Tag: health

Guarding falls into place

Guarding falls into place

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Since 2019, with a few short reprieves, my varied health issues kept me from my usual adventurous explorations.

NHS interventions have freed me from my armchair since the start of 2025 after months of recovery. I am so grateful for the treatment and care the NHS continue to provide.

I was “laid up”, though not laid low. Safety in the cocoon of home leads to “guarding”. I guard against making sudden movements that might cause pain, up to the point that I get to guard against moving out of the house.

I guard against thoughts of breaking free to go cycling and see the sea. I guard against the urge to roam at will, smell fresh air, discover new places, meet myself in the faces of new acquaintances.

Gradual steady improvements prompt me to book a July Green Immersion far to the south west. The call of the green wild represents freedom for me. Solitary walks in swishing green grasses, under trees where I look upwards, glimpses of far horizons, the flitting of insects, birds and the calls of birds.

My red heart continues to call out for the heart of the Big Green, till one morning I get up, go out with my good old walking staff and find myself ready to climb the big hill of our local nature reserve called Hengistbury Head.

I’m walking so very slowly. I stop every few paces to look and to take photos. there’s so much happening, so much to see and photograph. I’m surprised to be free of discomfort, and I’m listening to the song of my heart.

In the summer heat, I am stopping to drink from my water bottle. My slow pace, frequent stops and the rhythm of my breath combine. And so, I am receiving newness from all the growing things.

What is growing has its roots in centuries’ old rock and earth. My old thoughts are clothed in new emotions. Emotions are those old familiar half-forgotten streams of consciousness reinvigorated by this slow solitary progress along the sandy stony tracks in this delightful greenscape.

I rediscover the most extraordinary ponds high up on the north flank of this hill. The dragonflies time of mating is come. They whirr over the green leaf pads of water lilies in full flower. Lilies cream, carmine and white lilies. This is not at all a scene which is intended for me, who came walking this way in the heat of summer. Rather, it is the same scene of fertility and lush abundance that has been repeated over hundreds and hundreds of thousands of similar cycles, and I, a joyful Pixel of Humanity, am grateful to arrive fully present and able to drink in this elixir.

I make my way down to catch the hourly bus, and I decide to cancel my long-awaited and longed for holiday. Why undertake the travails of travel, when all the Green I could ever wish for is here on my doorstep!

I will soon return to this land next to the sea with its age-old landscapes. It offers me at age 79 so many opportunities for renewal, refreshment, and even rejuvenation.

In the name of the Big Green,

Love is present EveryNow

Me and my body

Walking in the Dordogne

I recently discovered that my normal way of talking about my abnormal health conditions has always been self-deceiving! I always “talk myself up” with family and friends. I say I am getting better, when the truth is I am getting better but so incredibly slowly, that it’s almost invisible to me.

I want people to think of me as on the “up and up”. But the way bodies repair themselves is massively slow and very different to how we all talk about our bodies. The lightning fast way our mind thinks and talks has nothing in common with the speed at which our bodies operate.

I have watched on during eight years and counting, as my body actively returns its systems to normal balance after a sudden onset of arthritis, five heart and one prostate operation and one month of intensive, damaging but successful X-ray therapy. I have managed my Sleep Apnoea well since Autumn last year. At the end of last year, I had to recover from a broken wrist after a trip-fall in the street.

What have I learned? I now understand my body has its own timescales when it gets going to repair and regenerate.

I directly compare the timescales my body follows to what I see in the natural world. A seed lies dormant in the dark. It slowly sprouts. The new sprout grows a little day by day. It will become a flower or a shrub or a tree over time. The time this regeneration takes is so many days and weeks and months of gradual return to normal that I need hindsight to detect and comprehend the growth.

I have discovered what joys await me when I can slow my expectations to be in balance with the processes my own body uses.

I used to reassure my friends and family how well I am doing every day. What I mean to say is how impatient, and even at times desperate my mind is with my inability to do the things I used to do at the speed I had been accustomed to do them. More difficult still is the way my mind lies to me and tells me I never ever will get better!

My mentor, Biodanza teacher and true soulfriend, Milarepa Malc Burgin used to say, “Be well. Go well”. This simple wish has become one of my guiding lights on this fantastic journey of re-Creation

As long as I take good care of myself, and I comply with my body’s demands in the way my family and friends wish me to when they say, “Take Care”, I can say with honesty, “I’m well and improving.”

~ Love is present EveryNow