Vale do Mondego, Alta Beira, Portugal
 
The day after Canela, the small stray visiting dog no longer was with us … and the cathedral of Notre Dame burnt for nine hours whilst the people of Paris sang to the Mary ... 
 
So many tears were shed last night in the wake of the realisation that a last gesture of kindness had been missed, not delivered, not met.
So many tears rising from the places where deep sadness is tucked away and breath cannot be breathed.
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Desolation at the realisation that a choice made differently might have allowed the two to have exchanged the gift that lived between them both … a gift not gifted is a gift not received. A human heart ripped open is a harsh way to meet the cracks and fissures of the hardened places as the tears begin to soften the way to open more to what the heart perceives and allows…
A message from a Peace Keeper some four months ago enters the open space of her grief and my witness as we both receive the truth of the moment. This four-legged companion of just three short days has brought us both bare faced and open to meet ourselves anew.
Here in this land where the energies and forces of heaven and earth come together in every action, living and dying, birth and death sit as comfortable companions at the same table.
 
This morning after a night of grieving I asked my body to lead the way to a plant song that could bring medicine towards me, possibly others, to enlighten and widen the communion taking place each moment. My only specific request was morning sun…

She brought me to lavender… lavandula stoechas penduculata to be precise… growing on the edge of a sloped  terrace in small straggly clumps this is no lavender bush rom my English and Australian suburban gardens.  Neither is this the lavender of fragrance and essential oils with scent permeating the skin with her light notes and oils when rubbed or sniffed. This one is much loved by many kinds of bees and insects and just pops up along the many caminos and ancient pathways here in the high grounds of the Serra Da Estrela national park.

These are randomly rooting themselves, freely propagating from single stems and rising up around the base of this long dead woody bush that may once have been the prolific white or yellow flowering broom. That’s how I noticed it this morning – a bright purple flower head
waving and shooting up through the dried branches of other. Upright, bright, softly shouting amidst the grey. 
Aha... there is life here.
As I place myself at the foot of the dead one I see so many small ones, living and fresh, gathered all round… Wild lavender doing its thing is soft on the eye and all of my senses…to meet her more fully I drop, open and allow the shift to begin.
 
Come with me as I connect and I am certain sure that this benevolent being of the plant world will gift you as you read these words… allow yourself to open and sense the energies she brings towards your body...

An ancient one in the form of tree stopped us,
stopped me…

Awed in wonder in my tracks, the field of this one’s presence asked me to slow my approach ... meet this one breath by breath. An inward bow of reverence and profound respect moved through me as I stood simply, un dressed in personality in the gazing and the lore…
 
No words do I have here, even from my core. I am somehow face to face with a being that both reduces and enlarges ‘me’ of thoughts and words into silence as I step gently closer towards … the dressing down of ideas, feelings and mental meanderings continues with each step. I say simply to this one in words without sound or breath… “I will come in the morning to be with you, get to know you a little… would that be okay?”

And here, in these last four words, “would that be okay?” I enter a doubting, diminished or deferred sense of my personal ‘inequality’ with one such as this.

Over the next 36 hours many areas of questionable integrity come up… the ways in which I do not know myself as this one does.

Clear, strong, integrous, steadfast, reliable, unwavering, generous, surrounded by many young ones…

I could go on with what magnificent qualities this one emanates as I sit now, just metres away and under one of its lower branches. For it was this morning after a night of less sleep that I have arrived to keep an appointment. Although 24 hours postponed, we are now together … and yet somehow also not. I realise as I sit that this mighty Cork Oak, is neither together nor apart. It just is as it is and as it has always been. The many young ones surrounding it know that as they look toward and incline in the direction of this mighty elder of their tribe they can draw out this ones qualities for themselves.
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Oak is Oak. Quercus is Quercus. By nature through and through this tree is tree you can depend on.

Can you depend on you?
Can we depend on you?
Can I depend on you?
When you say “I do”, do you?
When you say “I will”, do you carry it forward?
For how long?
When or what is your personal marker of voice, of question, of will?

Seven months of Plant Mentorship... opening to a greater communication wth the benevolent and hugely life giving presence with plants... it was a spontaneous choice and I was, as ever, in at the last minute without too much consideration.
I saw the announcement two days before the course began, immediately signed up and then took in the requisites. It seems pretty clear to me that my body chose this course! There was such rapidity in the choice.

It's been quite a few years since I was living with land and plants and garden and wild woolly walks in all seasons... life was a constant contact with many plants and so many aspects of living nature. The truth is that it's been too long.

I have in recent months become a longing one rather than an engaging one. I was missing the garden. Missing the trees and the river and the regular choice to sleep out under the stars that was often possible when the plants were so close... 
The distance between me and that kind of living has become uncomfortably long and the love song that I find there is way too much in the background... 

When a singer of songs forgets to sing except from the remembering it's time for a change. 

So to the heart I must go!


What makes my heart sing?

Plants make my heart sing. 

They are fluent in their communications and so generous! Generous with their medicine and generous with their inspiration and gifts. This may surprise many but they are also generous with words... I have been many times blessed with encounters so flowing and splendid that I could barely keep up as characters and inspirations, downloads of information and moving gestures would unfold in the space on the paper or the 'song' that was being told. 

So now, I enter anew into a different space, a new invitation, and I have asked another woman who lives as love for the plants and their consciousness, to lead and guide the way.... to have a shape creating container for this particularly unwieldy and sprawly being who loves to wander out into the wider field at will is a fabulous idea! 
I welcome the breadth and the change that she, this mentor and guide, will bring to me as I begin here on northern English soil and then head to Portugal, Ireland and Scotland over these next months. 

A plant a week!

One each week to come to know a little, to open towards from a heartspace and allow us both to breathe together and meet in the energies, the space in between...
One a week to aproach as and with a question and an invitation and a willingness to perceive and receive what the plant is open and willing to convey and communicate to me.

One a week:-) 

This is homework that makes my heart sing!!

It will go like ths initially - in simple terms I use words to convey the meeting but in truth it's more like an energetic exchange ... and as two beings who are new to each other it is only polite to be clear...

"Hello dear plant. I am Heather. Can we be together a while and would you be willing to show me your medicine gifts?"

So there we are heading to the moors through weather that looked like the clouds would fall on my head...we're off to do some forging work (not foraging, but forging...) and realise that I have come singularly unprepared for the other project... Foraging!!

We drive onto the land where the forge is and park the van with a speedy stop literally into a confusion of long leggy branches all aplomb with GIANT catkins!! Oh my giddy gorgeousness! This is too much to miss! I immediately reach out to the branch and have my face caress the furry and firm grey blooms. Delicious and sensual contact with these magical beings! They are plump, pregnant and bursting with the joys of spring and lo and behold the weather has turned and we are in full throttle sun!

There in the echo of my adoration comes my mentor's quiet words... notice which plant pops up and offers itself... that will be the one to be with. 
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So it's clear! We have begun! 

No pencil, no pen, no paper to speak of 
grumble to self... bummer... not a great way to start my entering into a sacred space and have communications ... 
​but rummage around in unknown spaces for long enough and one surely finds what is required, especially when one's body is in full frontal desire!! 

I settle ... close to an extending branch and we touch each other, long lean willowy branch and I... I close my eyes and soft breathe a little,
a meeting of bodies and etheric as we come together ... we created a quiet place together with the breeze, one that lifted me wholly and quite quickly to this -

This one speaks in prose and brings to me the qualities of movement, of length, of air and grace. So much here conveyed and so lightly the touch... 


Notes I had written whilst getting to know each other a little - aware of my ribcage and a little tightness as well as in back of throat a congealed lump...
now some yawns as I greet thee. And then along comes my friend, J, a joy of tears and gratitude as she speaks of a moment recently shared.. "take care of one's self first so that we may be available for others"...was this also a gift being shared from dear willow?

I observed that on each of the long lengths of branches there were many nodules not opened, where the life force had passed the nodule by and headed toward the ends...as though those that had been passed by had sacrificed themselves for the energies to go towards the very ends...I looked all over in search of leaves and as yet there were little until I found at the very end f the branch in my own hand a small cluster of dynamic, small green leafy ones with so much potency thrust into that tiny fleur de lys shape that I was reminded of a burst forth expression, like an ejaculation of life force! There in my hand were the only leaves to be seen!

Time passes so easily in this space of communion with tree... 

Some more of what I wrote -

This one is the first of my plant songs for ages and I notice a hunger and joy that has my heart glee!

I wander about a little with my gaze and take in the comfrey ground cover, fallen catkins galore, with sticks from previous weeks littering the floor... thickly scattered with yellow pollens rising ...
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I gaze to the shaggy variety, next one along, to see bee that is bumble on winds of a song of these long haired catkins with full flowering throng!
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I look up to the tangle of many branches filled with the grey silver buds that are filling my face with a smile wide and loved! 

It was the turning point from December to January, 2000 to 2001.
It was a time of big change and we were in the land of big space, Arizona, USA.

I was sitting on the very edge of the Grand Canyon, on my own, having walked away from my young son and his Dad as each of us were  taking in the vast space... This land opens an energy unlike any I had ever encountered in this life. At some point in that space of no time, a bird flew past, up close and impersonal, a little unwieldy and slightly awkward in its flight. It was simply a part of everything that was there... and it was wonder full beyond measure or definition. 

It all was.

Some short moments later a couple of Park Rangers came along in great excitement and asked me whether I had seen it ...  
   
What had I seen? 

Apparently I was witness to the first fledgling flight of a baby condor that had been raised as part of an international conservation action between South America and the USA.  

I learned later of the Hopi prophecy that refers to a time when the eagle of the south flies with the eagle of the north there would be the dawning of a new day with all peoples of the Earth. 

Seeing this video has awakened a deepest flow from my whole being. One that knows through every molecule  that we all know the muscle of jumping, of flowing, of soaring and choosing to be in full flight with our lives and choices.

It's as natural for each of us as it was for that fledgling condor on that December day in Arizona and, as it is for this adult condor, released through the witness and ceremony of a group, a community of people who only wish it well as this bird, no longer captive is released unto its full potential. It's natural state of being.

As you watch the video allow yourself to view it as though you are there...never mind that you may not have a direct translation of teh words that are being said. Allow yourself to read and translate the energy through the people, the ceremony of honouring and deepest gratitude that is present from the community. Allow yourself to read the energy of the condor itself as it turns and faces the group full on before leaping into the known unknown energy of its winged state of being. 

Are you open to knowing that energy for you? 

What is it that allows you to turn and say thank you to your past, your supporters and your future, fully knowing that as you jump you are fully held in the embrace of your own knowing and each fully awakened and intuited step or flap of your own fall as you move into your flight?

Are you ready to be carried by the sheer wonder of movement with each choice? Each moment?

What I know through every molecule of my body and being is that we all know the muscles of jumping, of flowing, of soaring and of choosing so that we can be in full flight with our lives. 

What do you require of You to set yourself on the joyous path with the energy of a full bodied Yes? 

Do you, like me, sometimes wonder whether there is a stop or pause button you can locate to create a wee bit more space for you?

Well these past couple of weeks have been that for me - it usually is at this soft time of year. I created a little space for a new breath... a wee bit of stop...breathe  out...sense...slow and allow just a little more attention on what has been. 

It points to one of the things I love about seasons. 
I love seasons!

It might derive from the fact that I come from Melbourne - a city where some people say we have four seasons in one day! 
It might derive from the fact that I was born at the point in the year where thanksgiving occurs (yes, it's coming up) and I get to be celebrated along with so many other lives... 
And it might stem from the simple joy of loving the changes. 
Yep. I really did say that. Loving change even though there are so many things I'd like to hold onto. 

So now, here in the misty zone of autumns greys and haze I am taken to some of the rich goodbyes and reflectings on what has been and I create a space where I also come to nurture some new seeds in my creative heartspace before planting them into cherished ground for winter germinating and warmings... 

So here are my pop up questions - arising from this moment of passing...

Are there aspects of your seasons past that you would like to revisit? Bless? Thank and acknowledge?

What aspects of the harvest would you like to acknowledge and take along with you, encouraging them to grow and be nourished? 
Are there some new choices required that can only be made if there's a wee bit more space for you in there?
Is there something you'd like to release with more presence but you just can't find it?
Perhaps there are some energies that you've been holding onto, weighing you down, sticking you kind of in something that is totally beyond reason,  slowing you in some undiscernible way? (way...weigh...interesting huh???)

A few days ago I was definitely in the weigh too squidgy zone - body weigh and mental way - heavy and not moving anywhere. 
Kind of stuck and getting stickier by the minute...

Undefinable tears at waking is definitely not a sign of a promising day...

My beautiful friend asked me whether there was anything at all that I would like that would assist. 
(Thank you beautiful one...)
  
Before I could stop myself and between some sobs I asked whether she would run my Bars... 
every day. 
Really. 
Every day.
I actually asked that!!  You know sometimes in the despair of not knowing a girl really does ask for something that she does Know.

Well there and then she offered to run my Bars and within a very short space of time - less than an hour - I was free of a whole lot of stuff. It didn't require talking about, unpicking or understanding, disentangling or reasoning, story sharing or justifying. I lay down. She placed her hands on the Bars points and I eased into a different way of being... let's say that I woke up again that day and was no longer the person who had woken up crying. 
There was nothing there any more that was creating the heavy and sticky stuff that you can't explain cos it was never real in the first place kind of thing....  

Is she running my Bars every day? Well kind of.
We are doing an alternate day sharing with each other.  The great thing about Bars is that when you run them for another your own Bars get run as well. You can also run your own Bars by touching the points and asking your body to run them AND we both enjoy the energy body processes that come from Access Consciousness as well and so we have been running them as well. 

Each day something for the other is creating more for each of us.

I have alot to be grateful for...

And I am:-) )  )   )

I've been off radar these past weeks - in a kind of zone where the living and the dying meet each other, a space I have called a Space of Becoming.

I was taken to Australia as my beautiful mum finally left her body after years of being interred through a very long period of life with the condition known as Alzheimers...

It's not an easy place to write about because the language of words is limited by definitions and forms  but I have been somewhere that exists on this planet and it wants to be spoken about...
It is an energetic place, a space really, a space where we can go beyond our emotional restrictions and rise in a way, to another way of perceiving...receiving...accessing our knowing and also our being. 

Is this the same space where new beginnings arise as well?
The answer is Yes. It is an unconditional yes.

How do I know?  My Mum told me so on a salt sea and warm windy afternoon on the northern coast of Queensland She gave me words - words that have never been spoken before to me and words that carried an energetic awareness of her, though she had never before spoken in this way. I wrote them down and they flowed in a way that was simple, clear and free. 
She spoke of what creates and maintains Alzheimers in a way that was directly pointing to something we can each and all recognise and it is this that I wish to share with you. It's a gift for the living when the dead convey freely what it is they are aware of from another realm of existence. 
You might ask why I would wish to share such a personal and intimate experience such as this and I simply say - it is no longer personal when it points to something that we each experience. She gives us pointers to glimpse a way of living from greater consciousness. I never knew her in this way but apparently she knows something about this now.
I was blessed to be able to run her Bars and also several different Body Processes over the occasional and infrequent visits to her bedside in Victoria, Australia. There was always, but always, a shift that was palpable...a relief and a lifting of something. Others with her recognised the shift too - this was lovely though never required. Sometimes the door seemed to open and a real glimmer of possibility emerged from her direct gaze at me or another. and then she would sleep and rest in a different way...deeply. 
Here is the link to the gift she brought through to me. It is for us all - directly pointing to the choice to not  engage with the avenue of regret or remorse or even of backward gazing through the haze of longing...



Yeppoon Hilltop.
Southern Great Barrier Reef. Looking out to the Keppels…
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The sea sweeps the vast shore and the waves kick up stories that she has spoken of or inferred or simply transmitted through her divine like lightness of being… Over the years I was able to osmose …sense… the many pleasures that she experienced here in this placeof her growing.
I am brought straight to the top of the highest point and I walk down clutching Red Ted - a soft bear that was clutched by her through night and day in the many years of incarceration through Alzheimers - and my laptop that simply plays the music of a Space of Communion like a long-lost accompaniment to a great friend.
I find myself stood on a central hearth, an altar of friendship that has been expressed by those who endured and remained in constant awareness of a time during the 2nd world war when this place was the home base to a large squad of soldiers from the US forces. They were the soldiers of the 41st battalion.
I am with her again as she conveys the warmth of these times through the gratitude that is expressed through these plaques. They speak of a tangible, an actual period of time that brings me to her youth and my own – the own that sucked in the stories and lived them over and over. The love that was touched and fanned and tantalised, the laughter and the heroics, her kindness and grace and her joy in stepping out with a new and wider fan base. These men opened her doors to a wide world that teased and taunted her burgeoning sexuality and her delicious flirtatiousness as well as the potential terror of the war sitting close by as though in her lap. It is raw and it is vulnerable and it is enlivening to all her senses. She tastes the salt of living and it makes her thirsty for more.
 
Mama – what is it that I can do for you from here?
 
It seems now that the following words are given to me through the energy that is my Mum though this is a new frequency – one that I cannot say that I experienced directly whilst she was lived in her body.

 
There are many who came onto these shores and the throwback in generous, way beyond your and my years. The cost has been high – a cost in cognition and consciousness and one that is created through the disconnect from the rootedness of being with one’s place of knowing…
There is a place of the grieving that has strong men weeping and small children ever sleeping. It is the place of unknowing and un becoming…a lost-ness that creeps into the bones and locks out a pulse that simply lives through the sweet soft marrow
Whilst you hang on to the haze – whether at the forefront or the back cupboards of oblivion - it lives as a lure, a silent and deadly lure to entice and enthral a kind of sadness that shuts down vital essence of life.

Many have tasted it and fall in love with its hypnotic gaze…. dazzling and seductive in the most whispered way this seduction lives as though by secret proxy, a place recognised as a heroic gesture – a love lost, a parting of such sweet sorrow, a longing and luring back, always back, to something that has been won and lost and never to be returned. Whilst the taste of this memory continues to be sweeter than the moment, any moment, it acts as a hook into the dizzying space of nowhere at all…the space of the other world that one is never given total and complete access to.

This is not the same space as presence and awareness – these have a different life force, a different quality of vitality. They simply generate more of the same – aliveness and clarity. Dear one – my daughter. You owe nothing to the many who are caught and seduced in this ever web like veil of seduction. Be not lured by it any longer and please cast off the nets from the gaze across the shores of your own becoming…look not to this space where the understanding entices you – the wish to recover those lost is not yours to complete. Allow it to end for you, only you, with this sweep of the shore. There is no life here and there will never be. Be awake my lovely heathering one. Awake to the multitude who wish to communicate through many means. Punctuate your new life with a wakefulness that no longer mourns the dead or the unborn but one in which each moment is a dance and a question, an open door to creation with all of the life forces that are present to your every expression and wish. Dot the I’s and cross the t’s and keep choosing to wake more fully. It is more than I can convey to you through words what it is that you are in the constancy of creation with. Be not a hero or a heroine, be not a martyr or a slave to another. Be commensurate with the rising sun and the morning birds – these are your truest gauges of how to live.
Wake up each day and each moment. Wake up more fully and breathe in a way that laces your very being with the delight of gratitude. This will be an ongoing gift to me …
and you owe me nothing.

As to my ashes there are some to whom it is important. To me it is not. I will convey to you the way and the spaces as you enter into a night tonight….be not troubled by them. You did me proud and you did me well. Thank you beloved daughter mother sister aunt dear…
 
I am of the sea and with the sea
I am of the wind and with the wind
I am of the sand and with the sand
I am of the light and with the light
And shall ever be
 
You chose a good body. Mark it well with attention that rewards and nourishes. Live my daughter as though you have never fully lived before and you shall know the sweetness of laughter as though a tonic for a heart that shall need not ache once more.
I loved your father and he loved me well. Let it not be necessary to ponder or muse upon your parentage…you are more than all of us brought together. A composition of joy and wonder. A daughter of the Earth and gift to us all.
 
Let the wind carry me away and we shall weep no more.
 
I call upon those who would wish to come with me that they shall occupy you no more. I call back to the ashes of the many, the memories of lost and yearned for spaces and we release the bindings and unfulfilled promises from each other and the many others as we become truly like a breeze and lifted to the air. Let there be no one who lingers any longer between the veils of lost-ness and grieving.
It is done.
It is done.
Weep no more. Hold onto nothing…not even yourself.

Go now
Be ready
The moment will be clear and light
We alight 
 
As I walked away from the place of the writing my eyes alighted on five small newly planted sea pines – the kind that the Australian coast loves…There they had been all along protected from the strong winds in that exposed landing by a strong layer of polythene…
I approached one, knelt down, touched the coarse fronds and caressed them as I introduced the idea to the one representative of the five.

“Hello trees…I am Heather…”I whispered to this young life form who had witnessed my  brief visit there…

I wonder whether you would like to receive the body of my beautiful Mum as a contribution to your life? Would you like to take her bones into yours and have them nurture and feed you as she did me? My fingers moved to lift the plastic and I touched the soil at the roots, pulling away some of the grass that was covering the soil, all the while listening, aware and awake to the energy of a clear yes or no coming towards me.
It came clearly – in the way of least resistance. That’s really where yes lives.
I went to the car and collected her box and a using a spoon I was able to lift the lid, prising it away from the seal and opening this most sacred new ground, new earth from old.
And there in the dark of evening light, with a wind that was warming to my very being, together with my mum, we brought about a union, a kind of wholly communion, of life and death.
Five trees said yes to receiving the body of life of the woman who gave me life. 
 
 
She was called Bern
And she did.
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Songbird and I have just returned from a truly wonderful six day in Budapest where we went for a three-day Access Body Process Class. Over the years, I have been learning to gift and have been receiving these processes one or two at a time. Upon first learning about this particular class with Kacie Crisp my whole body leaped at the video as I watched it multiple times ... my energy levels soared. There was no arguing - Hungary had always been a destination yes but this was not what I had imagined would take me there! The class had its own energy and called loud and strong.

The whole experience was quite simply profound. Kacie Crisp took us on a five day ride that covered money, bodies and showing up in the world. We are both still present to the constant ripples of change occurring as we continue receiving the class and run the processes on our bodies. I have a sense that I will continue to experience the gifts of this choice throughout my life.
 
How is that choice showing up just five days later?
Aware that there is an inherent danger in using words to express that which is beyond words I shall write from the energy of being that is available in this moment...
I have an awareness of my body and my choices coming into a greater sense of 'un-holding'...a kind of energetic expansion with all that I am with. It seems that everything is being addressed and dealt with from a new space. Moving ever more lightly through immense outer changes (house moving for one) whilst being exquisitely awake or receptive to every moment that requires attention.
 
We spent our last few hours in Budapest in open winter sun at the delicious outdoor baths Szechenyi...(My body absolutely demanded that we go there before leaving – even to the extent that I would forgo a much-desired visit to the famous Central Market Hall.! It's true to say that the wish to visit a food hall was no longer top of the list for my body...)
Once chosen everything was possible. Time and space no longer a limitation we moved effortlessly through Metro to park to waters and sun. For only one and a quarter hours I sat, stood and gently swam in the quietly bubbling waters asking my body to have everything she required from that ancient pool of mineral wealth from the earth. . .Sensate deliciousness... and greater communication from body to being...

It followed that our journey homewards through public transport of every kind was effortless and ease filled even upon  encountering tremendous detours and delays on the M66 when driving home.It seemed we were not returning the same way we had left!
 
This work changes things and is mostly experienced through the changes in how I and you move through change! Less resistance at every level. I cannot be definitive about anything - there is no cause and effect through these tools. They create a greater capacity for us each to live from our original language - that of the Energy of Being.

We spent our last few hours in Budapest in open winter sun at the delicious outdoor baths Szechenyi...
(My body absolutely demanded that we go there before leaving – even to the extent that I would forgo a much-desired visit to the famous Central Market Hall. Everything became possible. Time and space no longer a limitation we moved effortlessly through Metro to park to waters and sun). For only one and a quarter hours I sat, stood and gently swam in the quietly bubbling waters asking my body to have everything she required from that ancient pool of mineral wealth from the earth.  Sensate deliciousness... and greater communication from body to being...
 
Apart from now being able to bring these energetic body processes to others we are both very inspired by how they are allowing more of our lives and work with sound to be integrated more fully with the body.  The 'how' of that is something that we are constantly in the space of learning and becoming more aware of ... like everything, it is through the willingness to choose it that it begins to show up. The dance of Creation and Creating is alive with this level of inquiry -it is not always cognitive, it is always happening and it can be highly chaotic within the process of organising itself into something new.
 
This morning Gabriella played a bowl to me as she often does during the forging process...a bowl coming into its most coherent self is one that invites many questions...what is required? More fire? More hammering? If so what kind? Does it require something other than the forge? Is it something from another? The earth? Is there something that I am being asked to do or be that can make the difference here? and so on. It is a living engagement with the metal, the tools, the person who has called the bowl forth, the wider sensing into the being that is in the becoming - the bowl itself and its unique 'homespace'.
 
What arose this morning was a new level of receptivity to perceiving sound. Through a sustained and gentle playing of the bowl I stopped seeking an answer to her question - is it done? My body as a sense organ with its own response system started to show me that the bowl was inviting me to something that I Knew but had long forgotten...senses numbed or dulled to this aspect of fine tuning.All words and thoughts dropped away and I became aware of a distant space - one that is always present but unreachable from my trying to reach for it. There, just on the other side of what? 
It became clear - like a moment of light shining upon a place not oft seen but always sought. In a flash I recognised that the difference was that I was receiving the sound  through my body and not my ears. Yes I could 'hear' it but the listening was happening through Gabriella's engagement with my receiving it. We had, like new lovers, lost ourselves in the exquisite space of presence beyond judgment...a space where there just is that moment. 
In those moments I was aware of my relationship to all things...open to the earth and the minute and grand forces that are continually dancing the same dance. 
It is a constant pulse and orgasm of the unknown becoming the known and falling away as we open to receive, gift and engage with each of these moments. 
  
Here in this place called home , whilst present with a bronze singing bowl I am face to face with the creation forces of this incredible planet and I am free of my mind...it is sublime and alive and cannot be held onto. 
 
What I know is that I have had experiences like this before - many energetic transmissions and perceptions, transforming experiences that allow me to visit the great depths of sensorial experience.What was different this morning with this utterly beautiful singing bowl is that I did not have to leave my body to fetch the 'information' or the 'download' from a source outside of myself. My beautiful body, co-creative partner in life and living, was the enabler for what I received and perceived. 
 
This is new for me. 
 
Until this moment I had always 'thought' that being in my body during a sensing experience of this kind would be restrictive, create a limitation to my capacity to tune in. Until this morning I had expected that my body would only contribute through the visceral, the physical, the tangible aspects of the senses - touch, smell etc. 
 
What I experienced this morning was new for me.
 
My body is capable of bringing me more information than I could have ever imagine with my mind. Just because she is physical - mater - does not mean that she can only perceive the physical realms. She can bring me the universe if that is what I ask for.
 
This is new for me and I am enjoying the wonder of it without going into the state of awe and leaving, or ex-ing her again. 
 
Body will you show me more of your magic please? 
 
Universe will you show me more of the wonders of creation through having a body?
 
Thank you.  
 
 
So everywhere and anywhere that you might have created a limitation to what might be possible through having or being 'in' a body would you like to change that...experience something different?
 

It's a simple tale - one in which I share the experience of being with two different elderly women both of them mothers of mine ...
It's also a tale in which these mothers experience an energetic body process called the Access Bars ...
It's also a tale about what is received by us all as witnessed by me...I tell it without conclusion but because to me there are remarkable moments. If you, dear reader, find the telling dry, somewhat detached, it may be so. I make no apologies about that - in fact it is the opposite. It is the gift of detachment from the immediate availability of flooding emotions that is more usual in such situations that has me appreciative of what has occurred.
​
The first mother - my own birth mother - has been living with a continually declining state of brain function since the diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's Disease nearly 14 years ago. She continues to live, albeit qualitatively diminished, in a totally dependent state in a care home in Victoria, Australia. This visit was my first with her for nearly six years. The distance that such a period of time can create between visits can be challenging in some situations but with this condition there is some comfort in the knowing that time is one of the structures of this reality that becomes a casualty through the mental decrepitude that exists within dementia. Any concern and regrets I had envisaged or created about not having been physically with her slipped into a vast chasm... it was extraordinarily special to simply be with her there and then.
This was all that was required.  For this time we were together - in the body. 

As part of our first reunion I ran my mother's bars. This entailed gently touching specific points on her hear and allowing the energy to 'run'.  It is not a difficult process to learn and I find it to be an incredibly relaxing and generous experience for both the recipient and the giver. It is for me most often experienced as a deeply meditative state and one through which the relief of a quiet mind emerges with ease. This was the first time that I had created the opportunity to gift my mother this body process. I have been a practitioner and a facilitator of The Access Bars for nearly three years. They have contributed hugely to the changes that have revolutionised my life. 

At first and for quite some time during the session the energy was very subtle - holding the points did not seem to be creating the 'usual' sense of gentle pulsing or vibrational contact. And then there was the most remarkable moment when she had a huge release through a series of yawns... a release of some kind. My Mum, or at least her body, seemed to be responding to the releasing of electrical energies that clog up the neural pathways. It was as though contact was being made between ground control and a distant satellite station.
hat I absolutely know is that at the end of this first session my Mum not only recognised me but reached through her impossible strictures and knew me for all that I be.
There are few words that can be found to express the depth of gratitude I experienced in these moments....and as I write today.

The gift of having my Bars run is always a greater sense of space...an easing of constriction in the head that most of us have come to recognise as 'normal'. To take the words of Joni Mitchell's song, "...you don't know what you've lost 'til it's gone..."  
If another person experiences the relief that I do then I am grateful and rewarded. To have witnessed the subtle but evident shift for my mother at this time was a joy/fulfilling and satiating experience I had not realised I had been hungering for.
​Was that how she also experienced it?  

During the following visits i asked her body if she would like Bars again and also different body processes . It was beautiful to be able to sit with her in a kind of communion, a state of ease present through simply running the processes that her body was asking for.  She is completely silent in her dementia - she has not spoken for many years. There is sometimes the sense that she is communicating through touch also she appears to respond to different kinds of music and tonal speech patterns.  
I did not seek repair or healing of her dementia from our days together although I did experience that myself. Through being present in silence, beyond our stories, and through the gifting and receiving of these energy processes there was a great deal of releasing and shedding of the need for anguish and emotional intensity.  

Some weeks later I am once again in London. I visited my other mother - this one through marriage. She is in the last stages of her life and asking for release from her body. It hurts. She has lived the last five years without leaving her one bedroomed home in central London and she has done so with vast amounts of grace and peace. She asked for Bars and it was not possible to sit at her head so I sat by her bed in the wonderful state of communion with her body that is possible through Bars and I asked her body to run the Bars without my being able to touch the actual points.  
(She had had her Bars run several times before.  On one occasion in the past she described the effect as "It's more like a limitless place or even space now... No edges except where I put them. ...I suppose that's where they always have been but I never realised it in quite the same way." ) 
At the end of this tender session my mother in law opened her eyes sparkled a little as she asked for some food - two slices of soft goats cheese.  She hadn't eaten for days...her body had not asked for anything until this moment. I shall never forget the sensory pleasure I witnessed her whole being open to as she savoured the tiny bites, allowing taste and texture to be fully experienced. Her presence in the moment was a profound gift to me...each moment of her life that was only days from coming to an end was being lived in full consciousness and heightened awareness. 

I could write for days on end of the tender presencing that we each lived during the following ten days. Each moment laced with the recognition of the utter privilege of the intimacy that was being offered me in this relationship with one who had been my mentor, my friend, my nemesis and my shadow through more than twenty years in this life time...several thousand in others? What transpired was a series of days that were seamless and beauty filled. I was awake to her presence constantly and never once resisted the situation I had chosen. I knew without doubt that my awareness would inform me how and what to do for this dying woman.  Vulnerabilities and concerns were never resisted as we each allowed our bodies to inform us as to what was required. I recall that she said to me, "it's as if your body knows what mine needs before I do and then I don't have to think about asking...what a gift."

Just saying that I really would not have been open to this experience in years past. It had always been hugely challenging to be with my Mums in one way or another... I was a master of resistance.
What I know is that using the access  tools has created so much change in my world. What showed up during these incredibly tender and awake full days of being in the field living with death was more than I could have ever imagined possible in the realms of beauty and gratitude.

Yes thank you. I am grateful. 

 
 

I  write from a most beautiful and peace filled landscape of The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. There are three large turkey vultures swooping and circling at a high altitude and a constant presence of frogs and cicadas filling my audible landscape. The colours are as you might expect for this time of the year - crisp golden, greens and reds with a bluer than blue sky reflecting in the lake upon which I am gazing between sentences.
This very particular place has been named Bridge Between the Worlds and it is without any doubt an accurate name for the field that has been co-created here by my friend, Margaretta McIlvaine.
Over the past twelve or more months of my life I have had the incredible fortune to have travelled widely, following some of the invitations that come towards me and Gabriella that encourage us to bring our work/ gifts into the wider world. Sometimes I metaphorically pinch myself and ask questions  - questions that are filled with the awe and wonder of a child in love with the Earth. There is sooo very much to be grateful for -  awe inspiring beauty and wave upon wave of total appreciation for being in a position to say yes to a way of living that  seems to create more of its likeness...I wonder - is that the secret of living?

What else can I bring into the world that would allow more of this wonder and beauty to be available for more beings?

This past week has seen me meeting with people who are creating incredible places of sanctuary for land, animals, nature and people...
Here at Bridge Between the Worlds there is a luminous atmosphere arising from the woods across to the shore of the lake...am I the watcher or the watched I wonder as i gaze upon the light that seems to invite me to another dimensional reality in a blink, the space between the trees beckoning me to notice...space.

What a gift it is to be exposed to and to be aware of the space that is found in stillness.  A year ago I would not have reckoned it possible that so much ease could be found in being with other people most of the time, place to place and always engaged in the joy of companionship and meetings with other beings - two legged or other!


One day this week whilst spending time at a horse rescue retreat I was blessed by an intimate experience with a mare called Willow - an encounter that I had not anticipated, had always hoped for but had never encountered or expected. Dropped down into my heart and free of any sense of fear I was able to be completely present with this warm nosed and breathed equine stranger...total presence with another sentient being.