I spent most of my childhood up a tree. There was a giant oak across the street from our house, behind a wooden fence. I was four years old, and getting to the lowest branch required a whole engineering project: drag one of the outside rubbish bins over, turn it upside down, balance it against […]
There is a moment, right after a door closes, when the nervous system doesn’t know the difference between disappointment and danger. The chest tightens. The mind starts building a case. It was supposed to happen. I did the work. Why did this fall apart. I know that moment well. Earlier this year I had a […]
Recently I nearly left a party early to go dancing. I caught myself halfway to the door. Everyone else had gone. What remained was my friend’s core group, the ones who’d been at dinner the night before too. After a ridiculous game that involved pulling costumes out of a bag and putting them on at […]
Years ago someone gave me a piece of advice that has never once let me down. They said, “always look for the gift in every situation.” I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I do now, because I’ve had a lot of practice. Peru is my spiritual home. It has been for 30 years, […]
On Wednesday the light did something strange over Ilkley. My neighbours and I gathered in the lane, all of us craning our necks west, passing around a single pair of eclipse glasses like it was the most natural thing in the world to share. One pair, half a dozen households, everyone taking their turn and […]
I have said this to my clients, my sons, friends and to strangers at parties, and I will say it here in writing so it is official: if you do not know what to do with what you are feeling, go and dance. Not because it fixes everything. Because it moves everything. I have been […]
Full moon blessings, friend. I tossed and turned pretty much every night last week. This week, properly restless. Mind circling, the same worries over and over, the kind of thinking I know better than to indulge. I have spent twenty five years teaching people how to calm their nervous system, and there I was at […]
There is a word in the Andean tradition that has no clean translation into English. Allyu. It means family, but it is bigger than blood. It means community, but it is bigger than proximity. An allyu is the living web of relationship that holds a person up, human and non human alike. The mountains are […]
One of my closest spiritual soul sisters finally came up to Yorkshire for a visit. I gathered my whole family around for dinner so everyone could meet each other properly, because they’ve all been hearing about one another for twenty years. Twenty years of stories, finally sitting at the same table. Santosh came up specifically […]
When I was a teenager, someone told me I had the form and the talent to go professional with horses. I had the blue ribbons to prove it. And I wanted a horse more than almost anything. But I also wanted ballet. And the theatre. And to travel the world. And I knew, even then, […]
