“I realised that the way I had been skiing was a reflection of my life.” This was co-author Robert Kriegel’s epiphany, but they could have just as well have been my words. Inner Skiing is full of anecdotes such as these, making it, the right book for me but more importantly at the right time. It’s been sitting unread on my shelf for a couple of years all the while I have been wrestling with why I just can’t seem to “get” skiing. I have recently come back from Switzerland on a high because for the first time I skied beyond my fear to achieve new limits.  And what’s more, I enjoyed the whole experience, not just the fresh Air, fun friends and coffee stops. Until I read Inner Skiing—after the event—I did not know why or how such a transformation had occurred. So with renewed enthusiasm, I grabbed the book off my shelf to see if it had any answers. The timing was impeccable. I know now that had I read this book before I had experienced my own epiphany on a subject that has challenged me for two decades I would not have been [...]

The flat downstairs has a magnolia tree, and every year around this time pale pink buds start to pierce their way through hoping to announce the onset of Spring. When I see this starting to happen I always get a sense of hope and Happiness. Against a bright blue sky, each day the walk to work is lined with magnolia trees and cherry blossoms, whose delicate silky petals flutter to the ground like flakes of snow, lifting the spirits for the day unfolding. In the world of interior design, Magnolia coloured paint is harmless shade of cream more yellow than pink and often used to give a room a neutral clean feeling ahead of a potential sale. Magnolia as a paint hue is not seen as an adventurous colour, but I have often wondered what the meaning of the magnolia flower is. It turns out that the Chinese see this flower as a Symbol for Self-esteem and Spring. The pink hue inspired the idea of the delicate and the feminine. Magnolia grandiflora is for those lacking self-appreciation or belief in themselves; feeling undeserving, according to Claire Harvey author of The New Encyclopedia of Flower Remedies. As a remedy, [...]

The dangers of looking too hard for meaning in signs is that it is easy in this chaotic sense-numbing world to miss the obvious truth. The more I study the tools to interpret the signs, the more I realise that if messages are important they find a way of reaching their destination, irrespective of how good one is at translating them. At its most extreme if one is persistently not listening, a message can be delivered in the form of an accidence or illness. The tale of The Raven started with a tall dark handsome, but married man. Given the lesson I learned with The Biker, even I did not need Divination tools to conclude: “Don’t go there.”   Despite this, however, The Raven kept turning up in my life—at a charity event, in a lucid Dream, and even just walking down the street—all making me ever so slightly wonder if, perhaps I was missing some bigger message. By nick-naming him The Raven, I was subconsciously Calling on the raven as a power animal to give me clarity on this recurring situation. “Call on a raven when you need to clarify your Intention about a task, [...]

The other day as I headed off to what I thought was a business drink, I found myself at a local gathering of South Indian Brahmins. From just my surname they embraced me as if I were their own and proceeded to ask me questions about my father and his family that I absolutely no clue about. The funny thing was that the more names I threw out at them about family I had vaguely heard of, the more they knew who I was and where my father came from than I did. Today is dad’s birthday and he would have been would have been 76. As I sit here reflecting on this local TamBrahm community, I realise how little I know of dad’s life, his world and how and where he grew up. While I realise no good can come of regretting The Father of All Assumptions I know it has shaped my life for the last 10 years and its time for this cycle to end. This closely knit group with Tamil Nadu origins filled my head with stories of the types of people my family would have been and the fact that they would have been [...]

I never thought I would live to hear myself say that I love to play with numbers. In the mathematical format, numbers and I are like vampires and garlic. But when I discovered Numerology and the idea that you can play with numbers to give you a clue to personality, path and purpose, I was in my element. I first met Sonia Ducie, author of Do It Yourself Numerology on a day-long workshop at The College of Psychic Studies in 2009, but I had read my way through the Thorsons Principles of Numerology, which she wrote, long before then. Sonia, the daughter of a mathematician who would talk about mathematics at breakfast, started her love affair with numbers by mistake, she recalled when I first met her. Mistake or not, she has now been practising for nearly 20 years. For Sonia numerology is her way to connect to her psychic side. Most practitioners of the esoteric arts will use numerology as part of their divinatory practise whether they read palms, the Tarot, or are simply practising Feng Shui. According to Sonia, the power and energy in numbers is a fundamental force in the cycle of life. True or not, [...]

I really must stop goading the universe. The other day I was feeling happy and serene, tapping away at the article on The Four Principles of Spirituality feeling that everything was in balance and exactly where it should be when a triple whammy hit in one week. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said to a friend as a joke, “If I carry on like this I will run out of challenges to write about in The Life Detective.” How arrogant can I be? No-one ever stops learning; actively or passively, the lessons keep on coming. One of the key’s to my Happiness is staying physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit, so that my recovery rate these days is so much faster than in the past. It all started with my nascent Yoga journey: a whole 28 yoga classes since October in fact. I was feeling rather happy with my new routine of yoga twice, sometimes three times, a week. I discovered that I had let go of the past as evidenced when Synchronicity kindly re-introduced two old friends, now since married to each other, to a local Friday yoga class I had discovered. [...]

One of my guilty pleasures on a Sunday is to read Red Magazine from cover to cover before doing anything else. This particular luxury happens once a month, but today’s little indulgence it has thrown me into a state of comic cosmic confusion. And that is even before allow myself to consider the rumours of Ophiuchus, a potential 13th sign in the Zodiac. I like to read the magazine in the month I am in, even though it arrives the month before, and is likely to have been written even before that. So today I am reading February’s Red that arrived in early January. Normally this little eccentricity saves me from shopping as all the special offers are about to expire (sorry Red editors), but now I am wondering if this habit might have to change.  Another little custom I have is to race straight to the horoscopes, despite being fully aware that magazine zodiacs are likely to be more Barnum Effect than life predictions specifically meant for me. Something inside me still likes to believe that there is something quite important housed in the alignment of the stars in relation to the Earth at a [...]

Karma, which is derived from the Sanskrit kri, means to do and at its most basic level karma simply means action, although it has come to imply both action and reaction.

Yin yang is a concept of Chinese philosophy used to describe interdependence and inter connectedness of opposite but complementary forces.

Autumn is a time of change; it is one of my favourite seasons. Change for all and in particular change for me, and other Librans. Outside it is a time of changing colours of leaves, shrinking daylight, conkers, a new moon and lovely warm woolly jumpers: a good excuse to curl up by the Fire after a brisk walk in the woods. Inside, autumn it is about letting go of what was. It is about releasing what is no longer relevant to create space for what will come. In nature the leaves go brown as the green chlorophyll disappears leaving behind the yellow and orange colors that were always there, or in the case of leaves, such as those from oak trees, the colour is made from waste that is left behind in the leaves. Either way the tree lets go of leaves and toxins in the autumn. Autumn Equinox, also known as Mabon or Harvest Home, is celebrated, especially by Pagans reflecting on the past season. The equinox is when day and night are of equal duration before the descent into increasing darkness. Astrologers recognise this as the date the sun enters the sign [...]