Justine Aldersey-Williams

Who are you?

I am Justine. I am a yoga teacher. A mother. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A design graduate. A former secondary school teacher. A member of the British Wheel of Yoga. A helper at my kid's school.

Yes, but without all that, who are you?

I am a woman. I am a housewife. I am a singer in the shower. A business woman. An aspiring authouress. A former mural artist / wedding stationer / fashion show dresser / web designer / barmaid / summer camp counsellor. A perpetual student. A tribal belly dancer.

Yes, but without all that, who are you?

I am an over-thinker. An artist. I am an ideas person. I am a yogini. I am trying to improve.

But who are you?

I am a child grown-up. A crone-in-the-making. I am a body, a mind and a heap of emotion that I am trying to understand.

Who are you?

I am confused. I am mysterious. Unknowable. Boundless. Connected. I have no idea. I know nothing. I am fizzy. Light. I am Yoga.

Sometimes, our intelligence, personality traits and lifestyle habits become a smoke-screen obscuring the simple truth of who we are. The labels that we give ourselves and that our friends, families and enemies have given us contribute to our illusion.

These labels often describe our human-ness but say nothing about our being-ness. We are all human beings, not just solid, finite, differentiated human forms but invisible, infinite, undifferentiated and formless beings - otherwise what is the difference between being dead and alive? My being-ness is the same as yours and it can't be created or destroyed!

The difference between the truth of who we are and our expectations of who we should be is where stress lies and as well as being a psycho-emotional issue, stress sits in the muscles of the body, restricting breathing and affecting our moods.

When we suffer these human limitations, we forget that we are still beings and identify soley with the frustration, the pain, the injury etc. of our human selves. We think we are just the wrapping paper and forget that we are in fact the present!

I am a human being on a journey of involution, that is a journey of returning to the source of who I am.