This is my current view.

Beautiful isn’t it.

You almost wouldn’t believe the city centre and Primark madness are less than a minutes walk away.

Sat with my back to an ancient gravestone feels so right today. I’ve had an ancient tiredness in my bones and being, creeping up, creeping in. Unameable yet familiar.

It feels so good to just sit in the quietness as pigeons and squirrels wander by. Wandering as I wonder.

My wonderings recently have been inspired by a teacher called Arielle Schwartz. She combines psychotherapy with yoga. It’s fascinating.

She talks about how important it is to feel safe, and how often people who have experienced trauma don’t feel safe on a deep level, so need extra ‘nesting’ times and spaces.

She encouraged me to line my nest (my yoga room) with textures, colours, images and scents that speak to my nervous system, especially when doing psychothetaputic yoga.

I decided to buy myself a mat, blocks, cushion and rug just for this work. All white for some reason.

Heres the rug. Definitely a huggy rug 😂 it’s so soft. The staff in the shop kept stroking it and exclaiming.

Places like this often feel old and forgotten, and I guess buried. Powerful symbolism I hadn’t considered until now. The fact that I’m reading about old buried trauma and I end up sitting in an old graveyard.

Its a dream of mine to help people find a place of home and safety within their body and beingness. To find soul within every unfolding circumstance of life. To know that they belong and they matter. To weave ceremony for every precious stage of their life. To know that everything is sacred.

I feel like moments like this, writing this, acknowledging what I hope to create, is a signing of a sacred unseen pact. This or something better. So be it. And so it will be.

There once was a forest

Always green

whatever the weather

It’s foliage could be seen

Fierce unrelenting

To it’s nature be true

Green was the colour

Its one choice of hue

There’s something about it

That’s calls into me

Come to your true nature

And then you’ll be free

There’s something about

The forest as it breathes

A deep stillness in me

And I just receive

There once was a forest that swayed and creaked in the wind. Tipped with snow. Streaked with frost, yet never losing itself, always green.

A tiny human approached the forest. Just a girl in comparison to the size and age of the trees, yet inside she was boundless.

She entered, feet crunching in the snow, breath billowing in swirls and curls. She was alive. She was here.

The ancient boughs around her, so strong, unrelenting yet easeful. She believed the deep stillness she felt inside herself here was because the trees only knew to be themselves.

Not one was fractured or splintered in it’s identity. All were fully and wholy themselves. She thought it no coincidence that wholy sounds the same as holy. We are all holy when we remember our essence. We are all holy inside, underneath it all. When she got still here, with the trees, it was not hard to feel that. This was her cathedral, breathing and alive.

One day the girl felt drawn in a new direction by the forest. If a forest could whisper she felt “here, come this way, here, here..” and she followed. Anticipation mounting with every breath. A gift awaited her. She could feel it in her bones and being. The part of her that was one with the forest. Skin was an illusion of separation.

A clearing started to appear, and impossibly.. A cabin. A beautiful dwelling for humans such as herself. She stood, rooted, silenced. The urging had stopped. This was her gift. On swirling frosty breath she whispered “thank you. I love you. I love it. It’s perfect”. Hands to her heart, to embrace the swelling in her chest. Gratitude can be physical.

As she pressed on the door, the smell of cake and fresh coffee greeted her. The smell of home. Did someone live here? She felt more nervous now and decided to knock. No answer came so she gently, slowly creaked the door open and she couldn’t believe what awaited her. She’d expected it to be empty or sparse but this cabin was filled but simple. It was so cosy and a complete luxury, meeting all of her basic needs.

There was a range, should she decide to cook or make tea; a table facing a fireplace and a window, for her to write and gaze. She did most of her writing on her phone on a blog and she never did lone trips without it in case she got lost or injured. There were plates, cups, a bed, clean and made in the corner. Blankets and an easy chair. Candles dotted around and an oil lamp. There was no running water but plenty of bottles of water and some food supplies, including what looked like freshly baked bread and fruitcake. It really was surreal. Should she be here? Had the forest got it wrong? Was she trespassing?

Then she spotted it. A note. It was propped against the kettle. A simple folded piece of paper. As she unfolded it she marvelled at the mystery of it all. It felt like the never ending story, a story within a story that comes to life with each word uttered.

The note simply read ‘Welcome traveller. If you found this cabin I’m assuming you’re a friend of the forest and was guided here, as was I once upon a time. I have no idea who built it or why, I only know that it has been well loved and many have passed it’s threshold. I’ve read many a note and found many a supply. Apparently no one has ever met each other. We always arrive on different days. We called it the retreat. It seems to be meant for solace and solitude. The one request made is that you leave a note like this. You’ll find paper and a pen by the bed. Should you visit again, leave some fresh supplies, either for your next visit or someone else’s. Some even bring fresh flowers. I baked the fruitcake, it’s delicious. Tea is in the cupboard as its best served with tea. Signed your fellow traveller.

She was at a complete loss for words. Both a smile and a single tear graced her face. Gratitude again, threatening to burst her banks. This felt as holy as the forest. Pure, innocent, real.

She started the fire, made a tea and sat to the table with a slice of cake that was as delicious as promised. The silence inside matched the silence outside. It was the type of silence that holds you and fills you, rather than strips you bare. She felt held. Held and known somehow.

It is said a butterflies wing can change the course of existence with just one flap. Interconnection. She felt like that wing. Gentle. Delicate. Fragile yet whole. Holy.

As she gazed at the fire, stories seemed to flood her. She imagined realms and dimensions that most cannot see or feel. She’d paint their images with words, weave them into stories so souls could inhabit them and find rest. She’d shamanically journeyed many a time and felt stars sing and trees speak. She’d met the spirit of foxes and owls and mice. She’d longed to read novels like this, that touched upon the heart of the magic she knew lived in everything, but such books were rare and hard to find. Maybe that book was within her, waiting to be written. More than anything she could feel the spirit of the evergreen trees drawing her. They had a medicine for her and she needed to allow it to rise to her consciousness. She found herself wanting to draw them, touch them, photograph them and surround herself with their essence and smell. More than anything they felt like stillness, silence and strength.

A story for anyone who has ever felt ‘not enough’. The end is yoga ❤️

She had a peculiar kind of sadness that was difficult to locate. Like fog, it spread and had no form. You couldn’t call it this or that, or say where it originated. It hung inside her, cold and damp, obscuring all else. She felt second rate most of the time.

Let down and feeling unimportant, she stood by her secret garden gate and sighed. A silent tear slipped down her face, followed by a pure white feather.

She gasped. She didn’t think she’d ever had a feather fall so close to her face before, never mind a pure white one in timing such as this. She picked it up and ran it’s fluffiness across her cheek. It was perfect. It could not have been more perfect. Her mum felt near. She’d used to say ‘when a feather appears in an opportune moment, help is near’.

She’d been digging at her allotment. She loved it there. Secluded. Safe. No one to judge her and find her wanting. She loved clearing the beds, getting the soil ready for it’s winter rest. There was something so lovely about a clear, raked, healthy looking bed, full of worms and life.

Sometimes she wondered if she could clear her life. Just gut it, rake it smooth and allow rest, letting the natural life in her reinvent itself. She was also full of life, she just felt over used and uninspired. Second rate whatever she did. She just longed to stop. She wanted to rest like the soil in winter. She was sick to death of all the expectations. She just wanted to be like soil. On her keyboard I and u are next to each other. Soil and soul are one letter apart. She was soul weary.

The meditation she was listening to as she dug, was on shadow work. The author suggested she stop and listen to her heart. Why not. She put the kettle on in her little cabin, on the camping stove, and sat with her oracle cards. The card she pulled was soft pink and spoke of the softness of acceptance. She felt to open a book randomly, feeling it would compliment the card. As she touched the pages, before she’d even opened them, she felt ‘mother mary’. She looked and gasped again. It was a chapter on mother mary. The fog inside seemed to disperse a little in that moment of awe and unseen connection. How could she have known? And who was it that whispered that to her?

As she read the words her heart cracked open. Unconditional love. Love without conditions. How would that feel? The author urged that it was with her now. Innocence and mystery were enfolding her.

She sat gazing, silent inside. Silent and expanded. Nothing had changed but she had. In the silence she tidied the plot, finished tending to the soil and as she touched the gate to leave, a beautiful white egret flew over her head, like a small perfectly white heron. The inner fog shifted yet again. Beauty and innocence were dancing all around her, seen and unseen.

As she walked home, unbelievably a second Egret flew over her head as she approached the ring road in the city centre. She’d never seen one so peculiarly close to town before. Her day just got more and more mysterious and grace filled. It was as if these pure white creatures and their feathers were telling her that on the deepest level, no matter how she feels, she’s also always pure white. She can’t be dirtied or degraded by others opinions of her. She felt something in her sparkle briefly, inside the fog. A deeper truth waiting to be found.

A few days later she was given another key. Her eye kept falling to a book on the Yoga Sutras. She opened it randomly. It fell to a page that spoke about purusha and the atman. They are a part of you that yoga believes is your truest self. A layer of you that holds everything in it’s awareness, that cannot be dirtied, judged, less that anything or anyone else. It simply is. It’s always whole and always home. Pure white, always.

She gazed. Something in her knew this, was truer than any outer circumstance. She could choose to inhabit that place more often. It was never touched by change or aging. Her deepest truest self or being.

Always whole. Always home. Always enough.

Deep peace descended and bloomed within. She could live here.

It’s started ❤️

Working with plants has begun and it feels so natural.

There’s a butterfly lavender plant I felt so drawn to. It’s the start of my menstrual cycle so I feel really sluggish. I felt to place the plant close to me and I noticed particularly the ‘wings’ at the top of the flower. I had such a strong feeling to pull an oracle card and that it would relate. Sure enough the same card got picked twice. On it is a lady with butterfly like wings. I’ve also been reading a nature book by an artist who lives in a place called Wing.

The card spoke of many opportunities opening up to me, but also to know that every one I say yes to will require my energy, heart and mind. Balance is needed. Time to do and time to be. This is so relevant.

Recently I’ve been thinking I’d like to teach asana less and have more time and space for other things. I have no idea how, what or even why, I just know teaching movement as I am, 6 days a week, wants to change soon. I want more space. More room to manouver and reflect. Something wants to change.

Lavender reminds me of gentle healing. She feels like the reflective moon to me, soothing and quietening. She feels deep and quiet.

The counselling course I’m on is allowing me the time and space to become just that.. Reflective, quiet, wiser and deeper. It’s also asking a lot of questions that are calling me to know myself more and therefore to adjust course in places.

Lavender, to me, is a gentle healer. Her colour, scent, simple shape and astringent but calming smell all add up to ‘take some time to choose wisely and factor in the need for space and healing’.

To me, the language of certain flowers is easily translatable. I’ve been listening and drinking in their healing for years, just not labelling it as that.

Colour, shape, smell and texture has always been a potent language for me as a kinesthetic person who predominantly ‘feels’ the world. Even colour feels like a vibration to me.

A lovely little bonus to the message of this card is it mentions the need to balance giving and receiving. Today has been mostly receiving. The owner of our accommodation popped by today and invited us to his farm. It has a fishing pool, animals, crops to pick, glamping, fire pit and sauna. He also allowed us access to his pool table and table tennis, totally for free 😉 The cafe we visited earlier invited us to view their new roastery in the making. It’s not something they’d normally do but they found out it was adys bday and we’d travelled to their cafe especially. It was worth the trip!

The final little gift is a pine Martin (possibly a family of them) living near our bedroom. There are just under 3000 known to Scotland and we have a few on our doorstep ❤️😍

Feeling quietly blessed, held and ushered into new landscapes, inner and outer.

We are in Aberdeenshire, in a little dwelling that backs onto the woods.

Every day I spend a bit of time in the kitchen cooking up some plant power. Gluten and dairy free with natural sweeteners. I’d love to share some of this with you. It’s such a good feeling when you can have creamy mushrooms on toast, cookies, curry, chocolate, and it’s all super nutritious and Superfoodie. It’s literally a passion of mine ❤️💯

I did mine as peanut butter and banana. No raisins. Omg mmmm

forgive the state of our cookbooks. They get spattered and I have no idea how others have pristine cookbooks?! If you’re a pristine type, better to not lend us cookbooks 😂

I used gluten free oat bread ❤️

This curry was so good! We had left overs today with this salad (below) and it was such a good combo 😋

I have no recipe on me for the raw chocolate as I made it before the trip. It really is just raw cacao, raw coconut oil, raw honey and cacao butter all melted and poured into a baking tray. Top with nuts and berries, pop in the fridge and a few mins later you have a tray full of Superfood heaven!

This is the book I’ve been using and it really is quick and easy 😉

This is our scene right now. Sat by a log burner, relaxing music, so much light, plants everywhere, Ady doing his birthday jigsaw puzzle and me wanting to capture the magic of this holiday. It truly does feel magical so far.

I’ll start with our first overnight stay. It was at a beautiful, very luxurious hotel called Cally Palace. It was steeped in history and intrigue. The venue and food was incredible but it was the grounds that truly captivated me.

We walked at twilight, after our a la carte 3 course meal, and came across old woodland with hidden cottages and ruins. The only way I can describe the feeling of the place was that it was hyper alive. It almost felt enchanted. It’s the only place I’ve ever been that actually felt like it had nature spirits. I really didn’t want to leave. I could have soaked up that energy for days.

That evening I felt compelled to find out more about Cally Palace grounds and nature spirits. It led me down a rabbits hole of discovery, only to find that our final destination the next day would be near a world famous eco village that started off with a small group of people who sensed plant consciousness and plant spirits. Eileen Caddy was the most famous of the founders, but her friend and colleague Dorothy Maclean was the one who first sensed that plants had spirits that could communicate with her. Through listening to them she was able to grow absolutely huge healthy vegetables from almost barren windswept sandy ground apparently. This attracted much investigation from the outside world and they slowly became famous. I’m near that village right now.

I found the above book on audible and started listening on our long journeys in the car, deciding I’d like a geranium to work with. When we arrived at our destined home for the week, it’s surrounded by hardy geraniums lol. You couldn’t make this stuff up. The author was mentioning about making plant remedies and tinctures, teas and creams. Today Ady took us to Gordon Castle walled garden, and they just so happened to make their own teas, tinctures and creams from their plants. I couldn’t believe it! It was such a beautiful, peaceful space. The cafe made meals from their produce too. Neat rows of vegetables, herbs and flowers for cutting. Espalier fruit trees everywhere. It was pure art.

I wonder if I’m being called to work with my allotment in a new and deeper way. The author is also a reiki healer and uses plant medicine as part of her healing. Maybe I could too? All I know is that I want to develop a new and deeper relationship with plants. I believe the world is filled with consciousness in a way that most of us haven’t experienced because we haven’t been taught to open up. I believe there’s more love in this world than we have yet tapped into.

As I sit here, finishing off this post, Ady is laughing at how many chins he thinks he has on his photo earlier. I snort as I laugh. I think we all see ourselves differently to how others do. He’s lovely but he does make me laugh! Laughter has been a lovely part of this journey, keeping us light and warm. It started as we set off from Coventry for our epic drive to the highlands. We often listen to a funny talking book en-route and this time it was the life story of a comedian. At times we laughed til we cried. A student randomly messaged me something about the power of laughter, her message made the talking book stop (that never happens..it was a sign) and I smiled that she couldn’t possibly have known. When we arrived two days later at our home for the week, we noticed ‘the joker’ card tucked in a bracket by the door. Laughter and it’s healing power xx

The log burner hot tub will be ready to get into soon. Adys been stoking it. It faces the forest that our cabin backs onto. Bird song here is constant until night time. We have swifts nesting in the porch and another bird in a bird box by the door. So blessed to watch them darting back and forth.

My next post will include the recipes I’ve been using. Talk about plant power! mmmmm. Tastes so luxurious but is so nutritious and Ady can eat without chin fear lol.