Posts In: Journal

We’ve had a busy engaged time since the dawning of 2022 and so Clare thought it may be good to share some of the poems that have been guiding her into early Spring.

Also a couple of updates- the Forest Room has had a little lift and is now brimming with very early buds and foliage. The space has been a blessing as some mornings here in Hebden have featured very heavy downpours, so we have practised inside occasionally.

We are also branching out (!) into some creative play with Mindful Mark Making and a Sonic Immersion! Clare has an extensive track record in the arts… so it was only a matter of time!

Watch out for our rebrand all to be announced soon!

Enjoy the images and poems and we hope to see you on one of our offerings soon.

Start Close In by David Whyte (excerpt)

Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.

Start with the ground you know, the pale ground beneath your feet, your own way of starting the conversation.

Start with your own question, give up on other people’s questions, don’t let them smother something simple.

To find another’s voice, follow your own voice, wait until that voice becomes a private ear listening to another.

Start right now take a small step you can call your own don’t follow someone else’s heroics, be humble and focused, start close in, don’t mistake that other for your own.

Time to be Slow  John O’Donohue

This is the time to be slow, lie low to the wall until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let the wire brush of doubt scrape from your heart all sense of yourself and your hesitant light.

If you remain generous, time will come good; and you will find your feet again on fresh pastures of promise, where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning.

A Forest Room. This concept landed in my body as an initial idea after observing how some folks reacted to rain on one of my recent (October) nature immersions. We live in a damp, wet climate here in Yorkshire yet our relationship to Nature is more important than ever before. I am motivated to guide people from all walks of life on my nature immersions as I truly feel in my bones that our relationship with the more than human world is KEY. Key for our survival as a species for sure, but also key for the wellbeing of every species on this beautiful earthly planet.

So I thought I’d try an experiment. Just for the Winter. A space that could still allow for a deep sensory experience. I would create an indoor Forest Room in the mill at Hardcastle Crags that is adjacent to the woodland trail I regularly guide on. Gibson Mill is off grid, so the rooms are unheated. This made for a more authentic experience as we would need to keep our hats and coats on, and all the bark, berries and fern we would collect would stay intact in the colder  environment.

I weaved the space into our first ever course – Journeys with Nature. Every week course participants will practice out on the usual trail for a couple of hours, migrating into the forest room for the last hour of the session.

Let’s see how it’s all received!

Photography courtesy of Ana Paula

As we blustered into the darker months of Autumn some highly positive news landed in my inbox one morning. Calderdale council, my local authority, announced a grant they had recently received. This grant was a core fund to enable practioners across the region to offer their services for public and third sector workers. Essentially a way to say big thanks, immense gratitude for the support they have provided for thousands of  residents across Calderdale.

I applied to become a contracted practioner and was successful 🙂

This has meant a diverse and broad section of society have been now able to access my offerings, for no charge. I must admit this model makes me happy. For many years I worked in the third sector, obtaining funding for young people so they could be enriched through ambitious creative programs. This mode of operatus fits my ethos and vision then and still now. Social change is the driver for everything I do.

The natural world, the environment and social change sit within each other. Like all aspects of this living organism, there is deep interconnectedness. Taking place all day, all night, between all chains of activity.

It is my hope and intention, that by guiding a wide mix of people into the woods for healing, connection, restoration etc that we will all further invest into the protection of Nature, the planet.  I am writing a wee post on the first official day of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, so I guess it couldn’t be more timely. Let us live in hope, as the Buddhist activist Joanna Macy calls it – Active Hope.