Wellbeing notes: Dainty dose of colour therapy
01/06/2024 at 11:12 am | Posted in Wellbeing notes | Leave a commentTags: colour therapy, Fox-and-cubs, gardening, nature inspiration, orange, summer, wild flowers
“Just look!” said my dad. “Fox-and-cubs – the wind must have blown the seeds in.” He was pointing to a wild patch of lawn in his Wiltshire garden. Here and there were little dabs of orange, waving on fine stalks. There was something unusual and pleasing about the vivid colour. Right then, I fell in love with Pilosella aurantiaca, to give the Latin name. And nowadays, in June and July, I seem to see them everywhere.
These vibrant flowers are so called because individual blooms are said to resemble foxes; the buds, their young. Native to Europe and a few other places, they’re naturalised here in the UK. You can grow them in borders. However they are especially lovely in lush wildflower lawns.
Once considered a medicinal plant, their most important contribution nowadays may be to bring much needed colour therapy to balance mind and spirit. Orange is often associated with emotional wellbeing – perfect for anyone who considers their life to be somewhat grey. And yet too much orange can have the opposite effect, overwhelming a sensitive disposition. That’s possibly why Pilosella aurantiaca is so pleasing to the eye: visually, the plant is dainty, never completely dominating its green surroundings.
Maybe there’s a place in your life for Fox-and-cubs, or perhaps you can think of another flower that brings a similar sort of joy. Whatever the case, I wish you the perfect degree of nature’s colour therapy to enhance your life this summer.
This is how everyday adventures are made
26/06/2019 at 2:13 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 3 CommentsTags: healing, meditation, meditation flower, meditation inspiration, Nature walk, wild flowers
My meditation groups are expecting a theme to focus on next month and, unusually, I don’t have one. So I lace up my walking boots and head outdoors for inspiration. The path into the woods is almost hidden by tall bracken. It looks like a keyhole to adventure…
A gnarled tree decorated with long-limbed ivy dryads looms like a guardian just inside the entrance to the woods. The air feels still, waiting. And, just like that, my 21st-century preoccupations slide away to be replaced by the timeless now.
I step along knotted narrow paths fringed by bedraggled wild garlic, then through more bracken that dwarfs me. There are no signs of human habitation here. It feels really wild. The sense of adventure is growing stronger and yet I’m still not that far from my own kitchen door. Maybe, it’s an everyday sort of adventure.
After a while, the path opens out and becomes an idyllic, meandering thing.
‘If this is an adventure,’ I think, ‘there should be treasure of some sort.’ And so I look for treasure along the path – a tiny form of proof that this word ‘adventure’ is the one I’ve been searching for. And sure enough, before long, the way becomes dotted with wild orchids, like purple gems lining my route.
I look more closely at one of the stems. They seem wonderfully exotic for temperate England. Each tiny, vibrant bloom is worth a meditation in itself.
It feels like a sign, as though I needed one, that ‘Adventure’ is the ideal theme for my groups to meditate on during July.
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Suzanne Askham 