In this deep winter time, when everything outside seems to take a pause, it’s just the perfect time I feel for planning new things. And this year, I’ve got lots of new and exciting things in mind. I love to revisit what I’m doing periodically. A bit like my garden, I don’t like to stop still for too long and I love a good shake up if I feel like things have got a bit too static.
As ever, my garden leads the way. The trees have had a good shake out of all their old leaves and I can see them breaking down now, helped along by all this frost we’ve been having. All the nutrients gathered by the trees during last year are being drawn in, broken down, returned to the soil, ultimately to the roots, ready for new growth next year. What will that growth be like? There is so much promise in that unique mix of nutrients, that unique experience that this tree had, that all my trees and plants and all of yours had last year and each and every year. What will they make of those nutrients, of that experience when they grow next year? What will next year bring? Which buds will break? Which shoots will grow strongly and which will not? How healthy will that growth be? Will their leaves shine or will they be dull? Will they be filled with fruit and flowers or will they be resting?
I love this time of unknown promise, wondering what this new year will bring.
And this year, as I said at the top, I’m extra excited because I’ve been acting like my trees, taking stock, digesting my experiences and I'm preparing for new things.
At the end of last year, I trained as a yoga teacher. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m really interested in not just wildlife gardening, but in how we relate to the natural world. We can gain so much from building a deeper connection with nature and I think yoga can help here. Yoga is, of course, a lot more than simply exercises for strong and flexbile body. Yoga's poses, breathwork and meditation practices are all aimed at conditioning the mind and body until we find such peace and stillness within ourselves, that we feel united with both that wise inner self that we all possess and with the world at large - with this beautiful great universe.
As we connect in this way, within ourselves, it seems we can relate more powerfully to the fact that this earth awe inspiring and so very precious. Through connecting like this, we can experience what it means to fulfill the positive role in nature that we are so very well adapted for, with all our intelligence, dexterity and capacity for compassion. As we ease into this groove, we learn that we can live as though we are the Earth and the Earth is us. We embody the ecological reality of the world - that it is a deeply interconnected whole. And we find our place within it. For me, this means treating the world like a beautiful wildlife garden, spreading good will, creating space for everyone and offering hope that things can always get a little bit better.
So after rather a lot of waffling on about nature and connection, I've concluded that drawing together my long-term love of yoga with my musings on mindful and meditative gardening would be a really fun thing to explore, and a great way for me to put together some interesting workshops and practices to share with you. I am currently planning out gardening workshops with a yoga, meditative or mindful twist and also yoga classes that tune in to the flow of the seasons and draw inspiration from all the wonderful happenings we start to notice when we play about with wildlife gardening.
I'm very excited to be putting these things together and while I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to end up with just yet, I'm already having lots of fun working it all out and I hope, once I have some offerings to share, that you'll be able to join me for some of it too!
So if you’d like to explore this with me, please keep a look out on my website this year and if you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter to be sure to hear more news about any workshops, classes or other bits and pieces as soon as any of it is ready to go.
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