I had every intention of keeping a daily journal on the blog for this and then the kids got a cold with a nasty bout of kroup on top which has resulted in me having a tiny amount of sleep every night and turning my scribbles into a relatively coherent post seemed to much to deal with.
Now that everyone is on the mend obviously this cold has hit me (with a vengance I might add!) so my barefoot breathing became spine to trunk breathing this weekend as I put on layer after layer to stay warm and leaned against one of the apple trees to go outside for my 100 breaths.

This also meant that I modified some of the daily excersises to fit my exhausted state. I didn't take my camera with me, we've had tons of rain and my 100 breaths where done inbetween torrential showers. I was too worried that I'd have to run inside and forget my camera!

Monday was listening to the land.  All I could hear was the wind so strong yet compared to where it begun so very weak. The trees where flailing around, our willowtree suffered and the garden felt tired. Tired because of the wind beating down on it and tired because it reached the end of its season. everything is preparing to go into hibernation.  Annuals have set their seeds, perrenials dropped their fruit and are slowely turning the leaves into a fantastic display of colours.

Tuesday; one of the things we where asked to do was to write down 20 things you love about nature

1. seasons I love having 4 obvious seasons
2. moss, the sheer variety is amazing!
3. autumn harvests of conkers, acorns and beeswax dipped leaves that is piled up troughout the house.
4. flowers, all of them!
   
5. Giant oak trees
6. the dawnchorus
7. the gushing of the stream on the corner of our road
8. pile of frogs in our tiny pond
9. how easily nature adapts
10. snails and their perfect little spiralled bodies
11. rain (which is good seeing as I now live in the UK!)
12. rosehips and haws
13. smell of leaves decomposing on a forest floor
    
14. the amazing array of funghi that is sprouting up everywhere
15. spiders and their beautiful webs filled with pearls of dew
16. her ability to heal you without you realising it
17. the amazing amount of insects that live in even a tiny patch of land
18. the autumn sunlight, and how it is somehow softer than spring sunlight
19. Giant harvest moon
20. mountains and hills (not something we have in NL)

Day 4 Shapeshifting.
I needed to take pictues for this excersise but sadly that didn't happen I hope to pick this excersise up again when I feel better and the weather is a little less wet

Day 5 finding your tree ally

This one left me walking around in circles! I obviously need to go further than I was able to this time and if the weekend ahead turns out ok I will take a stroll to the canal where there are far more trees so I shouldn't be walking around in circles again.

day 6 walking meditation

I'm on familiar ground here (no pun intended!) I have been practising walking meditation for several years now. I was first introduced to walking meditation when I began readin books by Thich Nhat Hanh. I pasted a short clip where he talks about walking meditation

Walking meditation is something I could do whilst pushing a double pram around the block, after the relatively fast pace to help the twins nod of I would walk around the block slowly medatively and it felt great.

It was easy to drop into that meditative state eventhough so much was going on around me. Slowing down your steps to one for the inbreath and one for the outbreath makes you so very aware of your legs, your feet. You walk so much slower but you are so much more aware of the material beneath your feet. How different one patch of earth can feel to the next.
One moment you are walking on lofty damp moss and the next you walk on very hard very compacted clay, that despite the rain still feels dry because water simply runs of it. you are so much more aware of birdsong than when you rush to the shops walking practically the same route. I managed just 10 minutes before I was called back home but 10 minutes can make a huge change in your day.

Day 7 sensing the space inbetween.

And excersise to use senses other than your sight to explore surroundings. I had fun doing this with the boys. under the porch whilst the rain was bucketing down. I have a lot of plants under the roof we moved the pots around a bit so it wouldn't be quite the same as we remembered. Whilst this didn't have the same effect as trying to explore a large area with a partner it was really nice to notice the subtle energy differences as I moved from plant to plant. I can definatly see us trying this in a different spot.

The journey stick celebration for day 8 was just not going to happen. every stick we found was either too wet or to far gone so this too will be saved to try again at a later day.

I am really enjoying everything and love that most of the excersises can be used with the kids if I wanted to do so. I will properly print everything and bind it at the end of the cours

Yesterday was the start of the Barefoot Breather e-course, Our first email of the day arrived just after 9. I love it, its filled with Jason's stunning nature photography stories prompts, just fab.

Yesterday was an emotional day though so I didn't really look at everything until hubby took the boys to bed. I popped outside for a bit to see if I could see the moon but it was far to cloudy. I watched the bats play for awhile and tried to take a film for the boys. I thought it was a bit of a failure but they where excited to see it this morning.

In the material for yestday we where asked to set a sacred intention.Mine was easy for me, to connect with the unseen parts of nature.
Included in this weeks material was a meditation spoken by Jackie, I wasn't sure how this would go since I know Jackie's voice and I associate it with her and I find it hard to listen to peoples voices in meditation when I know them. It took me awhile to get into it anf I had a few bumps along the way. One I was lying down as I always do with guided meditations and in the meditation it was assumed I would be sitting. I meditate daily and thus have some meditation habits one being that I ground myself and to do that I visualise roots going into the ground. I was told to ground and then asked to visualise magnets and then asked to grow roots which threw me of again after this however I managed to sink deep into the meditation.
Part of the meditation was to visualise an ancient wood and what was rather strange was that I somehow connected 3 woods/trees that had more significance for me than I realised. One is the stretch of wood by the canal, its only 15 meters wide or so but it stetches a fair way along the canal until it is nothing more than a hedge boxing up the fields. The second was the path of the woods I grew up near and visited very often and the last which was the most unexpected was the tree in My great uncles garden in the bay of plenty New Zealand. It was a huge ginko tree, so large I could not wrap my arms around its trunk. Every morning there was a beautiful Tui bird singing its song and waking me up. Both the tree and the Tui where at the beginning of my path into this wood.
Straight away there was someone there, I ignored him and he dissapeared.
We where led to a circle of trees by that point my wood had changed into giant old gnarly oaks filled with acorns.
My circle however was one of beeches huge beeches with enormous trunks. they had an angelic aura to them. Once I reached the middle I felt very tiny, insignificant.
There in the middle was the same man sitting crosslegged waiting.

He wore a red dress with golden detailing. his skin was brown with deep lines of life. No sad lines or the lines you get when you are utterly worn out just lines because he was really old. He had long grey hair.
I sat down and nothing was said.
A word entered my mind, Andro.
Somehow it felt like it was a name but also what he was, it didn't really make sense to me.
We sat still for another moment and then something appeared in my hand which broke in two and turned into 2 pendants on cord I kept the left one and gave the right one to him.
I said goodbye and walked back.

I looked up Andro and acording to wiki its the greek prefix for male or masculine.

If this reads a bit disjointed I do apologise I wrote it as I remebered and haven't done any editing. This entry is mainly intended for myself but I felt comfertable sharing so I did :)
Day two has started and I will post about that tomorrow.