Category Archives: Walks

The magic of snow

A walk in the snow when snow is so rare, thus gilded by the brushstrokes of relative unfamiliarity, can take you out of yourself and remind you of currents of experience outside of the sequential… Continue reading

Posted in Consciousness & evolution, Menu, metaphor, Nature, Personal Development, Seasons, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

A woman’s voice across time

I like to think I’ve swept some grace through these places over the years; doing what grace does best, mixing up the light and the dark so that the line between them becomes softened…perhaps even more radiant. I like to think that in getting closer to finding my wholeness here, against all odds, I’ve increased the odds for all things that I’ve brushed past on my wending way… Exploring the underlying perfection of the places we happen to be in, however those happen to seem. Continue reading

Posted in Art, Art purpose, Art transformation tool, Consciousness & evolution, Conservation, Health & wellbeing, Landscape art, Life choices, Life journey, Menu, Nature, Personal Development, Recovery chronic illness, Symbolic journeys, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Blazing a trail along an alternate path

…So why not open to your instincts and let your feminine impulses be your guide, then you too can walk a softer path through so-called chaos; wherever you happen to be. Blaze your trail through it. Dare to unfurl your full stature there. Read all the subtle clues like the pro that you are. Remember who you already are in those places; that these are already your pathways. That there is no need to hide. And don’t forget to slip your shoes off and feel into where you are from your very roots, allowing that feeling to swell and grow upwards to the ceaseless light shining from your crown. For you may be surprised at the sheer power of the affirmative you receive for this simple act of reconnection with the surface of the earth in places that at one time always seemed to turn you away. Continue reading

Posted in Books, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, Life journey, Menu, metaphor, Personal Development, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Seeing the world

Its a classic time of year for me to be adding a load of eye-catching nature pictures to my newsfeed following long winter walks. To those of my friends who don’t live in my part of the world, or even a similar climate (and there are several), it may seem as though I live in a completely DIFFERENT world, but I don’t…not really.

I started doing an online photography course yesterday and I loved it when the teacher described how she saw a feather hanging off a branch in a pubic garden and pounced on it with her camera. Her friend said to her “How did you SEE that?” and she replied “How did you NOT?” I’m just the same and, like her, I would have then spent the next half hour angling different shots at this feather while my friend scuffed her feet around wondering when we were going for some lunch – I do that to my family all the time – but its not that I’m trying to force the beauty out of a subject. Its already there…its everywhere, its just a case of being receptive to it, to really see it, to notice it wherever it presents itself. Continue reading

Posted in Art, Life journey, Menu, Nature, Personal Development, Photography, Seasons, Walks | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Taking the route least travelled

When unexpected, inconvenient, things happen, whether these are major events or the relatively trivial, its an opportunity to adapt…to forge glorious new routes…to be fully present…to appreciate our own curiosity and the courage to go off-piste…and to notice all the unexpected gifts along the way. Via the oddly winding detour of the path least travelled, we may seem to have had to go much further/longer/harder than by the “conventional” routes that others choose, or even to take a step backwards for a while, yet we are rewarded with a stronger sense of going somewhere than if we just sat there hoping for something to shift or to “get somewhere” we believe we want to go, like someone stuck in a gridlock traffic being shunted along bumper-to-bumper yet with little say-so over their own progress. The end of any journey, when we seem so near and yet so far from some hoped-for destination, can feel the most challenging of all and yet, approached mindfully, this is when we get to appraise how glad we are that we came this particular way, owning the magnitude and perfection of our own unique path. This realisation, rather than “arriving anywhere” per se, is the moment when we notice the bizarrely coherent joy of this lifetime’s winding journey, however many seeming detours it has taken us on… (read more). Continue reading

Posted in Consciousness & evolution, Life choices, Life journey, Personal Development, Recovery chronic illness, Symbolic journeys, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The inspired and bliss-filled freehouse of the mind

I used to ask “why is it that, when I paint, thoughts of uncomfortable situations from long ago and old troubled relationships with people I haven’t seen for years sometimes float through my head?” They are no longer loaded at … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Art purpose, Art transformation tool, Consciousness & evolution, Health & wellbeing, Life choices, Life journey, Meditation, Menu, Personal Development, Spirituality, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Graceful journey: a Scandinavian experience

When grace happens to you, it is like a moment of poise that you just know is exactly where you were destined to be; one you will never forget and will continue to draw upon at times when life drags you back into its slip streams. Like portals between layers of space and time that tell us we are unfailingly on track, can’t even be off-track if we tried, these appointments with our own self-created destiny are powerful nodes of experience that communicate back and forth across time and space and make life feel unimaginably coherent, even in the midst of the most tragic or unexpected things happening around us. Nothing can truly shake us out of this sense of coherence once we plug into this personal journey of the heart. There is true power and strength to be found around so many unlikely street corners on such a journey through life; one which takes us far closer to the true epicentre of our own heart-maze than anything we could experience from following somebody else’s guidance on where we should be going, what we should be doing. Listen to the advice, yes…but the listen to your own inner guidance first; and take some of those detours down less trodden streets and be amazed at what shows up in some unexpected places. That’s when we realise that grace is, ultimately, an inside job and entirely portable, wherever we happen to be. From that space, we realise, place is just a matter of perspective; that the inner work is where it all happens and that, through the attitudes we adopt, we really are the true architects of our world, the creators of our own skyline view and (when we allow life to unfold for us) we are always, unfailingly, in the right place at the right time. Continue reading

Posted in Ancient sites, Art, Art technique, Birds, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, Gardens & gardening, Health & wellbeing, Holiday destinations, Installation art, Life choices, Life journey, Personal Development, Photography, Symbolic journeys, Travel, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Lady Falls…and then she stands back up again

It was undoubtably a stunning waterfall, many feet high; tall and elegant like a woman’s robes tumbling down into a serene pool of softly flowing liquid coloured brownish-red by the earth she carries with her. She could have been a goddess standing there in the water, the sun in her hair but, this time, a little aloof like she had been bothered by people before and so turned her back and withdrawn….Sharing a visit to a waterfall that felt very different to all the others we had visited but which (it turned out) had just as much to show me, with some much-needed comedy injected into it all… Continue reading

Posted in Ancient sites, Books, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, Health & wellbeing, History, Holiday destinations, Life journey, Menu, Nature, Personal Development, Recovery chronic illness, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Travel, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Returning to source: a symbolic journey

To get to where I really wanted to be (which was the twin stone circles of Nant Tawr) there were obstacles…so many watery obstacles…I had never before experienced water as such a direct obstacle before and no choice to embark on the journey anyway; and what a gift it turned out to be…the natural landscape incorporated into the very ritual of reaching the place I was headed for. Like the double helix twists, turns and crossing points of my very own life experience across multi-lifetimes, I was both “already there” and “heading back there” in every moment of this scramble across rivers and steep banks…getting nearer and then further away…choosing it, aiming straight, losing sight of it again, finding it precarious, hard, painful even…then getting back on track, dumping any unhelpful baggage I realised I had accumulated, knowing when to laugh along with myself, remembering this “place” once again like a heart-song calling me, sighing with the exhilaration of being back there and the joy of realising I knew the feeling of it like an old friend as soon as I got even close. These experiences were looping and relooping around me like the very water I was crossing until I got the rhythm of how it happened, keeps happening, had been happening since the very beginning of human “time”, like a familiar series of intricate dance steps (yes, I was being shown my very own dance moves by these audacious strips of water). I was being taken through all the old manoeuvres, humiliations, lost-confidence hiccoughs and sticking points of my life until I got to recognise them for what they were and was, instead, able to concentrate on that other feeling of reunion and return…of being up there on the other bank in the sunshine, high and dry…over and above that old feeling of separation from what I wanted, scratching my head at so many seeming-obstacles spread out all before me. By the time I had crossed my final hurdle, with a broad grin on my face, numb feet and slightly soggy trousers, I was really getting it…because that something that was drawing me closer was so palpable to me that the exhilaration of the experience was everything and was carrying me forwards across endless golden meadow. Continue reading

Posted in Ancient sites, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, History, Holiday destinations, Leylines, Life journey, Meditation, Menu, Nature, Personal Development, Remembering, Seasons, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Travel, Universe, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Journey with Elen: finding my way

“Sarn Helen”…who was this woman who gave her name to this incredibly long ancient road through some of the wildest terrain in Wales, passing standing stone after standing stone, so many waterfalls, fast moving water… My journey into this territory introduced me to the goddess of sovereignty, the maker of connections, the embodiment of all that it means to marry the sacred feminine with the sacred masculine and turn that union into a practical, harmonious way of being on this earth, bringing on line all of the power nodes that you are already aware of in this world and connecting them all up like a string of party lights wrapped all around your experience. It was like being introduced to the essence of myself in epic-legend form…how very cool was that? Continue reading

Posted in Ancient sites, Books, Consciousness & evolution, Divine feminine, History, Holiday destinations, Leylines, Life journey, Personal Development, Remembering, Spirituality, Symbolic journeys, Travel, Walks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments