Beauty & Bone Podcast

“Fire calls us to reveal our true nature, to open to the unbearable beauty of creation, to riskthe heartbreak of loss in order to love the world more deeply.”- Lorie Eve Dechar

Hello friends,

I’m really looking forward to sharing this episode of the Element Sessions with you. As we step across into the summer season we are exploring the FIRE element in Chinese medicine. Last week I shared a Deep Dive into the FIRE element which you can catch up on using the link at the end of this post, plus as a paid...

This episode of the Element Sessions podcast uses the WOOD Element as a jumping off point for a conversation around ANGER.

In Chinese Medicine each of the Five Elements has an emotion connected to it, and for the WOOD element (which is also connected to the season of Spring that we are stepping into right now on this side of the globe) the emotion is ANGER.

There is no emotion that does not have its place, and there are times when appropriate anger is a really important catalysing force. There is also, from a Chinese...

Hello friends and welcome to week 2 of our REST series.

This week, I’m delighted to share with you a conversation I had recently with coach, mentor and writer Lauren Barber about Human Design. I wanted to share with you my experiences of discovering and integrating this powerful way of understanding our energy into my life, and have Lauren explain to us what Human Design is, how it works and how it can be useful for us in terms of being more easeful in our lives.

It felt really appropriate to have this conversation during th...

Hello friends,

The morning after the conversation I had with Easkey Britton about the power of WATER for the Element Sessions she emailed me to say that she had woken with a sense she wanted to share a little more with us all around the healing and holding power of water when it comes to grief and loss.

She offered to share with us a practical embodiment practice, a water ritual, as a way to honour our loss and express our grief, a way to be with our heartbreak, which has been immense for us...

The Element Sessions Podcast | WATER with Dr Easkey Britton

I recorded this conversation with writer, big wave surfer & social ecologist Dr.Easkey Britton a number of weeks ago. I can honestly say that the time since I spoke with her has been different. I’ve engaged with the water around me in a different way, I’ve placed myself in and beside bodies of water more often, I’ve thought about my relationship to water, within myself and, rippling out, within the planet we call home, in a deeper, more present way. I am so excited to share...

Hi friends,

{ words below are mostly penned by the wondrous wordsmith Lindsay Johnstone ! }We wanted to get this out to you ASAP so you can dig in over the weekend. This is the second part of our chat inspired by All Fours by Miranda July, which far more famous women than us implore you to read :

We talk about leaning in to the messiness of midlife; fear of what’s going on inside our bodies; our relationship to our sexual bodies and how midlife offers us an opportunity to (re)discover who we are and wh...

Hello dear friends,

I’m sending this video by way of both introduction, and also as a way of telling you a little more about why I’m here on Substack, what my intentions for the beauty & bone community are and most importantly how I want this space to feel.

I’ve a special offer running until midnight tonight for my membership (GMT, Nov 9). The offer is for €20 a year for as long as you subscribe versus the usual €50. I will be putting my prices up next year (but you’ll still pay €20).

To get more of...

OK, let’s dive in to the second spiral of the Element Sessions, which is exploring

M E T A L

The Metal Element is connected to the season of Autumn, to a shedding, releasing, letting go. It is a deeply powerful time of the year. It was said in ancient China that the emperor would wait until Metal season to decide on which prisoners were to be release and which executed, because there was the greatest access to discernment and truth at this time. It is a a time of release, of return, of re...

Myself, Caro Giles, Lindsay Johnstone and Chloe George thoroughly enjoyed this thought-provoking chat, with a wonderful gathering of well over 30 of you, about how we are feeling at this wild time of mid-life.

We’d all read and adored Miranda July’s All Fours, and thought it would be a wonderful spring board from which to explore so many of the experiences we find ourselves having in our 40’s.

We spoke candidly about how we are feeling in our bodies now in our 40’s, what we are not ready to let go of, what we are grie...

I started taking HRT about two months ago. I was quite cross about starting to take it. I felt a little ashamed about it. A little bit like I’d failed. I’m also feeling remarkably, annoyingly, pretty great on it. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t piss me off quite a bit.

A voice recording of a post in which I explain why....

Hi dear friends, Welcome to the second conversation in this series of slow seasonal explorations of the five elements : The Element Sessions.

Today, I’m sharing, for all subscribers, a glorious conversation I had with writer, mother, grower and holder Kerri ní Dochartaigh. (More on this below!)

Next Tuesday morning I’ll be holding a live workshop and journalling session focussing on the element of EARTH. I’m so looking forward to putting some faces to names and meeting some of you in person. If you are curious about the offering but not yet a paid su...

I’m delighted to welcome you to The Element Sessions.

If you would like to follow along with this year long gentle exploration of the elements, please subscribe to my Substack beauty and bone.

I’m thinking of these slow, seasonal sessions as small pitstops in our year.

𖥸 Ways to pause, take a breath, take a look around.𖥸 See what is working for us, reflect on what is not.𖥸 Connect to different fundamental aspects of ourselves.𖥸 Be curious about what is challenging for us, absorb what has been good.𖥸 Be in community with other like-minded p...

In April 2020, at the age of forty one, I had a hysterectomy. It had been a long time coming. I’d been told at age thirty, after I’d had two big operations to remove aggressive fibroids from in, on and around my uterus, that I would probably need to have my womb removed at some later stage. The surgeries I had back then were in many ways a stop-gap, a way of holding back time long enough for me to be able to try and conceive. Which in and of itself seemed like a long shot – post the two op...

One evening, about six months before I decided to say yes to a hysterectomy that had been recommended to me for some time (for constant, teeth grating, breath taking pain, collossal amounts of blood, bloating, pain during sex, & more), I got into bed beside my husband, we opened the laptop and we watched a documentary about an octopus. The film charted a relationship that unfolded between a small, common octopus and a man struggling to make sense of his life. Over the period of a year, the octopus and the man formed a remarkable bond with each other, deep...

Can I be deeply honest with you for a moment? I am becoming less and less interested in talking about motherhood. Which, yes, I realise is a little strange for someone who has talked about little else on her socials for the last couple of years…

Let me explain.

As humans we naturally are drawn to a pack, to a ‘tribe’ - and motherhood is no different. It is comforting to feel seen and recognised and part of a community that is just like you.

But there are problems with this too.

For...

In this conversation we talk about ::* Amy’s own story of realising that she could no long manage to continue to be the same woman she was before having her children and how it took a near pregnancy loss for her to realise that she needed to begin to let go of much she had held on to for so long* How she searched for and did not find an explanation for the massive changes she felt she was going through as a mother

Amy also shares some incredible insights in to ::* why it is that so ma...