As I walk along my chosen path to help people establish the essence of who they are and overcome the effects of bullying to find their true identity, it is necessary for me to continue to place one foot in front of the other on my own odyssey too. 

We are being encouraged all the while in the 21st century to be open-hearted, authentic, honest and true to our nature in our individual quests. It is a courageous route for us all to take because in doing so we are being prompted constantly to embrace and show our vulnerability.

In our own hero's journey, where we triumph over adversity, we expose ourselves in order to build rapport and trust with any person that we wish to work with who recognises their own story of suffering in our sharing too, this is our triumph.

However, the exact same action that we carry out in speaking our truth in order to attract new friends towards us can also invite old foes that might wish to seek out and exploit our defencelessness for their own gain. They might be notable abusers, bullies and other critical influences that we have experienced in our past who continue to try and keep us small or indeed quiet for their own benefit or justification. In sharing our story with the world we have to be ready for this type of scenario too, for if we aren't fully prepared for it, we will continue to absorb, collapse and descend back into the realm of adversity, very quickly. 

Both forces are at work in the universe constantly to help us develop and evolve towards where we need to be as human beings. When we start to bring awareness to all aspects of the situation that we encounter we can start to see the overall divine plan for our lives and the state we need to be in, between triumph and adversity, if we are to keep an even keel within our lives, one of serenity and peace. 

Recently I have chosen to share more of my 'overcoming the effects of bullying to find my true identity' story in order to hopefully connect with other people that might be continuing to experience this situation in their own lives too. I wasn't however prepared for the storm that was about to present itself when my truth started to permeate in the direction of my own immediate family.

Over the past month it has felt like I have been very much walking between the eye of the storm and the tempest that has then come to surround me.

Many people have indeed expressed their admiration in my direction for my very brave account of what it was like for me to grow up within my own home, at school, college and then in the workplace, all within a bullying type environment, when I chose to express myself both through poetry and film as part of Anti-Bullying Week back in November. This is when I felt I was in the eye of the storm and completely in the flow of life, stepping forward on my path. 

Conversely however, completely unknown to myself at the time, my comments were also being received in a very negative, fearful way by some of the people that have been closest to me in my 50 year existence upon the planet. In fact they found my statements to be most shocking and hurtful as their version of events, their own truth, was being perceived quite differently to that of my own. 

Here, the thunder, lightning, downpours of rain and howling gales have been difficult to experience once again. It has been necessary for me to batten down the hatches for a while, an old age survival strategy of mine. However, with all the personal development I have done on myself over the years, together with the support systems I now have in place, both with regards to individuals and communities in my network, I have been able to continue to stride onward towards my goal.

In the past I would have felt totally uprooted by this experience when the hurricane has come to hit, this time around however I have been able to weather the storm and come out the other side perfectly OK, grounded, centred with my roots, trunk and branches all still fully intact, I can still stand tall within the forest. 

This primarily is because I have been far more aware of what has been going on around me when the winds have started to pick up this time around. I have been able to take my share of responsibility within the events that have occurred, I can perhaps see now where other people are coming from and what their angst is all about connected to me and my living situation. I have been able to accept this scenario for what it is and not tried to change the process that has been instigated, instead I have let the necessary healing start to take place. I have released my attachment to any outcome and let go of any expectation as to what the final result of all this will be, I have just acknowledged that it is all taking us somewhere to where we all need go. Things are a lot better I believe as a consequence because of this change in mindset. 

​At this moment in time I am inspired by the words of Oscar Hammerstein II and his song that he wrote in 1945, 'You'll Never Walk Alone', which also happens to be the anthem to my favourite football club, Liverpool FC. I am choosing to recount all the words here as I believe they bring hope at this time to us all.

You'll Never Walk Alone.

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone  

Indeed if your story in any way matches my own, you will always have me here in support of yourself in your corner, if you choose to connect with me in this manner. You don't have to walk alone through the storm you are encountering we can do so very much together. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

One of the paradoxes of my bullying story is that I actually feel somewhat blessed to have been able to live my life in fairly comfortable accommodation throughout. In these places nature has always been at my beck and call and I have felt well looked after, nurtured and nourished, even over-nurtured at times too perhaps.

For sure, I consider myself to have led a privileged life, one where I have perhaps been spared the ravages of reality and an ordinary existence thus far by sheltering within my parental home for a period of time that has far exceeded the norm. 

This however has led to its own pitfalls and problems, living within my own comfort zone and also finding envy at every turn from peers, contemporaries and dare I say relatives too. I have come to realise that being privileged or being in a privileged position is not necessarily a privilege.   

The shaman exists on the edge of society, where he or she is able to view community from the periphery, upon the margins. I have always lived on the edge of town. I have felt most at home with clear access to fields, grassland, moorland, woods and shoreline. It is here that one can properly commune with nature and start to see where the social models we live under are failing, or going wrong altogether, and hence the apparent reason for me to want to remain separate from all of that. I just haven't found a valid alternative as yet that is right for me to move on to.

My living accommodation, rather sadly, has for a long time been viewed by my friends and foes as a place where a great deal of projection can be placed upon it. Projection, as I have come to realise later in life, is just another form of bullying. When it is perceived that things are such a way when in reality they are far from it. 

This is not to disguise actual bullying because this was apparent too throughout all of my upbringing and was first witnessed, outside the family unit, when a betrayal by a so called friend led to more than two years of tyranny from brothers in arms. 

The boy that I had befriended in the early part of secondary school used to come and play with me in my own house, the first parental home that I grew up in. That was before one day I saw his bike not parked outside of my gate but propped up against the wall of a notorious lad across the street. Someone who had perhaps always looked longingly in my direction, festering a degree of envy towards the perceived lifestyle I seemingly led, with two doting, loving parents. 

It is a potent mix when a traitorous friend combines forces with an envious foe, living in such close proximity to my own existence. 

It was the early 80's and one of the most popular programmes on TV at the time for any would be teenager was the Blackadder series. In it, within one of the sketches, Edmund Blackadder asks Baldrick his servent 'Where is the Nutcracker?', of which Baldrick replies saying, 'Oh, it's his day off!'

A fairly innocuous statement one would imagine, one that is pretty funny for most, indeed myself too no doubt when I first heard it and yet it was subsequently used as weapon of destruction towards me to cause me ridicule as to what my family life was like down the road, just because I lived in a slightly bigger, privately owned, detached house compared to my playground buddies. 

My father in his own life journey had done very well for himself, working his way up through the ranks of his business, earning 50p a week when he first started with the company right up to being senior partner some 40 years later, working for the same firm all of his salaried life. He was then able to leave the business on his own terms and move into a fairly abundant retirement without any real financial worries. 

On his upward curve through life, taking his family with him, I was able to live in better houses than the majority of my immediate friends. The second house I lived in, just to put you in the picture, was a six bedroom house stood in at least one acre of grounds that included a tennis court within the garden. 

I like to feel, that naturally, I am a person of a generous nature and wish to share my bounty with others. I have a fairly open, honest and authentic streak within me that endeavours to welcome people into my life. I have found also however that in my openness I can leave myself quite vulnerable and exposed to those that are perhaps not fully appreciative of me and my circumstances. 

I have thrown many a party when I have been allowed the space, inviting a number of guests inside my own four walls, some great evenings have been had, cooking fantastic meals, offering wine, women and song. I jest, it wasn't quite like that. 

However in inviting people into my parents residence, then in the same way that I was ridiculed for seemingly having a 'Nutcracker' at my service, I was then deemed to live on 'The Blackler Estate' where we had wildebeest and other game from the African Plains running about here, there and everywhere within the Serengeti. 

Was this innocent jesting one asks? Or was there more poisoned arrows, cloaked within those statements of envy and jealousy? Certainly as they followed the then distant 'Nutcracker' jibes I found them quite hurtful until later in life I was able to bring a whole lot of healing to the issue at hand and realised that my buttons weren't so easily pressed any more.  

In the shadow work that I engaged with through David Richo and his book 'Shadow Dance' I gained enlightenment in the fact that envy and jealousy just mask the qualities of admiration and protectiveness. Those are the qualities that are readily at hand for us to absorb back into ourselves when we take the negative aspect of the shadow and transform it into the positive alternative instead.

The irony now is that I find myself at times envious of others, and have to remind myself or bring myself back to a mode of first attention to realise that this is just admiration and I am capable of living and leading my own life in just the same way that this person is should I deem that to be the path that I wish to take also. 

So, in short that person is acting as a guide to my higher self and what is possible for me in my own life once I start to put my mind in that direction and take self responsibility for the benefit of all. It is only then that I can start to bring parity to my life and lead a happier existence, free of the cages I otherwise find myself in, it will be the same for you too. 

I cover issues like this in my Transformational Talk sessions as part of the Shamanic Practices that I offer. If you are interested in investigating issues like this yourself I can help you once you click on the links below and we answer The Call To Adventure together as part of my Introduction Services. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

One of the more positive things to have come out of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has been our ability to reconnect with nature. 

Faced with vast periods of time spent alone at home, stuck between four walls, with only a tablet or phone screen for company, we have yearned for the great outdoors and taken every opportunity to go out and fill our lungs with fresh air and deepen our connection with the world around us. 

If we have been unable to venture into the wilderness like before then we have become more aware of what has been happening on our own doorstep. We have begun to value intimate time spent with bird, bee, flower and tree in the gardens, fields and hedgerows close to where we live. 

We have learnt that experiencing a restrictive, controlled, bullied existence is not a healthy one for us, short or long term, as many an oppressed individual would testify. It can lead to poor mental health, stress, anxiety and depression. Here we live our lives as fragmented souls cut off from our true selves and wider community, no amount of consuming can ever fill the void left behind. 

Whether we wish to live a life closer to our own nature or that of the planet itself, the plants and animals are just waiting for an opportunity to become more acquainted with us, to act as our allies. 

Flower essence and shamanic practitioners are trained to tune into what these allies want to communicate to us at a more profound level. They do this through capturing the spirit of the plant through a bowl of holy spring water and then sampling it or just understanding what an animal’s unique power and essence is from the characteristics and behaviours that it wishes to display to us all. 

This knowledge can then filter into a more expansive body of shamanic practices and healing techniques designed to restore any qualities we are lacking, bringing us back to a state of wholeness and balance, helping us to vibrate at a higher level of energy frequency to that which we do now, moving ourselves from a place of fear to one of love. 

If you would like to reconnect to nature yourself and want to tap into what the flora and fauna is wanting to communicate to you why not join me on a Medicine Walk or engage in a Flower Essence Consultation to discover 'The Essence Of Who You Are', these are the best routes into discovering the Great Mystery of how we are all interrelated and connected. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

For a couple of weeks up to the end of August and the start of September my mind was not my own, it had been taken over by what I call the Giant Caterpillar.

The Giant Caterpillar is made up of eight different personality types, what I have learnt in my shamanic training to be known as the 'Robes Of Distortion'. They come to distort the mind from what really lies at the very heart of us all, our true nature.

These personality types have been employed over the years to safeguard ourselves from the conditions that we regularly encounter in our lives as we grow up, to make us appear small, to get us to disappear or to fit in, none of these behaviours however serve us very well in the long term in fulfilling our true potential.

I know these different personality types to be the judge, the superior mind, the indulgent mind, the drama queen, the brain mind, the victim, the ramrod and the workhorse.

Respectively, they seek to criticise us, make us believe we are above all of the circumstances that we encounter, distract us into doing things as addictive pleasures (indulgences), make everything we do into a drama, be constantly over analysing things, bring us sadness as we adopt a poor me attitude, become impatient and frustrated with the way things are turning out and also make us appear to be busy, whilst engaging with all the wrong things in order to do so.

These personality types work to distract us, to side track us away form our purpose, sometimes they work alone and other times they all gang up to join the same shenanigans. Recently I have encountered both the judge and the indulgent mind in my own life. The judge is one of the most powerful of the personality types sometimes called the inner critic.

I have been guilty most recently of going on to social media sites both Facebook and LinkedIn and doing what I call 'compare and despair', comparing my progress through life and my business to that of others and basically doing myself down as a result in my progression. This is the judge at work being critical of my endeavours, this can lead to both depression and sadness.

With the indulgent mind too, we are led into temptation, often as a result of the above. We are distracted away from our purpose by sometimes some very attractive propositions but that which take us away from what perhaps we need to be concentrating or focusing on.

Our job when we experience these personality types is to start to question what is happening and indeed sit down with that personality type and get to know it better, what it is called, when it appeared in our life, what function it is here to perform, what is its belief, when does it get triggered, and what would make it feel more whole etc. That way we can start to ascertain what it is about and how we can perhaps redeploy it if we wish to, to perform another task for us and make it work for us as a friend or ally rather than a foe.

That is basically what I did two weeks ago I sat down with both the judge and the indulgent mind and got to to know them better, there reason for appearing and their purpose and since that time I have started to rediscover what has been going on at the very core of me and, through meditation, discover where it has wanted to take me. I can't describe it really but I feel a lot more peace about me now and have a realisation about just what has been going on with me internally and now have a real idea as to what is going to work for me going forward, where I can get both the judge and the superior mind to start to perform new tasks for me.
​
When we truly get in touch with our 'Diamond Of Consciousness', what is going on at our very centre, our inner butterfly, where we are able to replace all the fear generated by the robes and the Giant Caterpillar and are able to transform it into pure love, our individual essence begins to shine through.

If you wish to start to investigate your own Giant Caterpillar and Robes Of Distortion why not contact me and we can set up a shamanic introduction into my work, by taking 'The Butterfly Journey' and discovering for yourself where you are on that route towards metamorphosis and a far brighter future, from caterpillar to wandering, to chrysalis, emergence and imago. I look forward to hearing from you.

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below. 

Little did Derek Chauvin know when kneeling upon George Floyd's neck what the next 9 minutes would bring for himself, George, the black population, and humanity as a whole, I would imagine.

Racism, is in effect bullying. Bullying of a group of people purely because the colour of their skin is deemed to be somewhat different to what we might experience ourselves. We see the other person as separate from us, where the human connection and commonality between us has been lost.

Maybe the person comes from a separate neighbourhood, a different country, a contrasting part of the world, experiencing a varying culture and set of life circumstances to us. Instead of seeking to understand and begin to know that individual, extending the hand of love towards them, we choose to concentrate on the separateness, the fear and feeling threatened by the other person. We end up punishing them for not being like us. 

I speak from personal experience, my life path is one of being bullied. Ironically experiencing the flip side of the coin, as a privileged white male, certainly within my own peer group, in contrast to other caucasian youths that lived within my own neighbourhood. I was seen to be different. I seemingly had more than others, a bigger house, larger amount of wealth, more loving parents and these guys were envious of my upbringing and lifestyle. 

I actually ended up having a similar experience to George. Years of bullying by my own tyrants, two individuals in particular, led to a pivotal moment, a crescendo, where one of the protagonists placed his arm around my neck, playfully demonstrating to his counterpart of what it would take to strangle somebody.

Unfortunately for him, and for me for that matter also, he pulled his arm a little too tight around my windpipe and I blacked out and fell to the ground. Just like George, I was able to offer up little resistance to what was happening at the time, almost accepting it as the norm. That was, until immediately after the event where I realised the ramifications of what had just happened. Fortunately I was able to get back up onto my own two feet again. On doing so I felt immediately empowered to go and get help to start to bring about some sort of change. 

This I think is what is happening now, the black population is getting back up on its own two feet again on behalf of George and for their own sake too. They have been suppressed for far too long and this is perhaps the moment that has come to trigger a whole race into action and bring about lasting transformation. 

We of course have been living in an unprecedented time of late, the Coronavirus lockdown has placed restrictions on society across the planet like never before. If there has been any feeling of unrest going on behind closed doors then this scenario will only have exacerbated the situation. A pressure cooker of ill feeling could well have been building up in households across nations not necessarily related to racism, just in experiencing what it is to be human living through this time with our own unsatisfactory set of life circumstances playing out within our own mind. 

Under such a situation it only takes a tiny spark to explode a powder keg of emotion that has been pent up for decades, centuries, millennia even, and rightly so too. It may well prove to be the instance that brings a great deal of things to a head within the world that need to be healed within our own society and then moved on from. 

What the black race will have to do now, if my own circumstances are anything to go by is to seek to make themselves stronger in whatever shape or form is deemed possible, not by way of further conflict, but by way of questioning their oppressors and enquiring into how a more even society can be experienced and parity formed. 

For when I was being bullied, I didn't realise that I was the type of person that could be bullied, or would be bullied. So when one oppressor left, it was only a matter of time before another oppressor arrived because I hadn't done anything to change myself and my own way of being.

I realised I had to change my own behaviour, the way I conversed with people. I needed to find myself, get in touch with my own belief system, be sure of my own abilities, worthiness and purpose, to create a tougher core that was not to be pushed around any more so I was more able to stand my ground. This took many years of investigating and experimentation before the right path, teachings and tenets started to present themselves to me through my own personal development and eventually finding shamanism. 

If we resort to rebellion at any time and seek to become the oppressors ourselves, to retaliate through more violence, then we are no better than what we have experienced first hand ourselves. Sometimes, I grant, this is a necessary process if our oppressor won't listen to us or is not prepared to enter into a negotiation with us, but ultimately there are only losers in this scenario.  

If we are to follow Dr Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, where we realise that the only options open to us, by way of communicating with one another, are through being a parent, adult or child, then when we become the oppressor or are the oppressed we are acting out the parent / child scenario. Here we can only bring heartache and pain to our world. Our challenge or invitation is to try and shift that emphasis into the realm of the adult. Here a more supportive space of enquiry exists in a place love, not one of fear. Here we can bring peace to ourselves, others, our community and our planet for the benefit of everyone in the future. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

At 33 I sought counselling for the first time, I discovered that up to that point I had been letting other people rule my life. I had been brow beaten from birth, I had a difficult childhood and was severely bullied at school, this continued right through college and into the workplace.

My default, survival strategy had been to absorb and collapse, making myself as small as possible in order to disappear and go unnoticed. I was a good boy, quiet, timid and shy. I had no voice. 

Consequently, by the time I reached adolescence, I had little confidence when it came to women and it felt impossible to speak to the girls I really liked. I had a lot of shame around my sexuality and I felt emasculated. It took me until the age of 30 before I had any meaningful relationship with a woman and then ended up being with more maternal types that liked me more than I did them.  

Adopting a nodding dog style of communication, giving away my power to others, I also made poor career choices, not right for me. I was creative, and my tutors advised me to follow a textile design route when I really wanted to do graphic design. It took me 9 years to get back to where I wanted to be in the first place. By the time I had been made redundant from my second textile job in 1995 I had lost all faith in the system and decided that I would take responsibility for my own learning and development in the future.

My counsellor showed me an alternative way to live. I received my first tools in order to try and create change in my life and I began to realise the true power of personal development.  

It was more difficult than I first thought however and the Universe needed to intervene to get me back on track. I had a car crash. I came across a farm boy going Mach 3 with his hair on fire in the back lanes of Liskeard and there was nothing I could do but watch him hurtle at 60 mph right towards me. Fortunately I had the foresight to let the handbrake off so my car was able to absorb some of the impact, but it was a write off and I had the effects of whiplash for 2 years afterward.

This was enough to make me think about how I was living my life and whether it was truly rewarding enough for me. I still felt as if I was being bullied, in a way, because I wasn’t being paid well, even within my graphic design career. But then, I didn’t really know my true worth or where I was heading then so how could I expect anyone else to know that either?

In a dark night of the soul moment I reached out to my network and a marketing lady I knew asked me if I was aware of the work of Neil Crofts. He was a life coach, who had written a book called ‘Authentic - How To Make A Living By Being Yourself’. His was the first book I had ever read that spoke to me as if I’d written it myself. He used nature based techniques in his teachings and I took a Medicine Walk with him one day out in nature and discovered that I was to become a spiritual guide. 

I followed him to Majorca to attend a transformation course he was running out there but even before the course had started I encountered a beautiful butterfly in the garden, the like of which I had not seen since my early childhood, a swallowtail. It was a truly magical moment as I glimpsed a reflection of my own identity I thought and I was filled with a spiritual energy like I had never encountered before, an explosion of heat was released from my lower spine right up over my head as if I was being touched by god. I was experiencing a kundalini (spiritual) awakening. This prompted me to become a life coach too. 

As a result, I started to care more about nature and the planet. I joined environmental organisations like the Transition Town Network where I was able to sit in circles and begin to speak my truth. In time I headed up my own initiative and started more formal public speaking. I started to take on a number of coaching clients too and I helped people feel less anxious about their life, increased their confidence, gave them permission to be themselves and helped them establish their own life purpose, my own confidence soared also as a result.

Personally though, I was still struggling to share my heart with those with whom I liked the most. A seven year journey of unrequited love ended in disaster and I rather naively made mistakes with other women too. I had an affair with a coach of mine and a relationship with an ex-client too. Neither ended well even though I never wished either of them anything but love. I realised I had to work on my boundaries!

At this point I began to question my own ability to be a life coach and I withdrew from the profession. I felt as though a rug was being pulled from beneath me and I was devastated. 

I chose to take time out to properly heal. I went to work in a finance department and even followed my passion for sailing for a while. 

Finally, I saved enough money to complete three years of training to become a Shamanic Practitioner with Northern Drum and a one year training to become a qualified Accredited Flower Essence Practitioner with The Chalice Well too.

It feels like I have been blessed, I am thankful for it all, even the bullying! I continue to learn about our true allies of nature; the flora and fauna around us. I have found my masculinity, my true self and my medicine name, ‘Swallowtail.’ 

Best of all, I am now ready to help others to overcome similar issues to that I have encountered myself and I have launched my own flower essence and shamanic practice, Allies Of Nature, which incorporates a range of flower essences too.

I work with my clients, in nature, to help them overcome the effects of bullying to discover their true identity, using nature as an ally to move them from a place of fear to one of love, helping them to live their lives more in harmony with the rest of the planet. 

We engage in transformational conversations and sessions together which take place in all kinds of natural locations: on a hill-top, by a river, at the beach or in a forest. Our natural surroundings help us to go deep and discover the way to heal. 

​The flower essences are here to assist us in that process, proving to be magnificent teachers in their own right bringing their own individual restorative qualities via each flower essence in the range in order to help everyone come back into a state of balance and become the best they can be through improved emotional wellbeing. 

When you’re ready to discover your own true identity and become an ally of nature yourself, I’ll be here to help you with my flower essence and shamanic practice to guide you towards fulfilling your greatest potential.

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

With so much fear apparent within society at the moment concerning the advancement of Coronavirus across the globe, I feel it is time to give it a bit more of a positive spin and approach the subject with an element of love, dealing with it from a more spiritual perspective perhaps. 

For arguments sake, I am going to assume at this moment in time that this virus has come into being purely through some act of nature. It is my belief that the conditions upon the planet at this moment in time, be it through global warming or some other factor, have provided the perfect environment for its creation. I also believe that everything in our evolvement as a species upon the planet is indeed always perfect, we experience perfection every day, even in the worst case scenarios, in order to experience what we need to do to move ourselves forward as individuals or as a collective in alignment with the planet.  

The fact that this virus is here now, in the long term could be considered a gift from nature, a herald, to how we need to be, a call for us to adventure and find our own leadership and to do what is needed.

Sure, what is being presented to ourselves at this moment in time is difficult to grasp, as we are being urged to stop what we are doing in no uncertain terms. It may indeed cause a lot of heartache and pain, death and illness even, especially to the elderly and infirm. However, it looks to all intents and purposes to have been sent to make us think differently about how we lead our lives and what is fundamentally wrong with our existence, what is our pain and what we need to do to heal ourselves. 

My work with my range of flower essences would only point further towards this notion. I am about to create the Primrose Flower Essence this very weekend from my Allies Of Nature range of flower essences, an essence I believe that is very much about 'renewal'. There is no doubt that our society is looking at renewal now. A new way of doing things, perhaps a new way of being and existing. 

We of course will have our own concerns at this moment in time, I have got my own worries too, as to what will become of us, our houses, our jobs, our businesses, relationships, food, social interactions, all elements of community. However, I believe also that we are being asked to look again, to see what lies within ourselves once we stop. What are our true values? What do we really care about? How will we be towards our neighbour? Will we think only of ourselves in this crisis and stock pile or will we naturally start to think of others and the planet as a whole? In one way shape or form we are being asked to trust the process and see where this journey takes us, knowing that for the majority of us we will be OK. 

I believe creatively I will need to adjust the way that I do business very quickly and it is almost as if I am being encouraged to do this just now for the benefit of the long term, there are notions and ideas coming to me in this period that perhaps would not have come had this virus not arrived. I am being asked to step up in another way, to evolve and be more resourceful, to write blogs, post videos, do Facebook lives, to help engage more people perhaps for what happens after the storm has passed. 

In Italy I believe, due to a lack of humanity and busy-ness the once murky waters of Venice are now running clean. The skies and roads are now empty of transport too, our carbon emissions have plummeted overnight. Nature is trying to restore itself in our absence to a more natural way of being.

We as a species have abused our position upon the planet and raped and pillaged the Earth for all it is worth. We have polluted the air, the water and the ground, fires now rage across the planet too. All the elements are out of balance, life has lost its equilibrium and it is almost as if this virus has been sent to tell us something, that nature ultimately is in control of our existence if we step out of line.

It would seem as if it is not too far removed from the plagues of Egypt what we are experiencing now, i.e. natural phenomenon being sent to change our way of thinking, or just make us think, floods, fire, wind, disease, you name it really. 

In shamanism it is believed that spirit is a part of every living, breathing thing therefore spirit must be a part of Coronavirus, it must have a purpose, it maybe impossible to eradicate it if it has such a purpose, trying to slow it down or stop it spreading so widely is one thing, but if it is meant to be here, ultimately we might just have to learn to live with it.

I believe it has its own essence, its own consciousness, its own medicine power, it may well indeed be acting for the greater good of the planet as a whole, in whatever way is deemed fit. For something so very small it seems to have done a pretty good job in stopping us in our tracks just at the minute. With no natural predator for us, maybe it takes a tiny little micro-organism to put up nature's best fight to make us wonder at just how it is to be human in the here and now and start to act in a different way. 

We may find that this is one of the most creative times in our collective history as we are invited to find new solutions for ourselves the further this isolation and containment goes on. It maybe that come the end of it all our perspective on things has changed significantly. Maybe at home alone we will start to pay more attention to nature and the the flora and fauna around us and begin to love it again and really treasure it for all it is worth and start to place it at the centre of our lives once more now that we have time to experience it more fully. 

Maybe, just maybe, our lives will be better for it, maybe our businesses, our houses, our family life will improve because of it as we are encouraged to go inward and reconnect with ourselves, our significant others and Mother Earth herself. ​

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.

Once upon a time we all lived as members of the same tribe immersed within nature. If we trace our soul or ancestral families back far enough this is where they ultimately end up, as part of one clan, of the same origin. 

Within that tribe we would have done everything for one another for free. We would have erected our shelter together, hunted and gathered for our food as one, cooked the meals within community and looked after one another's children. We would have met in circle and been able to speak our truth authentically and been listened to with an open heart.

We would have had a close affinity with all that lay around us, a connection with all flora and fauna alike. We would have gone through our respective rites of passage together, all known our purpose and what our individual medicine power was that we brought to the community at large. 

As men and women we would have known what was expected of us within society. We would have been led by a council of elders, grandmothers all acting in the best interests of the planet, making no decision that would harm any child of the next seven generations to come of any species. 

​With the social breakdown that we are now faced with and the amount of suicides that now exist within our community it smacks to me as if we are living in a world gone wrong, of a society that has strayed way off course as to where it is meant to be, we are in effect 'the lost tribe'.

Whether it is men under the age of 45, sport stars that are away from the football pitch or boxing ring or celebrities struggling to deal with the spotlight and its various angles, all are living with anxiety and depression and many are choosing to end their lives prematurely, unsure of the reason why they are here or who they have become. We have lost our connection to our roots, we have strayed far from that which would bring us home to ourselves, we have distanced ourselves from our Earth Mother and are unaware of our own true nature.  

That is why I am choosing to adopt the practices I am now with my fellow shamanic practitioners attempting to bring the old ways back, to arrange to meet people in circle, in nature, or even around a table, just to be able to help people reconnect with something beyond themselves, to relieve some of their mental angst. To form a connection and offer healing, coaching and guidance back to some degree of sanity. 

Speaking from personal experience when I too have got lost upon the path, and experienced my own anxiety and depression which I have done on many occasions, it is only nature that has managed to bring me back to where I have needed to be, my own centre. The nature based practices that I have adopted and managed to amalgamate into my own life have an incredible ability to heal, to start to bring wholeness back to ourselves. To reconnect to something greater than ourselves and then to reboot us.

​A wounded, fragmented soul has no chance of a happy life, it has been adapted, urbanised, made to fit into a culture that is unnatural for it, to conform to an assumed better quality of life in the city, but at some stage in our journey that facade cracks and falls apart because of our lack of connection to the wild around us or even the wild within us. It is only nature that can help to restore any balance.  

So it is proving through scientific research also. A recent study carried out by the Universities of Plymouth, Exeter and Derby along with Natural England too has found that 'physically and psychologically reconnecting with nature can be beneficial for human health and well-being, and at the same time encourages individuals to act in ways which protect the health of the planet.' More details of the study can be found out here.

It is what native people have known all along. It is our task now to step out into nature and begin to come home to ourselves by using various nature based practices. Contact me now to find out how you can best begin to reconnect to nature yourself through the services that I can offer you through Allies Of Nature. 

If you care to comment on this blog with regards to any issues or feelings it brings up for you please feel free to do so below.