A dandelion in my small, wild garden.Photo by Fiona Beth.
Sitting on the bus a week or so ago, I passed a field full of dandelions. The bright, golden multitude made my heart sing. What a joyous sight this golden yellow is, wild and free.
A few days later I made the same journey. Each golden sun had turned into a silver globe, gossamer light seed heads waiting for the wind to carry them away.
They reminded me of impermanence. Too often I seek to hold onto joy and grieve when it is gone, holding on tightly brings pain and regret.
These tiny teachers spoke of a different manifestation of joy. Each bright flower had transformed into hundreds of seeds, where there had been one there was now the possibility of a whole crowd, and the gathered multitude? Thousands upon thousands of new golden suns waiting to be born.
When I hold onto my joy too tightly I stop life from flowing. If I can breathe gently and welcome new seasons there is room for growth. Without the gift of impermanence there can be no change, no hope.
Feet in the North Sea at Herne Bay last week (the sea was about 30cm away and lapping, freezing, over my toes).
It will be fifteen years this summer since I completed my reflexology training. I studied in London, and travelled up for weekend training sessions to Covent Garden. The training took a year, and during the week, when I wasn’t at my day job as a school secretary, or doing mum things, I’d study the anatomy and physiology book we had to complete, and practice sections of the treatment on willing friends and family.
I came to reflexology looking for greater wellbeing for myself and for a close relative. We had both been dealing with indifferent health, and some major complications, for some time. A friend had offered me a few treatments and I found them incredibly effective. My migraines reduced in severity and my overall levels of energy increased.
Over the years I have been fortunate to share this therapy with people at all stages of life, those seeking relief from stressful workloads, living with chronic illness, undergoing treatment for cancer and seeking help with fertility.
The reflexology treatment itself is gentle, non-invasive and seems to bring the benefits of many complementary therapies, such as reduced stress and improved sleep. For some people having treatment on their feet is not comfortable or appropriate, and in these cases treatment can be carried out on their hands instead.
I have often wondered at the impact reflexology seems to have. But this isn’t some kind of magic. When people begin to make time for their own health, whether that is booking a reflexology or reiki treatment, or beginning to listen to their body’s wisdom, or making positive changes in lifestyle, then a healing journey begins.
Tomorrow I start a new chapter in my hometown, I have a cosy room to work from in the centre of town, and I’m looking forward to sharing the gift of reflexology (and reiki) with people in this area. I’m excited to see how these therapies can support people here on their journeys to greater wellbeing.
I have been reconnecting to mindfulness practise in the past few weeks. I’m a student of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings have, over the past seven years or so, literally saved my life.
But last year I got myself into a pickle. I really, really wanted to dive into belonging to the community of Plum Village
I had studied with their courses in the UK for several years, joined a sangha (online, because travelling can be a challenge) and begun a regular practise of mindful breathing and walking.
But I needed that extra thing, to belong, to receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings, to become One of Us.
Maybe this has its roots in a lifelong feeling of being Other, or outside, maybe in not being allowed to join the popular kids’ games at school, maybe in my astrology or neurodiversity or any one of a hundred other psychological gifts that makes up the unique brain of a human creature.
Whatever it was, the deep desire, the heartfelt aspiration, had been with me for a number of years. I prepared as best I could, I booked onto a retreat where the ceremony to receive the trainings would be offered. I bought appropriate luggage for a somewhat disabled person to carry on a long-ish solo journey. I planned the travel.
In the week before the retreat my symptoms started to flare. I ignored them. I was going. This was my moment. But, as anyone living with long-term health needs knows, when the body knows, it knows.
By the day of the retreat I was really not feeling my best, I could not walk effectively, and was lost as to how I would make a journey of several hundred miles by train, with luggage, alone, to participate. In that moment of fear and loss I sent my apologies. I was angry that my body had (again) “let me down”. I felt that there had been insurmountable obstacles to my participating and belonging, and I was hurt and sad. The hurt and sadness was so deep I stopped my practise, maybe this was just not for me, and it was time to let go.
I don’t know how many times this has to happen before I really listen. I have a sense that Thay would smile at me, and very gently remind me that I was too attached to the idea of the Mindfulness Trainings. That standing up in a ceremony is not what makes a practitioner. What makes a practitioner is, well, practise. That the journey is just that, a journey, not a destination. That we practise every moment we are alive, not just in retreats or sanghas or even on our cushion.
So I am beginning again, smiling at my own rules which tie me in knots (or is that nots) and ever so gently breathing into the gift of stopping and resting.
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in, breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
Breathing in, I allow my body to stop, breathing out I allow my mind to rest.
White plum blossom on our allotment tree – photo by Fiona Beth
This morning I went to the allotment and the plum blossom was out, bubbling over the bare, grey branches, shocking against a rain streaked sky.
Like the blossom I feel I am emerging from a long winter. Somewhere in 2023 I put myself back in a box I had long been trying to leave behind. It felt comfortable, safe, played to my strengths. And it helped me find my feet, in a new part of the country. Sometimes too much new is overwhelming and that comfy, old shirt that is really past its best is the only thing that will do.
Living with chronic health needs is always an evolution. Eventually, despite loving the people and the knowledge that there was still a lot of work there I could help with, I had to listen to the body’s wisdom. Last week I worked my final day as a primary school teacher. It was a day of gifts. We made a hole in a piece of paper big enough for a teacher to climb through (with many yells of excitement and disbelief), we had a battle to create the longest ever paperchain from a single sheet of A4 (and the kids beat the teacher, more jubilation), and they created supersonic paper planes and helicopters that fell with speed and style.
In between the sunlight and sleet showers, the kind words and goodbye hugs, the knot began to untie. I was crawling under the tables retrieving felt tip pens and stray scraps of paper, when I felt it loosen.
And here I am. Starting a new chapter. The journey so far has been plotted at every step, I have always known what I am going to next, a goodbye was the prelude to new horizons. This time the path is not mapped, as I try a different way to shape life’s pattern. The old one leads to burn out, sickness, limping around with a stick and bed rest on sunny days when I want to be out in the wild.
This one? I know there will be days on the plot, setting seeds and tending crops, and moments of wonder watching the birds and garden wildlife at home. I know there will be walks in the woods to count bees or pick litter. I hope there will be plenty of space for reading, freshly brewed tea and long conversations with kindred spirits.
Beyond that, the path will unfold, in its own time, as I seek to listen to a wilder wisdom.
I started taking the Be Calm, Be Happy class with Plum Village UK this week. In the first class we received some input on walking meditation.
I have tried this before but realise after some instruction that I have been going way to fast!
Yesterday morning, like a good student, I set off to a local park to practice. This park is small and has a long loop of winding path perfect for some mindful steps. It was strange to be there with other people, children on their way to school, early morning dog walkers. I felt a bit self conscious (mindful moment!).
I worked with trying to time my steps to my breath. The minute I thought about breathing it seemed very slow, my steps too, were therefore very slow. In the class I had noticed that once I thought about walking, once I focused on it in a conscious way, my steps became very unsteady, I was unbalanced and wobbly, like a toddler. It seems that when I walk to get somewhere momentum carries me without the wobble. When I think about my steps, though,the whole process becomes much more complex.
Of course sometimes I would begin to think, wondering if people were wondering what I was doing, thankful that Simon had come with me so I didn’t feel like a complete loon…then I would catch myself and return to the breath. In, out, left foot, right foot.
Time slowed down and it felt like I had, on some level, been walking forever. I walked in the drizzly, cold morning, noticing the bird song, and gradually enjoying the process, the steady flow of breath, step, breath, step. There was a gentle rhythm that felt soothing.
I had to slow right down. And take very small steps.
In a new landscape I find the seasons are different. Back “down South” the daffodils would be out by the city walls by the last week in February. I would watch the green spikes emerging from the bus as it passed and await their blooms as the key moment when winter gave way to spring.
Photo credit Fiona Phillips 24 March 2023 – Blossom by the canal
We are now in the last week in March, the daffodils are out here in full force, a bank of them backlit by early morning sun when we walked past the train station yesterday. Along the edge of the golf course, too, the fabled golden host glowing against still-bare trees.
This week the blossom is emerging, blackthorn and flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). Grape hyacinth are out in the garden and the first bumblebee queens have emerged, on the prowl for nest sites. Three years ago bumblebee queens were humming about on a day trip to London on my birthday in mid-February.
Photo credit Fiona Phillips 24 March 2023 – Flowering Currant
These events have coincided with the spring equinox, which I will use as my benchmark for the “start of spring” when we reach the new calendar year.
So how fast does spring travel? According to this article from 2015 at around 2 miles per hour. I can visualise a time lapse map of the country, greening and blossoming as the season unfolds! I am now wondering if you could walk with the season as it unfolds (apparently from South West to North East).
This year not only are we in a new landscape but we also have a new garden. The soil here is heavier than the chalk uplands where I’ve lived for most of the past forty years. We have begun the process of clearing the ground of tenacious ivy (while leaving some because it is beneficial for many creatures) and are waiting to see what emerges as the ground warms in the coming weeks. I have planted some shrubs which will hopefully give blossom and berries for the birds and bees in coming years, and set some wildflower seeds. I’m also creating a rock pile and a wood pile for the creepy crawlies.
All part of seeking to create a wildlife friendly corner in these times of habitat depletion in our #wildisles !
I am a restless soul. No sooner do I arrive somewhere than I want to be on to the next place. I have spent my whole life feeling out of place and longing to find a sense of home.
When I was younger I longed for travel, I thought that somewhere out there (cue song lyrics) was that mythical place where I would belong.
Life unfolds, often unexpectedly. As a young mother in my twenties I wished the weeks away, believing that at some point the time could come when I would find the job or place that felt like a fit. It is a sadness now that I was not more “with” that time, I did not know at the time how young I was.
On and on we go, through career studies and professional life. Each place had something to give, some gift to be treasured, a moment of clarity, the joy of sharing a good piece of work. My children grew up, my marriage ended, I found a new love. On and on.
In the past five years we have been on the move both literally and metaphorically. Moving from the home where I raised the children, into my parents home to tend to my Mum in her final years, on to our first home for “just us”, reliving the student vibes in a second floor apartment. Last October we made a giant leap out of my native Kent and here to Warwickshire.
Still that niggle remains, the longing to belong, the desire to be “at home”.
Today I was reading a talk by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay invites us to come home to ourselves. To recognise our body as our first home.
I am not a friend to my body. I look after it, grudgingly, because this makes sense, but I do not love it. I have never felt comfortable inside this skin. Could this be the answer to my restless yearnings. To finally make friends with this oldest friend. The animal self waiting for acceptance. To breathe into the whole self and allow the earth to hold me?
I wonder if this work will bring me comfort, and finally, bring me home?
We moved last October. This was a big one for us. Nearly 200 miles north west into the Midlands. We left my dad and two sons back in Kent, along with good friends and forty years of life and personal history
Arriving in late autumn gives a bleak introduction to a place… dank, damp and dark is the theme for much of British wintertime. The middle of the country is also murkier, grey skies more frequent.
Despite this we have found a good deal of beauty and begun the process of settling. It seems that by taking it one day at a time it’s possible to adjust to a new world. Baby steps.
The biggest shift for me has been in my work life. I found a job in our first month here and started work at a local care centre as activities coordinator. A background in teaching and admin has been a godsend.
You may have read that social care is a challenging sector to work in. I can vouch for that. For me there have been challenges around learning what the role entails, being a worker not a manager (I’ve been at the “top” of my previous profession for several years as an independent education consultant and specialist teacher). There have been challenges around being employed rather than self employed (turns out I have difficulty taking direction, who knew?) And around physical capacity in a job which needs you to be active and mobile for the majority of the day.
I have found it challenging that there is so much need, the end of life can be very hard. There are moments of joy and laughter too but some days the witnessing of pain feels overwhelming.
I have wanted to run away more than once, bury my head under a duvet and give in to gloom. What’s the point?
A story I read the other night is helping me see that there’s a different way to measure my success and effectiveness in this brave new world.
One day a man heads down to the beach for his daily walk. Down by the shore he sees a person dancing near the surf. As he draws nearer he sees it isn’t someone dancing after all but a young man who is picking up starfish from the sand and throwing them into the sea.
“What are you doing, friend?” Says the man. “Well the sun is rising, and the tide is turning, and soon these starfish will be stranded and they will dry out and die. I am throwing them back into the sea.”
“How foolish!” Said the man. “This beach goes on for miles and you can see there are hundreds, thousands, of starfish. You will never succeed! How can you make a difference to the power of the tide?”
The young man picked up another starfish and hurled it back into the sea. “Well I made a difference to that one.”
I may have told it wrong but you get the idea. Life is messy. Often we have to make impossible and life changing decisions. We feel powerless in the face of circumstances, we are so small and the forces around us so vast and impersonal.
But. The belief that we can create change, making a difference in small but meaningful ways.
themoonlitpathblog 