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Uhmm, all this flooding around the world, the first week of the year, has gotten me thinking.

How do we prepare for the inner storms?

By knowing yourself, the patterns that throw you off course, weeding the mind on a regular basis, understanding how you are living your Gene Keys in every moment, undergoing a bout of rigorous inquiry, acknowledging as my friend Tanmayo reminds me  “there is no-one outside”,  staring into a fire to relax, buying a new umbrella, attending funerals to appreciate living, and cultivating friendships which help you navigate the same messy puddles of your life with laughter and compassion.

How do we talk, what do we do, what do we read or listen to that keeps us connected to the bigger picture?Do I even know what the bigger picture is? This is someone’s creativity to bring us back to the bigger picture of the resources needed to house us, a summer house made from old palettes, part of the Start Garden Party event held at Clarence House.

I know it happens as I feel transported somewhere else, like I was with two dear colleagues yesterday. I feel more imaginative, expansive and at ease.

I am grateful I have friends and colleagues who can remind me of the larger contribution we naturally make when we show up as ourselves. I’ve been fired up lately and been brought back to the sweetness of life by being in nature, playfully sinking into the larger rhythms of life which energise me.

A lot of emphasis in the past few decades has been placed on the knowing the individual. Yet who I am is so powerfully mirrored and amplified in how and when I connect to the whole: family, friends, colleagues, and nature – peacefully and in conflict.

Having been down with a  cold this week, I am reminded of what happens when I neglect to nurture myself, the challenge reflected in one of my prime Gene Keys, the 37.   What is my body letting go of I wonder? …  I look around and see how many are in need of nurturing and we do not always know how to ask for it. This takes us to the shadowlands of our being. Fortunately our gifts and light are also hidden in the dark as well.

So consider this podcast as a gift to you to nurture your deepest being, the biggest voice of your soul. It may not always be comfortable, but growth often happens when we learn to break free of the tiny fearful voices that hold us back and can be tough cookies. Many thanks to the women I interviewed, for their openness and candour that will inspire others I am sure to open up and move on.

Here are some of the Caribbean women I admire. Hot and sweaty with Jacklyn on my left, hiking with the fittest of them, after having suffered a stroke last year.

DOWNLOAD The Voices of Caribbean Women podcast by Martha Cuffy

Thanks to those women I spoke to from Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Bahamas and Jamaica whose candour and openness allowed this podcast, hopefully the first of a series, to be rich and real. It is not certainly the full picture, but it contains the voices we may fear to speak as they stir the deep.

On this 15 minute  podcast I have also included some exercises which are there to remind you about your richness, depth and commitment to service which has touched the lives of people you may never even know. This is for both men and women.

So on your next tea break, put you feet up, and listen. It is only 15 minutes long.

What women have said already about podcast:

“Helps you to relax and delve deep into your soul. It hits home. It really makes you think. It forces you to sit and think. It enables to bare your soul. Helps you to be more true to yourself than you have ever been. It is that deep. You see what is in it that you are a part of. It is real, profound.”

“It was very good. So much there, what you had to say. Very close to home”.

Last Saturday I was given the opportunity to do a taster of my Gene Keys work to the Dominican public during the annual Health and Wellness Expo, held on University of West Indies grounds.

People came up to my table as some had heard me on the radio talk about how your attitude affects your DNA, and how recent research in epigenetics supports the wisdom of the ancients: your consciousness creates your reality. Here I am below with the Minister of Tourism and Legal Affair, Ian Douglas MP.

Now how do you give a taster in only 45 minutes? Well I kept on asking this question until one morning in bed last week the answer just appeared: lay out the prime gifts of Dominica. I had already created Dominica’s profile in the run-up to the elections last year. Now I could share some of what I found fascinating about this process. It got Dominicans engaged, quite emotively at times, as to whether Dominica, my imaginary 31 year old client, was really living out the potential of her gifts. It was great to observe them gathered round her gifts and descriptions laid out on the floor in a sequence.

And today I gave an activation session to someone I met from that event in the Botanical Gardens, surrounded by bamboo trees. Nature is a potent remedy of how we can bloom if we have the right soil, and the right quantities of sunshine and rain.

2-7 May saw the first Gene Keys retreat, set in the spacious acrage of Mount Madonna Center, near Santa Cruz California. There were 86 of us in attendance, excited, nervous, and grateful for the opportunity to meet in the flesh many people we have gotten to know virtually through the 4 month virtual Deep Dive Retreat.

Well what did we do? The focus was on acquainting us and deepening our awareness of the ever more subtle layers of the body: physical, astral, mental layers and beyond. We did belly work which was profound in its simplicity.

I felt  loved and pampered by so many. I was given such great jewellery as gifts and there are so many talented bodyworkers in the group, you could be sure to find someone to massage you. My foot massage on my weary feet were just what I needed after extreme shift in temperature from the Caribbean.

Just where would you be without it? Especially just before a trip? (I am getting ready to attend the Gene keys retreat in California.

Relaxed.

Trusting that you are enough, and have done enough to attract in the next career move, as you trace back all the steps that have led up to that point.

But that is a quiet inner place. Not very dramatic, makes dull dinner conversation and does not attract followers.

So what are you choosing..

One of the biggest challenges in changing any aspect of your life, is not in deciding what to do next , but becoming painfully aware of the extent to which you have steered the ship of your life with the opinions of your parents, teachers, and peers, and rarely with the deepest and most authentic voice of your soul…

So, if you were to punch in “my soul’s calling” into your Spiritual Sat Nav, what route would it display?

Please leave your responses in the comment box below.I have a few but would like to hear yours.