Language

Another great Kendal Mountain Festival #kendal18. Inspired by the great work of the amazing outdoor equipment company Patagonia, The Rivers Trust, Save Our Rivers and others including some terrific climbers, kayakers and mountaineers, we are now looking at how we can participate in more action to help protect and sustain our planet.

We also attended a session entitled Connection to Nature which was a discussion with a number of authors including Jay Armstrong, editor of the Elementum Journal. The idea was to discuss what is so important about the embodied experience in nature? To discuss what it is like to go out into the wilds (however you define or experience them) and how we come back and share our stories. There was some reticence from the panel about discussing Healing and Nature. While some found this surprising, to me, and certainly in the philosophy and practices of Naturally Mindful and Tao Mountain it is not Nature which heals (remembering that we too are part of Nature and sometimes Nature can be vicious, destructive and deadly). Instead it is our connection, our engagement, our respect and support for the world around us which is healing. In other words to feel well, to feel whole, we need to engage, to come away from our screens, to look up and notice, feel, smell, taste, listen, to the waves, the wind the rain, the rutting of stags, the cry of the peregrine. When we do this our perspective changes and we start to heal ourselves by recognising our place in the Nature of things.

A wet, windy day above Ullswater, not the typical healing space
 but  one that engaged all the senses, provided a sense
 of achievement and helped us feel we belonged in this space