Brooke West’s brave account of the stages of her transformation journey clearly shows how there was deep meaning for her in the behaviour that was deemed “madness”.

Brooke describes her emergence through trauma, to re-empowering herself to become a channel for the flow of life:

#EmergingProud is important to help eradicate isolation and to offer support.

Things were really bad in my family and I couldn’t scream loudly enough for help.

No one had been listening to our traumas and, if they did, they were pushed away for fear of the sandcastle tumbling… until I tumbled into Wonderland. My older sister, D’Arcy, was addicted, unwell, eventually suicided.

~~

When I become neutral about thoughts, witnessing, noticing, without categorizing or judging, my spiritual connection strengthens.

Yogas chitta vritti nirodha – Yoga Sutra 1:2 – Yoga neutralizes the whirlpools of feeling.

I was raised as a Christian Scientist: Think yourself well.

Alchemy: From Psychosis to Prescience

So I thought about how different things could be…
I hated my university and the student loan. I wanted curly hair. I did not want to be the wife or mother to the five babies about whom my jock boyfriend dreamed – not me.
I did not want to live.

So

I spent all my money at a toy store to make up for the toys I never got.

I slept with strangers to make up for loving, unfulfilled.

I wanted to wear white and garden nonstop because it felt productive and calming:

Moments of mindfulness, completely absorbed, peaceful, beyond time, in the garden

With and as Spirit

So

I broke up with him

I quit university

I gardened in white

I walked around in my linen dresses carrying a stone the size of a prayer book in my hands, checked the fuck out, content.

Taking charge of my own life, finally happy! Family freaked out.

I was forcibly hospitalized and medicated.
I was impotent, confirmed in solitary confinement. For days. Alone.

Those days, locked in that cell, I passed some of the time by following a rainbow across the wall, my face pressed to cool, thickly painted cinderblock as my sole comfort. A glass block formed a small, opaque window that connected me to the rhythms of time and the magic of Light and nature, saving me from madness inside of madness.

I promised to myself that, if I survived, I would find gratitude and God and a rainbow every day.
The hospital released an activist.

~~

Now a Yoga therapist, initiated into a Yoga meditation tradition, as all Kriyaban initiates are, wearing white, my Yoga work, practice, and consistent, purifying, daily rhythms provide a constellation of stability, impossible to segregate.

I forgive every day.

And I got what I wanted:

Although I was drugged and made to go back to school and into debt I earned a degree horticulturist, a trained gardener.

Medication caused my hair to fall out!

It grew back in curly!

Alchemizing the medication which disabled me, my student loan debt was forgiven!

I keep no more selfish boyfriends, having found the love of my life in a woman!

I lead meditation and spiritual emergence self-help support groups!

I pray today for an eco-village life, agrarian, principled, contemplative.

I am more psychic today than ever. I move electricity. Everything I need comes to me, as promised by the siddhis in Yoga lore.
I am powerful because Life flows through me

and Light

Sound

Joy

Love

Peace

and

Wisdom

Just like it flows through you.

AUM

https://brookewestyoga.com

Thank you Brooke, for daring to be unashamedly, authentically who you were born to be ❤

I wanted to share an exciting news update with you all… it seems that the time for a shift really is nigh; and that is certainly cause for a celebration.

Yesterday I had a call with a Danish Masters student writing her qualitative research thesis in ‘Communication and Health Promotion’ based on the stories in the #Emerging Proud campaign book. 

The study uses a spiritual narrative to explain patterns and stages of a well established ‘transformational learning theory’, to demonstrate that, although unique, these experiences follow universal patterns from a catalyst experience to the transformation of recovery.

Anne- Kirstine will be interviewed about her research very soon – watch out for that!

The fact that the #Emerging Proud accounts will be documented in this way is exciting in itself, but interestingly enough on the very same day I was contacted by a UK- based Psychologist to inform me of a document due for release which also demonstrates ‘meaningful patterns in emotional distress’, which is set to be ground- breaking in providing an alternative paradigm to understand mental health crises beyond the bio- medical model paradigm.

This shift in the way the Western world views mental distress is potentially the marker of an historically significant change; a positive transformation for humanity.

A press release is in edit and will soon be winging its way to the broadsheets. The time is now; it’s time to proudly step out of the spiritual closet and step onto the new frontier…

Dr Mick Collins, a Mental Health Practitioner and ‘Experiencer’ of spiritual emergence, explains why he feels the #Emerging Proud campaign is so important:

If you’d like to talk part in exciting conversations that are going to lead to tangible actions on the 12th May, then please join us. You can book tickets HERE for the London event, or click HERE for other locations or to access the FILM as it launches. 

Unfortunately Lorna’s story is not uncommon; turning to drugs and alcohol as a ‘sensitive’ to repress ‘unusual’ experiences in childhood that are not acknowledged, is said to be a major cause of depression and suicidal tendencies in later life. Thankfully Lorna’s sudden ‘awakening’  shook her back onto a path of rediscovery, and then recovery. Here Lorna bravely bares all in order to help others who may be suffering in silence:

“I would class my-self as being a psychiatric escapee after years of being in and around environments where it was ‘normal’ to drink copious amounts of alcohol.

I drank to fit in with others as an extreme people pleaser and co dependant person who lost the ability to recognise her own needs through peer pressure of being told what she was seeing and feeling were not true. All this in childhood.

All this led me into self-sabotage after the death of loved ones, 3 children and a broken marriage and finally a serious car accident left my body broken and having to rely on others who could not see my needs and I became less and less able to know what they were also.

After turning more to alcohol and drugs I came to the point of believing that taking my own life would be of benefit to all around me and to ease my inner conflict.

Through synchronicities I was led into a self-help support group where one night while listening to soothing music and feeling very calm and happy lying on my sofa I had a profound experience of being out of my body and knowing all was completely blissful at the simultaneous moment of being in pure hell. I felt I was dying and being re-born at the same time!

The next day I stepped out of my door to a new world of colour and felt pure Love for everyone! I could not sustain the feeling though..

It sent me down a spiritual seeking path and I’ve had to delve deep into my inner worlds where I realised that I also had been blessed not to have been sectioned due to extreme neurotic and sometimes psychotic behaviours, to a lesser or greater degree.  I had been put on most anti-depressants available over the years and demanded to have Valium to slow my racing head from bursting! I only recall the doctor once saying it may be beneficial for me to see a psychiatrist but I refused as I had a relative under the mental health umbrella and I’d seen what could happen there…

Once I realised my behaviours had become so unstable and the damage I had caused to others, especially my three daughters, the guilt and shame were unbearable at times but again I felt I was being loved and guided by ‘something’ within me that was telling me I would come through and then help others to their freedom.

I believe this was a spiritual emergence over the years and I can relate to people who have had similar experiences all to that greater or lesser degree. I’ve had mystical and magical times and have been blessed to have friends who have supported me through the dark times.

I now feel balanced within, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and have never felt so physically well.”

Thank you Lorna, for #Emerging Proud, and for bringing the gifts of your authentic self back into the world ❤

I am delighted and so grateful that three more fabulous ‘supporters’ have joined to cheer on #Emerging Proud in the last week!

The ‘Only Us’ campaign, which aims to reconnect us as simply ‘human’, says;

“When we seperate ourselves and imagine humanity divided into two different groups we hurt those labelled as sick, ill, even mad. We allow stigma, prejudice and exclusion to ruin potentially good and creative lives. But we also hurt ourselves, because we stress ourselves out with false smiles and suppression of our own vulnerabilities. Don’t be afraid of your vulnerability, your sensitivity, your ‘mad’ side. Be bold, and if you’ve ever experienced a mental health issue (diagnosed or not) or want to stand alongside those who have, get yourself a smiley teary badge and spread the message!”

Get your Only Us campaign badge here

You can follow Only Us on Twitter @OnlyUscampaign

We will hear more about ‘Healing Voices’ and their ‘Healing Communities’ campaign very soon, but to find out more about their powerful movie before it premieres on 2nd May 2017, CLICK HERE 

And last, but certainly not least, thanks to our fabulous Italian colleagues, the Integral Transpersonal Institute in Milan is also on board to spread the message. To find out about their training, therapy and research work, CLICK HERE

The only way to create change is together…and the tide is turning towards the new paradigm. If you are a representative of, or know of an organisation that might like to join, please CONTACT ME; thank you ❤

Paula describes her journey so far, and the fears associated with ‘waking up’ in the Western world at present…

“After coming back from researching ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon rainforest, I started reading a lot of different philosophies related to consciousness and spirituality. I wanted to start practicing what I’d been reading so sometime in August/September I decided to go on a “mental cleanse”, which meant that I would unplug from all forms of media including TV, radio, social media, and so on. In addition, I practiced mindfulness throughout the day and deep meditation at night.

The meditations became so intense that I could start feeling similar yet subtler states to what I had experienced in Peru during some ayahuasca ceremonies. In particular, I was able to initiate a vibrational state in which I was in direct contact with what I could only describe as my light body. I would play certain sound vibrations or frequencies that I could tap into and that would instantly activate my “light body”. The meditations leading up to my “psychosis” episodes were most intense, for example I would be so deep in that state and if I moved, I could see/feel all of my cells light up a variety of colours.

One day I was at work I looked at some fractal pictures and just by looking at those fractals was enough to make me feel the vibrations in my body that I had been feeling the night before. I combined that with shamanic music and the vibrations started getting more intense. At first I thought it was amazing that I had the ability to initiate these states so easily, but then it started to get too intense and I didn’t know how to make it stop. Surges of energy overcome me and all of a sudden I felt like I was on psychedelics. This went on for 5 days straight and my biggest fear was that I would never be able to return to ordinary waking consciousness.

The best way that I could describe it is that everything I experienced became magnified and my senses became so sensitive. I could feel people’s voices as vibrations inside of my body, I could see that people looked the way they did because of their past experiences, I could hear the electricity running through electrical sockets, I could smell what I had never been able to smell before. Moments of joy were ecstatic, but moments of fear and paranoia were hell—everything was intensified. At night I could physically feel my chakras open up and I would have extremely vivid dreams. I woke myself up one night and I saw a grid of what I could only describe as the place where all possibilities emanate from. I had to isolate myself this whole week because I did not want to feel so much, especially in public spaces. I was afraid that no one would be able to understand what I went through so I did not tell anyone. And as much as I know the potential of having a spiritual awakening, I am afraid to go that deep again living in the culture that we do with all of its misunderstandings and without a teacher of some sort.”

Thank you Paula, for sharing so honestly with us; this fear is the very reason we need to develop a safer world in which such experiences can be spoken about and more appropriately supported ❤