There’s something deliciously fitting about a conversation that begins with summer houses and somehow spirals into Mercury retrograde, spirit animal medicine, self-compassion, AI discernment and the state of the collective. In other words, welcome to an average chat on The No Taboo Woo Woo Show. This episode was one of those catch-up conversations that ended up saying far more than either of us probably expected. On the surface, we were talking about space. Literal space. Garden offices. Summer houses. Yoga rooms. The practical reality of needing enough room to stretch out on a mat rather than trying to do embodiment work in a corner between a desk and a bookshelf. But as ever, the practical turned out to be spiritual. Because space is never just about square footage, is it? It’s about what supports you. What holds you. What lets you breathe. What allows you to hear yourself think. What makes it easier to show up for the things that matter rather than constantly adapting around what doesn’t. The spaces that shape us I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of space we actually need. Not in the aspirational Pinterest-board sense, though I’m certainly not against a beautiful room and a bit of good lighting. I mean the kind of space that supports the life you’re trying to build now, not the life you had five years ago. The work I’m doing has shifted. It’s no longer just sitting at a desk with a laptop. There’s embodiment work, Kundalini yoga teacher training, classes, practices that require room to lie down, move, breathe, stretch, shake something loose. Suddenly the question becomes less “where can I work?” and more “what kind of environment actually supports the woman I’m becoming?” That’s a very different question. And it’s one I think many of us avoid, because it sounds indulgent. We tell ourselves we should just make do. Be grateful. Stop fussing. Work around it. Adapt. To be fair, humans are brilliantly adaptable. We can get used to almost anything. But just because you can adapt to a space, a rhythm, a routine or a dynamic doesn’t mean it’s actually supporting you. Sometimes what looks like a practical frustration is actually a spiritual nudge. A clue. An invitation to stop squeezing yourself into a version of life that no longer fits. Grounding doesn’t always look glamorous I wrote on The Unstuck Edit recently about grounding, and one of the simplest ways to ground yourself isn’t especially sexy or mystical. It’s tidying up. Not because we all need to become minimalist saints who own one mug and a morally superior linen throw. But because our external environment affects our internal environment more than we often admit. When things are strewn everywhere, when piles start gathering, when there’s nowhere to put the books you’ve bought for the course you’re doing or the tools you’re trying to use, it creates friction. Noise. Low-level irritation. It chips away at your sense of steadiness. Grounding can absolutely be breathwork, meditation, bare feet on the earth and moon rituals. But sometimes grounding is also putting the bloody thing back where it belongs. Sometimes it’s making your environment kinder to your nervous system. The deck that found me While away in Shrewsbury, I wandered into a crystal shop and came out with a tarot deck I definitely did not need but very clearly was meant to have. It’s called Wise Earth Medicine Tarot, and I’ve been really enjoying getting to know it. It follows the structure of traditional tarot, but the suits are tied to the elements and the imagery draws on animals and the natural world in a way that feels earthy, intuitive and quietly powerful. The card I pulled for the day while recording the episode was The High Priestess, represented in this deck by an octopus. Honestly, both Sandra and I loved it immediately. We talked about the octopus as High Priestess making perfect sense. Intelligent. Mysterious. Sensitive. Intentional. Connected to the unseen. Able to move through deep waters with a kind of quiet precision. There’s no frantic energy there. No performative urgency. Just deep knowing. The message was exactly what you’d expect from the High Priestess and exactly what many of us need to hear: stop searching outside yourself for answers you already have access to within. The medicine of that card was all about intuition, mysticism, psychic connection, and trusting the wisdom that’s already alive in your body. Not forcing.Not overthinking.Not collecting seventeen opinions from the internet and calling it clarity. Just listening. Meerkat medicine, boundaries and finding your people The other thread running through this month for me is meerkat energy. As part of a Reiki challenge, I have been given meerkat as the spirit animal to work with for July. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t one I would have chosen for myself. If you’d asked me what animal medicine I was expecting, I probably would have said something grand and dramatic. A lion. A jaguar. A wolf. Something with a bit of cinematic flair. Instead: meerkat. And yet, the more I’ve sat with it, the more perfect it feels. When I looked into the symbolism, the themes that came through were community, vigilance, communication, adaptability, resilience and protection. Meerkats are social, but they’re not indiscriminate. They live in community, yes, but with structure, alertness and awareness. They know who their people are. They work together. They watch out for one another. They stay connected to their surroundings. That part hit me. Because community matters to me. It always has. It’s in my work, and as Sandra reminds me, in my chart, in the way I want to build things. But meerkat energy felt like a reminder that community isn’t about being available to everyone. It’s not about collecting people or trying to be liked by all and sundry. It’s about discernment. It’s about building and tending the right circles.It’s about knowing where you belong.It’s about being open-hearted without being boundaryless. There’s medicine in that. Mercury retrograde is not just here to ruin your Wi-Fi We also talked a lot in this episode about Mercury retrograde in Cancer, and I know Mercury retrograde gets treated like the astrological equivalent of a wasp in the kitchen. Everyone starts flapping. But, listen to Sandra’s astrological insights and honestly, I think it deserves a better reputation than that. Yes, it can bring delays, crossed wires and general nonsense. But retrogrades also ask us to review. Revisit. Reflect. Reassess. And in Cancer, the territory gets emotional. This isn’t just about whether your email lands in someone’s junk folder. It’s about emotional safety. Inner dialogue. Old stories. The way you mother yourself. The things you’ve inherited about what makes you worthy, lovable, acceptable or “good”. It asks uncomfortable but important questions. How are you speaking to yourself when no one else is listening? What do you do when life feels chaotic?Do you soften towards yourself, or do you crack the whip harder? Do you assume discipline is the answer to everything?Or are you willing to consider that what you actually need is compassion? That one has been a big theme for me. If you’re interested in figuring out the impact of this Mercury Retrograde in Cancer for you personally, then you have to go and buy Sandra’s workbook with explanatory video. She gave me an advance copy and it is deep, rich and easy to understand. Click here for the details. Self-discipline is overrated if it’s disconnected from compassion I am all for responsibility. I’m not suggesting we all light a candle, ignore our deadlines and hope the universe files our tax return. But I do think we’ve been sold a very narrow idea of what gets results. If you’re overwhelmed, stretched thin, emotionally battered, physically exhausted or just plain human, “you need more discipline” is often the least useful thing you can hear. It’s the spiritual equivalent of trying to fix a flickering lamp by shouting at it. Sometimes what actually moves things forward is self-compassion. Not because compassion is passive, but because it creates enough safety for honesty. And honesty is what allows change. When you stop berating yourself for not doing the thing, you can finally ask the more useful question: What is actually getting in the way here? Am I tired?Am I scared?Am I trying to do too much?Do I need support?Am I avoiding something because it matters and I’m afraid of getting it wrong?Am I trying to force myself into a method that doesn’t suit me? That’s a very different conversation from “for God’s sake, just be more disciplined.” This was the focus of this week’s Unstuck Embodiment class where we brought it back to the body. We moved, we meditated and we journaled. If you’d like to find out more and join me on the mat, click here. The AI question: useful tool or energetic gatecrasher? One of the most unexpectedly spicy parts of the episode was talking about AI. I use AI. I’m not anti it. It can be genuinely helpful, especially when you’re a solo business owner wearing fourteen hats and trying to get through your admin without losing the will to live. But I had a moment recently where I asked it to help with some show notes and it veered off into giving me feedback on how I should structure my content to be more engaging. And I felt my whole body go, “Absolutely not.” Not because the suggestion was objectively terrible. From a marketing perspective, it might even have been sensible. But it wasn’t me. It was trying to steer me towards a more hooky, clicky, attention-grabby way of communicating that might work for the algorithm but felt out of alignment with how I actually want to connect with people. That, for me, is the key point. AI can be useful.It can save time.It can help structure ideas.It can support learning. But
