Today I would like to share with you some of the practices that I have learned over the years that have helped me through life’s struggles. It can be hard to balance everything sometimes, especially when events and circumstances test your mental strength and emotional control. Each of these has helped me to step away, empty my mind of endless negative chatter and sometimes create things that I am proud of.

Journalling

Journalling is a recognised format for working through mental anxiety, lethargy and even relationship conflict. It’s important to be aware of all that is good in a day, and often offloading into a journal has as much positive effect as talking through with another person. Recorded, offloaded, gone. That is exactly how it works. Sometimes sharing a problem can complicate your mind further with other opinions coming into play.

One thing I have found, that with one opinion clarity comes faster.

Nature

Trees are my greatest passion. They are so important: to me, to you, to many life-forms that depend upon them. Their presence can often leave a lone walker feeling watched within the woods, but consider for a moment; that is a living, breathing, growing life-form and it is not surprising that we become aware as it draws 10,000 gallons of water out of the ground we are standing on!

To appreciate, and be with, nature is fundamental to our health, our mental strength and our vitality. Vitality relies upon the connection of all other life-forms on the earth, and it is not yet recognised how important this is, although the lockdown of 2021 certainly made some understand a little. Immersion in Nature will push away all of life’s stresses. The air quality, the colour palette, the movement of our bodies, helps to ease away mind chatter. To capture these feelings, the emotion I feel in the moment I take pictures.

Energetic Health

Modern life is extremely draining, all the electrical items, radio waves, and now the frequencies that hold the internet form an energetic cloud around us, through us and have an impact that we are barely aware of.

I have used the techniques of meditation and sound therapy as a Reiki practitioner since 2010. Initially I learned Reiki as a form of self-healing before progressing to Level 2 Master, this qualified me to provide Reiki for others as well as myself while integrating the use of chakra tuning forks and singing bowls. The practice of sound therapy has a very beneficial effect, if you relate it to the sound of your favourite music it is easier to understand how the effects work.

Mantra is the method of repeating a sound that is known to hold a specific tone and vibration. Repeating a mantra many times at the right tone will create a very physical vibration within your body in the area that tone correlates to.

Creative Crafts

Recently I discovered the art of creating rag rugs. I had some old garments and decided to have a go, instead of traditional rag rug type, I plaited my three colours and them machined them onto a cream backing material. All the items came from a charity shop and cost less than £15 and little time

Printmaking is a skill I learned through classes at Adult Education, this served as excellent therapy, giving my mind topics and processes to think about. I discovered a few styles that need no expensive equipment at all. The methods used are slow and precise, creating a meditative frame of mind. The results can be unpredictable, but nothing detracts from the achievement of creating the finished print.

I recommend this highly for anyone of any capability, there’s no requirement to be an artist, just a willingness to try.

Thank you for reading my first blog, if you have any ideas to share, or thoughts on mine, please leave a comment.

Look out for my next post, where I go through the journalling method in more depth.