Field Journal - Notes on Noticing
Mindful Walking, Nature Connection & Inner Reflections
On a journey from our heartlands to our wild edges, and back again.
Welcome to our Field Journal, where we explore the relationship between the natural world and our inner landscapes. Enjoy a variety of topics, from mindful walking, seasonal changes, and nature connection, to foraged finds, awe-inspiring coastal paths, favourite walking routes, and seasonal recipes.
Whether you’re drawn to solo walking, wild swimming, or simply slowing down to notice, this journal invites you to pause, reflect, and reconnect with yourself and the world around you.
Coming Home to Ourselves
Little acts of kindness aren’t so small after all
I arrived home yesterday to find a spring posy and a word of gratitude on my doorstep. It brought such joy to my heart, I thought to share it with you all incase you decide to spread some spring joy this weekend with a small act of kindness. The thing about kindness is that it has a wonderful habit of spreading. Continue the ripple.
Biophilia - Our Innate Affinity with the Natural World
This week feels like the perfect time to explore balance, in particular our inner balance, as the daylight and darkness of our outer world comes into equilibrium with the spring equinox.
I can sense the potency in the cool, damp morning air as I perch on my stoop, birds chirping and tweeting, making brave sporadic excursions to the seed feeder just a few feet away.
How Landscapes Affect Us
Insights in healing and integration and a poem and meditation for your weekend.
A few weeks ago a passing thought took me by the hand and led me down a path I have meandered down ever since. At the time, I was walking along the river Dart and noticed how inwardly churned up I felt as I plodded along side it. I was out of sync with it’s tumbling majestic beauty, not only that, but it’s rising energy felt to be pushing up, unbidden, the sticky sediment of emotional turmoil that I would rather have let lie (for the time being at least).
Wild Edges
Teetering on the edge, twilight alchemy and becoming Lordess of the Flies
This week I’ve been working on a collaboration project. The concept itself, although not mine, has the potential to do meaningful work. It revolves around supporting others in their roles as caregivers and positive change makers, people whose work is value-driven. So as you can imagine, I’m excited. Although it’s too early to share all the details, there is a theme that has revealed itself to be integral to the project: ‘use edges and value the marginal’.
Agreed, the phrase reads a little dry, but trust me, its juicy at heart.
Why breathe in and out through the heart?
Ever heard the saying ‘ where attention goes, energy flows?’
“While the heart is certainly a remarkable pump, interestingly, it is only relatively recently in the course of human history—around the past three centuries or so—that the heart’s function has been defined (by Western scientific thought) as only that of pumping blood. Historically, in almost every culture of the world, the heart was ascribed a far more multifaceted role in the human system, being regarded as a source of wisdom, spiritual insight, thought, and emotion. Intriguingly, scientific research over the past several decades has begun to provide evidence that many of these long-surviving associations may well be more than simply metaphorical. “
Confessions of a yoga teacher
Very early on a Thursday morning.
I haven’t practised yoga for five months. The first three of which were a busy mix of saying goodbye to the studio and embracing the new challenge of walking the SWCP. And yes, of course I know it would have been VERY helpful to slowly move and stretch my achy body at the end of each day’s walking, and to incorporate yoga as part of my recovery, but I didn’t.
Learning to Rest Within Yourself
HeartMath’s Inner Ease Technique
The past couple of weeks I’ve talked about radiating heart, and we know now there’s power in regenerative emotions. But what about the times when activating a positive emotion can feel like too big a leap from where we find ourselves? It’s a big and somewhat tricky jump from anger to compassion or despair to joy.
There is a practice we can try in the moments we find ourselves drowning, something that meets us where we are.