Three Happy Moments Game
23/11/2011 at 8:17 pm | Posted in Happiness, Parenting, Uncategorized, Wellbeing | 1 CommentTags: affirmation, inspiration, life skills, positive thinking, success, wellbeing
The unexpected fragrance of a flower as you pass by.
This is a great game to share with a child, partner or friend at the end of the day. And it’s guaranteed to make the toughest days seem better…
Simply take it in turns to share a first happy moment that happened during the day; then a second; then a third. Choose anything that comes to mind; they don’t have to follow chronological order. Here are some examples:
* seeing a tree with brightly coloured leaves, with the sun shining through them
* a letter containing good news
* thoughtful praise from a colleague
* sharing a laugh with a friend
* seeing your child’s face light up when you picked them up from school
* a blissful half-hour of meditation
* the unexpected fragrance of flowers as you walked by.
* a healthy work-out at the gym, or a yoga practice.
Over time, you get a very clear idea of the things that make you and your loved ones happy. And the more you focus on those, the more often those happy things happen. This is a win-win game.
Looking at the world through angels’ eyes
10/09/2011 at 10:10 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 8 CommentsTags: inspiration, meditation, nature, wellbeing
My daughter calls these angel clouds. They are a great reminder of a simple truth: when we rise above a problem we look at it with different eyes. Suddenly, we can see the big picture. We can actually see beauty where perhaps before we just saw stress and sadness.
Look at this picture, taken last week over Southern England. Everything is beautiful if you look at it from a higher perspective.
Answers in the maze
14/08/2011 at 9:00 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: Guidance, Intuition, maze
Old stone walls create a micro-climate.
Someone I love faces a difficult medical decision: accept invasive treatment or follow a more holistic route?
This person looks to me for guidance, and I have none to give. My mind has seized up with indecision. What on earth is the best way forward?
I head to La Seigneurie Gardens on the island of Sark for inspiration. Here, old stone walls create a micro-climate which is surely good for humans as well as plants.
There happens to be a maze in the garden, and I decide to use the maze to help me reconnect with my own inner guidance.
At the entrance to the maze, I ask the question in my mind: surgery, or holistic route?
I become aware of my own fears for this person I love. The fears are frankly getting in the way of guidance. So I consciously put them to one side and hand the question over to the universe, the invisible powers that be. I let go of any attachment to a particular outcome. I know that the person I love will be looked after. I begin to feel calmer.
The first thing that happens is that I get help.
The maze has a small wooden castle right at the centre. Three girls have reached the castle and climbed it. They have a good view of the maze and they shout out instructions to me: “Turn right, turn left; now straight on…
Monsters are usually more scary in our imagination.
“Watch out for the monster around the next bend,” they add. This sounds faintly alarming… until I see the monster. After that, I reach the centre very quickly.
The second thing that happens is that I feel slightly disappointed. Being told exactly how to reach the centre takes away the sense of adventure. It’s actually fun to take a wrong turn and then discover the way forward.
The third thing that happens is that I decide to explore the maze for myself. Deliberately, I go the wrong way, again and again. And guess what I find out?
There is more than one route through the maze. Actually, there are several – including some natural gaps in the hedges.
The fourth thing that happens is that my head clears and I can see the way forward for the person I love.
The three girls are like the medics: they have found a route through the maze, and they want to help others follow exactly their path. In fact, the girls are so persuasive, when you follow their instructions it can seem that theirs is the only way forward.
But life is simply not like that. There are always more options available and the right one for you is the one that feels right.
The monster can show us the riches of our soul.
And the monster in the maze? Well, in dreams the monster frequently represents some aspect of ourselves that we have walled off, believing it’s not acceptable. But when we face the monster, we discover it’s not nearly as bad as we feared. It just wants to be listened to, and then it will transform.
So the monster is a reminder of the more feared aspects of our own psyche… aspects that can contain the riches of our soul.
As I leave the garden I know exactly the guidance I will give the person I love and, if they choose, they can repeat the same words to their persuasive medics:
“There is more than one route through the maze.”
Recipes: elderflower cordial, elderflower tea
26/05/2011 at 10:01 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 3 CommentsTags: healing, Health, nature, nature recipes, naturecraft, wellbeing
Elderflowers: fragrant and good for you
We are busy gathering elderflowers for cordial right now. The fragrant flowers are all around us in the hedgerows, and easy to collect. Each head is a frothy summer’s bowl of wellbeing.
Elderflowers have been used for centuries for their health benefits. Elderflower water is mildly astringent and has traditionally been valued for the complexion. Make your own fresh elderflower toner by steeping a head or two of the fresh flowers – remove the pungent stalks first – in half a cup of boiled water, then straining. Apply on cotton wool, or spritz on to your skin. You can use it over a couple of days if kept in the fridge.
Elderflower cordial is an uplifting summer tonic – delicious with still or sparkling water on a hot summer’s day. If you have a cold or flu or feel run down, a hot drink of it in the evening is comforting and healing. Elderflowers are diaphoretic – they help the body during a fever by inducing sweating.
The recipe: take around 25 elderflower heads, with the stalks removed, and add them to a big bowl in which 1.3 kg of sugar has been dissolved in 1.8 litres of just boiled water. Add a couples of lemons, sliced, and a couple of oranges (or limes, for a more sharply refreshing summer drink). We mix the whole thing up, cover and leave for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, strain the liquid through a muslin cloth. It’s ok to give the cloth a good squeeze to get out more of the juices. Then decant into clean, sterile bottles (You can sterilise bottles by putting them through a dishwasher, or by gently simmering in a big pan of water.) The cordial will keep for at least a month in the fridge. I have kept it for up to six months, though it usually gets drunk long before that! You can also pour it into washed plastic bottles – leave space at the top as it will expand once frozen – and store it in the freezer.
We also gather the flowers to make herbal tea, which has all the health benefits of cordial, without the sugar. Discard the thick stalks, and leave the flower heads to dry. When dry, crumble the flower heads, discarding more stems as you spot them and place in an airtight container. This will keep for a year, until the next elderflower harvest. To make your tea, put one teaspoon of flowers in a cup of boiled water, brew for three to five minutes, then drink. You can add a slice of lemon or orange and maybe a spoonful of honey…. You can also make fresh elderflower tea by steeping some of the florets (without the thicker stalks) in hot water for around 5 minutes.
Yellow hearts for happiness
12/04/2011 at 10:28 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: flowers, Health, nature, wellbeing
Cowslips are beautiful tiny medicine chests
If you are lucky enough to have cowslips growing in your garden or nearby, nurture them. These small, quirky relatives of primroses aren’t so common nowadays, and they carry with them the peace and slower pace of a more rural past – and a few related health benefits.
The garden around the Studio is old farmland, and so the cowslips never really left it. But it’s easy enough to sow seeds in any garden and wait for them to appear.
Just looking at them is instantly calming and relaxing. However, if you have an abundance of them, you can do much more than that…
Herbal medicine
Herbalists use cowslip flowers and roots as a nervine, to relax and calm; to help dispel chesty coughs and nervous headaches; and to promote restful sleep. Collect the flowers between March and May, and the roots before flowering time, or in the autumn. Add the flowers to herbal teas; or make a decoction of the dried root: 1 teaspoonful to a cup of water; bring to the boil and simmer gently for five minutes. Then drink three times a day.
Healthy salad
The tiny, sweet tasting flowers are a pretty addition to salads; you can eat the young leaves too, though we have yet to try them here. In the old days, many households made their own delicious cowslip wine from the flowers, which helped to clear winter coughs and was a popular night cap.
Flower therapy
But the best reason to grow them is probably just to look at them. Each flower is a tiny trumpet of five connected vibrant yellow hearts. Gaze into one, and take three deep breaths, and you will receive a small but potent dose of happiness, I guarantee.
Hitch a ride on the lightwaves, and be still
14/02/2011 at 11:22 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: meditation, nature, wellbeing
Meditation word for this week is ‘Sky’.
Sky is a challenging word: how can we keep our minds on something vast that is constantly changing? And if we do manage to hitch a ride on the lightwaves, how do we stay calm and centred?
Actually, it’s a great word for meditation. And here are just some of the reasons why…
Looking at the sky with our mind’s eye is like looking at the skyscape of our own minds. Calm our thoughts, and the sky we conjure up in our mind becomes calm too… and yet always changing.
Meditating on sky helps us to understand the constantly changing currents of humanity… and find our own still point within the constant change.
Looking down at land from the sky, everything looks so ordered, and patterned, like a vast, intricate woven carpet. We know that the people way down below are a seething mass of emotions. We know we are too… and yet, from one mile high, it looks as though everything is just the way it is meant to be.
And then we may discover something interesting: what if our own lives are like intricate, hand-woven carpets? From our usual vantage point, on the surface, it feels like we’re struggling, sometimes getting nowhere, sometimes meeting a dead end and having to retrace our steps.
And yet… from the sky’s point of view, our lives look perfect, with colours, themes and motifs all placed exactly right. The U-turns we take and the mistakes we make may actually look like beautiful flowers from the air. The times we ambled along may look like silken mountain streams bringing much needed water to the flowers. And our most wonderful moments may look like bright woven diamonds, a stunning motif that recurs at exactly the right moments to help the pattern to look complete.
Recipe: Rosewater and Glycerin
15/11/2009 at 11:13 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 15 CommentsTags: nature recipes, naturecraft
This is another solution to the issue of preserving the skin’s moisture levels, and it comes to you with love and radiant skin from my mother, Shirley. Shirley has a beautiful complexion: glowing and dewy. She looks far younger than her age. And for much of her grown up life she has used Rosewater and Glycerin. If she swore, she would swear by it.
As a young mother sailing from England to Russia in the 1960s, she carried with her a gallon of Rosewater and Glycerin. It was enough, she calculated, to last her for the duration of her husband’s two-year posting to the British Embassy. Of course, she didn’t get through half of it, and left the rest to her cook, Nadia, who no doubt enjoyed her own radiant complexion for a long time thereafter (and perhaps a few valued friends and customers did too).
Nowadays, I blend my mother’s classic recipe for her, and here it is for you.
Ingredients
1/2 cup rosewater 1 tsp vegetable glycerin
Method
Put the ingredients in a glass bottle, shake vigorously, and let it settle. Shake before use. Use as a toner/moisturizer morning and evening.
Why it works
Glycerin is a fantastic humectant, which is why it’s valued in soaps (glycerin is actually a natural by-product of soap-making). Whereas oil locks moisture into the skin and prevents it from escaping, a humectant attracts it from the external environment, and draws it up from the internal layers (so keep drinking the water). A humectant such as glycerin is particularly helpful during the winter months, when the central heating comes on.
Rosewater is skin-soothing, anti-inflammatory, healing and anti-bacterial, with a mood-enhancing scent.
My mother uses Rosewater and Glycerin at night on its own, after soap and water, and in the morning she adds a moisturiser with sun-screen. I love the simplicity of this approach – and it works.
PS Plenty of rest plus regular doses of meditation also help keep the skin young. Check out this easy guide.
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