Be still and know: Swim in the silence.

‘I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in the silence and the truth comes to me.’- Albert Einstein.

Quiet. Quiet is the thing.

I crave it. I thirst for it like water. If a day has been noisy I can feel the quivering anxiety of overload building in me and I seek out quiet like one would search for a port in a storm. Quiet, for me, is a refuge. A state in which I can recharge, absorb the day and reconnect with myself and my body.

Quiet wasn’t always a sanctuary though, for years (4 perhaps or 5) I made sure I was never alone in silence. I was alone for long stretches during this period of my life when I was so unwell, at such dis-ease, and I started to realise that I was always ensuring that being alone never meant being in silence. 

I avoided being in a space quiet enough to hear my own thoughts, I drowned them out, drenched their chatter with audiobooks, podcasts, tv, films, radio, music.

The realisation unsettled me, yet despite the growing unease in my gut, I couldn’t stop filling any silence with sound.  Eventually even instrumental music went, I needed someone else’s words, someone else’s thoughts to hook my brain on to, to distract my own. I would fall asleep with an audiobook playing and leave in playing all night so that even my dreams were distracted by another narrative, reluctant to allow my brain to process my own, even subconsciously. To make sure that if I awoke for even a second it wasn’t to a room made huge with the space quiet can bring. 

I would watch the same episodes of a program again and again, finding the familiarity soothing. 

No effort was needed to follow a story when I knew what was going to happen but the distraction and repetition comforted me like a child requesting the same bedtime story over and over. At times I would find the constancy of the chatter repellent and intrusive but, that discomfort was preferable to making room to hear the wrestling discomfort within. I used noise like one uses a pain killer, not to fix the problem but to drown it out.

When I think back over this time now and try to see myself, my state then, with compassion, I think I was just doing what I needed to do until I was ready to do more. In order to help myself and to grow back into silence I needed to wait until I was strong enough to listen.

'Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content, the quiet mind is richer than a crown' - R Greene

Gradually, as I started taking small steps towards getting better or even towards wanting to get better (or even to believing it could happen) I saw that I was allowing minute gaps to a emerge. Little gasps of noiselessness, like dipping your toes in to test the waters. Now I can see the power of allowing this incremental soundless space to thread its way back into my days and how hugely that helped me listen to myself. As I took tentative steps towards healing and recovery, I took steps back toward myself in these spaces. I began to lean in and listen to my heart, to hear the cacophony of battling voices in my head and only by paying attention could I begin to understand the state I was in.

So much of what we do to take care of ourselves seems to be a seeking of space. By creating space in the body through yoga or exercise, creating space in our days with breaks from work, creating space in our lives with the gap of a holiday, creating space within ourselves through meditation, mindfulness or simply breathing. This is true of silence too - creating space from sound in soundlessness.

Now, I need it. I cannot cope with noise all day, I just can’t. Time spent it quiet feels healing, calming and regenerative to me. Too much noise can feel crushing, intrusive and repellent. Many years into having Fibromyalgia I recall learning about Audiophobia and thinking “YES! That’s it!”. The way bright light feels intolerable when suffering from a migraine and you have to shield your eyes against it; during a flare up sound feels too loud, like being too close to the speakers at a gig.

'The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear' - Rumi

I’ve been thinking a lot about quiet recently. With all that’s been going on in the world we have been forced to slow down, to change the shape of our lives and with this, for many of us, comes more quiet.

There has been much talk of bird song seeming louder and more present as the world has paused, the falling away of the noise we make on this planet seems to have amplified the noise of nature. I’ve found this so comforting. It feels like whatever happens, nature remains. At this time of year the world is so full of the noise of life. The leaves are back on the trees now and walking through the woods feels like bathing in the calm of soft, whispering white noise as they rustle in the breeze. There is peace to be found now the volume has been turned down.  

I was so afraid of these gaps and what would be there behind the din, but now I find these are the times when I feel most present in my life, most acutely aware of what’s around me and fully rooted where I am. This quiet allows me to sit firmly in the here and now, to witness those moments of grace that are drowned out by the clamour of the everyday. Here, too, is where I check in with how I am. Pain, it turns out, is loud and painlessness is quiet so in order to connect with the joy and gratitude of those blissful days when my body is at peace I need to be quiet in quiet spaces.

To hear this quiet, to feel safe and calm in places free from sound, to be able to sit with my thoughts and fears, feelings and body, to be totally present and at peace in the silence feels like a precious gift.

My prayer for you, in times such as these, is that you can explore your quieter days, that you can find grace in the silent spaces, that the slowing down may allow you to witness how you are, where you are and connect to what’s around you.

Listen to your breath.

Listen to your birds.

Listen with compassion.

Rest in the silence.

Take solace in the quiet.

Pause, until we can be together again.

And then we’ll sing.

Todays thoughts were bought to you with the help of  homemade Lemon and Ginger Iced Tea.

Paradise is a library: Adventure, nourishment and the magic of escape.

“She reads books as one would breathe air,

To fill up and live.” – Annie Dillard

3 weeks of vile intrusive thoughts have come before this sitting down. Prior to opening up my laptop on this wet and windy Thursday, the days that came before have been filled with simple lists – small goals to get me through until I can go back to bed. If you’ve never had to do this in order to cope with getting through a day that feels insurmountable it might be hard to imagine how everything can feel impossible when your brain feels like your enemy, I get it. It is tough to envisage. If you have done this then I’m here to say I SEE YOU.

Clean teeth. Get dressed. Change bedding. Do yoga (do yoga do yoga do yoga).  Leave house. Go for a walk. Swim. Eat. Breathe (Yes breathe. There are days when this is the only thing that makes it on to the list).  Often the list is one item long. Sometimes none of it gets done (so we start again tomorrow. With kindness. With love and grace and patience). And slowly, incrementally, you find yourself ticking 2 or 3 things off of the list. Getting dressed just happens without it having to be a focused and intentional effort. The clouds begin to part, you feel lighter, less fractured and hope seeps back in through these softening edges of your psyche.

It’s been such a trying, dark and tiring period of anxiety and fear that I honestly don’t want to write about it right now. I’m usually up for showing up with my truth and sharing the nitty gritty of it with you, but the retreating of this flare up is just fragile enough right now that the positive progress of the last few days feels precious and fragile like fine bone china and I don’t want to break the spell. It’s too uncomfortable to look back at it when I can still feel it breathing down my neck.

So, this time, let's turn away from that noise and look to something lovely.

I was sat scrolling through Instagram this morning and was delighted to see that it is world book day today. As a life long bookworm I hold a deep love for the magic of books and reading and I am so happy every year to see pictures of delighted children proudly dressed as their favourite characters (even the kid who chose to dress as Mr Twit. Interesting choice dude, but y’know… you do you!) and amidst my scrolling I came across a wonderful quote from Matt Haig (all hail) that sparked my urge to write this blog. Matt said ‘Reading isn’t important because it helps get you good grades or a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. Reading makes the world better. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action.’

Reading IS love in action. When you’re in the grip of a good book it feels like alchemy, like tangible magic, you can be so entirely absorbed in it, so free from everything else that it liberates you, transports you, binds you to the truth of human connection (that we’re all different, that we’re all the same). You know how I always use that Kimya Dawson quote ‘ I do this to remind me that I’m really really tiny.’? Well, reading does that too but more, it also reminds you that as well as being a tiny part of an infinite whole, you are also huge, powerful, everything. You can play a teeny part that influences a greater whole or you can be the entire story. Either way, books teach us the value in exploring and understanding another perspective. They teach us that we can change, we can overcome, we can explore, we can mess up, get up, try again. They show us its OK to be afraid and that we can learn to be brave. That we are already braver than we know.

Perhaps i'll read until i feel better....

I couldn’t have lived without books in my life, as much as I couldn’t have lived without air or love or water. Growing up I learnt so much about love and loss, loyalty and grief, bravery and pride from stories and how amazing to have such a safe place to explore these big and complicated things. The lessons we learn in the reality of our lives often arrive in a sweeping unsubtle, messy crash all at once and we have to figure out how we feel or what to do quickly. We make mistakes, we feel shame and fear and anxiety. Yet, when I sat with Lyra (badass, flawed, faithful, vulnerable Lyra) and turned page after page as she learnt and grew and messed up and blossomed with bravery, when she got in her own way or let stubborn anger derail her I could watch from my bed and realize her lessons for myself. What power to give a child! The power to witness and learn through observing from a safe place and coupled with the majesty of fun, escapism and adventure. There’s nothing like it.

How else would a bossy, anxious little white girl from Devon have ever experienced or considered how it feels to be a Chinese princess, a modern African woman, a gay man in Victorian London, an orphan, an immigrant, a child soldier, a Jew, a Muslim woman in 90s Khabul… or any of the other lives I will never live or feel or see?  

Remember learning about world war one in school? No? Me neither really, but have you ever read Birdsong? Remember how you couldn’t breathe as they crawled through the tunnels? How palpable the fear? How raw the pain? I nearly had a panic attack reading some chapters of this breathtaking book and will remember in my bones forever how it made me feel and how that, for a moment, gave me a glimpse into how it must've been for those young men.When writing is at its finest and the words have been sculpted like works of art an author can transport you to an experience far from your own in a way that educates your heart and moves the boundaries of your compassion closer to another. Isn’t that love in action?

"I'll read my books and I'll drink my coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door." J D Salinger

The day my mum underwent 14 hours of brain surgery, my dad sat in the waiting room the entire time and do you know what he did? He read the (then recently published) Goblet of Fire from cover to cover. 636 pages that for one terrifying day, took him away from where he was enough to get through those hours, that transported him enough to keep sitting there and waiting without going mad with worry. A 50 year old man feeling the grace of escape through fiction, sat drinking cold tea and reading of the adventures of teenage wizards and witches overcoming their life's challenges, relieved for a little while of the enormity of the life happening around him. Isn’t that love in action?

I could give you a million of these examples from my own life. Days, weeks and hours filled by the words someone else has lovingly crafted, their creation taking me elsewhere, freeing me, teaching me and absorbing my anxious mind but we’d be here for a lifetime. Most recently, two weeks ago in fact, we had a holiday planned with my partners parents and here I was right in the midst of some horrendous mental health struggle wanting to hide in a dark cave alone forever and disappear, dreading how terrible I’d be to be around, how hard I’d have to work to hide how I was feeling. 

So I did what I always do and packed half a dozen books knowing I would find escape and solace there. After reading and loving Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff a few years ago I’d ordered everything she’d ever written but (as those with a never ending/ever growing reading list will understand) had not yet got round to picking up and reading any of them. Among the half dozen volumes I took along was Arcadia, Groffs second novel, told from the perspective of Bit who we meet as a 5 year old boy growing up in a hippy commune in America. I picked this book up the night before we left as I couldn’t sleep stressing about the week ahead and that was it. I was in it, hooked, gripped, absorbed, transported. When that happens, it feels like exhaling. Like a big blissful sigh of relief, a release of pressure because I know in that moment that for the next few hundred pages I don’t have to be in my brain I get to be in Bits. Whoosh, what magic! What medicine.

I find relief on the yoga mat, in meditation, in Breathwork, in cold water but relief in these places comes through my effort, my work, my sweat and tears and it can be so very hard to achieve sometimes, but here in the warm folds of delicious fiction I am able to retreat and find relief through the majesty of someone else’s work. I marvel at the skill of writers who can take us there and thank the universe that they exist.

I am so grateful for books (Non fiction too, poetry too) and what they have bought into my life and I am sad that one day I’ll die partly because I know that means I only have finite time to read a finite number of books, but, holy gratitude batman, what a reason to stay alive.

I wanted to end with a few suggestions from my shelf to yours, but it’s unbelievably difficult so these choices come with a disclaimer that these lists are by no means definitive, totally personal to me, might be different on any given day and are in no particular order.

Adult Fiction:

1Q84 – Haruki Murakami

Jitterbug Perfume – Tom Robbins

The Collector – John Fowles

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

The Colour Purple – Alice Walker

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

Lights out in wonderland - DBC Pierre

The Power – Naomi Alderman

The God of Small things – Arundhati Roy

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

The First Bad Man – Miranda July

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegurt

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt

Young Adult Fiction/Childrens fiction:

The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

The Book Thief – Mark Zusak

Twelve bar blues - Patrick Neate 

Life of Pi – Yann Martel

His Dark Materials trilogy – Philip Pullam

The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick

Stardust – Neil Gaiman

The Curious Incident of the dog in the night time – Mark Haddon

The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl

The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien

The Snail and the Whale – Julia Donaldson

Percy the park keeper: One snowy night - Nick Butterworth

Non Fiction/Memoir

The Body keeps the score – Bessel Van Der Kolk

Wild: An elemental journey – Jay Griffiths

How to be a woman – Caitlin Moran

Reasons to Stay Alive – Matt Haig

Animal – Sara Pascoe

What I talk about when I talk about running – Haruki Murakami

I am, I am, I am – Maggie O’farrel

RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR –Philip Hoare

Daemon Voices – Philip Pullman

The Sea inside – Philip Hoare

Between the world and me – Ta-nehisi Coates

Women who run with the wolves – Claudia Pinkola Estes

 A Life Discarded - Alexander Masters

 Todays ramblings were bought to you with the help of a large steaming pot of Aloe Vera, Seaweed and Lemongrass tea. Trust me, its delicious!

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful: What the water gave me.

 “There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis…

I came from the wilderness.” – Wilderness, Carl Sandberg

I can’t remember the first time I decided to try cold water swimming. Considering how monumental a force it has been in my life this surprises me, but when I started thinking about writing this I couldn’t recall one clear galvanising moment of that first step into the water, or clearly bring to mind feeling the first waves of ecstasy stood on the beach following that first dip. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me really. The earliest photo I can find of me swimming in the cold sea is from 4 years ago. At this time in my life I would have been in the throes of my second period of morphine reliance (the one that truly became addiction), deep in pain and depression and living my life in a muddled blur of medication, fear, anger and hopelessness. I was right in the grips of the worst of it.

I’ve always loved the water. I grew up in glorious Devon so the beach and the moorland lakes and rivers were a part of my childhood. Many Christmases would be marked by running into the freezing sea at Exmouth with hundreds of people on Christmas morning, but other than that I don’t think I’d swam in the cold British waters since I was a kid. Not really, not with intention.

I’d love to tell you a story about this first monumental swim, this moment of lightning bolt clarity that changed my life forever but I can’t. It wasn’t like that. At some point I just started doing it and kept going back.

My Instagram is mostly just pictures of water (amongst pictures of my beautiful nieces and lovely pup) and I found one from around this time that begins to explore why this practice saved me. Beneath the image it reads:

“ ‘In times when nothing stood/but worsened or grew strange/ there was one constant good/she did not change.’ – Philip Larkin. Least favourite fact about chronic pain no.1 – you can literally make your pain worse by thinking about it. This is not psychological, it’s physiological. So, when not thinking about it feels impossible and you know you have to keep moving…go and get in the sea. She does not change.”

Here I could begin to cite research and add links to articles about the physiological and psychological benefits of cold water exposure. Wild swimming, being in cold water has never been that empirical for me.  I want to tell you, from my heart, why it means so much to me.

Being in cold, wild water again and again and again taught me two key things. These teachings I absorbed into my brain and body over time, through repetition, until I knew them in my bones. 1. All feelings are transient and 2. I am an infinitesimal spec. These are the lessons that saved me. This is what keeps me connected to getting back in over and over again, whenever I can.

When everything in my life felt hard, painful, confusing, hopeless…when I was riddled with anxiety, terror, fear, pain…when I was lost in the thick of it unable to accept living with this condition forever…bitter, furious, stuck and feeling helpless against the onslaught of constant fluctuating consuming pain – the water bought me sharply into the present moment. All things vanish for me when I’m in the cold water. All I can do is breathe and be there. It’s so pure, to just be present in my body, be present with my breath, be present in nature and it is wildly consuming.

For those minutes in the water I am not in pain. I’ll say that once again, louder, for the cheap seats in the back. WHEN I AM IN COLD WATER I AM NOT IN PAIN.

"Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you're wearing. Who you're around. What you're doing. Recreate and repeat." - Warsan Shire #postswimhappyface

I have lived through days now, over and over, when the thing that gets me through is knowing that I will be getting in the water later and the pain will go away. Often it stays away after, sometimes for the rest of the day, sometimes even for the day after too.

When I have stood on the shore or the river bank in the rain or wind or sleet or snow thinking about how cold I was about to be, I never considered that what I was absorbing was an understanding of the temporary nature of all things. I will be cold, but not forever. I am in pain now, but I won’t be in pain for every moment of my life. Life feels impossible now, but it won’t always. If I just keep going, things will change. Hold on. Keep going. Connect with that transient nature of all life.

“And I do this to remind me that I'm really, really tiny
In the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

But it's only really scary 'cause it makes me feel serene
In a way I never thought I'd be because I've never been
So grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

Rock and roll is fun but if you ever hear someone
Say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun
Look at the ocean, and the desert, and the mountains, and the sky
Say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant's eye…

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side

Of the road and jump into the ocean in my clothes

And I’m smaller than a poppyseed inside a great big bowl

And the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole

So I swim for all salvation and I swim to save my soul

But my soul is just a whisper trapped inside a tornado

So I flip to my back and I float and I sing

I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything.” I Like Giants, Kimya Dawson

Spot the Lizzie - "I do this to remind me that i'm really really tiny." - Kimya Dawson

There is liberation in the water too. The sea does not care that I’m in it. The River doesn’t change its flow for me. The sleet keeps on beating against my face whether I’m crying or singing, trying to get dressed or dancing with joy. When I’m out there floating, moving in the waves I do not matter and I love it. That may sound flippant, but I find it hugely reassuring and it sets me free. For that time, I am just a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand, a molecule, dust…a minute part of a massive, beautiful, wild and infinite whole. Connected to everything, comforted by my impermanence and existing solely in that moment is the freest I ever feel from the bonds of my body, the trials of my life, the pain of the world. Its meditative and enlightening and it lightens the load, even if just for those brief precious moments.

"That moment was all, that moment was enough." - The Waves, Virginia Woolf

Yesterday I was sharing my craving to write this piece with my dear soul sister Hannah and I said “I’m worried it will be 10,000 words long.” I really could expound on this unendingly! We haven’t touched on the deep beauty of getting in to nature, the dolphins, the sea birds, the fish, the frogs, the magic life I have witnessed in this practice. We haven’t delved in to the chemical and physiological effects that occur in the body. We haven’t explored the joy and lessons the surround this practice – how I heal through the action of travelling to the water too and how it brings moments of community, family, connection and compassion. There is so much gold here to fill many pages more, but before I ramble on too much today I want to come to the breath.

This weekend I learnt a new way of approaching this practice I have known and loved so deeply for so long. On our mid-course retreat for our Breathwork facilitation training we had the pleasure of being taught by a fascinating teacher by the name of Anastasis Tzanis. Anastasis spent the day giving in-depth lectures about the physiology behind different breathing practices, but he also bought with him a paddling pool that was filled with 120KG of ice cubes and water and invited us in to the water in a way that taught me how to connect with this practice to a new and powerful depth.

Sometimes at the beach or on the moor, I run in to the water panting and howling. Sometimes I walk in breathing Ujjayi breath. Sometimes I move my body the entire time I’m in the water. I enter and stay in the water in a variety of ways depending on how I’m feeling, what the days been like, how vulnerable I feel etc and so on. What I have never explored is entering the water in complete silence, focused, calmly breathing slowly through my nose, with soft shoulders, soft jaw, soft body and sitting with it in such peace and serenity and, reader, it blew my mind. It was so powerful. I know I can relax in cold water, but this was another level of exploration in to how to be with discomfort. In how to teach yourself that you can find peace in stressful places, you can find serenity when amidst ferocity, you can choose how you feel and react to fear and stress and pain and that your breath holds the key.

So yesterday at the beach, I stood on the shore and prepared myself slowly to enter the waves. Soft shoulders, soft jaw, soft gaze. I walked gently into the sea until the water was up to my chin breathing steadily through my nose and I just stood there. Still and present in the cold ocean, a Cormorant watching from the sea wall, the sun on my face, my body submerged in the icy salt water, my eyes closed.

Totally present. 

Totally Free.

At peace with my power and my insignificance.

Without pain.

How big. How blue. How beautiful.

Todays ramblings were bought to you with the help of massive mug of hazelnut coffee with hazelnut milk.

Misty mind: Brain fog and waiting for the clouds to clear.

 “For we all have our own twilights

And mists

And abysses.” – Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

My brothers used to love these jokes, y’know the ones where you send an unsuspecting lad off to fetch something implausibly impractical and oxymoronic in nature? Like a chocolate teapot, a tin of stripy paint, a glass hammer, inflatable dart board etc and so on. I certainly fell for my share of them as a kid! I’ve been thinking about these paradoxical quips as I sit here because for days I’ve been trying to write about brain fog. Ugh… the dreaded brain fog. The thing with brain fog it…erm…hmmm… **tumbleweeds**

Brain fog is a symptom of many physiological and mental health conditions. This clouding of consciousness is medically described as an abnormality in the regulation of the overall level of consciousness, less severe than delirium, which causes impairment to one’s cognitive function. Symptoms include confusion, memory loss, inability to concentrate, lack of mental clarity, often with a dose of insomnia on the side just for good measure.

It snuck up on me as a symptom to be honest with you. Pain shouts at you, brain fog seems to seep in through the cracks silently until you can’t see and your mind is thick with cloud. This heavy haze has been particularly present for me this winter. I started this blog with a view to excitedly churning one out every few weeks and then the fog descended. 

Throughout November and December I wrote the following three sentences…

The reality of loss, it seems to me, goes on and on…

I went on a journey to meet my inner critic and met Golum in a cave…

There is fear and struggle in the dark, but there is grace and peace to be found there too…

All trains of thought triggered by inspiration found on my Breathwork journey, all subjects with much gold to be mined, yet my mist blurred brain trails off into empty oblivion within a sentence of beginning. I get on the thought train at the station and no sooner am I aboard then the train ups and vanishes and I’m left kicking my legs in mid-air a la Wiley Coyote. It’s like opening a book to find the pages blank and frankly, it’s frustrating as hell. How do I explore grief, shame, depression…when I can barely remember my own name?!

What I’m getting round to here is…what helps? Well, for me at least, these things are key :

Hydration – Literally every cell, organ and system in our bodies needs water to run properly. We are fluid beings and maintaining proper hydration helps our body balance our temperature, properly expel waste and lubricate joints etc. Dehydration causes fatigue, headaches and sluggishness – all things that exacerbate brain fog in my experience. These two things feel inter dependant. Dehydration can bring on the dreaded fog for sure.

Food – For me, food is a beautiful thing. It is a tool, a medicine, a pleasure and an expression of love. Eating good, nutritious and delicious food feeds my soul as much as my body. Feeding your body and brain good things that will make you feel better is an act of love. I’m not here to prescribe what those things might be for you, just to say eat! Food is also fuel and a body with an empty engine will not run well.

Gentle exercise – Yoga and wild swimming are my drugs of choice here, I also love taking long walks and getting out into nature. Do anything that energises you and then….

Rest – Nap. Chill. Take a long hot bath. Meditate. Get an early night. Sleep in late. Rest well, in whatever way you can and do it with relish. This is taking care of yourself and it’s a priority.

Kindness – Be kind with yourself when the fog settles. It can be immensely frustrating when it lands, especially as the fog has no respect for whatever plans you may have or what you need to focus on. I have absolutely had experiences where I very much needed my brain to be engaged and thanks to the fog, felt like I was wading knee deep through treacle trying to think.

This one is easier said than done, but I reckon getting angry, anxious and all in a tiz only serves to confuse things further and 

make you feel worse.

Example – brain fog for me, often comes with a side of audiophobia and photophobia. This means it very much makes me want to hide away in a dark and quiet place. At the very start of my Breathwork facilitator training we had an intense and exciting weekend together in Brighton. Unfortunately for me this coincided with the onset of a wave of depression and brain fog which meant I found the weekend more difficult that I had anticipated. It was hard to allow these feelings to be present with me during an event I had anticipated being excited about and enthusiastically involved in. When it came to it, I felt like I couldn’t think or speak, like I couldn’t hear or absorb information and by the Sunday I was feeling full sensory over load.

There are two ways to respond for me when this occurs…crush it down, pretend it isn’t happening and force myself into an exhausting sort of overdrive, a state of hyper focus to compensate or acknowledge that it’s happening, try not to feel embarrassed or ashamed and take steps to help with kindness and compassion. The first option is terrible and drains the life out of me, but in the past it has probably been the option I have used the most. This leaves me super anxious, fatigued and crashed out for days afterwards. The second option is tough to allow in, but truly the kindest approach. In this instance, I shared how I was feeling with my teacher and friend Ben, shared with a few close mates on and off the course and tried to do the kind and nourishing things that help. This included at one point on the Sunday, lying on the floor with headphones and a sleep mask on for 20 minutes to give myself a break from the light and sound and people all around me. It doesn’t make the fog go away, but approaching it with love makes it feel less heavy to endure.

I only felt able to do that in this instance because I was surrounded by some people who I know and love, who I am are sharing this journey into Breathwork and self-discovery with and with whom I have previously shared my feelings around my condition. I was in a very held and safe space. And it felt quite beautiful actually.

And last, but by no means least….

Breathe! – use your breath like a tool. Our breath can be healing, invigorating, enlightening, explorative, relaxing , centering and so much more as well. Explore different ways of breathing and see what brings you clarity and energy. For brain fog I find any kind of nostril breathing can help awaken the brain. Sufi breathing is amazing for shaking off negative emotions and bringing some joy and fire back into the body. The well here is deep and I encourage you to play and discover different ways of breathing and feel into what works for you. It’s a delectable tool belt to have and can feel like having magic and medicine and peace and power in your pocket ready to reach with just a few breaths.

So folks, I guess that’s my ramble on brain fog for now. I’m happy I’ve managed to complete a rambling piece for you and I hope it has gone some way to explain my lack of rambling on other subjects of late. I feel a weight has been lifted and I am grateful for that.

Here’s to the clear days and the mist, the starry nights and heavy clouds, the waves, the winds and all things. I am here for it all.

Today’s ramblings were bought to you with the help of a Turmeric spiced Latte, because black pepper zings me back to life and natural anti-inflammatories are always welcome in my body.

Working hard to stay well.

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wellness is a wonderful thing. A worthy thing, a thing that holds more worth than gold. Wellness can be a quiet thing, it doesn’t have to be loud. Doesn’t have to run marathons or climb mountains; wellness is an individual treasure, personal to each of us.

I have found myself saying, of late, in response to enquiries around my current state of being that I’m ‘working hard to stay well’. In fact I’ve said it so frequently that it has become a bit of a stock response, but this morning when I uttered the phrase for the umpteenth time it really stuck in my head. I decided to go out for a run to enjoy a glorious and surprising burst of sunshine and there was the phrase, rolling around my brain, repeating and repeating in time with my pounding feet. “Right” I thought to myself “what does this mean to me? Why am I saying that so much?” So I started to unpick it.

When one is unwell, whether physically, emotionally, spiritually or mentally, wellness can seem like an unreachable goal. The very notion takes on all the qualities of a mystical land, far away across insurmountable miles, treacherous to find, too great a distance to traverse and of course, for some, simply impossible to reach. The yearning for wellness can twist ones heart towards bitterness and resentment. The thought of the sheer measure of the journey from how you feel now to how you want to feel, can leave you hanging your coat back on the peg, shoulders slumped, giving up before taking a single step.

Yet, if you dare to take a step. Just a step. One. If you’re brave and chuck your coat on, take a deep breath and open the door… there’s a glorious, messy, arduous and worthwhile path there waiting for you, to take you from how you’re feeling now to something better.

Here’s a quote from my journal – 3^rd of October 2017

“You know sometimes the penny just drops and something, that previously carried no tangible meaning for you in any real or graspable way, suddenly becomes so clear it’s as though you could hear it happening. Penny goes *drop*. It felt like a physical reaction in my brain. Like a tiny eureka! moment that makes you feel like you can now comprehend completely a concept that had never before truly taken root. “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step” Penny goes *drop* and I realised…Oh, so all you have to do is just keeping taking one step. Then one more step. Then step again. Step. Step. Step. Just a step. They needn’t be big lunging strides, they may be the slightest of shy forward shuffles. But each step counts. It means something. It’s progress. You just keep stepping. Recognise each minute distance gained and whisper a quiet ‘YES! That was a step!’ to yourself (or shout it loud and joyously if you prefer). Be pleased as punch by every step you manage *drop*”

It took me an age to take my first step towards wellness and the road was rough and hard. I remember seeing a graphic depicting the course of healing during that time and snorting a sardonic “yep!”. It was, and truly remains, a rollercoaster, a daily battle and a constant choice. Some days go better than others.

Wellness is defined as “the state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal.” And I think that’s the point I’m getting at. The choice of it. I like saying ‘working hard to stay well’ because I’m so happy that I am currently in a place where I feel able to do that very thing and not only do I feel able to choose it, I feel triumphant at the sheer joy of the choice. Working towards wellness, however successfully is a powerful act of love, of choosing yourself and recognising your worth. 

I relish saying the words because every word is true. The work is hard, I am feeling the most well I have in years and I know I chose to be here and here I am choosing to stay because I have enough love for myself to keep trying even when I feel too weak or low, too mad or sad, frustrated or sore. The acts do not have to be radical, they just have to be something. Some days that means changing the bedding and brushing my teeth, some day’s it means going for a run, doing some yoga, eating well. Some day’s it is as simple as giving myself time to breathe, to sit and focus on my breath and connect with my body and whisper a quiet ‘thank you’ to the vessel that carries me. Over time I have begun to understand what striving to maintain a sense of wellness means for me, you just having to start by trying and keeping trying a little bit everyday.

Choosing the path towards wellness has been about reconnecting with my body as a source of power, of joy and not just of pain and torment. Remembering that I love to dance until my hair is a wild mess, remembering that cycling along the river in the sunshine makes me feel 8 years old and totally free, remembering that I have so much to be grateful for within the flesh and bones that house me.

In the words of the delectable poet Rupi Kaur “look down at your body and whisper there is no home like you”.

Work hard to stay well, whatever that means for you, I promise it’s worth it.

Todays ramblings were bought to you with the help of a steaming pot of sweet jasmine pearl tea

The Breath of Hope (there's gold in them there hills)

It may be that

When we no longer

Know what to do,

               We have come

               To our real work

And when we no

Longer know

Which way to go

               We have begun

               Our real journey.

-        Wendell Berry

The Breath of Hope.

Black clouds carried me to the starting line, reluctantly with me dragging my feet and gazing out the window depleted, exhausted, without hope. It was a grey spring and I was running on empty. The pain, the fury, the sadness had stopped crashing like a storm and settled into my boots like lead weights instead, present with every step that heavy weight of dread. This spring did not bring for me the joy of the warm sun; I was stuck in winter and just couldn’t see a way out.  

Pain had bought me here. Years of daily, grinding physical pain and I was heartbroken at the thought that the long remaining years ahead of me would be like this - painful, every day. I was lost and furious, tired and sitting at the bottom of a deep well of sadness refusing to budge.

Doom seeps in like damp, I think. Slowly, quietly I was absorbing this deep feeling of hopeless. I felt hopeless in my bones.  

Following a back injury at work, I had been left with chronic pain that was eventually diagnosed as Fibromyalgia. Coupled with Depression and Anxiety Disorder and struggling with a concoction of very strong medications, things had become overwhelming and they didn’t seem to be getting better. How do you get yourself out of a hole like this? I had no idea and no energy to try. I’d day dream of dying in a plethora of catastrophic accidents just to give me an ‘out’, I became fixated on the potential for catastrophe all around me. I saw every tree quivering in the wind careering down on top of me, every passer by shoving me into traffic, every mouthful of food getting stuck in my throat. I craved these disasters because they felt like the only way this would stop. I remember saying to my mum at the time “if this is going to be my life, I don’t want it.”

And then.

And then, Breathwork came in to my life entirely by accident and everything started to change.

Now. Let me say two things to you before I continue. 

One, there are many more elements to this story, many things that bought about positive change. Months and years of work and effort and choices that have bought me from where I was then to where I am now; and the process never stops. Breathwork was an earthquake. A massive, beautiful shake up that became the first step on an arduous journey of healing. 

Two, I am exceptionally lucky to have the support of a wonderful loving family, empathetic and patient friends, a partner who ‘gets it’ and fights my corner endlessly, access to free/affordable services where I can get professional help and a socioeconomic status in my life (especially thanks to the kindness of those around me) that meant this time in my life didn’t render me totally unemployable, homeless or worse. I am so aware of the sheer privilege of this and I know that this is certainly not everyone’s experience, particularly when it comes to mental health.

In the lead up to my birthday that year, my family kept asking what I wanted and how I wanted to celebrate. I didn’t know, I didn’t feel like celebrating and I felt worthless. My partner was away in Nepal and I’d dreamed of being able to go out and join him for a healing hike in the Himalayas, but I was just too sick. They knew this and I eventually admitted it to myself. My parents suggested a yoga retreat and we searched through a few until I found one that was nearby and had the words ‘chill out’ in the title. That suited me fine. I didn’t really register the word ‘breathwork’ in the ad to be honest. I just wanted somewhere nourishing, restful and gentle to hide away in for a few days and regenerate a little. Well folks, as you’ve probably gathered by now, Breathwork blew the roof off of that!

In short, it saved me. Bought me back from the pit of the well, shook me out of numbness into feeling; threw me from despair into the chaos of those first steps towards healing. Breathwork gave me a mind-blowing and powerful therapy that allowed me to feel it all. The fury, the hopelessness, the fear, the grief, the desperation and made me face it all and let it out. I finally raged against the dying of the light.

My teacher always says ‘its called breathWORK for a reason.’ And, folks, he isn’t lying. I’ve since discovered, as I’ve continued with this practice, that it can be beautiful, joyous and euphoric. It can connect you to nature, majesty, love and the whole universe in an ecstatic, phenomenal way that I’ve not experienced so deeply through any other means. But, flippin’ heck, those first breathes were HARD.

Confronting all the ways I felt and all the things that had bought me to that place was terrifying. Those 4 days in a converted barn on Dartmoor, breathing with a group of strangers bought me back to myself. Made me peel back the protective layer of numbness and deep depression I’d stuck over the top of all I was experiencing and forced me to face it, head on. It allowed me to be with it, really feel it, express it and through this, start to take those first baby steps towards getting past it.

I roared. I wept. I banged the floor with my fists and screamed and shouted until my throat was sore and my eyes stung. But, I laughed too. I connected with other people who were experiencing pain and hardship. I felt held and heard, I felt understood and for the first time in a very long time I could see a tiny, flickering light of hope burning in the dark.

All because I was blessed enough to accidentally end up in front of a man who believes with his whole heart in the magic of this breath. I am here now, learning how to bring this out into the world, in my own way, because it saved me and now I understand how he feels.

I am nervous and excited. I am grateful beyond words that I collided with Breathwork when I did and I cannot wait to share it with you. There’s gold in them there hills.

Thank you for reading this today. I sat with much trepidation before beginning to type this post. Every word has been considered. This is the one I knew I’d be most frightened to share with you all, but I wanted to share it anyway.  I wanted to give you a glimpse into how life changing this practice has been for me and start to try and describe the power of the magic it can bring.

Now I am going to press ‘post’ and go and sit in the garden, dig my toes into the earth, drink my tea and smile at the sky and be happy in my heart that I’m alive.

Today's post was bought to you with the help of a steaming cup of Indian Malay Chai tea with hazelnut milk.

Wherever my breath goes, so I go too.

Over the past week or so, I have written and unwritten, drafted, edited and deleted my first attempt at this blog many, many times. My reluctance comes not from a reticence to share with you all, but from a feeling of genuine bafflement when faced with the enormity of the task. Truthfully, I don’t know where to start or how to start or which bit to start with… how to begin unpacking it all in a structured or eloquent format has left me, well, lost for words (and that doesn’t happen often). I want to tell you all what has bought me to this place, why I’m here, why I’m excited and why I’m afraid. I want to invite you in. I want to bring you with me.

Breathwork is the magic that has bought me here. Healing through breathing, learning down among the depths the breath can take you to and finding in the breath a tool for growth and change that is as wild and beautiful as the crashing waves and as massive as the sky.

I hope you’re ready for a whole lot of metaphors.

For those amongst you who may be unfamiliar, Breathwork essentially refers to a conscious breathing practice in which you can use your breath as a tool to influence your emotional, physical and mental state. There are different types of Breathwork, derived from a variety of spiritual and ancient traditions from around the world, used therapeutically for healing, learning, exploring in altered states, for growth and for meditation.

My own experiences with Breathwork have bought me to the start of a journey that I will endeavour to share with you here. Over the next year I will be embarking on a Breathwork facilitator training course in order to prepare me to bring my love for this phenomenal practice out into the world. Who knows where the road may lead? Somewhere gorgeous and terrifying? Sure! Somewhere complex and massive? Absolutely! Wherever my breath goes, so I go too. Want to come?

Breathe deeply, until sweet air

Extinguishes the burn of fear

In your lungs, and every breath

Is a beautiful refusal

To become anything less than infinite.

-         D Antoinette Foy

Todays ramblings were bought to you with the help of a hot cup of Rose tea, because tea makes all things possible.

 Follow my journey on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thepeaceofwildthings_blog/