feels discombobulating as I hadn’t planned to be here, and so feel at a bit of a loose end. 

A moment springs to mind from last year – saying goodbye to my parents and now ex-partner at the airport before heading to India on my first extended solo trip. I was flooded, and I mean flooded with anxiety and was having a bit of a meltdown/freaking out. Think full blown tears and body shakes at the airport. Wondering why and what the fuck I was doing. But as soon as I left them and was by myself, much of the anxiety immediately dissipated. 

I put on my metaphorical big-girl pants and wondered how much of the anxiety was actually performative or triggered by being around others. I guess you are more vulnerable alone evolutionarily, so once you leave the intimacy of your loved ones, you perhaps need to wear your poker face and have your wits about you. We are primal beings in so many ways. 

In a way, I feel like this moment echoes the point I’m at in my life as I write this. Able to see the dream of living abroad, travelling and working remotely, but unsure of whether I can make it real. And a bit terrified at the prospect of what I might have to do to get there, or the how’s – like a rabbit in the headlights. 

I feel that I am fumbling around in the dark, gazing further and further into the abyss and void that lies before me, panicking more the harder I look. And though I have leant into the unknown, the darkness, to glance and gaze many times before, and know the pearls and promises of hope that are offered beyond the womb-space void of the unknown,  it still feels trepidatious as fuck to be here once again, gazing into it.  

I also don’t feel like I have a choice except to move ahead and explore the unknown – playing with working overseas, and trusting in the journey and exploration, because the thought of going back to the familiar existence I have in the UK feels hugely constrictive. It doesn’t feel right in my body whenever I think about living and working here over the next few months or applying for jobs. So I feel that I have no other choice but to push on and expand – follow what my body wants to do – but the thought of doing so also frightens me, or at least it does at the moment. 

It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve had huge, ongoing guidance from spirit for months on end that I’m meant to go back to India. I’m not quite sure what it is or why – I have some intuitions and insights, but nothing concrete, so I’m trying to trust that it has a hidden purpose yet to unfold. And the guidance has been so unbelievably loud, that to ignore it and continue life in the UK just doesn’t feel like a viable option at all. 

What I’ve also realised is that even though your comfort zone provides a nice place to nest and feel secure-ish, I sometimes find it incredibly under-stimulating, unchallenging, and quite frankly boring to exist in. What I love about travel is how every day is so different and everything is so curious and unfamiliar. Novelty and curiosity await around every bend, and that is something that I love very deeply. I think I actually crave change and constant movement about as much as I resist it. So despite having lots of qualms and worries about the realities of working abroad – mostly around infrastructure and the worry that WiFi will cut out if I want to do anything live, it also feels as though the only option is to jump in despite the qualms. 

Over the festive season (it hit on Christmas and hasn’t quite loosened it’s grip), I started to view a lot of the choices and decisions I’d made this year from a completely different perspective though. Both perspectives that I’ve worn and embodied over the last few months could turn out to be accurate or true and they are all valid. Only time will tell how I’ll perceive this stretch of time in the future, but the perspective I’ve been moving through over Christmas has been very fear-based and doesn’t hold a lot of hope or courage. It’s also been very cruel about the decisions that I’ve made and how it all “might look” from the outside looking in. 

I keep coming back to  the same conclusion though – if I’m on this path that I’m following, which I am, and want to pursue it further, which I do – whether I pursue it with joy, excitement, hope and an open heart, or distrust, anxiety and fear, I will still experience it anyway. So, I may as well choose the sunnier perspective and try to just enjoy life as it comes, as much as possible. 

Pondering all of this got me questioning – how often does our fear of loss or the unknown actually prevent us from receiving and being present in whatever experience we’re in? How often does it dictate or sabotage it? How many life experiences and precious expansive moments does the subtle fear of loss or the unknown steal away, without us even realising that it’s happened? For whenever we make a choice, or choose a particular path or route to take, we are by default sacrificing another potential reality, timeline or potentiality.   

One of the things that I think we forget to share around the human experience or talk about enough, is how much time we can spend in our heads, imagining a future – worrying or fantasising about a reality that doesn’t yet, and might never exist. Or worrying, dissecting, self-congratulating, regretting, replaying, or ghosting around past moments that are actually long gone, and taking us away from the only moment that truly exists and can be experienced – the only reality that we truly inhabit – the present. 

So I’m playing with wearing perspectives. Trying to notice when I’m being neggy and hopeless and shifting gears through music, mantra, meditation or movement, to remind myself of the now. Attempting to bring awareness to my mind musings and reattune to the excitement and anticipation that co-exists in the unknown, alongside the fear… noticing the sweet freedom in the hazy or unformed, as well as the heaviness and dread. I’ve heard that excitement and fear are made up of the same bio-chemical composition. They often co-exist – two sides of the same coin. A necessary yin and yang aspect of this existence, of this vessel. 

One of the things that my mind is currently making a “problem” out of, is that I don’t know what I feel passionate about doing next in my healing work – I have ideas but nothing is igniting a real fire. But I’m also feeling the need/urge to do something, as it’s now my sole source of income. I guess what I’m doing is writing blog posts. The perceived conflict arises because I “follow my energy” and excitement to a huge extent in my work and how I run my life/service. So when I don’t find that energy pulling me anywhere in particular it can feel like I’ve hit a dead end. It is of course winter though, and I’m also into seasonal living and the idea that during these darker months, we are gestating, incubating. Things may not and don’t need to be clear. Yet the weight of conditioning around productivity, and the “should” programming that comes with it, often whispers—or wails—from the sidelines.

Gratitude is a cornerstone of my practice and has been vital on my healing path. Yet, even with a strong gratitude practice, when fear really takes hold, it can still feel tricky to access. Noticing when I’m stuck in an unhelpful headspace, overly focused on my thoughts, and then gently guiding myself back to simple practices like gratitude or journaling, can offer a way out—a reset. Ultimately I am experimenting with my life. I guess we all are really – but I feel like I’m testing my beliefs by taking a chance and living them. Yet there’s an underlying fear that it could all go tits up—that only creating when you’re “in the energy” might be a road to nowhere if that energy isn’t showing up often. It feels cathartic to get this out and dissect it. The nuance of the human experience is what makes it so juicy and exciting, yet when we’re stuck in fear or anxiety mode, it can quickly turn grey.

Anyway, the point of the article – the word oscillating. This word has brought me a lot of hope this year, as I’ve watched un-serving patterns wilt and drop away—though they still occasionally rear their heads for another dance with darkness. Despite healing often feeling like two steps forward one step back, energetically, this time it feels different and it feels like I’m at a turning point where I’m starting to choose and actually want to pursue healthier choices in my life and day-to-day. Not from a place of “should” or restriction, but from a genuine sense of self-care and self-love—an experience I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt in this way before.

It lifts the weight of “healthy choices”—for the first time, they don’t feel like a burden, but a gift. Things that will fulfil me and lift me up, as opposed to fleeting pleasures that don’t ultimately serve my body in being healthy, whole, and thriving. It feels like alien territory. Like I’ve finally actually managed to achieve the cultivation of some real deep self-love. It feels like a special and precious moment in time. But there are definitely still moments of feeling as though I’m dipping or swerving back into habits or patterns that I know deep down don’t serve me and don’t feel nourishing or “good” in my mind, body or sense of self. 

Oscillating is a word that I hadn’t really heard much of or understood before. I was introduced to it during my Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training, and have been crunching on it ever since. I feel that as I’ve been crunching, I’ve also been witnessing an oscillating process unfolding in real-time, throughout my being over the last 12 months. 

To me, the oscillation between them, or towards the sattvic states, is kinda like the two steps forward, one step back, path that self-healing can often feel like it’s taking. As well as perhaps, our general journey through life, our life-path, and the lessons it presents us with. Anyway, over the last 12 months, but particularly post-Vipassana, I reeeeeeeally intuitively feel as though I’m in a shift, a huge point of transformation, and probably a culmination point from years of inner healing and self-work. I intuitively feel that I am shifting away from some of the tamasic states of being (inwardly, and by extension outwardly), towards the rajasic state of being. 

Oscillating means to ‘move or swing back and forth in a regular rhythm’. In the context of the yogic philosophy that I was being taught though, it was used to describe the evolution towards “purer” or ” lighter” states of being. The way I explain this might seem like butchery to any hard-ass yogic philosophy folk, but in yogic philosophy there are three “gunas” (meaning “qualities” or “attributes”). These are three fundamental energies or qualities of nature that are believed to be present in all things. They are: sattva/sattvic (goodness, purity, light), rajas/rajasic (passion, activity, movement), and tamas/tamasic (inertia, darkness, ignorance). 

For me, the tamasic state of being was manifesting as apathy, self-loathing and some mega addictive/numbing patterns in my life. It feels like after years of dedication, trust, faith, and hard work, I’ve finally made it—or at least, I’m in the process of doing so. It feels like I’m wearing new skin and can breathe again, for the first time in my adult life. 

As part of this shift, the universe has also sent me some trauma goggles, which have been difficult to wear and integrate at times – I’m still very much in a process with this. It’s like I can see the trauma dynamics, the ego dynamics, and weird ass energy that people throw at each other and dance around on a whole new level. 

At times, it’s been stark to look at and has made me view people, interactions and conditioning in a whole new way. 

The compassion and understanding that it stems from trauma and where that all comes from is there, but there’s also been a deep sadness and grief at the realisation of just how much of our actions, our movements, decisions, relationships and ways in which we relate, can be written, programmed or informed by unconscious patterning and trauma. 

They are also helping to teach me things about myself, and deepen my journey into responding rather than reacting, and viewing my own trauma, narratives, and mind games in a more detached way than ever. However, though I feel that these trauma goggles are a gift in many ways, I’m also hoping that the integration of having to wear them and adjust to what that means hurries itself up.