The 12 Promises of Christmas that Could Save The World (Revisited)

Revisited Jan 2025

Last year I wrote a blog post that listed a number of ways to save the planet. Today I revisited that list to see how well I did in achieving the list of promises

1. Washing – what if we shower in cold water sometimes, its supposedly good for you, invigorating they say. The energy usually used to heat the water could be saved for something else. I have not manged to wash in cold or even lukewarm water this year, instead I have sometimes cut down the amount of hot water I use for showering and baths. Saving 10-15%, I wonder if I can cut down further???

2. Laundry – what if we halved our washing cycles by wearing less outfits? I’ve found myself dressing for the pub, or yoga first thing, and then wearing some outfits for two days in a row, which I reckon to myself is probably acceptable when camping, so why not at home?! 30 degree washes beat 40 degree washes, the cooller the better. This resolution really took off by the end of this year and when working from home I found I could wear the same outfit for three days running, up to two days and a night out; baggy clothes are especially useful.

3. Soap and Plastic – Replace your bottled bath products with bars of soap, instead of shower gel, shampoo, and conditioner, imagine how many plastic bottles you could save every year with these new fangled bars?! Soap is ideally organic, or at least free of petrochemicals, so not to pollute the waterways and harm the wildlife. New Year’s Resolution 2024 is to migrate over to refillable shampoo and conditioner and continuewith bars of soap instead of shower gel. Refillable washing up liquid, laundry and bleach, but alas, still going through those shampoo bottles.

4. Food – go raw if you can handle it, haha, it’s meant to be super good for you. Then, most ecological after that, is vegan. Let’s say a 50:50 veg:non veg flexitarian saves 30% of GHGs, so being part time vegan knocks out a nice chunk of your footprint, and you get to eat more vitamins and minerals too. Hurray, my favourite promise, I ate lots of tasty food ths year, check out my Recipes for vegan inspiration if you are stuck

5. Locavore – shop local and seasonal to avoid the airline/shipping fuel on imports. Aaargh this is tough, I do love chocolate and bananas

6. Avoid packaged foods, or buy products with biodegradable/recyclable packaging only, such as brown paper bags. Not too shabby as I eat mainly whole foods, but could do better. Lots of soft plastic wrap on the veggies. I guess I should be looking at how to avoid plastic entirely…

7. Clothes – what if we wore our clothes until they fell apart instead of palming them off to charity, or worse yet throwing them away, many of us could probably halve our clothes shopping bill. Very difficult to maintain, but feel like I have stopped shopping, can I keep it going for another year?!

8. Heat – get decent loft insulation, install solar panels, wear more jumpers and furry slipper boots in the winter. I remember sleeping in a wood cabin one winter, it got to -15 degrees and I was sat in bed wrapped in jumpers, cardigan, woolly hat and gloves with my breath coming out in clouds of steam, yet I survived and was quite warm and cosy too. Always found wearing a scarf or a hat and my slipper boots

9. Cars – Don’t own a car or don’t use it as much as you used to, instead use trains, bicycles, walks, busses and community car share schemes. Work from home more, use the time saved in travelling to do something for yourself. Looking into buying an electric car, secong hand, or can I get away without it? Hmmm…

11. Create a craft box with old envelopes, packaging, chocolate wrappers etc to make your own cards, gift tags, shopping lists etc (this is one example of Reduce, which comes before everything else). I have not created a ‘Making Box’ this year but I did buy recyclable wrapping paper that wasn’t wraped in cellophane. My mum had saved so much paper from Christmas past that there were 15 different types of paper under the tree. Every little helps!

12. Compost your kitchen waste, and identify suppliers of biodegradable/compostable packaging when ordering online shopping. In fact recycle anything and everything that you can: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! This is difficult when there aren’t recycling spaces, but the more we recycle, the less we land fill, and the less finds it ways into the oceans and rivers. I have been freakig out about micro plastic this Christmas, hundreds of thousands of pieces in just a litre of water. What have we done to our planet?

If you want to know how well you are doing in saving carbon emissions and their equivalents, here is a survey designed by WWF:https://footprint.wwf.org.uk.

Triple Green Stir Fry

I usually enjoy super simple recipes but today I’m going all out for this oriental treat. Triple green stir fry with the base aroma of toasted sesame, I could be in China! Get you calcium fix for the day, plenty of iron too. Serves 4

Toasted sesame oil – 2-3 tbsps

Bunch of spring onions finely chopped

4-5 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

Inch square of ginger, thinly sliced

Box choy, roughly chopped into large chunks

tofu (a 400g block, cubed)

bamboo shoots (half a bag)

cashew nuts (a small bag)

small broccoli chopped into batons – boil separately and add at the end

stir in one large dollop of syrup

seasone with parsley, paprika, salt and pepper

add one dollop of peabut butter

optional soya sauce

serve with rice, noodles, or couscous

Add the first eight ingredients gradually, as the broccoli boils (5-7min). Cook the pasta/couscous. Stir fry the veggies continuously for 15 min, or until tofu is heated through. Serve with pasta/couscous, season and add peanut butter.

The Double Helix Reveals Itself

Last moonth, I was focussing purely on the first chakra. After a warm up of pawanmuktasana around the feet and legs, foot massage and basic poses, I moved into more demanding stretches and dynamic sun salutations. In the standing postures I began to notice how energy moves around the body in Spirals. 

I have always loved working with tensegrity – feeling the stretch in one part o the body by moving another part. Almost as if I was a puppet on strings, I lead with one part of the body and the rest follows, stretching into the shape of the next posture, or even as I breathe, every inhale and exhale introduces me to a deeper place in the posture. As I focus on the root chakra, Warrior I has opened up for me in recent weeks:

As I ground down with the back heel and the big toe of the back leg, I feel energy on both sides riseing up the leg, opening the hip in one direction and straightening the leg on the other. By pressing down through the foot I activate the side body, I feel tensegrity working my lateral muscles, and the effect of grounding down helps me to reach up with my arms at the same time. The energy continues to spiral, Under and around the shoulder to open the chest, and up the arm, finishing at the hand in prayer. I find myself twisting from both sides to create an arch within the palm, extended high over head. On the other side, the front foot, bent at the knee, grounds into the earth, the knee, thigh and hip bracketed by energy moving up the lateral and spiral meridien lines. Again, front arm lines open the chest, culminating in the index fingers pressing together, while the back arm lines close the prayer with little fingers reaching upwards as one. We are at once opening and closing the chest with the prayer to sky dynamic, creating space on the inhale, deepening the stretch on the exhale. Anjali mudra emerges as a natural expression of form. Rather than pressing palms tightly together, the fingers join, but the palms are slightly open ready to receive blessings from the higher realms. The more the feet ground down, the higher the prayer reaches, the more the heart opens.

The energy is moving in diametrically opposed curves: double helices. I feel like one big strand of DNA! The aura pulsates, appearing and disappearing with each heart beat, shfting and changing as the human mind moves through its many forms. I catch a glimpse of the bright light moving around the body. The opposition bring balance, a grouding force that simultanously lifts as it connects to the earth. By working with the feet, the entire body is energised.

I have never found the warrior poses to be very accessible before now. The root chakra shadow emotions of anger, is tied to the idea of our basic survival; anger protects us from danger. This is because anger is associated with the fight mechanism in fight, flight or freeze. As far as we have evolved, anger is now a mask of other emotions like fear and sadness. By working on our root chakra, through standing poses, we may be confronted with stuck negative emotions being released.

The root chakra is by its nature tamasic. Tamas, the least active of the three gunas*, is inert, slow moving, lazy, and heavy. Only by activating the feet and legs do we begin to channel the enrgy upwards. When we observe the opposing spirals, and energise on them with the breath, the muscles of the body come alive, we become empowered. My right ‘to be’ is reinforced and we feel validated.

By projecting the image of perfect spirals emanating from the feet and hands, wrapping around the body, it becomes clear where there are imperfections. Where is the shadow? Where am I holding on whenI should be letting go? What in my aura needs more recognition? By visualising the spirals inherent in our sacred geometry we are able to cultivate the sensation of enlightenment. When we are in perfect balance, we feel at ease and can more readily observe how the spirit is moving through the body’s space. The double helices literally reveal the matrix of the body connecting the earth to the body to the spirit.

*gunas are the three primordial forces of the universe. They comprise tamas, rajas, and sattva: Inertia, activity and purity.

All Are One

7 – 1

The final in a series of fourteen practices, this moonth’s routine is all about activating sushumna nadi – from the tips of the toes to the crown of the head. Reclining hero and tiptoe fish help overcome fear of opening up your aura to the world...

A few days ago, I was listening to a Youtube video about Saint Anandamayi Ma’s teachings. It recounted how she taught the power of our own life’s challenges in teaching us how to be enlightened. ‘Without life we cannot be enlightened’, she said. When we practice yoga and meditation we are trying to carve a space outside of our normal daily lives to reflect back on it, to see how we act in and react to the situations life presents to us. If we often find ourselves craving peace, or a break from the humdrum of daily life, meditation offers us an alternative state of being, a place to grow our awareness.

Finding myself at a loose end, earlier today, I decided to spend some time in meditation. Breath awareness revealed to me some the energetic knots within my aura, literally tying me in knots. I pursue peace, calling on the unknown infinite source within me to take me into the light, to untie the knots that bind me. I become aware of some of the things in my auric space that I may seek to change. After sitting in silence for a further time, I realise I am bound by something that has been troubling me for some time. Still that ballast does not move. The same characters / forces/ archetypes manipulating my energy field do not relent. I learn to distance myself from them. I am reminded of the old prayer ‘Give me serenity to acept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference’.

There is a great sadness inside of me. There is anger, rage even, and fear. I remember Anandamayi Ma and her teaching and I wonder why I have been given this lesson in life. Santam Kaur’s song Heart of the Universe echoes in my mind, ‘there is a space that exists, between us, and around us’. She is singing about the magic of the aura. The aura is a mysterious thing; it surrounds the body in layers; it is made up of semi-invisible ethereal substances that science has yet to comprehend; it contains the chakras; it is transtemporal, it transcends linear time. 

Reverse warrior, inhale the upper arm reaches back stretching front of body open, exhale windmill the arms forward into extended side angle, opposite arm reaches up and over stretching the side of the body open; the body ebbs and flows through space and time

Yoga offers a space to learn about the aura. When we study the seventh and first chakras together, what connects them but the sushumna, the central current that flows from the base of the spine, the root, up to the crown. This energy system connects the the Human Energy Field to the Universal Energy Field. The human body then is a place where the infinite becomes finite. The paramatman becomes the atman. With every breath we are reborn. The individual’s field contracts and expands pulsating on a human level just moments away from the field of oneness.

We can use yoga to cleanse the auric space around us. The chakras that filter energy through the layers of ethereal fields carry messages about what this incarnation is dealing with at the present time. By repeating the same yoga moves everyday and by working on all seven chakras, it is possible to build up a picture, or energetic map of the things that are bringing peace on the one hand, and dischord, or pain on the other.

Our mind cannot transcent three dimensional reality. The closest to infinity we can get is oscillating between that space of zero and one, existence and nothingness, the beginnng of time, the edge of the universe. The human mind struggles to comprehend the things that are beyond three dimensional reality. Although we act out of unconscious places, and we see ourselves and other people react to the invisible unseen things that float in that space between us, we do not know exactly how it works.

In downward facing corpse, the breath slows, deepening with every inhale. From a whisper it builds to a wave crashing on the shore. The shoulders rounded, the head bowed down, the full back of the body open, the ‘will centres’ (1) of chakras, one to seven, surrender. The front of body is held, the ‘feeling centres’ hidden away, cushioned by the bolster… the mind sinks into nothingness

‘We are more than this body and mind, although we have a body and mind, we are something greater’, as the great sages and gurus say. We are both human and universal consciousness. Integrating the two parts is something that a yogi strives to do. How do I unite with the light, with my fellow humans, with my family? It is a huge question and one that has puzzled philosophers for a very long time. Some people like to work with life’s challenge as part of a tradition, they are called ‘people of the book’. Others keep their thoughts to themselves, their spirit is something private never to be talked about. Personally, I enjoy the traditions of old. The ancient wisdom that is written down, offering clues as a way to proceed. 

The light is a facinating subject. Recently I have been especially concerned with its contrast: darkness. I am struck by the self referentiality of meditation, the self reflexivity of consciousness, there is a frame of reference where I step outside myself to see myelf. I know me be being you. By feeling in the darkness, I find myself in light. The infinity of one mirror reflecting another mirror means that, so often, perfect peace evades us, although it holds us, mesmerised, for moments at a time. I clean the mirror of my consciousness, of my human darkness, by seeing through it, by spending time watching me. Through knowing the darkness, by acknowledging pain, illness, separation and suffering I find the light. Pure light is beyond words. 

Darkness is an unavoidable part of life. Each moment has the potential for renewal in light, but we must be content to balance the light with darkness. Our auras are ever changing manifestations of light / ether / energy, sometimes vibrating like starlight, other times casting shadows, all a mystery of our existence. We are each a universe within the universe. Infinity reaches towards infinity. Our flesh and bones are made of earth, water courses through our veins, air fills our lungs, and yet somehow we know we are more. Underneath all that we can see theuniversal energy field of oneness. A space where we are not divided by what embodies us, but where we are all one.

(1) Brennan, B. (1987) Hands of Light. USA and Canada, Bantam Books

The Seventh Chakra and Karma Yoga

Unlike the popular use of the term Karma, which means ‘what goes around come around’, Karma yoga strictly means yoga in action. The world karma derives from the root Kr in Sanskrit meaning ‘to act’, ‘to perform’, ‘to sacrifice’. Another Sanskrit word that I use in a similar context to karma is seva, which means selfless service. Both Sanskrit terms refer to working on your self by devoting your time and effort to someone other than yourself. The Bhagavad Gita particularly advocates selfles service as a way to rid the self of the ego.

There are many ways to dedicate the self to something outside of yourself. This week I am reading ‘How Bad Are Bananas?’. It is a book about how much carbon everything on earth uses up. Obviously it doesn list everything, but it covers a wide range of goods and things we use. Carbon dioxide is emitted by almost everything we consume and the average Brit consumes 12 tonnes of carbon every year. The author suggests taking on a 5 tonne target, and slashing your carbon footprint in half. This would be an example of karma yoga. For me, karma yoga means being vegan. This save a tonne of carbon every year and there are no farm animals kept in captivity to feed me.

By practicing karma yoga we can purifiy our chakras. Chakra one is purified as we get to know the self in a new environment. Chakra two purifies the emotions, how do we come into contact with the other in a giving or even subservient role? Chakra three is opened as we put the needs of others above our own. Sometimes this can be painful and creates tapas, or the feeling of austerity. Chakra four, the heart, is likewise cleansed by serving others before the self, the act of giving can open our hearts to a feeling of generosity and abundance. Chakra five is benefitted by honing our communication skills, getting closer to our true self opens the throat chakra and we can speak with a more authentic voice. Chakra six opens as we encounter new perceptions of the world. How do others see things? How does my perspective change by what I experience? And chakra seven is empowered by the light that we find in others. Universal consciousness means the light of consciousness that is in everyone. How do others face the world? How do they communicate? How do they care for me? 

When we work on one chakra, we work on all the others at the same time. The seventh is at one end of the seven chakras along the spine. It is said to open us to the higher realms of the spiritual universe. This can include discovering higher realms that aren’t widely known about. I have to thank Barabra Brennan for my latest insight from her book Hand of Light. The idea that there is a spiritual reason for all the physcial, emotional and mental problems that we face can be a relief. The world is beyond our understanding, and it is not necessarily anyone’s fault that things are like they are. I find this makes it easier to accept things as they are, and easier to forgive.

Past lives are often associated with the word karma because it is from past lives that we are working out some of the knots that get tied. Astrology can be insightful as to what the themes of this lifetime represent, and what we are working on in this incarnation. In yoga, the philosophy of karma yoga is extended into future lives. In the Islamic faith there is a philosphy whereby if you don’t get to do something in this life, you can leave it to the next life. I treat the idea of my futue lives in a similar vein. If something feels unresolved and is eating up my energy, I say to myself that it needs to get parked for a future life. 

The law of karma affects everyone that you meet, maybe you met them in a past life and in this ife you are working out some unresovled issues, maybe things left unresolved will recur in future lives. Karma has the effect of turning things around. If you feel poor in this life, maybe you were ostentatiously rich in a previous life? Like headstand the ultimate in seventh chakra alignment, karma turns things on its head. Instead of giving, you receive, and vice versa.

Karma yoga, yoga in action, helps to strip down the self by removing the surface level of desires that we automatically function from. What remains as we serve the other? Where are we stuck? Maybe you find yourself asking, Who am I? What makes me tick?

Barabra Brennan states that our life intention, for this life, is held around the head area, close to the seventh chakra. Working on the higer chakras may help activate your innate knowledge of this area.

It is believed that with enough training, a yogi can access information about their past lives, enlightening them as to what remains to be processed in this life. We can function without consciously knowing this information, but it canbe helpful to have a clue. For me, chakra yoga gives me a way in to this awareness. The more I absorb the philosophy of the ancient yogis and the more I focus on each chakra, the more I can tune my body to its life’s course.

The seventh chakra is often overlooked in yoga classes, who wants to teach a class of headstands? There is something scary about approaching the highest chakra. We know so little about it that it can be difficult to teach with the same assurance as say the first chakra when we deal with the physical realm that we can see is right in front of us. It is only by working more on the seventh chakra that I have begun to learn from it, and the books that I read support my growth in that area too. Life is a wonderful, mysterious thing. Too much focus on the higher chakras are somtimes accused of being ungrounding, but through karma yoga we can experience the self in action, action in its true spirit of universal bliss.