Can life's noise teach us deeper lessons about patience and self-compassion? This week on the Conscious Conversations Podcast, I reflect on my struggle to maintain inner peace amidst the vibrant energy of summer solstice celebrations. I recount how the relentless drumming of the festivities disrupted my meditation practice, challenging me to find tranquility in unexpected ways. It was in the serene embrace of my garden that I discovered nature’s ability to soothe and calm the mind. This journey highlighted the importance of setting intentions, being adaptable, and practicing self-compassion when things don’t go as planned.
In the latter part of the episode, I guide you through a peaceful meditation designed to connect you with nature and foster inner calm.
Please note that we do not necessary agree with all the views on this podcast and leave listeners to make their own mind up with what they do or don't agree with.
Can life's noise teach us deeper lessons about patience and self-compassion? This week on the Conscious Conversations Podcast, I reflect on my struggle to maintain inner peace amidst the vibrant energy of summer solstice celebrations. I recount how the relentless drumming of the festivities disrupted my meditation practice, challenging me to find tranquility in unexpected ways. It was in the serene embrace of my garden that I discovered nature’s ability to soothe and calm the mind. This journey highlighted the importance of setting intentions, being adaptable, and practicing self-compassion when things don’t go as planned.
In the latter part of the episode, I guide you through a peaceful meditation designed to connect you with nature and foster inner calm.
Please note that we do not necessary agree with all the views on this podcast and leave listeners to make their own mind up with what they do or don't agree with.
So let's just take a lovely deep breath together Inhale deeply, retain and exhale and, if you like, you can continue with some more breathing as you join me for this fabulous episode of Conscious Conversations Podcast. So last week, in case you didn't catch it, I had the grace of speaking to the wonderful Dr Joy Bracey, and she was very, very honest and her strength came by her amazing vulnerability to speak, with her battle with obesity and also how society looks at her and how and the quest that she went on to lose this weight and she's so amazing. It really helped to open my eyes to the fact that obesity is a illness, a disease, as she describes it. So if you didn't just hear that episode, do check that out. Also, I was on a podcast as well, and that podcast is going to be out on the 28th of June, and that podcast was with Supernormalize podcast. I will leave links to that podcast and also to last week's podcast, but let's get on to today's podcast, which is going to be fabulous.
Speaker 1:
So, as I share this to you, I am in the heart of summer solstice land. There has been celebrations, there has been people at the tour, there is a big music festival that is about to start and all this comes together and there's excitement, anticipation, but also the, the. If you feel into the earth, it actually needs a bit of time to have some quiet. And it's beautiful German for the solstice, don't get me wrong. But I kind of had a bit of a struggle because the energy was very strong and there's guests in our town which are always welcome, but they were drumming for like days all through the night and it was also on work nights so I was very tired to work. I'm sure other people were and I thought you know what the drumming is beautiful, but it's it's being the quiet and letting the land have its space and quiet. And, um, I was trying to meditate and all these ideas of what I felt I needed to do for the solstice when there was. I went up to the tour and there was people doing all kinds of stuff which again, that's their life. But I just thought we're kind of giving our grace to the change of the season and being up there and it's a bit hard with like noise for like four days, but equally, people are welcome in a town.
Speaker 1:
It was kind of making it very hard. I couldn't when I was doing my meditation. I wanted to sit in my garden, but I could just hear this drumming and the noise and stuff like that. Anyway, as fate would have it, the weather isn't cold, but it became grey and I realised a lot of people can not want to be outside when it's not boiling hot sunshine, but it was warm and do you know what?
Speaker 1:
Finally, I got to sit yesterday in the garden and the birds were in abundance and the crows but I love the sound that they make and they were like flying around and you could hear the bees, and it was quite early in the morning. Everything was flying about and but then I found the space within all that and I got to go really deep within myself. I sat there for about an hour and I felt this enormous amount of inner peace and I thought this is why I do it, and it made me realise to be more adaptable, about things like being fixed and set and I must and should, and all these words that I can quite often cascade towards myself when real, real without stepping back and thinking, actually empathy, and then, when I let it all go, it was like, oh, now the earth has settled here and all the wonderful people are always very welcome with now on the way to the festival. And yeah, it's just, it was such a magical, moving, powerful time that I felt. The lesson in this and this is why I share the story is, you know, sometimes things won't happen when we want it, how we want it, but if we set our intention. So I wanted the tension of kind of I literally felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was struggling to get a deep breath because all the energy and noise. But I set the intention. I wanted to find my peace, my harmony, my flow again. By doing that, I kind of let everything go. The inner peace, the inner knowing, the inner knowledge kind of came back to me. I'm going off on a quest next week, and it's a very strong quest, however, is to honour the training that I'm doing. I'm not going to share about it, but I will tell you that, a it's going to push me so much out of my comfort zone. B it's going to be a very, very strong connection with nature and C, it's going to make me it is going to make me, by throwing away all these conceptions that I have about myself very exciting, I'm sure. So I'm getting everything ready for that and also like one day.
Speaker 1:
So I was driving and I took the wrong turn and I don't know. I was so hard on myself and I thought you know what, stop being so hard on myself. And I thought you know what, stop being so hard on yourself. So my lesson, which I would like to share as well with you, dear listeners, is can you find ways like obviously you're going to try and find new ways to do stuff and improve and stuff like that, but can you also not be hard on yourself? That, but can you also not be hard on yourself? So it's finding that elegant balance between trying and giving up, and this can be quite elegant. I thought it was a hard balance to find, but it's not. It's going for things, trying for things, but then listening to that inner voice. There's no way I was going to have that peaceful meditation with drums. I celebrated the summer solstice a few days later and I thought you know what that was my lesson not to be so fixed, so fixed of how things are.
Speaker 1:
The other amazing gift that I got after sitting down and and finding that space when I just the noise of nature just ended up creating no noise in my head. Um, after sitting there for an hour, was that I was writing like I've managed to do all this stream of consciousness, writing and discovering what I want, because sometimes I find I wonder if you find it the same, dear, listen and do, let me know is. I have all these ideas of things that I kind of want to remember or do, and then I forget about them, and I've even started a little book that I've put things in and occasionally I forget to look at the book. But that is my best advice is to write it in a book, because most of the time I will remember to look at this little book and the thing to do is to decorate this book so it looks very elegant and then you can kind of see what it is that you kind of need to learn and what you kind of need to find out for yourself. Another thing that I found very humbling was when I was on a guest on Super Normalised podcast and I was a bit nervous because I was thinking I'm gonna have to talk about myself all this time and I have not been on anyone else's podcast before and I thought, gosh, this is going to be um, this is going to be what's the word a little bit nerve-wracking, not because I am scared of answering questions or stuff like that, but more so it was the unknown.
Speaker 1:
But when one pushes oneself to dive into the unknown, to be in the unknown, that is when we kind of learn to be our best possible version of ourselves, and I feel like we notice there's a difference between being reckless and being brave. There's a big difference. Reckless is when you have no care whatsoever for yourself or maybe for anyone else, and you're just completely reckless and you just do things and that's it. Whereas kind of being brave is means you may you probably will still have the fear, but you've done some sort of assessment of the situation. You haven't gone so far that you've over analyzed it, but you've done some sort of assessment of the situation. You haven't gone so far that you've over analyzed it, but you've done some assessment of a situation and you've weighed up the pros and cons and you kind of go for it. Then you kind of surrender, and that is the difference between being reckless and being brave. Being brave doesn't mean that you have to kind of be like this knight in shining armor, but it might be doing something that's outside your comfort zone.
Speaker 1:
So for me, the bravest things that I've done recently which you might laugh at, but hey is that I was very late to the game in the driving and I find it quite nerve-wracking sometimes. Now I'm at the point where I can get into the car and drive. My biggest fear is if it's going to be a difficult parking space at the other end, because I'm still mastering the art of parking in tight spaces. But you know, I'm not going to be reckless. I will be brave and drive there and I'll park in somewhere that feels like there's lots of space, and if there's a car parking space away from everyone, I will go in that. For now, as I progress and my skill set gets better, of course I will be more brave and try more difficult car parking spaces, and that is my biggest bravery. That is my biggest bravery and also this quest, this shamanic quest that I'm going on next week as well, that is going to take every ounce of my bravery.
Speaker 1:
But yet there is a part of me, a part of me within my soul, that has to do quests and do things that will put me outside my comfort zone a bit. That may look like something very, very different for you, and I would really like to hear how that is, how that feels for you. I'll tell you one thing that really, for me, helps change my life and that is reading, reading, physical reading, physical books or kindles or anything like that, and I've always felt that it does something wonderful to the brain and it helps connect me in so many ways. But I just feel that books do so much and when we're looking at these short clips of films and I look at funny things like someone sent me this clip and there's a dog that had been sneaking over its neighbour's fence to ride on the horse and they caught the dog sitting on the back of the horse riding along. So that is, you know, I will look at occasionally, look at films, but I see people and they're waiting for a bus and they can't just be there for a moment, or they can't just be, or they're waiting for someone and, okay, maybe they're busy working professionals and they're checking emails. But I just worry because I think, can people not just be for a moment without the need to look at phones or anything?
Speaker 1:
It's through that spaces of boredom that genius is created artists, writers alike and even if you're not an artist or writer, it's through those moments of boredom that perhaps you'll get fresh ideas. So if you're stuffing your head every spare second with your smartphone and AI generated stuff every second with your smartphone, you're not going to get the chance to come up with fresh ideas because you're not allowing yourself space. And I think those moments of space are like micro meditations. And how do you get micro meditations into your day, dear listener? So it's all very interesting food for thought. So how can we be brave but not reckless? How can we fit in meditation in the form of allowing ourselves space during our day? And how can we learn to be a bit more in the flow and not being so fixed but also honouring ourselves? And that is the best gift you can do is honour yourself from a place of balance. If you can do is honour yourself from a place of balance, and you won't get that if you're, if you never have the time to just simply be. So how can you fit moments of time to simply be into your busy day? Let me know and I'll be very interested to hear. So it's happy summer solstice from me.
Speaker 1:
Here is the meditation for this season. Top tips for the meditation is either sit nice and cross-legged on the floor with a nice straight back always nice to sit on a block or a cushion, or that's not available for you. You sit in a chair with the back nice and straight. The important thing is you're not slouching, and if you're doing something that requires your concentration, all you need to do is just pause this and you can reconvene the meditation at a time that is good for you. If you're doing the meditation, let's begin.
Speaker 1:
So if you look at the tree in front of you either that is a physical tree or a tree that you've imagined after seeing in a book and you just have your gaze in one spot and you just allow that tree to move, you allow the branches of that tree, as you look at it, to move in the breeze, the reverberation as the wind hits against the leaves, casting a green and magical breeze like a sea in the air, and just think that wind is blowing away all your cares and you're just allowing yourself to be. Imagine that you're as perfect as can be, as beautiful as you are in the moment, and they dance and they sing and they prance in the wind and the gentleness of the breeze helps to illuminate a sense of ease within your being. Perhaps today has been a little bit more difficult to navigate than other days. Meditation may feel a strain, but if you look at the tree it can help. You feel this breeze, the sense of ease as you inhale through the nostrils and you exhale and you let it all out. You allow yourself to be yourself, to be free within this moment. Allow yourself to be greenery.
Speaker 1:
Why it resonates with the sense of self-love inner love, outer love, love for others, love for ourselves. Nature is so godly in the sense that it is godly in the sense that it is beautiful, it is there, it is resilient. It's not that nature never has a care for it can be difficult for nature to navigate who's eating who, who's feeding off who but within it, nature is in the moment, nature is in the now. Nature is so beautiful, nature just knows. How can you be in line with that nature? Take a calming, deep breath and just allow yourself to gently listen to the tree as it moves so gracefully in the breeze. And if your mind pops off somewhere, don't despair. Just come back to the breath, breathe deeply as you take in that tree, just allowing yourself to feel completely and utterly free. Allow, allow, take a calming, deep breath in and out through the nostrils as you inhale, exhale, as you slowly come back into the moment. Come back into the room.
