August rain: the best of
the summer gone, and the
new fall not yet born.
The odd uneven time.

Sylvia Plath

(This image has nothing especially to do with what I am writing about, but is my late summer harvest and is - I think- a thing of absolute beauty that I wanted to share)

It is the season of pink skies and more angled light. Of shedding, but where shedding is still more noun than verb. If asked you might be able to say why you know it; the noting of earlier darkness each evening, altering now at pace. A novel cool that licks its way through still open windows in the morning as you wake. Trees that have tired of their own splendour, But it’s a feeling too; a sense that exists beyond the realm of language, a bodily shift so nuanced that we have not got words to speak of it- at least not precisely- and yet we know exactly what we are saying.

In response we are just as complex. Ageing teaches us not just that it is possible to hold opposites simultaneously in the same heart, but requires of us that we do. That we master the seemingly impossible skill of sitting where life is liminal, where contradictions co-exist, where we might feel two things equally and at once.

It is early and the sun is just hitting the tips of things. I am sitting in a quiet that the summer has made unfamiliar. For the first time in four months I need to wear a jumper. Outside there is the call, soothing and haunting as it is, of the wood pigeons, a family of which populates the yew tree that sits just beyond my bedroom window. In recent weeks the garden has been like a creche; a cacophony of baby birds, all fluff and feather, seemingly waiting in turn for scattered seed and the bowls of water that I have placed all over the parched garden. They are yet to learn the dubious art of competition. And for just now they are also quiet. Only the pigeons still sing.

For the first time in weeks, the house is empty. We are down to just the two of us again. It is a temporary scattering, because everyone will be returning before they leave again, but it offers up a trailer of simultaneous foreboding and relief. A little of me would like an endless summer; these baggy days and all their population. A full house, all comings and goings, living rendered wanton and excessive. And all of this relentless light. Yet in the very same sentence, I feel the beginnings of a call to more order, to days more contained by darkness, to a house I can stretch into, to thinking in longer sentences. To thinking at all.

It is in these places of cusp that we are made most aware of the cycling of things, of how all stories of loss are also of redemption. And about how living is always a cumulative thing. It is both strange but also beautiful how much a season is weighted with its own memory. It can provoke, at times, something that feels like tension, give us a feeling of seeming reticence, of hesitancy. But is also offers necessary nuance to the conversation we are always having with ourselves about living. And it is those ones, the conversations that are still curious, the ones that contain a measure of not wholly knowing, that are the most interesting but also most necessary of them all.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS in SEPTEMBER

September’s rolling around will bring us back to the mat.

For the first half of this ‘term’ of classes, have devised a beautiful series of seven sessions that is designed to be an elemental journey, to will help us all genlty navigate the path from Summer’s end to Autumns start, straddling as it does the Autumn Equinox. The beauty of summer is how much time is spent outside, and how elemental it can makes us feel and I thought it would be an interesting and potentially potent exercise is to move out of summer and into the autumn by way of each element.

CLASSES - ‘THE ELEMENTS- A JOURNEY INTO AUTUMN’

TUESDAY 9-10am ZOOM CLASS LIVE and RECORDED

Dates- September 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th & October 6th, 13th & 20th

You can sign up for all seven Zoom classes ( at a £25 discount). Remember that if you buy the package of classes you still need to then use the package to book your actual sessions, and that applies to whether you want to join me live or just get a recording. Those who choose the whole series will also be sent the classes as a full package at the end to keep as videos and redo as many times as you would like.

A usual, recordings of the live class will also be sent every week for those who can’t make the in person session or who would like to do it more than once in the week. Those will continue to last a full week.

If your Tuesdays are more ad hoc than that, then you can always join any of the class as a one off. Any yoga is always better than none at all and each will work beautifully as a standalone session.

TUESDAY 6-7PM at CHLOE’S STUDIO GAGINGWELL

Dates - September 8th, 15th, 29th and October 6th, 13th and 20th.

Note that Tuesday 22nd September will be a longer form Autumn Equinox Workshop to mark and celebrate the tipping of the seasons.

Bookings for both classes and for the Autumn Equinox Workshop are now open.

BOOK ZOOM CLASSES HERE

BOOK TUESDAY EVENINGS HERE

BOOK AUTUMN EQUINOX WORKSHOP HERE

CANDLE-LIT AUTUMN EQUINOX WORKSHOP @ CHLOE”S STUDIO, Gagingwell

Tuesday 22nd September 6-8pm

Join me for a beautiful evening of movement and reflection as we celebrate the Autumn Equinox—the point where day and night come into perfect balance before we gently transition into the darker half of the year.

Through mindful yoga, breathwork, poetry and music, this candlelit workshop offers space to slow down, reconnect and embrace the change of season. You’ll leave feeling grounded, spacious and deeply restored.

Book below to join. Spaces are limited.

BOOK AUTUMN EQUINOX WORKSHOP HERE

Mary Oliver

I was going to write to say that I was planning to go a little more underground for the summer, but it has already happened. The unusually and relentlessly hot weather has brought the harvest forward by more than a month, lending the landscape an end of August palette. That, and an early holiday because for the first time in twenty years we are not beholden to school holidays, seems to have taken the scaffold from everything, my days and my thinking alike. I find myself in an early torpor. It’s a place I usually end up at the end of summer, but here I am already. And it feels like a good place to be, when you have the luxury of letting it.

Our holiday this year took us across continents, to the wilds of Canada where we lived for ten glorious days fully immersed in friendship and nature; sleeping amidst pine forests, swimming in peaty rivers and washing in a lake. We were also blissfully devoid of technology because we were almost entirely off grid for most of it, and entirely so for three days. Given the choice, this is how I would stay for the duration of summer’s baggy days, for the predictable but also arresting impact it had- and almost immediately - on my nervous system.

Technology holds us in a state of constant agitation, wedded to the incessant need to call or respond. Retract it and we quickly normalise, returning to not just a mind but a body that feels more immediately spacious. More unstrung. The feeling was compelling in the way that something altogether familiar is, like well worn shoes or the smell of home. It made me think that it is not just the way our bodies and minds long to be, but remember being. Relieved of the unnatural centrifuge of modern life, devoid of the roller coaster of dopamine, aware only of news that travels at a human pace, the body literally exhales back into a more primordial state; a place of spacious poise, of balance, of equilibrium.

We so often assume that all growth, that any altering, requires the addition of things but of course it’s mainly subtractions that we need. Mainly we need to get out of the way of things so that we might return to our much more fundamental nature. Of course I vowed that once home it would be different, determined that I would throw my phone metaphorically even if not actually to the wall. And of course as soon as I returned the habits of home did too; checking for news, checking for messages, checking for anything at all, just checking and checking until within days I was rendered hyper vigilant once more.

Twice in the last two weeks my youngest, who is nineteen has referred - in passing - to feeling and knowing something with his body. The comments seemed so fleeting, so assumed and ordinary, that he didn’t feel the need to explain it any further and I didn’t think to ask. At the time I took it as unremarkable and we simply carried on chatting. It was only later that I thought of it as unusual and especially for a nineteen year old, well known for his rationality. But what he said, both times and quite rationally, was that in each instance his body had been part of the conversation. That his body, ahead of his mind, had been doing the articulation. Which is how it is. More often than not our bodies lead, and we - if we are sensible- might just follow.

In it’s ten days of softening my body offered a ready and easy answer to a question I didn’t realise I had been asking. Released from the structure of linear living, it pushed out against its own limits, became more boundless, assumed a fuller and more breathable shape. And that it felt so ordinary, so entirely natural- like it had been squeezed into something else and now had the room and the relief to return- was its own answer.

In its days of extended light, in its release from some if not all of the strictures of ordinary living, summer offers us a rare chance to lay things down; our technologies of course, but also the rigours of the rational mind, the need to have things done in any particular order, or even at all. It is an invitation that we might feel a pull towards, a bodily pull. And having had a little taste of how it is to go there, my plan is now wholeheartedly to return.

________________

I am still planning to write all summer, though in a disordered and easy way. If something makes it to the page that feels of some note then I will send it to you all, but it possible I might go quiet until the pull of structure- which is also a thing - returns. To that end I am switching off paid subscriptions for the summer and a little beyond. But I am also offering you all three yoga sessions that are my favourites from the summer term. They will all be downloadable, so that if you have the luxury of being off grid, or even just simply want to take them to the quiet of the garden then you can.

Regular writing and yoga classes will all resume in early September- but I will message well in advance of then as a reminder so that we might all come back to more ordered living together.

In the meantime, I hope you are able to steal moments within these apex summer days for yourselves, even if that just means lying on the grass of an afternoon or evening, feet bare and mind unharnessed, and listening to the now quieter but still busy meanderings of the birds.

xx Nicole

THREE SUMMER YOGA SESSIONS - For Everyone

Finding Your Flow

Paying Attention

Feeling Connected

* 10pm on Midsummer’s Day, a pair of trees, half a moon and a sky still full of light

It is midsummer though no one, I imagine, needs told. Even without a calendar we would know it by its fever pitch build up, the sheer expansion of the days, the excess of everything; of light and pollen and insect.

Overnight the roses keep blooming and the lawn, just cut, returns immediately to flower. Right from a dawn that is already day the air is thick with heat and honeysuckle. And as the days themselves have lost their boundaries and the night it’s definition, we too have been altered; made more expansive, less defined, more open.

I am spending so much time outside, padding the garden with tea and secateurs from first light and walking the fields, often in pyjamas, beyond sunset, that I am tired to the point of delirium but it is a state that suits high summer. Like I am drunk on all the light. My thinking is softer, words feel less necessary, everything is slowing to something altogether gentler, more hazy.

Solstice and its surrounds are one of the years liminal places, where the veil between worlds and consciousness is thin, and it feels right that boundaries, the worlds’ as well as our own, might feel more blurred. It has struck me, more than once, that if I follow my instinct to be barefoot and barely clad, if I continue to feed my now near addiction to being in the open air, if I sleep outside one night this week as I intend to, then this porousness will continue until I end up as up as much clover and rose and wild grass as I am still body and breath. It is a delicious thought.

All endeavour has now been relegated to the edges of the day, with afternoons so slow they have nearly stopped- which is both the definition and the invitation of ‘solstice’. To stand still. To take stock. To hold, for a moment, the whole of it all in an outstretched hand or a lingering breath. To notice, which is the whole point of any ritual, big or small, where we are, before we are tempted to get to anywhere else.

YOGA THIS WEEK

Tuesday 9-10am Pivoting at the Point: A Celebration of the Solstice.

Slow and soulful yoga to suit the heat and the time of year.

Book here to join live tomorrow or to get a recording that will last two weeks.

Tuesday 6-7pm Evening Flow class - has been cancelled this week as the studio is expected to be too hot omrroow evening. The class willr esume as a regualr slot in September. But in the meantime I am plotting an outdoor session or two, while the weather is good. This week if I can get my skates on, or in July. Let me know by email if you’d be keen, and watch this space and the whatsapp group for details .

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-Mary Oliver 

Near the top of a mountain and overlooking Lake Orta in Italy is a quiet little village. Many of the houses have been abandoned and others are only frequented in the summer months, but all those that are lived in are still beautifully tended, with courtyards covered in pots of long flowering geraniums, hydrangeas growing liberally over garden walls, and wood piles stacked perfectly. They are an artistry in the summer months that is rendered practical as the days shorten which, inevitably and eventually, they always do.

Throughout the whole of the day and across the night, the church bells in the village ring out, sounding out both the hour and its halves with a strangely soothing regularity. I assumed, when I first noticed them, that the bells were to mark out the time of day- a sonorous clock- so that those without their own timepiece could still keep track of time.

But apparently the point of the bells, which have rung out daily since the 13th century, was always to summon the attention of the community, a means not just to define the day but bring a quality of presence to it.

Years ago my Buddhist teacher told me too about a group of monks he knew who lived high up in the Himalayas. At some stage they had adopted the practice of wearing tiny bells around their necks. Like church bells these would ring out, but at unexpected moments, depending on what the monks were doing. And every time they heard the bell, the instruction was simply to stop. To stop and to pay attention.

If even monks need such instruction, then I - surely- need it more. On a walk this morning I was horrified to discover that I had managed to almost cross an entire field before I realised that it had - over the weekend and when I was away- erupted into wildflowers. They spanned out in every direction, glistening with last nights rain and opening to the still pale morning sun. For as far as the eye could see I was surrounded by wild geranium and ox-eye daisies, by red poppies and purple clovers, as well as great clumps of miniature lupins that I made, in that moment, my favourite flower, as an act of apology. And yet, I very nearly hadn’t seen a thing.

It is a state as old as time but also thoroughly modern to be so wantonly distracted. Whoever the ancient texts spoke to with their messy minds, and even a thousand years ago they did, a contemporary audience- me & us- must be worse. The world trains us in the art of distraction, teaching us how to spin plates, to over-do, to respond incessantly to the addictive call of rolling news and to the ping of notifications. Again and again we are called away from our tasks, called to splinter our attention. If I could miss such beauty when I was in the very midst of it, how much do I not see and never even notice that I don’t? How much of living is actually lost?

I knew what I needed to do with this moment of realisation, with this sudden ‘noticing that I hadn’t noticed’ and that was to be glad for it. To walk on with my head newly raised. To turn my ears to the wind and my eyes to the sky. To practice resting my attention on the breath, to focus on my next footstep. It might be a sign that after a busy week and weekend I needed a quieter day to settle, or just a simple lunch of cheese and bread on the steps outside where I could listen, for a time, just to the high summer chatter of the birds.

The only way out of distraction is gentle and repeated attention. And like any other skill it takes a measure of practice. There is something on offer as soon as we have caught ourselves in the experience of looking away. And it can serve rather beautifully, and if we let it, as its own bell.

YOGA CLASSES THIS WEEK

Two more weeks of yoga to go in this Summer term series, and they straddle the fervour and beauty of high summer. There is always a reason to practice yoga, but this is an especially beuatoful time to do so; when your practice will be light filled and warm, and when you might take your mat or a recording outside.

Book below for

TUESDAY 16th June 9-10am ZOOM LIVE and/or as a recording

ZOOM YOGA 9-10am

TUESDAY 16th June 6-7PM IN PERSON EVENING FLOW at Chloes Studio in Gaginwell

EVENING YOGA FLOW

YOGA RETREAT in GOA, INDIA 2027

Join me on what is likely to be a final retreat in India 28th February to 6th March 2027.

The retreat will be held at the absolutely beautiful Bamboo Yoga which is located on a still unspoilt Southern Goan beach. Twice a day yoga classes are held in a shala looking straight out to sea, the beautiful huts are scatttered amongst palm trees and hibiscus, the food is off the dial amazing and the staff take better care of everyone than anywhere else I have been. The week is truly magical from start to finish, and a beacon to have on the horizon of your next winter.

Email me for a copy of the brochure or to save you a place. There is the option to pay deposits in installments if that helps.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make
a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven”.
Milton

When the rains came last week I was delighted. I spent the whole week responding to other peoples complaints with the refrain that ‘It was so good for the garden’, which showed every bit of my age and reminded everyone of their mothers. But the thing is, right then, I meant it. The smell of the dry earth being pelted not just with intangible drizzle but great monsoonal downpours had me enraptured. I flung open all the windows of the house, leant out and drank in the smell of petrichor and watched as the raindrops drew shapes down the window panes, little by little and then all of a sudden, as they do. On more than one night I fell asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof with a delight that always reminds me of childhood, in that same non-specific but insistent way that cut grass does. And whenever there was a break in the clouds and the sun returned, I would stop whatever I was doing - any excuse will do- and would go out to the garden to delight in the aftermath; the rain settled in perfect droplets on the leaves of the alchemilla, the buttercup strewn grass that was now glistening and the flowers - hot pink roses and dirty purple poppies and cream coloured foxgloves with their speckled violet throats - that looked so relieved that I was sure I could feel it too, like a form of kinship.

Fast forward to this week, to now, to today, when I got soaked even just getting a water bottle from the car, got stuck on the way to Oxford in the inevitable traffic that rain always causes and find myself battling that strange and particular tiredness that only a barometer can explain and I am less enamoured. Irritated even. And hungry for the summer, real summer to return. I haven’t yet made it into the garden but even from the window the trees look bedraggled, the roses are cowering and the clouds are sitting low in the sky and lending their drabness to everything. Even the dog doesn’t lift his head from his basket as I walk past. He has- it seems- no interest either, in getting outside.

The Buddhists might use the experience - my pendulum swinging reaction to the same thing- as the perfect example of the mind’s own vagrancies, itself as changeable and untamed as any weather. They might say too, that it shows the extent to which nothing is neither objectively good or bad, but just - to borrow and bastardise Hamlet- our thinking that makes it so. Awareness like this, however fleeting, can be at least useful. It is so easy to cast around for external cause to explain our feelings and only sometimes is it true. And anyway rarely is anything as intransigent as it seems. And it can be helpful, in a small but still meaningful way, to recognise that the shallow roots of these feelings are both their antidote and opportunity.

One of the first times I ever learned meditation in any formal capacity was at the Jamyang Buddhist centre in Elephant & Castle in London. The course ran for six weeks and coincided with some building work next door, so our beginners meditation sessions were accompanied by the sound of drilling and hammering. It proved hard, and in most cases impossible at first not to be distracted by the relentless and jarring sounds that interrupted the otherwise silence, piercing both our thinking and our early attempts not to.

On the third week, and aware that there had been some complaints from some of the students, our teacher spoke out.

‘These conditions are ideal for meditation’ he said, with his trademark wide grin and shining eyes. I imagine more than one of us looked back confused.

‘Small troubles, like this drilling and this hammering, are our best teachers.’ he added, before going on to explain that the entire point of meditation was not absolute silence, or a mind free from thinking, but the opportunity not just to see with a certain clarity how changeable the mind was or how quick we are to leap to response but also to practice the essential art of sitting with small discomforts - like noise, or sore legs, or fleeting thoughts or, indeed, a period of seemingly endless rain - to practice, like a fire drill, for much bigger things.

____________________________

YOGA THIS WEEK - WAYS TO GET ON THE MAT

This week’s class is a heart opening practice inspired by the recent rain, and by the opportunity it might afford to make enough space for all feelings. Soulful and soothing this week the emphasis will be on opening the upper body, releasing and relaxing shoulders and the arms , and making space in the whole of the heart space with the hope that you will be left feeling both newly spacious and energetically uplifted.

I am also teaching an extra class this week at Chloe’s studio so for locals there will be an opportunity to practice in person on Friday morning, as well as the usual Tuesday Zoom and evenings sessions.

BOOK NOW………………..

‘MAKING SPACE FOR EVERYTHING; A Heart Opening Yoga Practice’

Tuesday 9th June 9-10am ZOOM LIVE and/or Recorded.

BOOK HERE

Tuesday 9th June 6-7pm IN PERSON @ Chloe’s Studio, Gagingwell

and/or

Friday 12th June 9.30-10.30am In PERSON @ Chloe’s Studio, Gagingwell

BOOK HERE

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

*and things to tend, and maybe also a view of the sea

I spent the last week on the coast of Cornwall, back to a place that decades of returning has afforded the status of a home from home, even without the bricks and mortar. Every year we move between different rentals, each with its own charm. One is romantically sat above an art gallery and a literal stone’s throw from the slipway, which makes a daily morning swim a few steps from door to sea. There is no danger of resistance when you can smell the salt water as soon as you open your front door, can lean out to check both the tide and the queue for coffee at the waterside hut.

Another of the houses has an especially beautiful garden, awash now with foxgloves and irises and white trumpeted lillies, and in the summer with the acid green and pink hydrangeas that Cornwall is famed for. It is a bigger place, with a table that can squeeze the sixteen of us when we gather for meals, and enough bathrooms that I dont need to share with teenage boys.

And then there’s another, the one we had last week and for the third or fourth time, which sits in the middle of a row of houses with seafaring names like Coastguards cottage and Admiralty terrace. It is above a road that runs away from the village, one that eventually becomes a coastal path, and is further to lug the paddle-board and more steps to go for milk and the still warm potato rolls in the village shop every morning. But beyond that, the stairs up the terraced garden is the only other price to pay for views are transfixing, blue and sweeping and so expansive that you can feel the boundaries of yourself start to blur the minute you look out towards the horizon.

My sleep runs in cycles across the course of every month and last week coincided with my waking even earlier than usual - up on the cusp of what is now a very early dawn- and so I watched the sun rise across the water every day, in the still quiet of a sleeping house. I have spoken more than once of my love of the silence of the earliest part of the day, of how particular the quiet is in a village where mostly other people are in bed, no doubt with sheets flung off to counter the heatwave that kept the air thick at night and into the morning.

On only the second day I am aware that our neighbour for the week, Valerie, is also an early bird. From just after sunrise I can hear the muffled sound of her radio, set to a station of classical music which i can only vaguely hear. Then like me, she is at the on the terrace with a cup of tea, watching the sun as it raises its head, spraying itself in glinting fragments across a millpond still sea. We are both bleary eyed to begin with and so we make a point of leaving each other to ourselves. It is only much later, when she has watered the concrete troughs of multicoloured petunias and I have written in my notebook, that we acknowledge each others presence, with smiles and gentle talk of the mornings uncharacteristic heat. Of what it speaks of for the rest of the day. Only later still will she tell me stories of the village, of its past and present. Of how she arrived here more than fifty years ago now, ‘on her way to Australia’. Of how she and two friends were planning on taking the next £10 passage to Sydney, which was still six months away. About how she said to her girlfriend that she really hoped ‘that that Terry bloke won’t be there’ when they made their way to Portscatho from Truro, the very Terry that she married within three months of arriving. The Terry that she bought a house with for only £4000. The house they brought up their three daughters in, daughters who thankfully hadn’t moved far away so that she saw her grandchildren regularly enough to be a comfort. The house she was still sat in now. That she could sell of course, for 300 times what she bought it for - but then ‘who could put a price on this view’.

I don’t know when Terry died - it is a question that is hard to ask- but I do know despite twenty years of renting in the village we have never met him but that they were together until his end. I know too that despite the time her love is undiminished. She speaks of him in the past tense with still shining eyes, telling stories of his love affair with sailing, his work for the coastguards and his irritations too. ‘You get it all when you are together a lifetime’ she offers up, with a still girl-ish smile.

It was from Val that I learned that more than 50 percent of the village is now second homes. And that the jellyfish swarms come earlier and earlier every year. And that octopi now over-populate the coast line, stripping the sea of scallops with their impressive tentacled dexterity. And that a ‘blow’in’ from London had broken up the Am-Dram society that had otherwise been running for decades, with all her bossy and serious ways. And that the bus no longer comes to the village, because there are no more teenagers to take to school in Truro.

But it was from Val I also learned, as the week went on, the art of still beautiful living. In the ritual of a quiet early morning accompanied by steaming cups of tea and then coffee, in that order. In the maintaining of things to tend; stone troughs of petunias that needed watered each morning, and a wildflower patch for the bees ‘that mainly looks after itself’, in the feeding and cuddling of reticent guinea pigs, rescued from an animal centre. I see it too in the daily feeding of a seagull - whose name I cant remember- but who knocked daily with his oversized beak on the back door, so that he could limp with his gammy leg inside and be fed. Or in the watching with a smile the children jumping from the pontoon on the far side of the village at high tide, their delighted squeals carrying across the water. ‘All my children did the same’ she said, as we watched together. Generations have done the same thing.

I noticed how she would wait for the sun to leave the terrace before returning to the same view every evening, a library book in hand, and be absorbed in reading for longer than most can now muster. And how she would pause on the dot of 6pm, put her book down splayed at the right page for just long enough to get a glass of cold white wine, to which she added a single ice cube. On some nights she would be joined by a woman I presumed to be her daughter. On another it looked like an old friend. On those occasions the book would stay where it was and there would be animated conversation instead. But other nights she just returned to her book, interrupting herself to sip her wine or to look towards the horizon turned pink by the heat haze, her mouth upticked and always threatening to smile.

YOGA CLASSES IN JUNE

Tuesday yoga sessions will run for the next four weeks which see us through to the peak of the year. The warmer days lend themselves to practice out in nature ( which the Zoom classes are perfect for, and the recordings can all be downloaded and so taken anywhere too) and it is at this time of year, with bodies that are naturally more open, that you can make real progress in your practice.

The evening In Person classes are at Chloe’s Studio in Gaginwell. For the last few weeks we have been bathed in a slow setting sun every evening - which lends another layer of magic to the class and makes it a perfect way to end a day.

Sign up for tomorrow or for a whole series of classes using the link below.

TUESDAY 2nd June 9-10am ZOOM Class

BOOK HERE

TUESDAY 2nd June 6-7pm at Chloe’s Studio Gagingwell

BOOK HERE

‘Some

days my life is held together

by definitions, some days

I read the word swallow

and all my feathers show.’

ADA LIMON

This was obviously written yesterday. But everything- of course- still applies.

__________________________

It is Sunday morning and I have woken up with a ball of anxiety in my stomach. Except that is not right because it’s more full bodied than that. It’s like I am fizzing.

I am too agitated to linger in bed, despite the day of the week being a permission. And so I go downstairs and make myself two boiled eggs with buttered soldiers, the childishness of which is a comfort.

I decide I have to go on a walk and immediately. So I pull on some jeans but leave my pyjama top on and just wrestle a jumper over it. The sun is shining but I know the morning air will still have a bite to it. And then I cross the lane that runs in front of my house, to the small woodland opposite. It is fairly scrappy, as far as woods go, but has more than once been a source of solace.

I can see the trees from my bath and all year I watch the seasons as they arrive and retreat across the branches of hazels and oaks, across horse chestnuts and pines. When my children were little we would build stick dens in there and roast sausages over rudimentary fires. Later I could leave them on their own to play without worry. In the summer there are a whole line of cherry trees that track the edge of the field, the remnants of an old orchard no doubt, and they still fruit. They are too tall now to pick anything from, but get your timing right and you can spend an entire afternoon eating the windfall.

Today the trees are all in new leaf and have the vivid green of Spring and there is dappled sunlight coming through the branches, scattering itself across the woodland floor which is covered in fallen branches, with ivy and moss. Within three minutes I have heard a robin, a blackbird, a chaffinch, a wood pigeon, a blackcap, a great tit, a wren, a chiffchaff and, at the top of the woods, as though in salute as I am leaving, the distinct chortle of a green woodpecker. When I reach the field beyond the woods, walk out into what is now much brighter sunlight, I am greeted by a chorus of larks.

Because I have no schedule to return to I don’t just take my familiar walking route, the one I do daily to satisfy my need to clear my head, to be outside and to up my step count. Instead I just meander. It feels like a luxury, the ability to see a little wooden bridge and cross it, to linger by a towering horse chestnut, which is in full flower. By the river I add canada goose and grey heron to my mental bird collection. Both are standing, necks erect, perfectly still, guarded and hoping, perhaps, that I don’t see them. I walk slowly by and they stay where they are. I notice the bright pink campion that lines the path, and the buttercups that have erupted and everywhere, as well as some other tiny yellow flowers on long stalks who look miniature stars and whose name I do not know.

Whenever I come to a fork in the path I turn the opposite way to usual, marvelling that after twenty years of living in the same landscape I can still find novelty; paths made by sheep or the new overhang of trees, others erased by overzealous hawthorn or an explosion of cow parsley.

On the familiar road that eventually leads me home, I meet a hare. It is running towards me and - presumably as I am downwind of it- seems to have no idea I am there. I stop and stand as still as I can, fascinated to see how close it might come. It gets to within two metres of me before it stops too, sits up on its haunches, white tipped ears erect and twitching. We seem to look at each other, both momentarily still. They are beautiful, hares. The stuff of folklore and fairytale and somehow also regal, and this is the closest I have ever been to one. It takes a few moments more before something catches its attention - or it realises I am there and a dreaded human - and it makes for a gap.

I see it again, just before I turn off across the field and back to the woods. We have been walking in parallel, the hare in the field and me on the road. But this time it sees me straight away and is startled, and I watch it run through the semi grown wheat, track it by the tips of its oversized ears till it runs out of sight.

By the time I get home I am crazy with thirst. It has been well over two hours. But I feel better. Not perfect. But better.

In the last week I have had three people, all from different parts of my life, confess to feeling overwhelmed. I don’t know whether its just synchronicity, the sort that comes from our own feelings looking for mirrors, as they do. But experiences are often more communal than we think. So often when I teach a yoga class, set as they have always been around particular themes, someone will tell me at the end that the words were exactly what they needed to hear. Often they will ask me how I knew what they needed, and my reply is always the same. ‘Because it is what I needed too’.

The minutiae of everyones living is always different, of course it is, but we also exist under the same suns, subject to the same cycles of the moon, grapple with barrages of the same news cycle, have the same technologies thrust upon us. One of the things that most arrests me about Buddhist texts is how contemporary the people seem, the ones that they were written for. What we grapple with is wholly human and it is a long time that we have been doing the grappling. The ‘monkey mind’, for all its frustration, is as old as time. And the best solutions often are too.

There can be a particular quality to May that can feel like a collision, a riot of beauty but also bombast. All the headiness is a marvel - who’d have even thought of it only weeks ago - and yet for all the love affair it can also feel destabilising. Like the pace has picked up to such an extent that we can’t quite keep up.

So much of feeling requires just sitting with, requires some waiting, but simple gestures can also be potent nudges. Bodily anxiety invades us and can linger for days, but offered gentle movement - a walk, a simple stretch, a giant yawn, even just a deeper breath - it can also be tempted to retreat. Feeling overwhelmed eventually passes with the offer of rest or doing the next smallest thing - especially if we are that generous with ourselves- but can also be edged out by something so small its unexpected. I am not one to glorify housework, but folding clothes - turning the chaos of a basket into the order of a pile- can be underrated as a source of momentary calm. But more than that it offers palpable reassurance to a mind and a nervous system that have assumed the worst, that things - small things- are still possible. When I came home on Sunday morning, I untied my boots and shook them off in the hallway. I put some slippers on and made myself a second cup of tea. I put on the album where Ella Fitzgerald sings Nat King Cole on the record player. And I chose the seat in the sunshine, where I sat with my hands around the warm cup. And all of that, small as it all was, helped too.

__________________________________

THIS WEEK -

TUESDAY SUMMER YOGA

This week the practice will be focussed on de-activating the nervous system and gently centring body, heart and mind. Think soft and soulful movement, a generous breath and gestures chosen for their proven capacity to calm. There are options to join live on Zoom, to have a recording which will last two weeks ( and so cover the half term break) , or to come to the new in person evening class at Chloe’s studio in Gagingwell. For the last two weeks we have practiced in the face of a setting sun and it has been completely glorious.

BOOK for TUESDAY YOGA - JUST CLICK ON LINKS BELOW

9-10 am ZOOM CLASS LIVE or a 2 WEEK Recording

6-7PM EVENING YOGA FLOW - In Person at Chloe’s Studio, Gagingwell

If you have read this far then thank you. If you have booked a yoga class, then thank you even more. And if you like what you have read then one way of supporting is to ‘heart’ the piece, re-stack it if you are a Substack user, or just comment below. It is a super lovely way for us to start a conversation but also helps more people to find what I write - which i am always grateful for.

“We are stardust, we are golden / And we’ve got to get ourselves / Back to the garden.”

— Joni Mitchell

No words are coming to me this morning. I am unusually tired and have been for the last week. Like a child at a birthday party, it is as though I wore myself out with my enthusiasm for April, and now need time to recover. All week I have been getting snatches of thought that I am translating badly to the page. This morning I have already moved from pen and paper to typing, in case that helped, but it hasn’t. I am full of the beginnings of so many things but can not get to any ends. I am not wholly sure what I am thinking about and then none of it feels very original. But then I remember too that there is no such thing as original, not really, and that anyway that is the point. Because on some level we are all the same. On some level we are connected, and beautifully.

On days like this, when my attempts to do anything meet a wall, I know I need to get into the garden. That there I will be transported by the generous mundanity of simple jobs, that I will be soothed by the simple act of working with my hands. That there I can marvel at all the life force that necessarily exists within a seed so small I can barely see it. That I can plant those seeds and just be enamoured that they grow. That stay there long enough and I will be able to feel, after a while, the quiet pulse of connection. And that something in that always leads to hope.

Two weeks ago I drove into Oxford to hear Suzanne Simard interviewed by Isabella Tree. Authors are my new rocks stars and I will go a long way to listen to them. And when a talk is good - and this one was exceptional- I come away with the same elation and sense of the communal that I used to go to gigs to find.

Simard is a Canadian scientist and was made famous by her discovery that trees had intelligence; that a forest is not an assortment of singular trees but a community that lives symbiotically, sharing knowledge via a complex underground network. At the time her ideas were deemed revolutionary. Many were even disbelieving. But for others, myself included, what she said made intuitive sense. Of course the trees are connected. Because of course everything is connected.

Anyone who spends any length of time in their back brain - meditators, sages, poets. physicists and mathematicians- all eventually come to that very conclusion. The physicist Carl Sagan famously announced that ‘the cosmos was within us’, and suggested that both poetically but also actually, we are all made of star dust. The poet Walt Whitman - the forfather to so many other amazing poets- described himself as a kosmos, but meant it as the opposite of hubristic. Instead he saw that everything existed within the same circle, and that he could never be ‘a stander above men and women, or apart from them’. According to Whitman there was no duality, no hierarchy, nothing or no one who was, any more than another, extra- ordinary. And in the best explanation I have ever heard for the energy that we all share, the yogi and writer Michael Singer describes our energetic connection as being akin to our being empty jugs. The air within the jug is not materially different to the air outside, it is just separated and temporarily, by the jug. Break the jug and the air simply merges once more. So too our shared energy. Separation is nothing more than illusion. A mis-twist of seeing.

It is way of thinking we could do with more of. We live in a fractured world, one that feels like it is increasingly on the precipice of its own unravelling, dominated as it is by the thinking of un-contemplative men. Social media thrives on dividing us. The news is defined by its ‘othering’. Disconnect from nature, the only very nuclear family, and our increasing obsession with ourselves and our own exclusive well being is feeding into the notion that we are not just separate but different. And something about separation muzzles hope. In the same way that connection explicitly fosters it.

During his eight year Presidency, Barack Obama apparently insisted on reading ten letters a day. It was only ever a fraction of the 10,000 letters that he received daily, a volume that needed 50 staff members, 36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers - a whole community of people- to sort through. But those ten letters gave him a sense of the very real grievances of the people he was entrusted to help. Whenever he replied, it was with pen on paper, written out once as a rough draft before he took the time to write again, on White House headed paper. And he did it, spent time he didn’t really have to do it, so he could avoid the bubble of a Presidency. It mattered to him that he could understand the life of the everyman/woman and for that he knew he needed to stay connected. The letters, received and written, were exactly that. They helped him to measure the pulse of the nation, and to direct policy accordingly. But they also- he insisted- gave him hope. No matter what happened- no matter how much things went wrong or how much he found himself criticised- the letters meant he never became callous or cynical.

An awareness of connection seems to do that. When Dr Suzanne Simard spoke in Oxford last week, what most struck me, as well as the beauty and resonance of her ideas, was how fundamentally hopeful she was. In theory, she has every reason not to be. Anyone who lives up close to nature can find ample reason for despair. But her message was anything but despairing. Because she had seen first hand how the connectivity of trees made them immensely capable of healing and, as she insisted by way of her gentle smile and still wide eyes, of healing more than just each other.

YOGA CLASSES - TUESDAY 12th May

I have spent more time than I should have this last week watching the way my ferns have been unravelling, which has inspired this weeks classes, and which will be all about spirals and involve lots of delicious twists. Especially good if you feel like you are carrying a lot at the moment, and guaranteed to make you feel uplifted.

There are now two ways to join…..

ZOOM CLASSES 9-10am

An hour long yoga class that you can join from anywhere and that can be accessed both live and then afterwards as a recording which means you can do it again and again.

Book here for Zoom

IN-PERSON EVENING YOGA FLOW 6-7pm Chloe’s Studio

An hour long in person yoga flow which will involve asana, breath, music and poetry. Last week we practiced with the fading sun on our faces and it was magical.

Places are limited so book to join.

Book Here for In Person

Do you remember, as a child, how eager we all were for the passage of time? How much we longed for a school day to end, for our next birthday to come or to get the age when we could finally get our ears pierced?

‘I’d like to freeze them at this age’ I would often hear my mother saying to friends, which I took to be the compliment it was meant as but it also terrified me. I didn’t want to be frozen into perpetual childhood. I wanted life to pass, and sometimes quickly.

Some of us are born as natural children and I had all the curiosity and wonder that we associate with the very young, wiling away hours deep in imaginary play in the back garden of my grandparents house, where I would tend to my dolls and make mud soup, amidst the ferns. The smell of moss always takes me immediately back there, in that way that smell is so often time travel.

But I was also always older than my years, adoring of my grandparents and happier- often- in the company of adults. If ever I couldn’t be found within the picket-fenced perimeter of our Cape Cod style house on a leafy suburban Sydney street, then my parents knew to come and look for me several doors up, sat on the porch of a near neighbour, who called me ‘her little eccentric’. A little of me always wanted to be ahead of where I was.

But all this month I have felt the ache, beautiful as it is, that comes from the passage of petal and leaf, the abundance of blossom and then its falling, the beauty of tulips in all of their fading. Nothing has ever arrested me quite like this April has done, with its days that I’d agree with my mother to freeze. These have been days I have wanted to stretch. To linger in. Even to stop entirely.

I haven’t got a problem with ageing. Whenever I am asked about it I always resort to quoting Stephen Fry, who on the cusp of a significant birthday and when asked about how he felt about getting older, replied with his trademark dry wit ‘Well it’s better than the alternative’. Which is both funny and profoundly true.

Our society’s obsession with perpetual youth is to be railed against for more than just its impossibility. And anyway it is all relative. As a twenty something year old I shied away from having my picture taken, putting a hand up to lenses if anyone tried to freeze me in time. But now when I see a rare picture of that time, usually shrouded in one child or another, I wonder what I was so afraid of. My fifty year old self sees only beauty. And so will my seventy year old self of now, if I have the luxury of getting there. Youth depends entirely on where you are looking from.

And time too. The same days that are stretched endlessly as a child are rendered blink short as a result of maths and proportion. But nothing has changed in the earth’s turning, or nothing in our life time anyway. Days and nights are as they always were, the tides shift as they always have, the moon waxes and wanes reliably over its 28 day cycle. Time is still there for the taking. And all the while, as we blink through another April and launch into the bounty of another May, we are gathering wisdoms that we can tuck into the increasing folds of ourselves, alongside the repeated instruction of a beautiful Spring, that tells us that the only way to deal with the passage of time is to pay it due attention.

YOGA THIS WEEK - TUESDAY ZOOM AND A NEW CLASS

TUESDAY ZOOM CLASS

Tuesday 5th May 9-10am on ZOOM & Recorded

Tomorrow sees the continuation of Tuesday Zoom classes which began last week and will take us through the the summer. It was magic to be back on the mat with lots of you last week and its never too late to join. I am extending the pass that gets you a discount on all remaining classes for anyone who wasn’t quite ready to start last week, but you can also come as a drop in if that suits better. As a teacher of mine once said, you will never regret having done a practice.

BOOK HERE to join in person or get a recording

NEW IN-PERSON CLASS

Starts THIS Tuesday 5th May 6-7pm

This Tuesday evening I am starting a new class at the beautiful Chloe’s Studio in Gagingwell. Tucked amidst beautiful trees and green fields, with ample and easy parking, this studio is going to be an amazing place to begin or return to my in person yoga classes.

This session of asana, breath and meditation will be perfect for after a long days work or for escaping the witching hour at home, or simply to round off your day - and will mean you can float into the rest of your evening both relaxed and uplifted.

BOOK HERE to join.

Charles de Lint

It is Monday and I am not quite ready for it. I was away in Ireland last week, a four day jaunt that novelty and failing to call home made feel infinitely longer, and a little of me has been left behind. Anyway the older I get the harder I find it to move between places and ways of being. I need so much more runway, both in the advance and in the aftermath of anything. More runway and more convincing, because when I am at home I don’t feel I want to leave, so wedded I am to the rhythm of my days and the familiar fall of the light - and right now too, the absolute audacity of the blossom- but once I am gone I can only ever imagine myself away.

It helped that despite being Ireland we did not experience a drop of rain which was ‘a grand stroke of luck’ according to another guest, who delivered the proclamation and the rest of his tips with his beautiful Irish lilt. I think I could go to Ireland just to be spoken to, to hear how the language and the accent turns everything, even directions, into poetry.

It helped too that I was with two of my closest friends, friends who I love like family and whose rhythms mimic mine. I always used to say that families can not be run as democracies and especially on holiday, but friendships can, or these ones could. I don’t know if I have ever felt such ease in filling our unplanned days. A few ideas thrown around and simply settled on; a coastal walk in the company of returned swallows, an Atlantic swim and then another because the first was so giddying, a walk up a mountain with a picnic packed, daily naps, whisky sours before dinner, oysters and crab salads and conversations that meandered from the serious to the sublime and the side splitting and back again. And we sang, in the car, and a lot, to every Irish band we could possibly think of. We laughed and we cried and we paused often to take in what Oscar Wilde once described as the ‘savage beauty’ of Connemara. We didn’t stop much, and yet I felt - I feel- entirely rested.

And it helped too and maybe most of all, that we stayed at the Anglers Return, an old home covered in the evidence of its own generous history and shrouded with birdsong. And that the owner Lynn was, without any shadow of doubt, an angel in human disguise. Because for the four days, as well as having each other, we found ourselves with an Irish mother, a beautiful woman, tiny in stature but wide eyed with curiosity and with a heart as big as the West coast skies. Every morning we were fed on home made granola and stewed fruits, and then eggs and mushrooms and tomatoes, all freshly cooked. She would see us off each morning, minding if we might have left something behind, checking if we knew where we were going, calling out her directions but not before checking too whether we might need extra towels or maybe plastic bags for our wet ‘togs’. A mother who would welcome us back in the afternoon, commending our bravery for the water or the walk and insist on our having hot showers or better still a bath, while taking everything off us to so that she could give it all a shake and a spin. ‘Its no bother’ she would insist if we tried to resist her the extra work.

And who then, when we went out for dinner, would make sure that we came home to a log fire and lit lamps, to beds turned down and with electric blankets on low. And who would, every night without fail, leave the hall lamp on, so that we could pad our way, bare feet on warm carpets, to the loo.

I have always known, really, that the world turns on small kindnesses. But it took a little trip to Ireland - four days in length but now longer in memory- to realise quite how much I needed them too.

SUMMER YOGA SESSIONS

A HEART EXPANDING YOGA FLOW Tuesday 28th April 9-10am

We start the Summer term of yoga classes tomorrow with a heart expanding class- I am going to try and pass on a little of beautiful Lynne and irelands wide skies to you all.

Book here to join live tomorrow morning from wherever you find yourself between 9-10am or to receive the recording straight afterwards and which will last you the week- this will be one that would be magic to take into the sunshine if you can.

A HEART EXPANDING YOGA FLOW

It is early and the sun is doing its watery dance across the walls of my bedroom. The collared dove purrs from the yew tree, that ancient protector. And the cat who has already come in search of affection, a desire never satiated in this now old feline, is now sat in a column of light. She is upright but dosing, paws perfectly together, tail curled around her, eyes slowly opening and closing, like soft wings in slow motion. That her ear occasionally twitches in response to the quiet morning’s sound is her only concession to paying attention.

It is how I would like to always wake at the weekend, awash in this feeling of Sunday, with its lack of care. To bathe in the soft glow of an already warm morning that foretells of a beautiful day. It is a rare thing, to have nothing to do, and of course it isn’t true. If and when I think about it, plenty will call to me. There is a piece I am struggling to write but need to finish, a bill or two to pay, seedlings that will need enough watering to last them the four days I am about to be away. At some stage I will need to pack. But really the day is empty. It is a Sunday that feels as a Sunday should, free of obligation or clock watching.

It strikes me that whenever I have a day that like this, or a weekend that lies blank in the diary like this one has, how luxurious it feels to have left living to chance. Like slipping into a bath that is the perfect temperature. Or getting into a freshly made bed, sheets sun dried and pulled tight, when it is still light outside. Or reading, in the afternoon.

There is a yoga cue that I heard in a class years ago and that I promptly stole and have used ever since. ‘Do one thing to soften’. I love it for its generosity- it’s invitation to soften anywhere and anyhow- but also for its impact. Offer yourself nothing more than a slight bend in the elbows in downward dog and the whole body feels like it has exhaled.

Same in living. There are so many ways to soften; with gentle movement, a circular walk, in the slow and undistracted stirring of a risotto, a bowl of which is the perfect foil for these t-shirt warm days and still crisp nights. But it could just as easily be, and needs to begin with, a tiny offer of some space.

Years ago a friend told me of a trick she would do with the guarding of space expressly in mind. Every few weeks throughout the year she would write in her diary that the Smiths were coming to stay. Despite its being such a common name, she knew no such people. But having this imaginary family in the diary not only gave her an immediate out to questions of whether she was free, but it also reminded her that she wanted to be.

The world is full of unintended frictions, things we have to do, and much of it for others. This is largely a good thing. But a lot of the running we do is also of our own making, a habit of distraction -and as another friend once said- making our lives so busy that we can boast of them. We have might have already come to the conclusion that collecting things is no path to peace, but still fall at the hurdle of collecting experiences, seeing - even by accident- our full diaries as some sort of currency. Of seeing every day and weekend as needing something specific and memorable to be worthy. And in doing so we create both abundance but also tension.

Even without being overrun, and as within the most seemingly simple of yoga poses, there is almost never nothing to soften, and almost always always something to be gained from doing so. And when in doubt, doing just one thing - even as small as lingering in bed with a second cup of tea or pausing just long enough to hear the blackbird sing- is a strangely potent cue.

__________________________________

YOGA THIS SPRING AND SUMMER - Book Now for a Host of In Person and Online Offerings. There is genuinely something for everyone, wherever you are.

I was sent this reel this week and it made me grin from ear to ear. If you are still Team Yoga, then I am back to teaching at the end of this coming week and have lots of offerings to come in the next few weeks. Yoga, as it turns out, is its own form of space. And all of my classes will leave you softened.

SOULFUL SUNDAY - A Pop Up Yoga Class - Grounding & Grace

Sunday 26th April 9-10.15 am £20

Enstone Parish Hall

A lot of locals have been telling me that they want in person yoga but that weekdays can be tricky, so I am bringing back Soulful Sunday sessions as a pop up starting Sunday 26th April. If enough of you are keen then I will try to do something monthly.

Spring is a time of incredible beauty and abundance, but also peak flux. Coupled with the madness of the world and the speed of living, our capacity to drink ieverything in without being pushed off centre is something we can actively cultivate- and for that there is nothing better than a gentle and considered yoga practice of a Sunday morning. Leave everyone else asleep in bed and steal away for a long hours yoga; we will move, breathe, meditate together and you will leave grounded but also uplifted for the day and week ahead.

BOOK SOULFUL SUNDAY HERE

THREE 30 MINUTE YOGA RECORDINGS

These are three recorded sessions created with Spring in mind. Each is designed to tend the hips, the heart and the head space alternately, and can be used as a mini series to get you back on the mat, or to weave in to the week alongside other longer form classes. Perfect to plug the gap until tuesday classes resume.

£20 via paypal link ( email me to buy the sessions or hit reply to this message) or free to PAID Subscribers to Substack

TUESDAY MORNING ZOOM CLASSES for the SPRING & SUMMER

9-10am £15 a class or a Summer Block of Classes for a reduced rate

Begins again Tuesday 29th April.

Book here to be sure to join.

A lot of people have been confessing to me that their yoga practice has fallen by the wayside, and Zoom sessions are still a super convenient way to get back on to the mat. Practice from the comfort of your own home, in your pyjamas and with bed hair if necessary, with company as a live class and/or get the session as a recording to use during the week and as it suits.

Everyone - the regulars, the lapsed and beginners- welcome.

BOOK ZOOM YOGA FLOW

NEW CLASS- TUESDAY EVENING YOGA FLOW 6-7pm At Chloe’s Studio in Gaginwell

This is a new In Person Yoga Flow Class at the beautiful Chloe’s Studio in Gaginwell.

Beginning 6-7pm on Tuesday 5th May, this will be a regular Tuesday class that you can book weekly or as a one of class as and when it suits your diary. Each class will be especially sequenced to track our needs as we move from Spring into Summer, and will involve a soulful flowing sequence, a focus on breath work and lots of poetry.

All tuesday classes will then run through the end of the summer term ( apart from half term). Bookings now open for the first week and for sessions throughout May and June .

IN PERSON TUESDAY EVENING FLOW

‘Outside it is

warm and blue

and April.’

Sylvia Plath

‘The world is on fire and still……’

For days now this phrase has been circling around in my head like a mantra or a writing prompt, asking to be completed. I am convinced it is another person’s line, that I have stolen it from someones poem but I can’t find the source. (Incidentally, if anyone knows where it is from or of anything like it, can you pop it in the comments? I am both intrigued and fascinated by why it has come to me and where I have picked it up.) What I do know though, is that it speaks of the world’s carrying and carrying on, which is both a confrontation as well as a relief.

The natural world might be unfairly buffeted by us humans but still it manages mostly to show us an extraordinary level of indifference. The sun will shine, wanton and exaggerated, in the face of our terror. It will throw us blossom - great blousy swathes of it- whether we have asked it to or not. And then it will cast it aside, scattered confetti on slick pavements, before we have had time to really notice, having stayed just long enough for us to know what we have missed.

The birds sing in the morning no matter the news. Today, whilst a lunatic leader was threatening annihilation, the skylarks were singing in the field, louder than ever, and on the wing- as they do- their trademark flutter and glide sending them in ribbons of undulation across the unusually warm dawn sky.

On the verge where I parked only the other day, brow furrowed in thought, there was a tapestry of wildflowers; clumps of dead nettle and comfrey, with dottings of cowslip, and a host of errant bluebells. ‘And still’ they called out to me from where they stood, all ordinary and arresting, in combinations of their own making, whether I was looking or not. ‘And still’, they said, their heads nodding in the beginning of the night’s wind.

There is moss in the lawn. It is everywhere. Everyone says I need to do something about it. Get a specialist in before it takes over completely, which it already has. But I can’t bring myself to do anything more than step on it with the first of this year’s bare feet, nodding in the face of its’ insistence on magic. ‘And still, and still’ it whispers.

And tonight the hawthorn blossom, more of it this year than I have ever seen or or maybe just ever noticed, will draw me outside in the new light of these early Spring evenings. And no matter what has been of the day, it will insist on being beautiful, bursting branch against a fading sky, like a Japanese painting.

In this package-

A Trio of 30 minute Yoga Classes

Books to Read

A Whimsical TV series to watch

Recipes for seasonal veg

Other things that have caught my eye

Special Offer for NEW Subscribers

As this post has a lot of new and shorter form yoga classes to have and keep, so to make them more available I am offering a special Easter discount to any new subscribers, which is 25 percent off the annual subscription forever.

Follow this link to redeem the offer.

Read more

and I have begun to understand light as

one of her most loving whispers.’

KERRI NI DOHARTAIGH

The dawn is late and the day is cold. And both are exactly as they should be.

The clocks changed yesterday - an hour’s sleep stolen in exchange for the gift of evening light. Every year the practice is questioned by one newspaper or another- is it outmoded? do we need to change anything? - though the narrative is quieter in the Spring. This seems to be a trade that we are all more willing to make. Still it will affect us, this week, as we acclimatise. A day per hour they say of jet lag but this singular hour can take longer to adjust to, leaving us groggier in the morning if we are made to wake, more likely to roll over another time if we aren’t. But also we will marvel at the evening light, the sudden seeming shock of it & its invitation to linger. It makes no difference that it is an annual thing, something about more light is always arresting.

I spoke to two of my three children on the phone last night- it is a Sunday ritual to catch at least one of them- and they both mentioned it; how they knew the clocks had changed but still there was surprise, that the evening felt strangely trippy with all its feel of late afternoon but the clock time saying evening and that it would now change everything, that it had already. From here on so many of our conversations will be littered with the light of the evenings; the marvel of it, the relief of it and all its seeming novelty, which annual habit doesn’t ever lessen. I have heard eighty year olds speak of the the same.

We are renowned for talk of weather in this country- something Richard Mabey amusingly describes as a ‘ceaseless, nagging narrative’ and it is true. Most talk, small or otherwise, is invaded by tales of the weather. And its not just spoken; diary entries so often begin with note taking on the particulars of the day, open the curtains and usually the first thing we absorb is the state of things outside; the colour of the sky, the feel of the air, whether there has been frost overnight, what wind blows and from where. I have had builders in every day for a month and the first thing we talked about, over their first of many cups of tea, was how the morning was, whether it would rain later and last week, how cold it had suddenly become.

We might be more sheltered from the weather more than ever before in human history but it is still exerts a pull on us that we feel often bone and always emotionally deep. Which explains, perhaps, why we apparently have more proverbs in the English language for weather than the Inuits have for snow. And more stories too. Since time immemorial humans everywhere have told stories as ways to pass on wisdoms, as exercises in imagination, as time travel, but also- and often- as a way to explain. The Greek Gods were purveyors of justice but also ruled sky and land and wave, bestowing weather and seasons in both retribution and delight. And Celtic mythology - which is the inheritance of these lands- offers up its own mythical and poetic explanation for the tendencies of the year. And for what is a common cold start to April. According to both Scottish and Irish folklore, the last three days of March and the first three of April are known as the ‘ Borrowed Days’. Versions of the story differ, but most agree that March borrowed three days from April to create a final blast of winter as a way to punish a hubristic cow, who had been overheard on the mountains boasting of its having outdone winter. “March borrowed of April, / Three days, they say; / One rained, the other snowed, / And the other was the worst day that ever blowed” is an old rhyme which tells part of the story. But not of the cow, who in most renditions comes to a grizzly end. It is a sorry but also amusing tale whose lesson is that for all the light we can not take anything for granted ( a good a life lesson as Ive ever heard). But it also offers up, after a weekend that showcased all four seasons across its forty eight minus one hours, an explanation for these unpredictable days that seems to me as good as any other.

YOGA THIS WEEK

There is one more Zoom class tomorrow morning, Tuesday 31st March, 9-10am to see out the month and before we break for Easter. The class is available to join live, with any children or teens in tow if they are on Easter holiday ( note that you can bring anyone extra for free this week). As usual the session will also be sent as a recording, and this one will last two weeks.

I am also offering several half hour sessions to all paid subscribers, which will be sent out in a package after the Easter weekend and will be yours to keep while you have a subscription. These are a great way to keep your practice going over the holidays and work well as extra sessions between classes.

A reminder that there are a host of sessions available under the Ways to Be Well packages that are sent regularly to paid subs, and that you can always sift back through while your subscription is live.

YOGA for the SUMMER TERM

Tuesday Zoom Classes will resume Tuesday 29th April 9-10 am and will run until the end of June. Bookings and discount packages (8 classes for less than the price of seven) are now open. Click here to book. Booking now is a good way to guarantee your own commitment to a whole summer of yoga practice.

NEW CLASS - Evening Yoga Flow - From Tuesday 5th May I will be teaching an In Person evening Yoga Flow class at the new Chloe’s Pilates studio up at Gagingwell. The class will be 6-7pm every week until end June. Bookings are directly via Chloe’s own booking platform. Book here.

The Magic of May - A Yoga Workshop

May is a month of both magic and mayhem. To celebrate the magic and ground the mayhem, I am offering a two hour workshop at the beautiful Lowbarrow Barn between 10-12 on Thursday 7th May. Book before April 24th for the early bird price of £40 for a specially curated yoga session of asana, music, poetry and breath which will leave you both fully settled and entirely uplifted.

Earlybird Booking here.

Sending love and a happy Easter to everyone who celebrates, and a gentle onward march into Spring, with all its unpredictability, for those who don’t.

Much love,

Nicole

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“March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.”

—Kahlil Gibran

During the introductions on a course that I am on someone described themselves as a ‘serial starter’. Despite their comedic tone it sounded as though they meant the phrase as a criticism; an acknowledgment of their love of beginning new things that was dampened by a measure of both frustration and foreboding at the prospect of finishing.

I felt the particular sympathy that comes from recognition. Others in the group must have as well, as there was more than one nodding head as he described himself. Of course he will not be not alone in loving the atmosphere of a start, with all of its beginners luck and the early momentum that comes, I think, from hope. And neither will he be the first to admit to how shy that early self belief can be, how easily it might retreat, and how often it is not the beginning that defeats us. But the beginning again.

There is a Buddhist parable that I especially love that speaks to this. It tells the story of two travellers who were parched and thirsty and who looked to dig for water in a field. They both choose a spot that looks like it might lead to water. In some versions of the stories they even used a dousing rod to choose where to begin to dig. To start with it the morning was still cool and they were digging into a layer of sand and topsoil, so the going was fairly easy and they both made good progress. They called out to each other, urging each other on. Quite quickly though, they both came upon harder rock.

Disgruntled with the lack of any moisture at all, and tired in the gathering heat of the day, one of the travellers decided to abandon where he started and choose somewhere new. He returns to the relief of the topsoil and makes quick and satisfying progress. He is happy again.

The second traveller, whose hole is still only a couple of feet deep, uses whatever is left of his conviction or determination and sticks with digging where he first started. He seems the more disgruntled of the two and the closest to giving up. At the end of a few days the first traveller has a whole series of holes that are a few feet deep at most - the field pockmarked with them- but he has failed to find any water at all. The second traveller, who stayed the whole time in the same place, has made it to an underground spring and has fashioned himself a full functioning well.

The parable is usually told as an instruction to stick with a particular spiritual path, even when you feel like you are getting nowhere. It feels especially apt in an era of ‘pick and mix’ spirituality, where we do a little bit of everything, as and when it suits. We are a faddy culture if ever there was one. But really it might be applied to anything we might want to undertake, anything that requires a level of commitment, which of course most things do. But what it doesn’t highlight, which I believe to be true, is that both the travellers would have found themselves as serial starters.

Whenever we undertake to do something; embark on a new creative project, begin a business venture, start a new job, or cultivate a new habit, we will have had an obvious first step. That alone is a boldness. But with inevitably, at some stage, we will come up against difficulty. I have never met an artist who has not once been plagued by self doubt. Even the most disciplined of people come up against their own resistance. Every business ever started would have had moments when there was no guarantee of success, and possibly even some evidence of failure. And even if we don’t derail ourselves, then life- inevitably- will do it for us. Things happen that take our attention elsewhere, necessities interrupt us, illness stops us in our tracks, parenthood distracts. So too does love. And conflict, thw world’s and our own. Habits, so hard to initiate get all too easily interrupted, and then often broken.

The second traveller, who in the story simply dug and dug endlessly in the same place, will have also come upon his own doubts, will have had the need to sleep, will have stopped to eat. Maybe at some point he even gave up almost entirely. Like the second traveller, who started again on hole after hole, the first will have had moments of picking up his spade and starting again. The only difference was that he chose to do it in the same place.

In his book Meditations for Mortals, the now grandmaster of imperfect living, Oliver Burkeman talks about letting go of the need for a perfect start. One of the things that can hinder our beginning at all, but especially beginning again, is that we have a strange predilection for feeling like we need to wait for some cue. I have already told the story- and probably many times- of how I would always want to start on the hour or half hour when revising for exams as a teenager, which turned out really to be just a nifty procrastination technique as I would put off beginning - or beginning again- over and over and over. Oliver Burkeman’s advice, when a day or a week has begun badly, is just to start at 11am, or on a Wednesday. In the context of a year, we might have already begun at the start of the year and lapsed already. So we can choose to begin again now that it is Spring. The world offers us up endless poignant places to begin; new years, new seasons, new months, new moons, new days - but it is true too that we don’t especially need any of them. Beginning doesn’t require a start line, but rather a boldness of step, a thick skin to doubt and eventually a willingness to forgo novelty. But it will always need tempered by the recognition that we will always need to find not just a moment to begin, but future moments to begin again, and again and then again. Over and over and in the same place, until we until we eventually find water.

YOGA CLASS- Tuesday 24th March 9-10am on Zoom and/or as A Recording

Book now for an especially generous and soothing yoga session which will be dedicated to our sense of touch, as well as how we move through the world.

BOOK YOGA HERE

There will be two more Tuesday yoga sessions until the Easter weekend, and I will be making three half hour sessions which you will be able to buy to keep you going over the Easter holidays. Bookings coming soon for those.

How To Build a Tree by James A Pearson

‘Everything you see has its roots

in the unseen world.

The forms may change,

yet the essence remains the same.’

-RUMI

There is a palpable sense that the pace of the year is picking up. Of course I know a day is a day and a month- give or take a few days- is a month and that everything should be, if we were really tethered to clock time, the same. But of all the supposed constants time is the most elastic, bending and stretching as it does depending on if you are busy or waiting, in difficulty or delight, amidst the very depths of winter and feeling it might never end or sat, as we are now, on the very precipice of Spring. And yet already with a sense that it could run away from us. That it probably already is.

Nothing makes me more acutely aware of mortality, my own and everything else’s, than the early Spring. I have a mixed relationship with it as a season. Get me to May, when everything is convinced of itself and saying so with an abandon of cow parsley and I am full of proclamations that it is the best season. But here it all feels so fragile, with steps as tentative as baby’s, the possibility that it could be put into reverse - that winter could come cackling back- ever present. And yet there is already a momentum, palpable and evolving, that I find just as unnerving.

Last week I went to my Wednesday night pottery class in Oxford. It is a magic of its own, accessed via an art gallery that five of us tip toe through each week, pausing at the beautifully curated paintings propped on easels and made mystical in the half light of closure. It is like being behind the scenes of a tiny museum. And then we gather in the old brick building beyond where we listen to Parisian cafe music and cover ourselves in clay in a vain attempt at the mastery of something that looks simple but is anything but. It is an experience that makes me internally skip each week with the pure and uncomplicated joy of it. And the mess.

Last week, I was parked up early and so ambled to the gallery, drinking in the rare coincidence of time to spare and the city’s blossoming. And it was then that a single magnolia tree entirely stopped me in my tracks. I have alway noticed the tree, as it takes centre stage in a prominent garden on the corner of the street, and it looks beautiful even when bereft of leaf. But last week it was standout, in full flower after having been, only seven days before, in seemingly tight bud. Had I been asked, I would have said we were still a few weeks away from the peak, and yet here it was, resplendent in the still cold twilight air and suddenly so. Which is how it always is at this point, nothing and then everything, and with a transience that can make you breathless. And so an insistence that we risk our attention.

Always early heralds of Spring but as old as the dinosaurs, magnolias are a symbol of survival, and yet theirs is still a fragile statement. They have a brevity I find almost heartbreaking; a single hard frost and all of that pink velvet beauty is reduced to rust. Which makes them as brave as they are brief. As though all their upright pink petal against bare branch is saying, as my sister always did and despite being the littlest, ‘I’ll risk everything. I’ll go first,’ which is the same as saying ‘I’ll show you the way’.

YOGA CLASSES THIS WEEK

Tuesday 9-10am

This week sees the start of Spring by every measure and it always feels like a much better beginning than anywhere else in the year, with all of its light and possibility and momentum. So if you have a lapsed practice or simply want to make being on the mat a weekly experience, then this would be a perfect time to carve out space, before the year runs away from us.

We gather tomorrow morning on Zoom, which means needn’t go anywhere. And each session is also sent as a recording to do more than once in the week, or at another time if you can’t join live. Book below.

BOOK YOGA CLASS HERE

restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.’

― Oscar Wilde

I have been learning the extent to which stillness- in the sense of stability almost more than quiet - is essential for consistency of anything. For the past few weeks I have been in seeming perpetual motion; swapping one hemisphere for another, packing and unpacking and taking flight again before I had even properly landed. And that was before acute tooth pain. And without even considering the centrifugal force the world’s now daily and exaggerated horrors naturally exert on our thinking, and our nervous systems. Amidst such unpredictability the first thing to be lost is usually the very thing most necessary; the metronome of a gentle morning rhythm.

The older I get the less convinced I have become about the straightjacket of days that MUST start with the regiment of a ‘nothing gets in the way of it’ routine. The most famously touted of morning routines tend to always be men’s, whose lives- one can only assume- are less interrupted by the wanton and changing needs of children, the vagrancies of a menstrual cycle and who must not have been so tethered to the seasons as I feel I am. I couldn’t possibly have a morning routine that managed to always suit what are perpetually altering contours of any given year. So whilst I have immense and open eyed respect for the likes of Benjamin Franklin and his ‘come what may’ 5am wake ups and his accompanying daily question of ‘What good shall I do this day?’, I can only ever last a few straight-jacketed weeks at most before I rail against myself. Even when I have found a certain regular steadiness, despite everything, there are days that call me to do more of one thing and less of another. And sometimes nothing at all.

By the same token, no rhythm- which is often what happens when I am too much in motion ( or sick as I have been this last week) - has its own way to unsteady. In the vacuum that is left by the lack of a deliberate morning, the less helpful usually creeps in and all too often that is wanton double chinned doom scrolling in bed, which can only ever spill out negatively on the day that follows. I read somewhere recently that it is a privilege to be able to turn away from the news and perhaps that is true. But I also think it is essential that we limit our consumption, not just by how much but when we choose to pepper our still primal nervous systems with the overwhelm that is the 24 hour news cycle. We are not designed for this. Our nervous systems are still tethered to an age when news was a conversation and travelled only so far as people could walk.

The way we choose to begin the day is the filter through which we go on to experience it and it matters.There is something of a gently considered morning that anchors the rest of the day, and especially so when it encompasses the experience of the dawn.

A few years ago I made the new years resolution to see more dawns. Like all of the best resolves it was simple enough to carry out and disproportionately impactful. As an Australian my love of dawn should come as no surprise, to myself or anyone else. Australia is a nation of dawn dwellers. Well before the skies are fully light the suburban streets ring out with the quiet sing song of walking duos or the insistent pad of the runners’ feet. From just on sunrise the surfers gather at the ends of beaches, surveying the conditions, itching to take to the water. The coffee van perched on a clifftop not far from where I was staying had the biggest queues at 7.00, after everyone had done their runs or laps or had surfed for the day.

Yogis too have always had a quiet love affair with the dawn, referring to the time just before it as the ‘ambrosial hour’, considered an especially potent time to harness a natural stillness of the mind. Yogic texts describe this twilight as the time when ‘amrita’ - the nectar of immortality - is most concentrated in the atmosphere, and it is said to amplify the benefits of any spiritual practice. Being naturally a time when everything- colour, sound and skyscape- is more muted, there is less for the mind to latch onto at the break of the day and so it is left naturally free to roam across the threshold of conscious and unconscious more easily, picking up their shared wisdom with much greater ease than when the day has started to gallop away from us. As the writer Hannah Kent says of why she writes first thing in the morning, often before she has done anything else, ‘ I like to hold onto my dream space for as long as possible; my mind softened and receptive, a little out of time.’

In a recent talk that I went to by the poet David Whyte, he too emphasised the particular potency of dawn and suggested it held a daily invitation to carry over what more naturally comes to us at night, by way of dreams and more spacious thinking, into our more thinking hours. His counsel was to find deliberate ways to hover in dawn’s liminal space. ‘ Don’t immediately turn to the phone when you wake, for more than you think is lost when you do.’’ In fact, he insisted ‘don’t even turn to the to-do list. For it was written by the you of yesterday, and that person has necessarily altered overnight’.

Journalling, gentle breath practices, watching the sun rise without disturbance, listening to the increasing clamour of the birds, even just padding around in the gardens morning mist- as I did this morning- seem worthy alternatives. A yoga practice at this time can feel especially nourishing. Or ten minutes of sitting quietly, allowing the mind to dwell in the space it necessarily found in the experience of sleep. Anything is worthy, so long as it serves to acknowledges this liminal time but doesn’t tread on it.

For those of us moving towards the Spring equinox, it is a good time to be thinking of the dawn. As an ever moving target, most of us are up well before the dawn in winter and can only ever experience it as an aside to whatever else we are doing. And in the height of summer we mainly hope to sleep beyond it. But there is a beautiful period of time, a sweet spot when the dawn is within easier reach, which makes it the perfect time to expressly decide not just when but how we might want to wake, and consider how we might offer ourselves the opportunity to experience but also prolong that breath hold moment when the light first seeps into the sky.

A THIRTY MINUTE YOGA CLASS

In lieu of a yoga class this week ( because my tooth saga is still unfinished and I have builders clanging away, I offered this to my regular yogis - which made me think it might be a lovely thing to offer everyone, perhaps as something for your next dawn.

Password is SPRING

YOGA FOR THE SPRING EQUINOX

The older I get the more important it feels to slow life down by marking the natural passage of the year. With that in mind I am offering a two hour yoga workshop next Thursday to mark the Spring Equinox. There will be a soulful yoga sequence, lots of uplifting breath work, poetry, prose and music - set amidst a full two hours which gives us the rare chance to go slowly and linger in places. You will come away feeling relaxed but also wholly uplifted, and ready for the naturally increasing fervour of Spring.

BOOK WORKSHOP HERE

‘WHAT THE VOICE KNOWS’ - A free lecture series that begins TOMORROW night

For anyone who is a singer, but really for just anyone who is fascinated by the voice and its potential, I highly recommend this series of online conversations which brings together voice coaches, performers, singers and scholars to explore how our voices are moulded by the worlds, traditions and times we move through, and why this matters. All of which sound fascinating in itself but also feels especially pertinent to the times we are living amidst.

Sessions and adjacent song sessions are led by voice coach, singer, actress and founder of Singing as Life Practice, Emma Bonnici.

All the details of the lecture series as well as the way to sign up are here . Any questions message Skye at singingaslifepractice@gmail.com

Susan Murphy Roshi

Despite having been in the Northern hemisphere well over a week now- a landing made very soft by a reunion in Northern Italy with my husband and boys- I am still waking well before the dawn. It is said it takes a day per hour of time difference, and whilst I have not especially struggled to sleep, fully adjusting has probably taken the full eleven hour/day quota. But it hasn’t felt a burden. Accustomed to the longer days of an Australian summer I relish the excuse to watch the sun creep over the horizon behind the bank of trees in front of my house. Or listen to the already shrill and insistent birdsong - what I think may have woken me- that feels so different to the midwinter versions that I left behind. Already the chorus is abundant; the robins and blue tits who never stopped singing now joined by wren and wagtail, chaffinch and crow, as well as the wood pigeon and white coloured dove. They will only get louder from here.

Like when you see a small child after an absence, what has been a change in tiny increments to those living up close to it, feels significant to my now untrained eye. After five long weeks of being away, I have returned to what feels like an altered landscape and its whisper is of immense promise.

Officially it is still winter and I can see it has been waterlogged. The river that runs in front of our house is meeting its own high bank and rushing with a fervour that can be heard from the house. The lawns of the garden are saturated and any area regularly trodden is more mud than anything else. I have heard of this winter’s reported gloom and though I have missed a good chunk of it, have had enough of them to know the bodily way in which a yearning for winter’s end can accompany this time of year. We long for the light and turn towards it as a plant does, with impatience and often asymmetrically. It is easy to get ahead of ourselves right about now, and of course. If collective will were at the helm of the year’s wheel then I suspect it is these weeks, at winter’s tail, which would be the most accelerated. But in doing so we might miss what can be most compelling about this still sepia coloured landscape.

It is true that these weeks can feel especially long, even at times that we might be going backwards - March is still to come and is known for being capricious. But in the same way that a cat retreats before it is to pounce, or an archer needs to pull back the bow before the arrow might take flight, energy is necessarily building. And with it comes one of the most compelling of bodily feelings, which is that quiver of anticipation most felt deep in the belly; the knowledge that all that is good is still to come. We are on the right side of it all.

We are still a good month from the Spring equinox but everywhere are the signs of its eventual arrival. My front garden is host to drifts of snowdrops that add outline to the base of the rusted beech hedge. They are winter’s flowers but pull us into spring. Banks of daffodils, hopefully added to each autumn, are still mainly in bud but their direction is decided, upright and ready for the returning light. The odd one has unfurled as if to say look at me, look at what I am beginning. The blossom trees- apple and cherry and quince- look bare from afar, but get up close, as I did in all my circumnavigating of the garden in yesterday’s pale sunlight - and they are covered in tight buds. They might still be an impatience away from doing anything really but we know that they will.

It can feel a burden to still be in a season that always lasts too long, but this is also when the delineation of the year into four simplistic seasons feels most obsolete and clunky. For the real story is far more nuanced and needs a better language. Both the Japanese and Chinese traditions knew better, dividing their years into 25 seasons and 72 microseasons. Devised more than 2000 years ago in China originally and then borrowed and adapted in Japan, they have more seasons than weeks in the year, each lasting no more than five days. Born out of acute awareness, they invite the same, suggesting what might be happening at levels deeper than just the obvious. They recognise that even when not everything is visible, a lot is happening, and capture what is necessarily fleeting, in the same way that their tradition of the Haiku does. A micro season is at once a moment in time and a reminder of its flux.

The seasons generally teach us of the reliability of change, but micro seasons highlight the minutiae of it and in a language that charms with its poetry.According to the micros-season, we have just had the five days where ‘Rain Moistens the Soil’ and now find ourselves in the season where ‘Mists starts to Linger’. A few days more and the “Insects will begin to Hum’ before early March will bring us the time when the ‘Peach Blossom will Smile Open’. There is something that is both beautiful as well assuring about this recognition of the earth’s pulsating alchemy. And a calling to look a little deeper than we might used to, especially in the moments when we might feel most stuck. Things that are hidden are often no less distinct once we take the time to see them.

Seeing the world in this way suggests we are wise not to stop at the surface of anything, but linger in presence and so drop beneath the obvious story of any given day, with its weathers and outline. Here, at the level of a quickening earth, we might find ourselves somewhere much more enticing; amidst the mosses that gurgle in their watery abodes and where the mycelium are starting up new conversations, where roots are now widening and deepening to carry the weight of eventual growth and where the hazel blossom, so easily missed for all of its camouflage, hangs suspended, swaying like prayer flags in the mild morning breeze, spreading the news of change.

_______________________________________________

AWAKENING TO SPRING - A YOGA SERIES on the SENSES

Yoga classes begin again tomorrow for a six week series that runs from Tuesday February 24th to Tuesday April As always they can be bought as a package ( and at a discount) or you might want to drop into singular sessions as and when it suits. They will be designed to work as a series but will just as easily standalone.

This Spring I am borrowing from myself and we will re-explore the senses. This is not out of my own laziness but purely because I found paying particular and deliberate attention to the senses last year completely transformed my experience of moving into the Spring - with each sense being brought to life by the week practice and then altering how I lived within the week that followed. After a long winter of dormancy, there is something really compelling about bringing the senses online one by one - a gentle way to move from hibernation to fully awake as we move from winter’s tail to the start of Spring. Beyond the theme, each class will be uniquely created - I am not sure I have ever repeated a class in all the years I have been teaching- so the content will both be new and relevant to exactly where we are in this particular year ( and micro season).

Classes are now available to book via a pass or as a single session. Tomorrow we will begin with the sense of sight, and how we might adjust and celebrate what is now a more distinctly returning light.

BOOK YOGA CLASS HERE

"If I seem close to tears / It’s for my sins, not sickness...
I thank my lucky stars for second sight." 
— Clive James, My Home 

If ever we needed affirmation that time is not linear, that it morphs and stretches and bends in context, then the build up to any leaving offers it. Ten days ago, when I was still in the very the midst of being home (Australia home), the days felt endless and I even wondered whether maybe I had been here too long. I was suddenly feeling the pull of home ( England home) in a visceral way; longing to rest my head on my husband’s chest, to see the real faces of my children, to be at dinner across from the glistening eyes of a close friend or to be curled up by a fire with my cat. I wanted to be planting my dahlia bulbs in pots, which is the point at which I start any real dreaming of Spring. And strangely, I couldn’t stop thinking of the wisteria that still needs its late winter pruning.

But now - as I get ready to fly on Wednesday- the time I have left is moving at alarming pace and of course I feel like digging my feet into the sand of the beach, resisting these faster paced days with the obstinacy that I was famed for as a child. Suddenly I feel a sinking feeling that soon the day won’t start at 6am with the sun bringing the palms outside my window into gradual relief, that I will not be woken by the chortle of magpies, that my daily routine won’t include laps of a sea pool and a coffee on a clifftop, and that my wider family- parents and sister and niece and nephew - won’t be just up the road. Or that dinner at night, just for one, won’t be able to consist of nothing more than a bowl of perfect cherries.

When I confessed to my husband last week that I was feeling the first pangs of homesickness, he couldn’t help but laugh. ‘When you are here you are homesick for Australia, and when you are there you are homesick for England, ‘ he noted. And he is right. It could well be that I simply suffer from a terribly unenlightened example of the famed idiom, ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’. Dissatisfaction is one of the hurdles of the human condition and the prospect of loss can have us clinging harder, despite its obvious futility. A friend and I once talked about the strange phenomenon of ‘anticipatory homesickness’ that can descend in the build up to leaving our homes even just to go on holiday. Having probably longed to go away, the days in advance of leaving, and even for just a week, often magnify all that we love and we can still feel a strange undercurrent of lament. Time and then its lack offer up interesting changes in perspective.

But there might also be a more generous way to see this, appreciated perhaps most obviously by those of us who suffer the plight and the pleasure - via heart and happenstance- of having homes in two places and hearts that are split, almost entirely evenly, between the two.

For a language that is so rich in synonym, it has always struck me as a surprise that English lacks a word nuanced enough to explain the feeling of longing that lodges itself in the heart of those who live away from their own land, and especially happily so. ‘Homesickness’ feels too obvious and like it is purely an affliction. The Portuguese word ‘saudade’, in as far as anyone who doesn’t speak Portuguese might be able to understand it, feels like it could be better. Officially meaning a ‘melancholy or yearning for something or someone that is absent’ it somehow feels more embodied, or at least it does to my untrained ear. But still it only really speaks to one side of the equation.

As I have lived a long time with this lack of articulation, I have always revelled in conversations with people whose lives have followed a similar trajectory, give or take, and who find themselves feeling the same complicated and wordless way. In fact I feel such an immediate kinship with those people, no matter how little I ever get to know them, it is as though inhabiting two countries has somehow created a third to which we all belong.

In the first few days of being here, when a little of me was still back there, I got chatting in the local bookshop with the owner and another customer over a coffee. The owner, Raymond Bonner, lives between New York and Australia, and as well as having an enviable wikipedia page struck me as someone who possesses that particular energy that both pulls you from where you are & then just as insistently draws you back. After a lively conversation about travel and books and writing, the other customer and I then lingered even longer, losing a good hour more to a conversation of the kindred. When I asked her whether she was from around here her answer was both yes & no; she was back in Sydney after fifteen years of living in London. When I asked if the homecoming was a happy one, she hesitated and went on to describe the entangled feelings - ones I absolutely recognised- that had her emotionally straddling two hemispheres and always seemingly homesick for the other. As we spoke in glowing detail about everything we loved about each place, about all the things we missed when we were in the other, it struck me that maybe we weren’t simply suffering from a form of homesickness but the altered perspective that comes from absence, one that had rendered both places in an elevated and unique relief. And that the longing that we thought we felt might also be another word for carrying.

In his copious writings about being an Australian in happy exile, the writer and poet Clive James talks about exactly this; that distance from our homes doesn’t sever love but exaggerates it, by offering up what he called ‘second sight’ - a picture so clear and vivid that we can and do take it with us. Seen and felt from one perspective this can easily feel like a burden but it is possible that it is much better than that. That instead of a diminished landscape it is an infinitely bigger one, one that transcends borders and is composed of the best of everything. So that when I am reunited with all that I have missed next week, but no doubt living with a missing still, I can reassure myself that the very thing that is creating the longing might well be something to love about it; a perspective that has offered up memories so techni-coloured that I can do as James did and have ‘ a mind that is basking in the Australian sun even while physically in the misty afternoon drizzle of London.’ And that living in this way, always between two worlds, is actually just accessing the best of both of them.

YOGA CLASS THIS WEEK - Tuesday 10th February

9-10am GMT ( or 8-9pm AEST)

This is the last session that will be zoomed from Australia before there is a break for half term next week. To join live or to be sent the link to the recording which will last two weeks, book using the link below.

BOOK YOGA CLASS HERE

Classes will then resume on Tuesday 24th Feb and will run for six weeks. We will be exploring Spring via the Senses. It was a theme I ran last year and found it completely altered my experience of Spring and offered a magical way to get up close to it. Whilst the theme is the same, all the class content will be new and relevant to where we find ourselves each week.

Bookings will open for individual sessions or a pack of them after half term.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well“

Julian of Norwich, 14th Century Mystic

There is almost always a point when in the depths of something - a season, a period of profound grief, even a time of feeling stuck creatively- when any other state of being feels unimaginable. The rational mind might still try to talk itself around, offering up rightful platitudes in the way that a well meaning friend might, but our knowing and our feeling can still be at odds.

We might be able to rationalise that everything will eventually be okay, to convince ourselves, as my father in law always insists, that ‘this too will pass’. We might even try to be reassured by the sun’s simple but reliable rising each day, and yet still find it hard to trust that it will actually happen.

There are times that can feel not just uniquely hard, but so much so that they could defy natural laws. In the very depths of winter, especially one that is prolonged and deep, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine what the spring even looks like, let alone put our faith in the fact of its return. And even when the faith is there, it might not be enough to lighten our living load.

It is true that we are almost always a step behind where we actually are, but also that it is in these places of apparent vacuum - the very darkness before dawn- that the altering we seek is most likely to happen. The claustrophobia - as airless as it can feel- is not just a necessary part of any cycle but the very thing that can ensure its own ending.

I think I have spoken of it here before, about how metamorphosis - so often sanitised by biology books with their circular diagrams of caterpillar to crysalis to ‘ta-da’ butterfly - misses out it’s most morbid but also necessary stage. That stage - which is not aesthetic enough to make it onto any page - is the point of complete dissolution; the moment when the caterpillar is no longer caterpillar but also not yet butterfly, when instead it has been reduced to a formless goop. Without this often ugly and always uncomfortable stage, the flourishing aftermath would not, could not, happen.

The idea of ‘dissolution’ appears across almost all traditions, both secular and spiritual. The classic hero’s journey, so beautifully rendered by Joseph Campbell, explores the inevitability of loss and hardship to any personal alchemy. That this journey of separation and initiation and return is used as a template for so many books and films is not just testament to its truth, but also its resonance.

Sages too, of almost every lineage, speak of similar stories of renunciation, of needing to face profound loss, and of their periods of doubt and despair as being part of all spiritual ascension. Letting go of the outer self as the path to the inner self is an admittedly clunky summary but it covers many a story.

The particulars of our own story, what has taken us to the trough, count - of course they do- and some things are easier to alchemise than others. But there is also no hierarchy of despair. What matters more is the promise that comes when we don’t just accept the fact of the trough that we find ourselves in, but give ourselves up wholeheartedly to it, allowing ourselves -for a strangely blessed moment - to feel fully into our own hopelessness.

For whilst we wouldn’t wish hopelessness on anyone - and endless cycles of it can be damaging- there is something that happens when we allow ourselves to drop fully into how we are feeling and accept the futility of our fight. Often what arises, spontaneously and without any particular intention, is the spacious inner quality that comes when we stop clinging to outcome.

When we start to loosen our grasp on notions of how we should be feeling or who or where we should be, when we relinquish our futile attempts to control our circumstances, we come to a place whose conclusion is that we can only ever be exactly where we are and that where we are will only ever be temporary. And this conclusion can feel unexpectedly hopeful.

There is a lot of talk of the imperative of hope and it is true. Science has shown that people that are hopeful are also likely to be happier. Hope gives us direction, helps with healing, and staves off the darkness of despair. But there are different kinds of hope and they aren’t all useful. Very often hope is just a clinging to outcome in disguise, and with it we can become wholly entangled in the desire for things to be different to how they are. That hope - the type that everyone became so wedded to when ‘manifestation’ was such a craze- can prove a trap.

But there is also a wholly healthy atmosphere of hope that we can actively cultivate but that is also born of the understanding that nothing can stay as it is, that change is not just possible but inevitable, and that patience rather than clinging is what is usually most called for. This hope - enlightened and born of real wisdom- usually requires a giving up of quotidian hope or what the Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls ‘wish fulfiillment’. In a way that can feel ironic, it requires a certain hopelessness. Which is why the point at which we feel the most despairing, when we can least imagine a different way to be, is also often the point of the most palpable promise, like the very first whisper of spring.

YOGA THIS WEEK

I feel like a migrating bird, who is feeling a distinct calling back to the Northern Hemisphere and towards a very slowly incoming Spring, but for now and for the next ten days I am still here, dispatching yoga sessions to you all. I am loving the connection that comes from being able to still teach online and the last two weeks have been magic. We have been focussed on the ways to come back to centre, and this will continue with two sessions centred around the pairing of wisdom and compassion. As always the sessions will involve soulful movement, lots of breath work, and some musings and poetry. It would be lovely to see you.

To book to join the live session tomorrow ( 9-10am GMT or 8-9pm AEST), follow the link below. As always the class will be followed by my sending out of a recording which will last a full week and means you can do the class when it suits ( instead of joining live), and/or as many times as you would like.

Book Here

‘I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.’
Rilke

A few years ago, my daughter was going to meet her then-boyfriends mother for the first time. She was nervous in the way that everyone is, when it comes to meeting parents. But she was particularly so because she was a year or so out of university and struggling, a little, to find her feet. She knew that most conversations, old and new, always came around to the question of what she was- now that she was free from the structures of an education- doing with her time. And as yet, she wasn’t sure.

When the time came and she met the mother, the topic inevitably came up. It is hard to define ourselves apart from our endeavours, though of course we should try. My daughter started to answer but fumbled a little, struggling to articulate the various things she was interested in, and what she had begun to experiment with. Whether the mother noticed her discomfort or not I don’t know, but at some point she gently interjected, ‘Ah, she said, ‘ you are in the fertile void. How wonderful.’

The beginning of anything, be it the steps beyond university, the start of a year, the embryo of a project, even the first flicker of love, is always a place of deep uncertainty. In the rush to define things- so that we might take the first more obvious step, or answer the question of ‘What now?’ in a bold and resolute way- we often miss what is a more quiet but essential part of any process. The very necessary prologue.

Everything we do - every idea made manifest, every project we embark on, every decision we make, every act of creation or tending, every meal we cook, even every sentence we utter or write- has its origins in a place long before anything is visible. The real beginning of anything is the quiet that comes before it, in which nothing is said, nothing is written and nothing is decided.

In the rush to answer the call to definition, the worlds and our own, we often don’t allow ourselves the time in this place of uncertainty. It might be that we don’t even know that anything is happening, so hidden from the realms of our more obvious thinking those first sparks usually are. But even if we can sense that something might well be brewing- a change in direction, the embryo of an idea or a major life transition- the necessarily shaky ground can be a difficult place to spend time. To avoid the inevitable feeling of vulnerability that ‘not knowing’ brings up, we can rush to make things somehow concrete. Sometimes serendipity is on our side, the impulse is a good one and the idea is somehow fully formed from the outset. But more often decisions that come from the shallows of our thinking are often ones born of the parts of ourselves that are terrified of the unknown, and so we end up with something relatively easy and comfortably contained because it feels safe. And certain. And the ego likes certain.

Like seeds in the ground that need a certain darkness and quiet to properly germinate, the best of our ideas usually come from places that are subliminal and they need to stay there for a good time to take on any explicit form. I have been doing a lot more writing in the last six months and one of the things that has struck me is how much of it happens when I am not sat down and doing anything that looks like writing. There is no particular pattern but ideas will usually spring up as fragments and snippets and often out of seeming nowhere. If I try and turn them into something too soon then I usually only get a few sentences in before I hit a wall. But if I leave the idea where it is, unexplained and hazy, anything weighty will start to become a little more cohesive and seemingly of its own accord. The shape will happen in the moments that I am not expecting it. It might be when I am asleep, infiltrating my dream world but more often it is when first awake, and still in the liminal and potent place that exists at the cusp of waking. But it can also be when I am out walking, and usually without anything to write on. And the same often happens when I am in the bath- I have regularly had to call out to anyone within earshot so that they can bring me a pen and paper so that I could stay urgently still and catch a more fully formed thought before it flees. The location doesnt seem to matter but the state of mind does, and the common thread is times when my rational and overthinking mind, the one that wants answers and surety, is quelled just enough for the real thinking to emerge from elsewhere. And that elsewhere is an altogether deeper landscape.

The poet David White speaks of this place as an internal horizon line, one that he poetically describes as ‘the space between what we know and what is waiting to emerge’. It is rarely an entirely comfortable place to be. This frontier can often feel quite troubled at first, like two opposing waves crashing up against each other, but it will be a part of the cycle of our living whether we acknowledge it explicitly or not. And whether we like it or not. The first sentence is never the beginning of a story and most stories are born of discord. When we start to recognise how essential this place is, when we cultivate a willingness to sit with any discomfort when all we want to do is escape into certainty, when we insist on answering any questions with a simple but heartfelt ‘I don’t know’, we give this ‘fertile void’ the space for its own fertility. And from that place, a place of quiet depth but also breadth, the very best of us will likely start to arrange itself.

YOGA CLASS THIS WEEK - Tuesday 27th January 9-10am GMT

I am still in Australia but teaching on Zoom at a UK friendly time. I am no lover of technology, but it is a modern world marvel that we might be 12,000 miles apart and still seemingly in the same room for an hour of practice together and last week felt very special, to see so many shining faces from so far away.

The four sessions that I will do from here are all around the idea of finding our centre, and this week we explore the concept and feeling of levity, in body and heart and mind. It feels like a good thing to explore as we approach the end of January.

To book onto the class and join live, or receive a recording that will last you a week click here.

BOOK CLASS HERE