Being Mothered

Shape shifting

"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.

There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice.

What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other. But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What if you had no long snakey tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?

The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature.

More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estés - Women who run with the wolves: myths and stories of the wild woman archetype

Journal

LET YOUR DESERT BLOOM

Happy Summer Solstice to all you beauties! A time of the planet tilting those of us in the North...

Time to rewire and rev up your inner witch

Women who dream of flying are connecting back to their innate desire to be free and connected to their birthright of the numinous. Supernatural flying women date back from prehistoric times when people postulated the radical divide between earth and sky. We created myths and rituals to bridge this separation, incense and fire to create smoke to connect the earth to the heavens and evoke spirit. Women have always flown to take refuge from the concretised captivity of earth's gravity and the mental plane that, when overly lived in, constrains and constricts.

The Ethereal News: CULTIVATING EROS - 'IT FEELS RIGHT TO ME'

“Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strengt...

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against Reality - Lewis Caroll

Did you know that In our heavens we mostly have to relate to masculine archetypes? Think of...

Cultivating our inner tribe

Governments and institutions need to come together to find common ground, to collaborate, to understand and empathise with, whether that's the government departments of your body, mind, heart, spirit and soul or external governments in the world right now....we need a new song for March....crank up some Sister Sledge and get kitchen dancing with your tribe....love of your inner world will save the day:

Learn + enjoy the process of becoming

'Please hold me during this time. My transition, my awakening is precious and sacred. Please move me slowly and lovingly into newness and allow me to stretch my wings and feel into new spaces within me without judgment or fear.'

The Good, the Bad, and the Wild

A client came to me saying she had a dream where her best friend was flirting with her boyfriend in a very provocative way and as she watched the scene unfold she felt strangely voyeuristic to it and turned on. And the more her man was turned on the greater she felt it amplified in her too. We talked about her own sex life, what she liked/didn't, whether she initiated, role played etc.

Couples Work

But the discord is where the magic is, it’s where the friction is saying ‘notice this’, ‘deal with this’ ‘bring it to the forefront for your combined and individual growth.

The importance of dreaming

Here's a beautiful rounded example of what we mean in this world of 'working on ourselves' or doi...

Helping women to help themselves

Opening to Pandora's box

The spinning Wheel of Life and how to navigate it's highs and lows

useful stuff we don't learn at school We often think we are on a straight line trajectory - birth...

Some Information about Jane

Jane Kersel is recognised as one of the most distinguished embodied movement, yoga and consciousness teacher in London. She is a teacher’s teacher and was a much loved teacher at The Life Centre, Yoga Campus, The Bio-medical Trust + Triyoga (where she trail-blazed and invented their Hot yoga offering and the design of their studios). Now she works in her new vessel the Ethereal Gym teaching consciousness through the visceral body and private one to one and couples consultations sharing jungian analysis techniques and healing modalities.

My Philosophy and intention for all who study with me

to see life as a spiritual investment as much a material one - invest in love, harmony, inspiration, creativity, beauty
to commit to our own happiness - not waiting for someone else to sort things for us
to create rapture - channeling venus energy - to live as the dream of the lover and mystic
to let go of the patriarchal model and ask for the dream

Aphrodite

At that moment, the door to my studio opened as if a gust of wind had gotten behind it (this so often happens when working with spirit).

We both smiled, it was as if her lover had walked into the room there and then, his energy had arrived.

Move

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions.....

The way to do is to be

There is no need to run outside.......

Creating space

It’s important in our work together that we never over-ride these ‘primary’ parts - the parts of us that are out there in the world functioning and getting things done. However, without the understanding and integration of both of these polarities - the doing with the being, the feeling with the thinking etc

A useful perspective

360 degree health - mental, physical, emotional, physiological, spiritual, energetic To discove...

creating inner space

To observe and do shadow work, we need the experience of being centered in a higher self. That is why our spiritual practice is so pivotal. Without space inside our minds to observe forbidden feelings and behaviors, they take over. When they do, we feel controlled and overshadowed by them.