I follow a path of pagan spirituality, but I was brought up a Catholic, developing a strong connection with Our Lady, whom I now recognise as my first contact with the Goddess. Since the age of thirteen, I earnestly studied all aspects of the esoteric, from reincarnation to astrology. I have always sensed the presence of spirit beings, often hearing their voices, or seeing words written by them in my mind.

The material world that we are all so absorbed in, is such a small part of the true picture! Believe this, and it gives your existence meaning and purpose, and everything will go more smoothly!  This is one of the messages I try to convey to make this world a happier place.

Like so many of us, all my life I have been aware of the spirit world.  I go through my days knowing that our accepted view of ‘reality’ is mostly illusion - although it is a very powerful illusion, that can cause us much unhappiness and confusion.  I am aware of the power of Spirit in my daily life, causing events and opportunities to fall into a pattern.  In my work, I call on my spirit guides for support, protection and inspiration, and I rely a great deal on my intuition in all I do.

I’m a counsellor, hypnotherapist, astrologer, Reiki master and EFT practitioner. I also offer Indian Head Massage, usually as part of a general relaxation package that includes creative visualisation and Reiki.  A lot of my work is done via Zoom or FaceTime, and I regularly give talks on the subjects I write about.  I also do broadcasts, currently with BBC Radio Gloucester, and I write a monthly astrology column in Spirit and Destiny magazine.

In my therapies and writing, I would like to call to awakening hearts to see wider, more inclusive perspectives, to question materialistic dogmas, to find acceptance, peace and a deep connection with Spirit.  It is vitally important to me that the work I do helps others on their journey, opening the way to their own spiritual meaning.

The message of the Goddess in particular has never been more urgently needed, and it is one of the main subjects I write about. I feel that the idea of a female deity is deeply necessary, for it brings more gentle, less judgmental and more inclusive perspectives, emphasising the importance of personal experience and belief. Does it matter that God is usually called ‘He’? I would say it does, very much, for that simple pronoun speaks volumes.

We all need to realise we are co-creators of our destiny, to own our power and use it well.  Astrology can help us with this, making us feel connected to a much wider reality, and putting our life experiences into perspective.  One of the many truths taught by astrology is that ‘this too shall pass’ - very encouraging when you are going through a dark phase and can see that when a certain planet moves from its troublesome position you will feel better. 

While my first two sons were growing up, I decided to formalise my astrological knowledge and learnt astrology with the Faculty of Astrological Studies.  I gained their Diploma, Gold Medal and Veritas Award in 1989.  At the same time, I trained as a counsellor with the Gloucestershire Counselling Service, completing my post-graduate placement in 1993.

I also trained as a hypnotherapist with the South Worcestershire College of Hypnotherapy.  In the same decade, I became a Third Degree Wiccan High Priestess.  Since then, I have also become a Reiki Master, qualified in EFT and gained an MA in Cultural Cosmology.  I live in the Cotswolds where I run a coven and also participate as a Druid, with my Druid husband. 

I have written over 50 books on astrology, paganism, shamanism, herbs, crystals, psychic protection, spirit guides, vampires, fairies, graphology, myths and Earth Mysteries.

Magazine features and columns have followed, including the ‘Stars’ page for Woman and other magazines.  I now write regularly for Kindred Spirit, and Spirit & Destiny magazines, while practicing as a therapist.  

My name used to be Teresa Moorey and I've written lots of other books under that name.  These include: 'The Fairy Bible' 'The Numerology Bible' ‘Working with Spirit Guides' 'Working with Psychic Protection' 'Working with Hypnotherapy' 'Secrets of Moon Astrology' 'Silver Moon' and 'Witchcraft, a Beginners' Guide'. 

The Little Book of Nature Blessings, is my latest book.  In it I write about the blessings of the Sun, Moon, the four elements, trees, flowers, animals, waterways and the sea.  What I write flows from instinct.  I sit at my desk and go into a dream space, and in that place the words come.  Simple practices can help you get to know yourself better, find nourishment for your soul and share in the delight and satisfaction that's offered to us all, for free.

You can read myths that bring to life the magic in nature, be taken into another world through visualisation, and encourage dynamic change with short rituals. Happiness, relaxation and greater meaning in life can be found for all of us. This is a message I wanted to spread in this book.

Moon Astrology has been re-released by Octopus/Godsfield, and in it you can find out how to align with the moon, for wisdom and self-empowerment, understanding how your moon sign affects you, encouraging you to bring your life into harmony with cosmic cycles.

There are two subjects that have played a major role in my life: art and spiritual experience. Both have remained with me, growing in importance and frequency as the years have gone by. My first experiences between the ages of six and seven featured episodes of sleep paralysis, clairaudience, and clairsentience. I took an inquisitive interest into these strange experiences, and after school I would study at the local library, reading through books regarding the paranormal.

At the age of nine, I tragically lost my best friend and neighbour, and from that moment on we began experiencing unusual amounts of paranormal activity at home. Later in my teenage years, I began seeing spirit clearly, and over the decades I have spoken at length about the spirits I've encountered. There is never one kind, and they always appear in different ways, sometimes rather out of context.

In my twenties, I was invited into various private spiritual development groups by other established mediums that I had met. However, it was during my years at university that I was able to fully explore my past, and began combining it within my love for creating art. My art processes from childhood have expressed different styles of automatism, and over the years I have developed in my own unique approach and style, combining psychic mediumship with art production. My work expresses itself mainly through trance-based spiritual contact with the help of spirit guides. This technique I hid for many years under the guise of surrealism.

During my development, I have constantly pushed experimentation in my works, to disconnect them from myself and what I define as my ego conscious mind. This I believe has allowed the higher energies to more easily flow through me to express themselves. My spiritual drawings and automatic writings begin with my entering a trance-like state in which I allow words and faces to appear, emerging from those energies I sense that want to be heard and seen. The drawings themselves develop from automatic writing, and have an almost 3D depth to them, often including very detailed and delicate imagery that I begin to perceive within the automatic marks made. I have related these deep environments that spirit show themselves through as having dimensions and energies within them that we don't see or understand. My works are often mixed media, depending on my process as the automatist. Over time, I often re-visit my automatic drawings, and after some reflection, I may add to the works. Due to this process, I rarely refer to my works as having reached a definitive completion.

My automatism paintings are often created by igniting chemicals, and by doing this I have found that spirit imagery transpires. I reflect on the imagery, and work further details into the paintings with a grisaille technique. When drawing, I usually use traditional materials such as pencils, erasers and various paper weights. My process has refined and developed with my drawings and automatic writings in that I freely allow myself to be in a trance state, but never to the point of loss of self. I have recently been informed that the balance tends to be myself and the spirit working together on a 50/50 basis. I usually prefer to work in isolated locations, away from any distractions, but lately I have found I can fall into a receptive state almost anywhere, and at a rapid rate.

As for the future, my work with spirit continues to deepen, exploring ever more puzzling imagery. I feel that with each work I create, I am edging towards something ever more profound, and I sense that the progression of my works reflects this feeling. Spiritually, I meet different guides ever more clearly.

I recently had archived works on show at The College of Psychic Studies in London, an institute I am very grateful to be affiliated with and privileged to know the lovely people within. Walking around studying the archives of my predecessors, I find myself musing upon the lives of all the artistic and professional mediums that have come and gone throughout the years. All of them were on the same path as I, catching glimpses of the other side. And I reflect on the thought that I am just another peace in the jigsaw. Perhaps in another hundred years or so, another like myself will be reflecting on the creators of these archives, adding their own pieces to this beautiful puzzle.

I am JuliLa! Myself and MaCello (and little LeLe) are the creation of Julia Palmer-Price, singing cellist extraordinaire, mystical musician, teacher and composer of uplifting ditties. To bring songs through is my greatest joy and indeed a privilege and a pleasure beyond measure.

Born in 60’s London, with a musician for a mother, I began composing silly songs from an early age. Our good Christian family was locally known as the Von Trapp’s of Sydenham. All four of us siblings played all sorts of instruments and entertaining was our ‘go to thing’ especially around the Church calendar. I attended St. Phillips ‘religiously’ every Sunday morning with Simon, Ben and Jo until, deciding upon a classical career, I left home to study cello in 1980.

At the RNCM in Manchester, tendonitis soon put paid to my classical aspirations, and I began exploring other styles of music. My opera singer friend Viv and I became backing vocalists for The Biting Tongues and began experimenting with co-writing songs together, calling ourselves the Wild Women of the Wongo! I still sing the co-penned song Listen today.

Upon graduating, a tour with The Sadista Sisters was followed by a BBC Play for the Day called Rachel and the Roarettes (incidentally starring a young Gary Oldman) which, via Pebble Mill Studios, brought me back to London where I sessioned as a cross-over cellist in the glamorous 80’s pop band Hollywood Beyond. Becoming the Dinner Ladies with Mick Jackson, Lorraine Bowen and Ben Davies, we were signed by Joe Boyd to Hannibal Records and, in 1987, released a single Muscle in the Bud and the acclaimed album These Knees Have Seen the World.

A live session on Andy Kershaw’s Radio One show saw us go on to prestigiously perform at Sadlers Wells Theatre, the Cambridge Folk and Edinburgh Fringe festivals, and record at famed Hansa Studio in Berlin. Until, totally enchanted by his eclectic songs, I joined Roddie Harris to form Mirò, whilecontinuing to be in demand as a session cellist for, most notably, Billy Bragg, Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs), Irishmen Gavin Friday & The Man Seezer and the Rainbirds in Germany.

Arrangements for Mirò songs were honed through improvisation during the acoustic night’s we hosted in Earls Court. The basement of the Troubadour Coffee House had been ‘dark’ for a decade and, not fitting into any of London’s Rock, Jazz, Cabaret, Funk or Folk music scenes, Roddie started up London’s first ‘Acoustic Club’ there, reviving the folk cellar, reached by going downstairs via the kitchen. With Mirò as the house band, our legendary Wednesday nights were folk club in style, however, musically everything was welcomed! Our policy was inclusive so long as folk played at the level of (or behind) the human voice. Consequently, the pin-drop quiet audience and players of every conceivable level and proficiency learned their craft as they listened to each other with respect. It was like Church! Sometimes twenty-four floor spots would play before the billed act. And week after week we witnessed inspirational performances by Pooka, David Grey, Tylor, Dave Russel, Johnny London, Beth Orton, Keziah Jones, Praying for the Rain, Ade Sweet, Sonia Kristina, Bob Cairns and The Sons of Fat Harry, The Hank Dogs, 99% Love, Sam & Mano, and many more performance artists and poets. It was an incredibly inventive, wildly exciting and creative time.

Incidentally, all the while in London, I was furthering my cello playing, exploring posture and the mechanics of my craft, via the Alexander Technique, Tai Chi and Iyengar Yoga, and, complimenting my ‘inherited’ natural teaching ability, by studying the Kodayli Method with David Vinden. I also completed a ‘Whippersnapper’ Early Years course.

Meanwhile, being in Mirò was all consuming, our band’s epic performances were dynamic, intense and frequently feisty as Roddie and I played out the drama of our sometimes dysfunctional partnership on stage, dramatic conflicts always having a big-hearted resolution! Our music was unique and totally fulfilling, highly vibrational and never dull! From 1987 to 1994 we became a cult band in Italy, which supported the self-release of three Mirò Albums on our own Secret Heart record label, Angel N1, Grain of the Voice and The Circus of Electrifying Possibility. We also put out an E.P. Greetings from the Golbourne Rd. and a single, The World in Maps, for which we made an animated video starring the legendary Sam. Always looking to inspire and fire up our acoustic scene we put together a compilation of Various Artists, In the Beginning Tommy Steele, and hired big venues like the ICA, Bloomsbury Theatre and the (then) Town and Country Club in Kentish Town for specials and launches!

Devastated when Roddie and I finally split as a couple though we tried to continue with the band, having just sold out The Bloom Club in Milan, it became impossible, and I had to leave. This ending was the beginning of my spiritual awakening.

The first of many ‘lightbulb moments’ happened in a bathtub at Gaunts House Summer ‘mind, body, spirit’ Gathering! I was overcome with a feeling of bliss as I understood unconditional love truly for the first time. The realisation I truly loved ‘him’ and I truly loved ‘her’, and so it was perfect that ‘they’ truly loved each other, set me free.

So, off I went to seek my next musical collaboration, mixing popular tunes with my own material. I busked Covent Garden and Portobello till, finding two eager ‘fresh-faced’ musicians, I started my own band. The Big Love Orchestra Om was me on cello and voice, Alex Lund on bass and Gavin Bonner on drums. Becoming involved in London’s growing alternative, organic, creative, spiritual and green community scene, Bloom (for short) rehearsed out of the Grow House in Ealing. We gigged all around London before heading out into the fields, playing the Kingston Green Fair, Earth Spirit Festival, Buddhafield, the Big Green Gathering, Pete Lawrence’s Little Chill and the Green Field at Glastonbury! Financed by benefactor Louis, an unreleased early Bloom album was recorded in a barn at Lodge Farm in Godalming. Our humble efforts were taken to be mixed by Louis and bassist Alex in Europe. When Alex returned to our dismay all but one of Gavin’s parts had been replaced by an incredible Serbian drummer, and although the result was an amazingly well produced album, being unrecognisable, it broke us up.

Meanwhile, at the Bonnington Square Community Cafe my evolving spiritual enquiries led me to form a friendship with Anton, a channeler of Jesus! I bought a bus and, on Anton’s invitation, moved to Brighton. I got a job, taking over for a cello teacher on maternity leave, and suddenly found myself with 100 students, bombing around Brighton Schools in a little grey van, bursting with baby cello’s, having a crash course in teaching the Susuki Method. Little did I know where this was magically leading to!

I remember drinking tea in the Mayor of Brighton’s kitchen when Anton suggested, “you could play with Nigel Kennedy”. “Haha, nice idea” I replied. The next thing I knew my phone rang and an American voice drawled “You wanna come play Jimi Hendrix with Nigel Kennedy?”. Not to be fooled, “ha-ha” I replied, “who is that having me on?”. But it was Don ‘the damager’ (as Nigel called him) for real! I was hired on the spot, and my ‘audition’ in Belize park turned out to be a first rehearsal.

In my element, I found myself part of an eight-piece chamber ensemble with top notch musicians on a hugely exciting and extravagant tour. Starting at the Milton Keynes Concert Bowl, heart wrenchingly missing out on my sister’s wedding day (another story), zig-zagging across Europe via Ronnie Scott’s and, the proudest of moments, playing the Royal Festival Hall with my beloved parents sitting in the audience. I still sing Glastonbury Girl whose tune came in as we flew over The, (also being missed) Festival that summer, finishing my classic song in time for the last show at the 1999 Lizard Eclipse Festival in Cornwall! After which, these truly awesome travels landed me in the Malvern Hills, where I fell instantly in love with the hills, and then with a gentleman named Phil.

And this is where my JuliLa story begins…

I met architect Philip Price at an All Hallows’ eve party at his restoration project home ‘The Grove’ where I was introduced to him as ‘Nigel’s cellist’. Phil had been told by his psychic Korean concert pianist sister-in-law Heasook that he would meet, fall in love with, and marry a cellist and, it turned out to be me! Romantically we had our first kiss at midnight on the millennium at Nigel’s infamous New Year party and, that February being a leap year, I proposed at two minutes to midnight on the 29th, after walking back over the hill from a Tuesday night jam session at the Brewers Arms. Luckily Phil, after thinking long and hard for several nail-biting seconds, said YES in the knickers of time! And our daughter Aletéa was born 9 months later! We were wed at The Grove and our son Harry followed soon after.

Happily, for the next ten years as we raised our children, I determined to create a Cello’ScooL and develop a style of teaching practise that combined both the Susuki and Kodayli methods with improvisation from Lesson one, whilst all the while continuing to concentrate on my own compositions. My wedded sister brought her growing family to live over the hill in Colwall and our parents soon followed. Sadly my mum, Valerie, arrived in the grip of pancreatic cancer, mercifully a short illness, that saw her off only two and a half months after her first diagnosis.

Thankfully mum dying here in Malvern allowed my sister Jo and me to be with her during her ‘transition’. It was to be an experience I will never forget. At 1:08 am, as the last notes of Faure’s Requiem rang out, a look of wonder fell across her face, and as serenely mum ‘breathed her last’, the bedroom filled with everlasting light. Brighter than the sun, moon and stars together, it was a biblical light that lit up the room and shone on, as if through the walls, through the hedgerows, the buildings, on and on through the hills, 360° all around, on and on forever! I remember simply holding space, staying completely still with Jo, as mum’s spirit left her physical body, for we had no idea how long. I lost all fear of death that day during that last, too beautiful, lesson from my darling mum. The feeling of expanded space, glistening as if a host of angels sang Halleluiah’s, touched me and will remain with me always.

I was so grateful at this time for having just found an Interfaith community in Malvern which at last allowed me and the children to join a regular like-minded gathering of enquiring spiritual souls of all faiths and creeds (or none)! I am eternally grateful for the practical spiritual support of our ordained minister Jane Coulthard at such a poignant time and have been an active member of our interfaith community here in Malvern ever since. Introduced to music from many traditions, I found I truly resonated with certain chants and mantras, sung by Deva Premal and Miten, and discovered that my own hymn-like offerings would find their place within the services.

We buried mum’s ashes under the Yew tree in Colwall Churchyard, and our darling dad settled into life in the locality and life went on. As the children grew (and grew) we were able to re-roof The Grove and restore not one but two Bechsteins with the gift of mum’s inheritance. Our Open House boasted a concert hall with brilliant acoustics and, gloriously amateurishly, I began promoting again, filling the program with musical maties and the halls with the sound of music! From time to time I got to play out in the World back with the Friday-Seezer Ensemble, most memorably ‘Ich Lieber Dich’ at the Dublin Theatre Festival and an unusual re-working of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf! Recorded for the Irish Hospice Trust and released with a book illustrated by Bono and his daughter’s. This led to a run in the sparkling Spiegel Tent, installed in New York State one summer, with the most blessed singer-songwriter ever, Fergus O’Farrell. As the seasons turned back at The Grove we were all flourishing, Phil with ambitious projects and the children by now thriving at their School.

While enjoying teaching and hosting countless magical happenings for the community and children’s parties, I began to think about recording. Having been all the while honing my ‘unique brand of acoustic, ambient folk’, a body of work was rapidly expanding. I managed to simply produce a live album of my songs ‘Back to life’, and was getting back to business when around 2009/10 things began to get tricky as the credit crunch kicked in. Then, unexpectedly, one ordinary Thursday afternoon, Phil died.

With the support of family, friends and the community, though in shock and totally heartbroken, we endeavoured to transform the tragedy for Aletéa and Harry, who were only ten and eight at the time. Our beloved Phil had no life-insurance and, utterly ignorant of the extent of our debt, I was left with the prospect of losing everything. It was the countless miracles that would follow that confirmed for me the existence of a higher consciousness and allowed me, tangibly, to feel able to rely on the divine guidance available 24/7. Especially when holding out for the SALE of our home to the ‘highest bidders’ Anna and Bernard Taylor. Who were, serendipitously, able to spend a fortune to literally fulfil Phil’s original vision for The Grove. Now metamorphosed into the beautifully restored elegant Grade 2 listed home & performance art venue, Elmslie House.

Freed from a weight of responsibility, in our new heaven-sent home with my equally heaven-sent second husband Owen, for the next ten years I indulged in expressing my spiritual ‘journeying’ through my compositions. My songs arrive through a channelled creative process, some ‘land’ and stay, annoyingly as ear-worms, until they are done. Some are quick, some slow, while others are a years-in-the-making process! Full of inspiration from the hills, I can tell you the exact spot where a melody or lyric came in. Often gleaning ideas from wisdom teachings, words heard or read, at other times spilling out straight from my head and heart in morning sessions.

Invited back to the concert hall at Elmslie House, in 2017 I began a Song S P A C E Class with the intention of creating mini-musicians on Planet Earth! Marrying mantra’s, hymns, hums and fave tunes with my own compositions, and SoLfa.. so good! My class ‘for gentle folk of all ages and their little ones’ got me re-named by a small child and I became JuliLa! As a bonus, the class beautifully inspired a flow of new material designed for my family audience, to naturally explore their voice with, allowing folk to free-up, tune-in, and embody being a divine human.

In the lockdown pause, at last I had the time, space and opportunity to weave together a set of these songs I had recorded ‘in stolen moments’. Engineered and co-produced with an incredible musician Dylan Fowler, at his Studio Felin Fach in Abagavenny, in June 2021 my crowd-funded debut Album as JuliLa in Fields was released at Hellens Manor in Much Marcle, Herefordshire.

Fast forward to now, I am well fired up to journey on! It is my intention to continue to passionately create meaningful music that interactively transports listeners, via sweet sing-a-long songs or a powerful mantra (or three), from wherever they are at, to awaken to the truth of who they BE! So joyfully, with an inspired smile, brimming with potential and possibility, we may get out there together as ‘conscious creators of our own creation’ to curate our beloved planet, care for all sentient beings on Earth, and co-create a happy-ever-after for our children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children to inherit.. init!

A Zen Guitar is one of the creative outlets for Nick Palmer. Based a little West of London, one of Nick’s preoccupations of the last three decades has been the source of creativity. Ask any great imaginer about the inspiration for their work and you’ll get dozens of responses: Lovers, the wonder of birth, transcendent experiences, vast skies. Asked about the origin of their creative energy, most artists don’t know. Only those creators with a developed spiritual framework will even attempt an answer and usually attribute their output to a greater power.

This relationship to a creative force and an innate desire to express it remains a mystery to most but it is present in everyone. Speaking our truth is humanity at its most democratic and it manifests in all aspects of our lives. People don’t need an instrument, a brush or a pen to be heard. It shows in how we raise our children, how we tell a joke, how we prepare food and how we word our emails.

This creativity is not just the privilege of humans either. The Giant Himalayan lily flowers once in seven years and then dies. It has always seemed clear to AZG that this exuberance, this beauty of expression is part of the Universe’s splendour.

AZG’s first spiritual insight took place in a kitchen in the North East of England after a heartbreak in 1990. Looking over a desolate winter landscape with a hollow feeling in his chest and in a space between thoughts, he experienced infinity, eternity and Agape in a single moment. Agape is divine love, and it outshone any love that Nick had ever known. Indeed, it became clear at that moment what religious devotees mean when they describe their deities as ‘pure love’.

Returning home a few days later, Nick received a book from his twin sister called ‘The Tao of Pooh’. This charming little book draws a parallel between the simple Wisdom of A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and Taoism. The first line of the Tao Te Ching, Taoism’s seminal text reads:

“The Tao that can be spoken of, is not the eternal Tao”

This was enough to redefine AZG’s relationship with scholastics, thought and creativity. It brought a new-found faith in the non-intellectual, the silent and the receptive.

Now Nick tries to be interiorly silent when approaching music. To create a void into which expression can flow, so that whatever is trying to voice itself can do so frictionlessly. Sometimes AZG takes a feeling or a mood to his time with a guitar, and this inevitably changes the colour of what is produced. The song ‘My Father’s Smile’ was born out of deep sorrow, but its sibling ‘Every Single Song’ was the product of emerging optimism and healing.

As an electric guitar player for his whole life, AZG discovered fingerstyle acoustic guitar after the impulse purchase of a Yamaha Silent Guitar. Able to produce the sound of a top quality acoustic, complete with effects gave Nick the ability to create the headroom that characterises a finished recording. Reverb, added to an acoustic guitar to simulate the instrument in a recital space was a creative shot in the arm for AZG. Several years of hard work to learn fingerpicked guitar followed and continues. Nick’s ruling axiom about creative pursuits is that ‘it doesn’t have to be good, but it does have to be said’. This is the democratic pinnacle of creativity. Everyone gets a say. Everyone can express themselves. Ever voice can be heard.

Nick continues his exploration of the source of his creativity with the Zen practise that informed his choice of name for the project. The relationship with thought is a central tenet of Zen, expressed in the meditation, the koan practise and the role of non-verbal experiences in experiences of ultimate reality. Even the title of AZG’s first work ‘Kensho’, is a reference to the moments of spiritual insight that can be catalysed by diligent practise of any spiritual discipline. Indeed, all the esoteric traditions of the world; Contemplative Prayer, Zazen, Sufi rituals, Yoga, Transcendental Meditation all borrow the idea that truth is to be heard when the mind is quiet. To properly appreciate the light of the divine, you must first blow out your own candle. Only this way can expression come from its source and be in accord with the rhythms of the Universe.

These days, Nick continues to write and record music to a small audience via his website and to write spoken word stories for children called ‘The Ten Minute Bedtimes’. The demands of parenthood and a day job in technology means that the time preserved for creativity and expression is more precious. But, by committing to the Zen principle of ‘Beginner’s Mind’ in his artistic development and the source of his energy, AZG has found a tempo that works.

Antonella Sands is a versatile London-based artist, illustrator, and educator, as well as a trainee art therapist. She works on various projects (including book illustrations) and portrait commissions.

She believes creativity is the key to unlocking our inner selves and well-being, and that it connects us to our true selves.

Art and self-expression are her core passions. She developed a fervent love for drawing and art at an early age with a special fascination for people and surrealistic, fantasy imagery.

Antonella is a mixed media artist; she uses a variety of mediums, including acrylic, pastel, watercolour pencils, and inks. Although she experiments with a variety of materials, she predominantly uses pencils and acrylics. When drawing, she attempts to express the beauty of the the unseen which lies beyond conventional forms.

Through experimenting, trying things out without knowing where it will lead, discoveries can be made, connecting her with the subconscious mind, which is part of the creative process.

Her rich sources of inspiration are myths, legends, fables; these influences are diverse and include a love for literature, photography, theatre, and fashion.

“My art is an expression of my soul journey: it incorporates personal stories, memories, states of mind, and dreams”.

Creativity has allowed her to visualize and transform experiences, memories, and feelings through the process of creating artworks; connecting to her spirituality and helping her to cope with distressing experiences and difficulties she’s dealt with since an early age. She recalls drawing small paper fairies, as a child, and releasing them from her balcony, hoping they would come back to take her to their magical kingdom, rescuing her from her pain. This cathartic process helped her to cope with stressful events.

Art has been an outlet to explore and enhance her wellbeing and has enabled her spiritual needs to be explored and expressed. Antonella is passionate about promoting creativity and self-expression to enable others to better their mental health, especially those who suffered from trauma, distress, mental health issues, and adverse childhood experiences.

She works as an early years consultant and has been teaching in different educational backgrounds for 25 years, promoting self-expression and creativity; leading creative workshops and projects with families, children, and early years leaders in their communities.

When working with children with physical disabilities, trauma, or behavioural challenges she uses sensory activities to enhance all five senses, strengthening skills such as hand-eye coordination as well as helping people to make sense of their personal experiences. When working with children with trauma and emotional difficulties; she uses activities like “paint your emotions” to promote self-healing and self-regulation.

She has a keen interest in psychology and neuroscience, especially the connection between early years attachment and brain development. This led her to study art psychotherapy at master’s level, which acts as a bridge between her love for art and self-expression, and her commitment to helping vulnerable people using a psychotherapy-informed approach.

Those from disadvantaged backgrounds are more exposed to toxic stress which impairs the nervous system’s optimal functioning, creating issues for development, behaviour, and mental health. The use of art materials in therapy allows meaning making through the process of self-expression, which allows people to access the subconscious mind and convey distressing emotions that are too painful to be verbalized.

Antonella is passionate about promoting creative approaches to enhance mind-body and brain healing, connecting us to our subconscious and helping us to make sense of our stories, strengthening our sense of identity.

Her children’s book “Dreams in a box”, published on Amazon in 2016, was the result of an unusual dream: in 2014 she dreamt a rhyming story for children. Later, she translated her dream into an illustrated story, giving voice to her subconscious self and her inner world.

Dreams in a Box celebrates every child’s unique dream and their potential to achieve it. It is designed to promote children’s true potential and self-confidence and to enhance their wellbeing. The book supported children in need charities.

Amongst her projects, in 2020 she worked on a collaboration with multilingual author AM Hellberg and illustrated two of her fiction books Hug-Snow Days and when Pat Met the Curry Cat.

In 2022 and 2020 she received the Ian Wright graphic Award 1st prize with her artwork “Angel of Peace” and “Four Seasons” from Harrow Art Society’s President, Cheryl Gould.

These works were created as a result of the artist connection with her own spirituality and subconscious, exploring the concept of transformation.

“Four seasons” was inspired by a 1920 picture of a lady. The sense of calm and melancholy that it emanated prompted Antonella to start sketching the eyes and recreate her own version of it.

Later, she incorporated different elements of nature and its seasons in an unusual montage: the lady of the drawing had become the cyclic seasons of nature, through a cathartic process of transformation.

“The eternal cycle of the seasons reminds me that nothing really dies and that life renews itself constantly”.

Angel of Peace was created during lockdown – a time of uncertainty and confusion, but also a time to reflect and meditate, to heal our soul. The artwork attempts to bring healing, peace, and brotherhood in a broken society. 

In 2019 her artwork Soul Retrieval was awarded the second prize by Harrow Art Society’s President, Cheryl Gould.

This artwork involved the artist’s painful journey during her childhood; she gave voice to her subconscious by allowing whatever symbol came to mind to be represented in the portrait, sketching different elements as part of her personal story. The process of “soul retrieval” gave her the opportunity to re unite her older self with the younger version of her, during a process that, despite being at times challenging, brought balance, self-acceptance, and wholeness.

In 2017 her painting Angel of Silence was awarded second prize by international artist DashiI Namdavov at the event if I can in Harrow.

Antonella also worked as a fashion designer and illustrator in Italy, her native country.

She is mainly a self-taught artist, and as part of her professional development she attended short courses in Fashion illustration using Photoshop with City Lit and Fashion Design and Marketing at Central Saint Martin College of Art and Design.

Antonella is a member of different art societies and takes part in their annual exhibitions and projects in London, where she lives; her work has also been featured in local newspapers and magazines.

When I was a young girl, I remember going into my local WHSmith with my mum and looking at the book chart for the week - especially the top shelf. I remember saying ‘Mum one day my book will be up there’ to which we both laughed and went on with our day. I still don’t know why that younger version of myself knew with such conviction she’d be an author, but I’d like to think even back then it was a sign from the Universe and my intuition coming through.

Throughout my teenage years I definitely would have said I was an atheist. I’d grown up exploring Buddhism and Angels briefly in books, but after years of experiencing depression, I didn’t know what felt true and the pressures of teenage life and school soon took over.

In 2012, at nineteen years old, I went along my first awakening journey after being left in £7,000 worth of debt by my then boyfriend. I was a banking manager at a well-known UK bank - a role which I’d fallen into (banking certainly wasn’t an aspiration of mine) and was heavily depressed. Very quickly after taking a loan out to help my boyfriend with his debt, the relationship broke down, and I was left to pay the entire loan. I also had to leave my job at the bank as I was surrounded by debt each and every day and this only deepened my depression and anxiety.

This is when I found Extreme Couponing. Here in the UK at the time, couponing was very taboo still and there weren’t many places to find them. The concept had me hooked and within a few months I’d cleared my debt and had a big stock pile of supplies. My friends pestered me to start a Facebook page to help other people do the same and so ‘Extreme Couponing and Deals UK’ my first business was born. After a year I monetized the business, as I really had no clue what I was doing or how to run a business! Throughout my entire life I knew I wanted to run a business, but had no idea what that looked like or how to start one.

I ran my wonderful couponing business for six years before manifesting a buyer. Over that time, it had accumulated over half a million followers here in the UK. I’d presented a regular money-saving slot on This Morning, and was known as the UK’s Coupon Queen from doing incredible press features too. I absolutely loved that business, but I knew it needed a team of people to grow it to new heights, and I too at this point wanted to put both feet on my spiritual path. So rewinding slightly back to 2016 when I had my spiritual awakening, I was in my second not so great relationship at the time and my depression had worsened over this time to a point where I was at absolute rock bottom.

Long story short that relationship broke down and the Law of Attraction came into my life, just like with couponing it was something that was such a positive distraction in my life at the time and gave me hope. Very quickly, I started to turn my life completely around. I healed my depression, learned what self-love was and created a healthier relationship with myself and others. This is when I started to incorporate manifestation into my existing YouTube and platforms and luckily my money-saving followers loved this content too!

In 2017, I decided to go full-time with my Spiritual Queen business and help people in a new way and I’ve been running it ever since! I found spirituality as a whole fascinating and almost like a remembering, not like I was learning something new. Stepping into my spiritual shoes fully wasn’t an easy journey, selling a six-figure business and starting all over again with a personal brand was a huge leap of faith, but I knew in my heart it was what I came here to do, and it never felt like work.

A couple of years into my spiritual journey, the want to write a book had always strongly been there. Because of my success with my couponing business, I honestly thought it would be a money-saving book but I’m so grateful I get to write about money, manifestation and spirituality now. I always joke that each book has my entire soul in it, and it’s so true - these books have been an initiation. I’ve lived the teachings in the book and have learned huge life lessons in these ten years, and I love being able to share these with people now and help them navigate life too.

Being an author is definitely one of my favourite hats I wear in my business. It allows me to be creative and writing comes very naturally to me even though my A-level results would tell you differently. I’ve definitely got better over the course of writing three books, but it feels like a full circle moment seeing my book on shelves all around the world and I’m only 29!

There of course have been hurdles and challenges with getting my books published, but the Universe truly had my back. I pitched my first book to over 30 publishers and literary agents and got rejected, so I ended up hybrid publishing this one. My second book was exactly the same even though I knew how incredible it was it got rejected once again and I felt like giving up - my intuition was screaming at me ‘this has to be distributed properly this time’. I’d done everything in my power and yet still no book deal.

In 2019, I remember my first publisher saying he couldn’t distribute it in the way I wanted it to be so I said to myself ‘Angels, Universe you want this book traditionally published, help me out I’ve tried everything’. Within six hours my first traditional publisher Watkins reached out to me and asked me to write a book on money and manifestation – little did they know I had a whole manuscript ready to go on just that exact topic!

Now I’m very lucky to have two incredible traditional publishers who publish my books so don’t give up hope, it only takes one publisher to say yes. My books have now sold over 16,000 copies since 2020 and I’m so glad I listened to my intuition and didn’t give up.

As I reflect on my 20’s and head towards my 30^th birthday next year, I have so many wonderful things to reflect on - whilst I’m so grateful to have experienced these huge career successes so young that has also come with a lot of sacrifices and huge up levelling which was necessary but extremely hard in places too.

My books very much reflect the last ten years for me and the emotional and spiritual journey I’ve gone down to heal and find peace within myself. Many may not know how closely linked manifestation is to the inner work but both are vital when working with the Law of Attraction and that has very much been my journey. Healing deep trauma and childhood wounds have been the best gift my 20’s have given me, alongside two incredible businesses that have transformed so many people’s lives including my own.

In terms of what’s next? As I enter into a new decade of my life, I’m certainly excited to see what my 30’s have in store for me and the Universe too. I want to go slower this decade and get to enjoy life and travel more. Knowing who I am at my soul now after doing the inner work has created so much abundance in my life, so I really want to explore and embrace that now. Of course, I will write more books. I definitely have more ideas and opportunities which feels really exciting, but most of all - I want the Law of Attraction to reach and help even more people turn their dreams into an abundant reality! I’m grateful for all of the experiences I’ve had over the last decade, and as turbulent as some seasons have felt, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Emma Mumford is the UK’s leading Law of Attraction expert. She’s an award-winning life coach, 2x bestselling author of her books Positively Wealthy and Hurt, Healing, Healed, speaker, Law of Attraction YouTuber and host of the #1 spirituality podcast on iTunes ‘Spiritual Queen’s Badass Podcast’. Emma’s work helps people turn their dream life into an abundant reality using the Law of Attraction and spirituality.

I am an artist, art educator and spirit medium. I have been able to draw realistically since around the age of five, which coincided with the realisation that I saw and walked alongside many people who were invisible to others. These visions never frightened or concerned me, indeed I found them comforting and good company. There were many other spiritual events in my youth, including out-of-body travel whilst seeing my physical body comfortably lying on the bed. I also had, and continue to have, precognitive dreams which would be proven by the news in the following days. These are memories which have never left me, a vital part of my life.

As an artist I can draw or paint anything. Then, as an art educator, I realised that when I was teaching portraiture I could draw the people I saw in my mind’s eye. During one session, I was drawing an elderly man with whiskers and a beaming smile when suddenly a lady remarked, “That looks like my grandfather and what a good likeness. But he died many years ago.”

At this point in my life, I did not want to give away my secret that I saw people, places and objects that were not part of the physical world. Yet this one experience helped me to understand that indeed I had the ability to create portraits of those who had passed over into the afterlife. This was quite a revelation since I had no experience or understanding of what spiritualists call the ‘spirit world’. I thought that everyone saw what I saw!

My perception of the world around me had many more people in it than were actually visible to the physical eye and these visions would happen in the most extraordinary places. Many years ago, after a meeting in London, I visited the British Museum and sat in front of the statue of Sekhmet, next to a gentleman with a large black folder. I was curious and asked whether he was an artist; he said he was a poet and if I looked at the papers in the folder I could read one of his poems. His work was very ethereal and not what I had expected. When I had to catch my train I stood up to leave but realised I had not thanked him; when I turned to him, he had disappeared in a split second. I believe now that he was a spirit teacher encouraging me with my own writing.

When I was thirty I met Ged, a healer, and he took me to a meeting at the local spiritualist church in Liverpool. This was my first experience of a religious practice other than Roman Catholicism, and it was very different! The Scottish medium Mary Duffy gave the service and I received a message from her, saying that I was a spirit artist. Not understanding what to do about this, I said, “Well, I am an artist already.” She replied, “You also see those in spirit so you will be able to use your gift to draw them and help those who can’t see to understand.”

Fortunately, other people did understand and were ‘brought’ to me. As Head of Art in a girls’ school in Toxteth, I would occasionally have student teachers working alongside me on teaching practice. One of these was a young woman called Linda Nichols. She came and went and I thought nothing particular of it until a few years later when I was invited to a spiritualist meeting in Liverpool city centre. I had found it difficult to locate the building and was late. As I eventually walked through the door I heard the speaker say, “Ah, here she is, the lady in red.”

“Yes,” I said, bemused, “I changed into this outfit just before I set out for the meeting. How did you know?” She had a spirit drawing for me and a message. Whilst that was interesting enough, the amazing thing was that the artist was none other than the student teacher who had completed her practice with me in my school.

“The spirit world has many different ways of getting us to work with them,” she commented.

It seems that I had been slow in understanding that point. These early events, more fully described in my first book Portraits from Spirit, were taps on the doorway of my mind to understanding how the spirit world works.

Later, as an educator of art, I realised that ‘spirit art’ was not only unknown in the world of Art, indeed it was deliberately ignored. This much was clear from the rejections of my articles written for art journals: this “cuckoo form of religious art” had no place in art history. Despite being part of the Spiritualism religion since about 1852, the art and artists from its inception were not accepted within the British art world.

There has been a slow growth in public events featuring spirit art, such as the Georgiana Houghton exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, and works seen at the  Lily Dale Assembly, New York, the College of Psychic Studies in London, and The Ancient High House gallery in Stafford, England. Yet art historians still categorise such work as ‘Outsider Art’ when its creators are clearly spiritualist. My own work has come under a barrage of criticism both from art historians and theologians since I began demonstrating spirit portraiture publically in many European countries and in Britain.

However, I have never given up working alongside the spirit world and have dedicated over fifteen years to completing a book that collates the history and methodology of spirit art, classifying it for the first time into six different types. For someone with structural dyslexia, my second book, The Art of Spirit, was a hard task!

The most incredible of the paintings I have seen was brought to me by a friend, Annette Tollis. Featured on the front cover of my book, it was created by the Bangs Sisters in America and known as Pearl (c.1898). This painting was created by a technique called precipitation. Using spirit energies alone, with no human touch, materials from the spiritual ether had been dropped onto the canvas; when finished it looked like an oil painting of the most exquisite type.

Another was a pastel drawing of Hollie created through me at a public demonstration. There was an audible gasp from the audience as the drawing was completed and I said, “…and she has butterflies in her hair…” The grandmother had a picture of the child on her mobile ’phone with butterflies in her hair for her mother’s wedding. At that moment, the pure love for the child and from the child for the grandmother could be felt by everyone.

There have been many difficult times while progressing my knowledge of spirit art. Yet there has been great joy in knowing that I have helped people unknown to me by creating portraits of their loved ones without ever having met them. There is also pleasure in understanding that, spiritually, I cannot create the art alone: all spirit artists have a team of invisible helpers, including the person who receives the art. Without this spiritual support producing the portraits, landscapes and images of familial objects, the deceased person would not be recognised.

The process begins with the love that passes through the consciousness of the deceased and of the artist, and it finishes with an outpouring of love from the recipient. Without this channel, the drawing or painting would be worthless. It is the continuous love that matters.

Where do I go from here? As an educator, writing about the methodologies and processes that support the creation of spirit art alongside examples of it, I hope to be helping the ‘new wave’ of artists, some of whom are embracing new technologies in their work. I am also collating portraits of living people that I have drawn, so that healing may be given to them through the drawings. The work of the spirit through art continues and grows, helping ever more people on their spiritual paths.

Ann Bridge Davies is a professional artist and medium, and author of The Art of Spirit, published by Local Legend and available worldwide.

Ayla Shafer was born on Winter Solstice (December 21^st) in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK. From a young age she was naturally attracted to the creative arts, drawing and painting for hours and listening to music. Her mother encouraged her to play violin and piano, which in tandem with her attendance at St Christophers, an independent self-governing Quaker’s school that prioritised the nourishing the spirit of the individual, her creativity and enjoyment for the arts flourished. Yet even at this early age, there were already signs as to where her love for art and music might take her.

“I remember as a child painting prairie landscapes with tepees and buffalos over and over again. I seemed to have had this deep obsession with the native cultures of America. I still have one of my little paintings. I was also really into creating with my hands and enjoyed all the crafts: basket making, felting, natural dying and so on. I guess I was already experiencing a fusion of earth-connected living through creativity. It’s so interesting to reflect on the fact that in some ways I was already on my path, even back then.”

At 15 years old, her mother bought her a guitar, and this marked the beginnings of songwriting as a form of personal expression for Ayla. Inspired by the songs of Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Damien Rice and Bob Dylan amongst others, Ayla began writing simple songs which became a sanctury for her. Amongst the turbulence of an unstable home life, music was was a way for Ayla to transform the inner storms into something beautiful.  As she approached the end of her school years, it was the call to travel that began to occupy the forefront of her mind – a inner sense that there was ’something out there’ calling her, a path to explore, and as the years went by, and with a gap year approaching in her education, she decided it was time to get out there and see the world.

“Something inside was calling me to travel, so I worked hard at multiple jobs: as a waitress at Pizza Express, and at a live-in care home, to save up to buy a ticket. I knew I wanted to travel the world. I had that sense there’s something much more out there, and I would like to know it.” And that is exactly what she did. At 18 years old, she travelled to the Fiji Islands, New Zealand, South East Asia, Vietnam, Lau, Thailand, Cambodia and India.

“I really didn’t know how to travel the world, so I just used the Lonely Planet travel books! Although I guess I was rather naïve and innocent, my father had travelled round India in 70s, so I knew he was going to be cool with it. My mother on the other hand was very worried! Initially, I travelled on my own, but in New Zealand I joined up with others. And it was there I met up with my lifelong friend, the singer Susie Ro, and the two of us hatched this idea to give ourselves a mission to live off our music. It was extraordinary really. We were both writing songs, and singing beautiful harmonies together, so we just said “let music be our currency”, and we lived by that axiom. I remember at one point we were travelling in a van and the tyre was flat, so we pulled into a garage and convinced them to fix the tyre in return for a musical performance! On another occasion, we needed to catch a ferry, so we went to the office, and they agreed to let us play our music in return for ferry tickets. We thought perhaps it was standard practice, but we later discovered it really wasn’t! It was a magical time, paved in gold, and I experienced a deep trust. But that’s not to say the experience didn’t require lots of flexibility, a little recklessness, and the willingness to sleep in some strange places!”

“I look back at that time as if it was an opening to one of the doors to my future. Often our paths in life have doorways and thresholds to be crossed, and these times affirmed in my unconscious that music has its worth, because of how we were received, and what we received in exchange, through giving our music. We were so supported and blessed. From a cultural perspective, it isn’t really that unusual: look at those travelling bards of antiquity. There’s a core value in many cultures that people are very appreciative of the mystery that music brings.”

Returning to the UK at 19 years old, the plan was to study Anthropology and International Relations, both intellectual and academic subjects, and whilst Ayla was very passionate about world affairs, injustice, human rights and saving the world, there was also a calling within her to continue with the music and the creativity somehow. As a compromise, Ayla decided to take an interim one-year Art Foundation course in Falmouth, towards the end of which she was visited by her old friend Susie Ro, who made the proposal that they jump back into that wonderful van again, and travel the UK, driving around and living off the music. And that’s what they did!

“It was wonderful. We played at lots of festivals, getting free ticket entry and our food paid for, plus £100 a gig if we were lucky. We were very inspired by what we created together, and people were so touched by the music we were creating and by our friendship connection. I guess a year of travelling the world, and a year of creativity during the Art Foundation course had connected me to a deeper truth inside of myself. I finally realised I am not here on this planet to study Anthropology.”

“Also, my foundation year was significant musically, because I started to gig a little and share my music, and it was amazing to me that people would show up for my music. Even with my parents being wonderfully supportive of whatever I wanted to do; it was still quite difficult to shake off the cultural programming I’d naturally absorbed from living in a western culture. Here, art isn’t something you’re meant to do for a living. Music is a hobby, not a way of life. So many times, people used to ask me ‘what do you do’, and I would say ‘I am a songwriter and musician’. To which their response would be ‘Oh, you mean you’re unemployed!’ Ayla was undeterred however, and her songwriting continued apace.

“My first songs were just about figuring out who I was, what I was made of, and what my feelings were. Reflecting on the challenges and confusion of being a young person, of getting to know myself, of meeting myself and my buried sorrow and pain. I never tended to write about love. It was all about working out my inner world, and what was difficult inside. My music helped me to work though my stuff, finding those answers, and reflecting on the beauty of them. Occasionally, I found myself writing more of those political/folk/activist type songs, and I was always committed to that kind of brutal honesty that I had heard in the works of Bob Dylan and Tori Amos etc. That level of revealing naked self to oneself. Not censoring things because they are uncomfortable, and not doing the people pleasing thing. To be so vulnerable in my honest expression was also very challenging.”

Ayla played in pubs and bars, but began to realise that the environment wasn’t ideal, and that people were not really hearing the songs. “In the West we don’t have a culture of really listening, and I found that difficult. I used to come home after my concerts and cry, really cry, because something in me was saying ‘this is not what you’re here for’. I think that was the time I entered my first real ‘dark night of the soul’, and I came to realise that I didn’t want to do things that way anymore, and that I had to really step away. I had to stop doing music – it was too painful, and with too much examining of my own shadow. I knew I needed to take a radical step.”

“I heard about a friend who had travelled to Mexico with a nomadic horse circus, like a travelling circus on horseback, and something in me clicked. ‘Wow’ I thought, ‘that’s got to be just about the wildest thing I can think of doing’, so I decided to take off to South America!”

So Ayla flew off to South America and joined ‘Nomads United’. With saddle bags and little else, 20 people and 16 horses rode without maps ‘just thataway’, stopping to run educational shows about the environment for schools and earning money along the way. Living with their horses, putting up tents and sleeping in fields under the open skies.

“Living with our horses wild and so simple was incredible. There is something wonderful to be around these animals – in some ways the horses were more significant to me than the people really. There’s a connection with these beings that is so powerful. They have such a healing presence. It was a very important time for me. I thought I was going for 6 months, but I ended up staying almost 2 years!”

During the rainy season, Ayla stayed at a yoga school where she discovered yoga and meditation. This was to prove to be a pivotal time, spending four months on a beach in Mazunte venturing deeply into yoga and her own consciousness, she began to explore the culture of North America, and the joys of Sweat Lodges, Sundances and Vision Quests.

“Here I discovered the rich traditions, rituals and songs of Native American culture. It’s alive there and people are living it. I did my first Vision Quest, going into the desert to eat peyote in Mexico, and I had several very intense expansive experiences. I met many other travellers, people from all walks of life, walking all kinds of different spiritual paths. I was feasting upon so much richness I had no idea existed. Also, I didn’t know anything about the medicine music genre, I didn’t know about traditional songs, about people singing together and chanting, using the music as prayer, and this resonated with me profoundly. These elements of being touched by sound and music and rhythm in that context of prayer and ceremony very directly was exceptionally powerful. I had a tremendous feeling of homecoming, like I was finally finding out where I belonged.”

Then Ayla heard about the sacred valley in Peru, and life started to feel like she was connecting the dots in some mysterious dot-to-dot picture of her life. Going with trust, she landed in Peru, and while asking for directions to the sacred valley, someone scribbled her a map where she could sleep near the mountains and be safe. Thus began one of the most significant chapters of her journey into spirituality and sound.

“I dived deep into Peru, drinking lots of medicine and participating in ceremonies and I finally realised that this is what wants to come through me. I was meeting the divine in myself. I felt it, saw it and heard it through the land. I continued to fall so profoundly in love with the earth and nature, and in finding my sense of home with Mother Earth, I could fully give myself to it. It was an incredible time in my life where I really felt at home in all senses of my being.”

But Ayla was low on resources, and began running out of cash, so she started playing music and singing outside restaurants, busking where she could to generate money. And she discovered that unlike life in the West, the culture she experienced demonstrated a blending of spirituality with daily life that does not exist in the West. An integration of ceremony, prayer and day-to-day living that has persisted for thousands of years within the culture.

“It’s mostly us in the West that we make distinctions. Culture and spirituality are not really separate things to many indigenous peoples.  They are one and the same thing. Spirituality, and the links between spirit and the earth, is inherent in their whole way of being, and for me, this earth-based element has always been very important to me. I still practice yoga every day, but I have not really felt a calling for me to follow that as a deep spiritual path, to go to India for example and really study those traditions. I’ve been much more drawn to the earth-based traditions, to those ancient roots. All ancient traditions are fascinating for me, but I do seem to have an innate, natural pull to the Native American, First Nation people. This speaks to me very strongly in my life, and what my path has entwined me with mostly is the indigenous cultures of North and South America.”

“My memories of those days are all woven in with these beautiful gatherings and rituals, not all necessarily with plant medicines; I have continued to walk the path of these traditions, for example following the Vision Quest: the Native American tradition of four days, no food, no water, my solitude in nature with no movement and no sound. They have been powerful experiences that have enriched and shaped me.”

Family ties and an inner call to return home saw Ayla journey back to the UK where she started to integrate what she had learned into her Western life, becoming a ceremonial musician. With no interest in performing at concerts, her passion for singing in ceremony and prayer and offering her voice to spirit continued to be her obsession. Connecting into the medicine and ceremonial circles scene in the UK, she continued to spend time with the native peoples that would visit from abroad, or travel to Europe to work with indigenous people and share their ceremonies and spiritual culture.

Alongside this, Ayla also recorded her first EP Words and Wolves, containing five tracks of evocative and exquisite songs described by Songlines magazine as ‘Spellbinding folk music infused with latin mystique’. Recorded simply, with only acoustic guitar and a few other instruments, Ayla’s intention was in no way to seek fame and fortune, but simply to express what was in her heart.

“It’s always been important to me to give the songs a home and to be sharing them. There’s always been an impulse in me. I’m not satisfied if I’m not doing that. But I was finding the channel through singing at ceremonies, singing round fires, playing at a few festivals. It was enough to be really roots with it at that time. I didn’t need more.”

“And then I wrote this song: Vuela con el Viento (Fly with the Wind) and something just happened really. I put it on Soundcloud initially, and it just took off. It went viral. I don’t know why it took off in the way that it did. The song has a magic to it, I guess. How does any song become a hit? It’s the spirit of the song. The way it touches people. I had no idea, but I began to see, like, WOW…something’s happening…!”

‘Something’s happening’ might be an understatement. Whilst the album mix of the track on Soundcloud has received more than 800,000 plays, it is the YouTube video that is the most astonishing, with over 20 million (yes million!) views. One could even argue that Vuela con el Viento (Fly with the Wind) is one of the most successful contemporary spiritual songs ever written. Perhaps it is all the more surprising that the song isn’t written or sung in English. The song is in Spanish.

This song was released with her Debut Album ‘Dive into Water’ in 2016.

“Now that I am more used to writing songs in Spanish as well as English, I have come to realise that there’s a special frequency, a spiritual force inherent to the Spanish language that has a certain energy to it. It has a powerful and indefinable quality to it that is very different to English.”

Appealing to Spanish native speakers might also explain part of the mystery, but what about English audiences? How do they connect with the song when they don’t know what it means?

“I think that there’s something about the mind not understanding what a song means. The music is able to enter us without our mental filtering. We can receive the medicine of sound into our body and heart without the mind getting in the way. It’s a mysterious force. What does it even mean to be touched by music? We FEEL music. Sometimes it is important to understand the words: there are gifts to understanding words, but sometimes it’s good for the mind to not be able to latch on and just receive the gift of the sound. I think there is something to that. So many people have written to me saying what the song has meant to them in their lives, and they have no idea what the words mean!”

At this point, Ayla was pregnant with her first child, which might have discouraged her from starting work on her next album, but at 7 months pregnant, she committed herself to begin working on it. After attending the Aniwa Gathering in Ibiza, where many indigenous peoples from all different cultures around the world share their wisdom and teachings, she met Txai Fernando, the Brazilian music producer, and thereafter began working with him at his studio in Norway, and in the UK, recording tracks for what was to become her 'Silent Voices’ album.

“Fernando is a brilliant producer with his own unique approach. He had spent lots of time living and working with indigenous people and has an amazing method to music and sound. He works with the spirit of the song, treating it as such, taking care of it, respecting it and what it is asking for. I feel I was also going through a natural ripening at this stage and began to feel the need to more actively share my music and get it into the world. It became more significant to me. I made the shift to realising that is what I am 100% dedicated to doing. But I was still making my money in other ways outside of music, working here and there, selling things that I’d bought from abroad and so on, but the growing success of the Vuela con el Viento single was bringing the importance of my music into in focus.”

“We released the video for Vuela con el Viento when I was literally 2 weeks away from giving birth. It was a bit like birthing two things at once! It was filmed by Kai Ohio, whom I had met in Manchester when filming a live performance I had attended, and I thought his work was wonderful. The video looks like it was filmed at some exotic location, but it was actually at a beach in Liverpool! Ironically, I was so immersed with the birth of my son, and looking after him, that I didn’t even keep tabs on how the video was doing. Around 6 months later, my friend wrote to me and said ‘Ayla I hope you’re claiming monetisation on your YouTube video’ and I said ‘No, why?’ I had no idea it had taken off in the way it did!’

21 million views later, and Ayla is well on her way to global recognition. After several years on the road travelling to Portugal, Brazil and Mexico, Ayla has now returned to the UK and is living with her family on a farm in Devon, taking the time to slow down and enjoy quality time with her family. To tend horses, grow vegetables, and to connect with the land. Yet she has no plans to put the breaks on her musical journey, with a tour planned for next year.

“Honour the Water is the theme of my tour for 2023, and it comes from vision I have to share the music in a more inclusive and interactive way. I’ve never been particularly attracted to the idea of concerts. They have always felt rather one-sided to me. My vision is to create more of a shared space, with the intention of exploring a deeper purpose with my audience. It’s a big step, as I have never done a proper tour, but now it makes more sense. The theme is water: how it is the essence of life, the vision to be planting seeds, that the world is part of this sprouting, and we are all in a new time, with people stepping forward to ask: how can we live our lives in a way that is honouring life? Together we have to find a means to create this new way forward. That we can honour our connections more, to ourselves, to the water, to the web, to the spirit, and to each other.”

Yet touring is only another step on the path for Ayla. She still has a passion to bring the cultural traditions and ways of life she has so profoundly experienced to the senses of the Western world. To build some kind community where these values can be more readily experienced. To assemble her tribe, and fulfil her lifelong purpose.

“I’ve been the traveller for so long, and have always resisted prescribed boundaries, yet I feel I came here with a strong knowing of where I was going. I have felt it as a force compelling me somehow, guiding me. I feel utterly blessed that I can expand this vision further, and experiment with it. After all my travels, I still ask myself ‘Where is my tribe? Where is the life that I really long to live?’

“What really makes sense to me, would be to live in a community with other people, and other families, where we sing, dance, pray and walk our spiritual path together and grow food together, like the tribal people. Where all the aspects of life are not separate. Where music and dance and prayer are not for special occasions – they happen every day, as a part of daily life. In all my travels there’s been a part of me that’s always seeking to find again something that I remember deeply in me from my ancestral memory. In my bones. That I came here to live in a way that makes sense: being connected to the earth, to spirit, to my communities. To be singing, praying, dancing and growing food, feeling free, and not being constricted by the illusions of how reality is presented to us by our western culture, which is strong, and so far away from what I feel is the essence of what this miracle of life is really all about. It takes us so far away from ourselves and that which really matters, which for me is my ancestors, the land, the animals, the children, the songs, the dances, the sky the earth, life, spirit, God, whatever we want to call it. I guess with everything I have been doing, there has been that seeking of something which I know in my essence, because it is my essence, and I’m seeking to try and work out how to live that way here, as part of the 21^st century.”

In addition to Ayla's album releases, she has also worked alongside organisations that protect the Amazon Rainforest. 2018 saw the release of a collection of live, acoustic and experimental tracks with the album Ima Adama, from which Ayla donates 25% of the profits to The Pachamama Alliance. This album release was followed in 2020 by Ayla's single Music Plants Trees and the Music Plants Trees Remix (featuring Chris Paradox) with Agami Records, which donates 100% of the profits to tree planting projects. Ayla is also leading the way in Artivism with the Music Plants Trees campaign, it's vision and mission to help reforest the world through music, and to support social and environmental causes through art. For every album and ticket sold at Ayla’s events a tree is planted, and Ayla ensures that whilst she is on tour, her travel is by train or boat when possible.

The most recent creations by Eugenia Maggi propose a connection with dreamlike and ethereal worlds: shapes, colours, movements accompanied by sounds that represent a soft, harmonic and light dimension of existence. They invite calm, to live in the present moment, to meditation and self-knowledge.

Her illustrations oscillate in the spectrum of visionary and psychedelic art, with an altruistic imprint: the search for healing and transformation, both personally and for those who encounter her work.

“I trust in the power to change our life circumstances by changing the way we think”, is one of the mantras of her artistic expressiveness and also a philosophy of her life.

The path that brought her here was built through intense experiences, the investigation of the psyche, meditation and some transcendental experiences with sacred plants, mushrooms and psychedelic therapies.

The inner girl who seizes the pencil and loses track of time every time she draws, Eugenia grew up surrounded by rivers and a markedly wild ecosystem, considering the short distance that separates her from the capital of Argentina. In the Tigre Delta, the islanders move in boats, there are no streets or paths that connect each of the islands, and the special climate of this wetland has favoured the presence of plant and animal species from subtropical environments in a southern region.

In that environment some things were missing, but the gifts were a great connection with nature and an uncensored invitation to let your imagination run wild. Her father had shamanic training, he played the tarot and was her first teacher in this art that she practices today and has integrated into her creative universe.

Her mother, an actress, felt at that time a special ability to connect with beings from other dimensions or extraterrestrials, so that mystical and supernatural experiences were recurring themes during her childhood.

The magic of the island was later manifested with the arrival of Jorge Gumier Maier, who moved to the same creek when Eugenia was 17 years old.

She did not know it yet, but she had met a very important Argentine artist and curator, who promoted a space in the Rojas Cultural Center that was the most important art gallery of the '90s in Buenos Aires.

Jorge suggested that she be his assistant, Eugenia began working in his workshop and collaborated with his samples for several years. Together they painted pieces of wood or plastic that the tide brought and he rescued, but at that time she had a very figurative and realistic interpretation of art, and she did not understand what Jorge was doing, she thought it was crazy.

When she finally attended the exhibition of what he did with all the items she collected from the river, the idea of ​​art that she had flew through the air.

She found a totally different aesthetic concept: she tapped into an unimagined sensory delight in discovering that you could create beauty from something completely abstract and build new things from there.

Jorge not only marked a milestone in her artistic path and in her aesthetic perspective, but he became her family and one of the most important people in her life.

During those same years, within the framework of formal education, he studied Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, where he acquired new tools and techniques of expression.

Later, she trained as a Web Master and motivated to achieve an economic livelihood that would overcome the scarcity of her first years of life, she enrolled in the Advertising career, although that environment was not comfortable for her and she interrupted those studies a few subjects after graduating.

She then carried out a transforming workshop with the plastic artist Paula Duró, also in Buenos Aires, which provided her with a very free space where each one developed her artistic projects.

Based on the tarot that she learned from her father, she studied the technique of Alejandro Jodorovsky, a Chilean writer and filmmaker who uses the Marseille tarot cards as a therapeutic tool for psychological self-knowledge and to heal, without seeking to predict the future. .

Later he was trained as a companion of Evolutive Breathing, a practice close to meditation or mindfulness that uses conscious breathing and inquiry techniques, aimed at self-discovery, creativity and the integration of thoughts and emotions, in order to live more present, healthy and connected with our desires and purposes.

Already in adulthood, her mother, who suffered from schizophrenia, left the house where she lived and to this day they continue to look for her. It is an episode that left a strong mark on her history.

Eugenia entered a state of deep depression and, following the recommendation of traditional medicine, she was treated with psychoactive drugs, but she felt dull and absent. Faced with the possibility of being trapped in that circle, alternative therapies emerged as a way out.

Guided by a shaman, she participated in a ceremony a sacred plant from the Amazon characterized by seeking the expansion of consciousness. The trip was very strong and provided him with a deep healing, of great transmutation of pain, with visual experiences where deities were presented that made him feel protection, infinite love and that his existence had meaning.

Many of the images in his work have to do with this expression of love and the guides that appeared on that journey. This transformative experience also allowed him to make the decision to see the world, leave his native country and head to New Zealand.

From then on, trips to different regions began to be more frequent, including Southeast Asia and much of Europe.

He has lived for several years in London, where he worked for a time as an artist in Camden Market, and then in Barcelona, ​​where he currently resides.

Thus, travel became one of his main sources of inspiration, the various forms of deities and spiritual guides of the cultures of each region, as well as the fauna and flora, which are very present in his work, generate a lot of peace and represent at the same time, a great refuge.

Also experimentation with psychedelic therapies, mushrooms, yoga or meditation, which give him access to a deeper dimension of the mind, to the subconscious, from where a large part of the images he creates are born and are always linked to a search for fulfilment. in the present moment.

Psychomagic is another element that flies over his imagination and finding a deeper meaning to existence fascinates him. In Thailand, for example, tattoos are also elements of protection.

In the same way, Eugenia likes to think that her creations can have some power, that they can help other people or protect them, just because whoever has them chooses that they do. "And faith makes that work, like a holy card," she explains.

Through all these influences, and although she continues to go through situations of anguish, anxiety or other emotions in her daily life, Eugenia has achieved a deep confidence in the power of transformation that we have when we focus on building new ways of defining ourselves, how we think ourselves and how we treat ourselves.

“As I was being kinder to myself and treating myself with more love, I was developing a healthier bond with myself. I feel that my reality has been profoundly transformed, and it continues to happen as long as I continue to trust in it and work on myself”, she reflects.

The materials that she has used throughout her career range from pencils, watercolours, acrylics, ceramics, painting on paper or canvas, to print designs for different surfaces.

But today she works almost entirely digitally, on an iPad Pro with tools like Procreate and After Effects.

She finds that multimedia is a very friendly support to be able to create animations, incorporate music or make 3D objects.

She recently began to paste up, a street art technique that consists of leaving stickers of her illustrations in public places.

This returned a more tangible dimension to her drawings, which allows her to interact with people when she hits them, to talk, to know what causes them what they see.

And on these stickers she is also applying augmented reality, through a QR code that each illustration has, with which people can use social networks and see the filters that each of the works has.

Among her next challenges are the animation of meditations and drawing and live animation where the support is the city itself.

Colm Holland is a writer, teacher and therapist, publisher of 'The Alchemist' in 1993 and author of 'The Secret of The Alchemist' in 2020.

2023 is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of the English language edition of the global bestseller The Alchemist by the Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho. The memory of that event holds a special place in my life because I was probably the first person in Australia to read the manuscript before publication, when I was working at HarperCollins Publishers in 1993.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book or its author, I should say that it is the third best selling book of a living author in the world; with over 160 million copies sold in 70 languages and sits at the top of the charts with Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code. Of course when I read The Alchemist for the first time, like everyone I had no idea just how successful this book would be; but what I did know was that it was going to be a life-changing book for many people.

I was so convinced of its sales potential that I persuaded my colleagues to abandon printing a small run of an expensive hard-cover edition, that would come later, and go straight to paperback and print thousands more than originally intended and give it all the publicity of a popular crime or romance author by an established author. The result speaks for itself, and considering I had never requested such a risky activity before, I was happy to be vindicated by the incredible sales that have gone on and on for thirty years.

More importantly to me, I also got the chance to meet Paulo Coelho on his first visit to Australia. The story of our encounter is re-told in my book, The Secret of The Alchemist, but I want to say here, that it was one of the most significant turning points in my life and not something I was expecting at the age of forty. Paulo informed me he was a magician, in the spiritual sense, and he was so grateful for my faith in his book he had spent a day of his time working his magic with the universe, so that whatever I truly desired in my life would come to pass; all it required of me was to decide what I really wanted.

To discover what happened next you need to read my book, except I will say the magic he performed has shaped my life and those around me for the better for the last thirty years. Nothing had prepared me for the changes that took place. Where I had previously lacked the courage of my convictions - I now found a new confidence to step out of my comfort zone and take the risks to achieve my dreams. Where I had held back by fear of rejection from allowing myself to be centre stage in my immediate world - I now pushed ahead and found I had so much more to give and it was gratefully received. And finally, where I had previously accepted ‘my lot’ in life - I was now able to shape my destiny and bring joy, wealth and happiness to others, and myself.

Two years ago I finally published my story, full of the insights and benefits I now know can be discovered by taking Paulo’s book, The Alchemist, at face value and enter a life based on the ancient principles of alchemy; the forgotten art of ordinary magic that can be part of anyone’s experience. The pain and joy of personal transformation is all there in his story and it resonates with almost everyone because it is a living myth for our time. Carl Jung asked himself the question one day, ‘What is the myth I am living?’  Is it a tragedy determined by fate or can I choose my own myth; full of adventure, wholeness and joy?’

The Alchemist is the hero’s journey; a metaphor for the journey we all take through life and how we respond to the obstacles and opportunities that we are presented with and the choices we make at each moment. The principles of the ancient art of alchemy provide a guide in the person of the alchemist, a central character in the story, who does not make those choices for us, but supports us at critical times when we need to face our fears and risk all, or so it seems, to move forward towards our treasure, which is the gold of the alchemists.

So whether you read Paulo’s book many years ago, or if you haven’t read my book, can I recommend them both to you if you are at a point where you feel the need to reassess your own myth, and decide if it's time to rewrite your own story? May the power of unconditional love help you make the right choice. 

My own creative journey as a writer is irrevocably linked to the story of my encounter with Paulo Coelho, but it was to be another twenty-four years before I would put pen to paper. In 2016; I was living on the Cote D’Azur and thinking about how my life has been a wonderful alchemical journey and how few people have written about personal transformation from that perspective. 

My book The Secret of The Alchemist is the result of three years work that involved the application of the alchemical process to writing a non-fiction book that was part autobiographical; part a critique of the not-so-hidden alchemical references in The Alchemist; part a presentation of the history and processes of the ancient alchemists and part a treatise on the application of alchemical motifs that Carl Jung understood to be present in his own myth of Individuation. In that sense the success of my book is that I was able to use the same principles in the creation of a book that I lived my life by and taught to others in my online school.

The application of my alchemical spiritual process to book writing

My writing process went something like this: ( I should note that I was working full-time as a professional marketing consultant at the same time as writing.)

The Saturation Stage: (In four parts over a period of one year)

• I documented the stages of my own spiritual journey - before and after my encounter with Paulo. Then I chose the transformative moments and built narrative stories around them that are part factual and part interpretative.
• What followed next was a deep dive into the The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho to find the mythological motif of the Hero’s Journey as it relates to the alchemical principle.
• Next up was a lengthy study of ancient alchemy from multiple cultures and schools and a reworking of the key principles that were most relevant to my topic.
• Finally a wide reading of Carl Jung and his not-so-easy to summarise understanding of the psyche’s use of archetypes and mythology and his overarching thinking on the place of myths or fables in our own daily experiences.

The Combustion Stage: (Another year in the making)

• I would then commit to meditating on all the four parts within my unconscious mind as I went to sleep at night and then the moment I began to emerge from sleep in the morning and allowed myself to ‘see’, using my active imagination, the book taking shape in my mind’s eye in progressive stages.
• I would then find whatever time I could in the day to begin the first draft until I was satisfied I had all the components in place.

The Silence Stage. (Three months of waiting and another seven month’s writing)

• When the first draft was complete I sent my manuscript to a trusted professional editor who was spiritually sympathetic to my work and has years of experience in structural editing.
• I waited three months for her to complete the structural edit and when it returned I re-wrote the entire manuscript based on her recommendations. This required the swallowing of pride and the compromise of fixed positions in my mind and the result is a beautifully balanced work that Carl Jung would say was the goal of alchemy.

The Action Stage. (Another year to publication)

• I asked my unconscious for guidance on who to approach to publish my book and an old publishing colleague came to mind and sure enough my book became his company’s lead title for that month.
• Within one month my book was number one, two and four on Amazon.com for Twentieth Century Literature and stayed there in the top ten for three months and still appears in their top 100 out of hundreds of thousands of titles.
• Then followed months of publicity, interviews, articles and posts.
• Hachette Livre - France’s leading publisher translated my book into French and released my book across the French speaking world.

In conclusion, I have found that the spiritual principles that have guided my life for so many years are the same tools I should apply to writing. ‘The Great Work’ as the alchemists called it is the process I have outlined above and I am applying the same principles to my first work of fiction - a three volume historical series - based on the factual existence of Alchemy in Elizabethan England and woven into the fictionalised story of one of my ancestors whose life stretched across eighty years into the early part of the seventeenth century. I am using the same process to create an alchemical magic that I hope people will want to read. If you want to discover the story of my personal spiritual progress then you will need to read my book and I trust you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

“To say science and spirituality are mutually exclusive, does a disservice to both” - Carl Sagan.

Those insightful words always resonated deeply with me, and by extension the arts (in my case music and sound), provide the perfect medium to communicate ideas which simultaneously straddle the worlds of science, spirituality, and art.

I discovered my passion for music and sound via electronics and technology. Growing up in the late 70’s – early 80’s around the age of 5-6, I was fascinated with electronics and computers, I loved listening to records while watching the turntable go round and round (there was something about the disc shape which I found mesmerising), along with anything other worldly, such as extra-terrestrial life, magic and the paranormal. In fact, I had numerous experiences with such things very early on.

Although less frequent, they have continued throughout my adult life which is itself an interesting point; when we are young, we are completely open to everything, more in tune, and capable of perceiving magic in the world around us. But as we grow older, we are taught and told to discount as dreams or imagination, anything which can’t be easily explained.

When I was young, wonderful and mysterious things seemed to happen to me all the time, they were a regular feature of life. They were not just dreams, nor the product of an over-active young imagination. They were real, palpable experiences, often with physical evidence. As I grew up and the influence of the secular world flexed and tightened its grip on my psyche, those occurrences became rarer, or at least much more difficult to perceive through the increasingly dominant lens of the rational adult mind. Because of this, I find myself actively seeking them out, hoping for another glimpse of the tantalising ethereal world which seemed so much closer to my younger self. I’ve often wondered how many of us have these mystical experiences early in life but soon either forget them or are persuaded by our parents that they all have some prosaic explanation and are to be quickly discounted.

When I became interested in such topics in my mid-twenties, I began to remember all those childhood experiences and decided to investigate them further as I felt they were an important part of my personal spirituality. Part of that process involved regression hypnosis which granted, is perhaps not the most reliable source of information due to its highly interpretive nature. But experiencing it first hand, I can say with absolute certainty that the things I saw and experienced were not products of imagination, nor was I led in any way by the practitioner, what was most overwhelming though, was how incredibly emotional the experience was. In quite uncharacteristic fashion, I found myself in floods of tears as waves of emotion washed over me. The exact content of those sessions, and of all those experiences is beyond the scope of this article, but I have started writing a book on the subject.

Topics such as past lives and reincarnation, extra-terrestrial life, out-of-body experiences, ghosts and other entities, between-lives, and E.S.P have all been regular features in my life and have greatly influenced the music I write. I’ve always subscribed to an individual, personal spirituality rather than one based in organised religion. It has been my experience that whenever humans seek to organise spirituality in the form of religion, it is all too often for entirely the wrong reasons.

Through my teenage years into my early twenties, my family had introduced me to a Christian organisation with whom they had been studying the bible. However well-intentioned they may have been, that whole period was incredibly damaging. This religion was particularly cultish and controlling, it took everything I had to separate myself from it, and meant I had to endure being completely ostracised by the very people who had been my closest friends for years. By deciding to follow my own spiritual path, I was considered a dangerous apostate. I had dared to question some of their most troubling and contradictory doctrines, but rather than discuss them with me, it was announced to the congregation that I had chosen to follow the path of the devil and therefore must be shunned by all. I can’t begin to describe how it felt when the people who had been so close to me for so long, now hurriedly crossed the road to avoid me with looks of fear and dread on their faces.

As challenging and painful as that was, it taught me a great deal and ultimately served to strengthen my resolve to follow my own spiritual path, and to decide for myself what exactly my belief system would be made of.

After more than three decades working as a composer, producer, and sound engineer, of studying the cultures surrounding the native instruments and traditional musical styles I was incorporating into my work and exploring a broad range of spiritual subjects and belief systems, I am convinced that music and sound are powerful beyond their aesthetic and emotional qualities and are actually ancient technologies. The ancients understood this and used music and sound both in their spiritual practises and in very physical, practical ways ranging from all kinds of healing, sonic levitation, esoteric weaponry and defences, to even accessing other dimensions. One area I found particularly interesting was cymatics:

“…In his research with the tonoscope, Dr. Jenny noticed that when the vowels of the ancient languages of Hebrew and Sanskrit were pronounced, the sand took shape of the written symbols for these vowels, while modern languages, on the other hand, did not generate the same result. What was so special about these languages, did the ancients know of these sciences? Dr. Jenny’s research leads us to conclude that there is deep rooted science behind the ancient languages. This perhaps explains the healing and manifestation power of various Sanskrit mantras…”

https://theinnerworld.in/spirituality/science-of-sound/cymatics-and-its-wonders/amp/

Over the last thirty years, I have been privileged to explore so many aspects of spirituality, from my early new-age albums with themes including feng-shui, reiki, ayurveda, tai-chi, yoga, and others, through my world-dance music of the early 00’s which focussed on eastern mysticism, to earlier this year when I released “Moon”, my 37^th album of original music.

This one combined my love of space and science with the combination of synthesisers and orchestra which has become a big part of my style, and the incredible narrative of the 1969 Apollo moon landing.

I adore composing film music and view this album like a score for a movie in your head. I take much inspiration from vivid imagery, a story or narrative and strong emotional content which are all rich in the Apollo 11 mission. “Moon” explores the emotional and spiritual impact of that pioneering mission upon the astronauts who braved incredible odds and forever changed the way we perceive our place in the universe. I’m honoured that the album has won ‘best electronic album’ in the annual One World Music awards this year and spent 4 weeks at No.1 in their charts.

Science, spirituality, music, and sound are all vast and fascinating topics, but the area where they overlap is what fuels my muse. The power of spirituality combined with music is clear, but it really hit home with me when I saw the reactions to my 2002 album, “Guardian Angels”.

One track in particular, “In Michaels’s Realm”, has over 1.3 million views and more than 500 comments, and some of those comments took me completely by surprise.  

This short little piece which features a solo choir boy over a gentle, dreamy orchestral arrangement of strings, harp, and trumpet, seems to have connected with people in a remarkable way.

When I scrolled back through the comments, I was quite overwhelmed to find so many claiming the track had helped them overcome difficult times and to reconnect with their own spirituality, and most incredible of all, several said it had lifted them so much that it prevented them from committing suicide.

I found this incredibly humbling, it confirmed to me the power of music as a tool for healing, especially when combined with spiritual themes.

It also got me wondering whether we really do compose anything at all completely by ourselves because at times, musical ideas and inspiration in general seem to be gifted to us, appearing from thin air without conscious thought or effort. In a sense, at times I feel more a conduit for the music, wherever it comes from, than its actual originator.

Either way, I feel it is a great privilege to be able to express myself in this way since music not only delights, heals and inspires those it touches, it has also been a great comfort and dependable friend to me throughout my life, giving language and form to the abstract concepts of spirituality and how I relate to it.

Jayne’s arrival at the canvas was almost as if overnight, a shift, a ‘stepping into’ occurred. This shift happened in the midst of working with an energy healer for deeper answers to chronic pain and dis-ease, present by this point for more than 15 years.

Some years prior, Jayne had explored meditation, oracle cards and trained in Reiki, gaining knowledge of energy healing and the etheric body, and reconnecting to a childhood recognition of something bigger.

The energy healer Jayne worked with used spiritual guidance, developing her own flow for healing others, and often received direct messages and visions. One such vision was of Jayne painting planet-wide with a connection deep into the earth and out into the Universe.

Jayne had never explored painting due to ‘art wounding’ and inner beliefs of not being good enough, so she just smiled at the idea, not thinking it could be a reality.

During the years of bringing up her children, Jayne explored connections of a spiritual nature, stepping in and out of allowing, letting earthly life have the priority until needing desperately to find answers for healing. Being open to anything and a few months after the healing vision, Jayne saw a woman on social media, Flora Aube talking about her online course Painting with the Divine Feminine.

This was Jayne’s first recollection of saying ‘Yes’ from deep within, no mind at this point, just higher self. It took courage to send ‘real’ money through the ether for something physically intangible and join a circle of women from all over earth, but trust was there gently whispering and taking her hand. Jayne now recognises this experience as a soul led screaming to say yes and just do it!

From contact with Flora Aube’s’ The Art of Allowing, Jayne met another artist Michal Shimoni - these women, along with many sisters in art circles from all over the world, became her mentors and teachers.

The connections Jayne knows were universally placed - it is too short a time in a few words to write about the divinely led paths that opened up - but she says that soul led listening, trust and love through painting have completely changed her life, with the canvas becoming a reflection of life going forward.

Facing a blank canvas was like standing on the edge of a void, needing trust to step forward and place the first mark. The fear was real. The ugly ‘I can't stand this’ phase, in each painting real, the trust needed to step through each layer real, communing with ego real, realising until ego is recognised, tamed and loved, you cannot receive with love into the heart what appears on the canvas.

There were times when Jayne couldn’t comprehend she had painted the image with the story, this is how she knows there is an artist inside every soul, for her the art inside is the potential. So many people have said to her ‘I could never do that’, but Jayne always smiles knowing they hold that potential. With a quietening of ego and inner critic, a welcoming of the breath, listening, trust and love for the self, an inner guidance can flow forward.

This inner guidance in turn can flow down through the brush, for the potential to move to the canvas with the most surprising outcome. Jayne expresses that the ‘art of the art’ is the centering, the breath and the heart connection, and that during the process, a depth of truth can be revealed. She says ‘truth within ourselves when met and witnessed with purity becomes external truth laid onto canvas’.

There was a point Jayne stepped into where she felt the images, energy and stories were being channelled. She never knew what was coming, and to this day, she never plans or pre sketches a painting. She will breathe, meditate then follow her higher guidance.

Painting in this way, Jayne has discovered you are often not physically at the canvas. She has chosen not to fight ‘not painting’ and does not feel the drive to paint without connection to the higher self, so when spirit is quiet then patience and self-love must prevail.

Jayne says it took some time, inner battle, frustration and reflection of life to find patience and love, and then there were tears of recognition that this IS the journey of awakening to our spirituality, reflected back. Jayne has received the deep support of sisters and mentors and has been gifted the opportunity to return this loving support, especially whilst completing facilitator training for the Art of Allowing which ran very deep in 2020.

This type of work is huge and is happening in many parts of the world through many mediums, but is kept mostly within ‘safe’ circles due to the risk of wounding on stepping into the more mainstream areas. It takes bravery to be seen whole, you feel naked and vulnerable, but without moving into new witnessed spaces how can the light, love and trust flow forward?

Diving Deep was painted on a universally guided trip taken in 2019, Jayne’s first true experience of a self-manifestation. She met with both her art facilitators who just ‘happened’ to have planned to come to Europe from the USA and Israel to Spain, to hold an Art of Allowing retreat.

It’s hard to put into written language the process of a painting, from its completed point, another space that never truly arrives, and certainly if it does, not with ease, which again reflects our spiritual journey that never truly ends. The painting holds the energy of the physical and soul journey Jayne experienced through the laying down of the soul skin onto the canvas after a meditation based on Dr Clarrisa Pinkola Estes seal-skin story, to the finding of the deep peaceful Buddha energy that eventually filled the canvas (and Jayne!).

There was a communication as an internal flight, deep into the waters of discovery and exploration. The inner being reflected the experience of tasting a freedom, a love within a sister circle that Jayne had not yet experienced. She says if she hadn’t followed what she now recognises as a soul yes spirit communion, what she now holds so deep and wide in her art and spiritual journey would not have materialised.

On returning to home space, when asked if she’d had a good time Jayne’s answer was always ‘life changing’ for the combination of art, sisterhood, music and the ocean had opened her to love and spirituality, trust, joy and laughter through a doorway she could never have had imagined, and since meeting with herself at the canvas Jayne does not doubt Spirit or Soul. She listens to the deep knowing and recognition of something beyond.

Having her sovereignty and queendom revealed through the canvas, Jayne has a yearning to invite others pulled to spirit and soul, to some moments of breath, inner stillness and connection with the self, potential and inner artist. It is her deep belief we are all artists and healers, waiting for a doorway, portal, and the invitation from the heart to say YES.