Gratitude for Earthheart.
Thankful to all the volunteers, like Maitari Simone, over the years who have brought their skills, their commitment, their love to this land in the midst of the forest that nourishes so many!
Meeting the raw edges
I’ve been reading so much lately about the interdependence of all life forms. From ecologist Suzanne Simard discovering how trees talk to each other to this evocative article from Andreas Weber who says
“There is only one immutable truth: No being is purely individual; nothing comprises only itself. Everything is composed of foreign cells, foreign symbionts, foreign thoughts. This makes each life-form less like an individual warrior and more like a tiny universe, tumbling extravagantly through life like the fireflies orbiting one in the night.”
We are not born to struggle alone, although in our patriarchal society the values of the warrior, the lone wolf are over-emphasised. There is immense strength to be found in coming together, to share celebration, joy, happiness as well as the more ‘difficult’ passages where we can feel grief or anger that’s overwhelming when faced on our own.
Myth-busting: Sexuality in the menopause
An interview as part of the ‘My Menopause’ series, with Katie Phillips of the School of Self Love
Online with Katie Phillips – talking about menopause
Beautiful feedback from Initiation!
Thresholds journey
Threshold times in our lives are gateways to new possibilities. They can often feel like the darkest of times, when we are ‘stuck in a rut’, endlessly looping around the same old patterns.
Clues to the presence of a threshold in your life might be rehearsing the same old conversation with someone over and over in your mind, though you never speak it out loud. It might be repeating patterns of an argument with your beloved, where the scripts feel too well rehearsed. Or it might be an indefinable sense of excitement, of something coming up in your life that you can’t yet see.
The signifier of an important Threshold in your life is usually fear – and the more intense the fear, the more potent the threshold you are approaching.
I want to invite you into an experience of what it feels like in your body, to approach and then pass through a Threshold. Take 15 minutes, take a pen and a notebook, a cushion perhaps, and drop with me, into this Thresholds journey
If you feel called to go deeper into a Threshold that’s calling you in your life right now, we have a special offer on the April weekend. When you book, you get to bring a friend for free! Because we can only step through the important gateways in our life with the support of community, a sense of a tribe around us who are witnessing, rooting for us. Bringing a loved one or a friend will support you both to move through the Threshold journey and integrate it into your lives back home.
To book Thresholds, hop over to the webpage and when we receive your booking we’ll send you a code to book your friend in on the same workshop for free!
Thresholds in London
I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be bringing the Thresholds work to London this year, 2018. Working with Alternatives, the date is yet to be confirmed – but if you’re in or near London, I look forward to meeting you this year!
Reconnecting to ourselves and to nature
In his talk on his new film ‘Tawai‘ to the audience at the recent Tree Conference in Glastonbury, Bruce Parry speaks about the guidance that tribal Penan people hear from the natural world around them, and the possibilities of our own remembering of an inner feeling of connection to nature.
‘In order to be able to experience what it is that these people are experiencing there are a number of things we have to do, we have to slow down and feel more deeply into ourselves, into our bodies…in order to feel more deeply we have to feel the good stuff and the bad stuff. To really go in there to feel who we are and what we’re doing in the world and how we are behaving…it’s hard to really truly wake up to what we are doing on this planet and how we are with it. It’s no surprise that we are anaesthetising ourselves from those feelings, addicted to all sorts of stuff that keep us from being present and feeling….but our only route forward is to go into that feeling because if we don’t we will just go blindfold off a cliff.’
Samhain Blessings
Samhain calls us to let go, deeply, before the days dip into winter, of anything that we are carrying that no longer serves us and can be composted back to the Earth. We can do this with gratitude for whatever harvests this year has brought us, whatever gifts of food or medicine or lessons learnt.
Here at EarthHeart the crows are calling from their roosts, and the trees now are changing into their last colours of the year, a final display of splendour before the beauty of their bare winter silhouettes is revealed.
As we come to the end of the current year-long Initiation training, with the last module beginning today, we honour all that has moved within this sacred circle of beautiful women, held in the heart of the forest. You can hear from them in a series of interviews here. And we look to new beginnings, beyond the dreaming-time of winter, to a new circle of women already building for next year’s training.
Samhain Blessings!
Jewels
Grief as a Threshold emotion
In this beautiful interview, Francis Weller speaks to the value of grief as a threshold emotion, in its ability to soften the heart, to bring us alive and allow us to fully express our joy and exuberance, as well as compassion and gratitude.
To allow grief to move through us safely and powerfully, we need the circle. We need community to provide both a safe container to witness and hold our sorrow, and to provide the energy and collective field of grief so that our own personal process finds its place in the web of life once more.