Smoke on the water

Smoke on the water?  Well...nearly.  Sort of.  Oh, okay, let's call it steam.  :-)

There are two pools at Schloss Pichlarn.  One is indoors and a very fine pool it is.

But then, if you walk down a few watery steps, you come to a barrier.  A pair of glass gates.  And you wait until they recognise your presence and then they open.

A cold gust of breeze slices your shoulders and so you sink down under the water surface and swim through and out, into a world of mist and sun and sky and mountain.

Today the sun was so bright that I had to shut my eyes and swim blind, face turned to the mountain slopes, still spotted with snow.

I am quite alone.  At least, if there are other people, they are ghosts. And it is so quiet here, so peaceful.  Just the odd flute of birdsong.  Just the sound of water slapping a slow rhythm of waves.

Yesterday the wind was playful - it blew the leaves into swooping dives.  I thought at first they were tiny birds or huge brown butterflies.  But no.  And a rainbow arced the dip between two peaks.

But today the leaves lie exhausted.  The trees are patient, still awaiting spring.  Still.  And I am still too.  Floating, drifting, face turned to the sun.  A chill warmth.

Do you strain?

'Do you strain?' asked Dr Schaffler as I sat in his consulting room at Schloss Pichlarn in Austria.

I frowned a little.  We had already debated my bowels and their various movements in huge detail and at great length and had established everything was fine and dandy.  But hey, this was a German doctor practising Ayurveda (the ancient Indian school of medicine) in Austria - and so I just figured I was getting a triple dose of stool searching.
'No, I'm very rarely constipated,' I said.
He laughed.  'No. I mean...do you...are you...always straining in your life.'
'Am I stressed?'  I thought about it.
'Yes, of course, sometimes.  I'm a freelance writer so either I have too much work and I worry about getting it all done, or I have too little and I worry about that instead.'

He gave me one of those looks that says 'you've just dodged the question' but he let it lie.  In fact, he made me lie on the couch and prodded and pulled and poked my abdomen.

Dr Schaffler is not happy with my abdomen.  Which is fine, because neither am I.
'It's weird,' he said.
There you go - official confirmation.

He explains how it's going this way when it should be going that way, and is fat here and thin there (which isn't good) and he tells me I need more yoga (well, yes, if only my yoga teacher hadn't upped and offed to India) and more breathing (proper breathing) and...  he gives me two sets of herbal preparations and advises I steer clear of bread for the time being.

Then he looks at me again and says.  'Grief.  Your pulses talk about grief.'
'They do?'
'They do.  And strain.  Not stress.'

And so I smiled vaguely and muttered about language barriers.  But then, a little later, as I was leaning against the edge of the outdoor pool looking up at a bright clear sky above snow-capped mountains, I realised I was clenching my jaw so tightly that my teeth were creaking.

Damnit, he's right.  I do strain.  I always strain.  Too darn hard.  At everything.  All the time.  I mean, for heaven's sake, I'm here in this gorgeous spa and I'm even straining to relax.  Ye gods.

And you?  Do you strain?  :-)

Dream healing - a Greek pilgrimage

I'm off again on my travels in a few days.  To Austria this time - a  big hotel that majors in golf and ayurveda, which I have to say I find a puzzling combination.  But still...four handed massage?  Bring it on! 

And I've been chatting to a  fellow journalist about spas/retreats we have loved and it dawned on me that, for the most part, it's not the actual spa bit that is the most important - it's the retreat bit.  

If you read this blog regularly, you'll know how much I loved Serenity Retreat.  An exchange on Twitter the other day reminded me that there's another place I adore equally.  The Spirit of Life Centre, based on the Peloponnese in mainland Greece (yes, I have a bit of a *thing* about Greece).   I wrote about it on my other blog but I figured maybe I should share it here too...

They do a ton of yoga retreats and walking holidays, and 'just sit back and watch the waves' breaks... But I went on a dream healing pilgrimage - and it was just magicial.  

From around 500 BCE – 500 CE the cult of Asclepius, the gentle healing god, flourished in Greece.  Recognising the intrinsic link between mind and body, the Asclepian experience advocated a mix of nature cure (good food, exercise, hydrotherapy, bodywork) and psychotherapy (talking cure plus therapeutic catharsis through watching drama).  However they went further.  Central to ancient Greek therapy was the concept of the healing power of dreams.  After you had undergone suitable physical and mental preparation, the temple therapists would decide that you were ready for ‘incubation’.  You and your fellow pilgrims would be swaddled and left in the ‘abaton’ – a room dedicated to dream healing.  Here you would lie down, sleep and hopefully dream.  The dream would either result in a spontaneous healing or it would give instructions on what should be done to affect a cure.  

When I went the pilgrimage was curated by Kerry Kousiounis, founder of the Spirit of Life Centre, and psychotherapist Barbara Siddall - and they have coaxed the ancient system into a format that works a treat for modern day pilgrims.  Trips to various Asclepian temples are mixed with days at the centre practising meditation, visualisation and breathing techniques. The process is gentle and pleasantly non-dogmatic.  We didn’t have physical ailments but our group possessed the usual modern-day neuroses and anxieties.  These were addressed with some surprising results and quite unexpected outbreaks of emotion. But whenever it started getting a little too heavy, we’d be piled into the minibus and deposited somewhere gorgeous for a therapeutic dose of splashing in the sea.  All, I suspect, a cunning part of the cure.

The food was absolutely delicious.  Mostly we ate out – and exceedingly well – at local Greek restaurants.  Fresh salads (often picked while we waited) and vegetables, tangy seafood and freshly grilled meat, followed by fruit and washed down with a little wine (and the local liqueur) made for the best healthy eating plan I’ve ever experienced.  We seemed to stagger from one huge meal to another so I was stunned to get on the scales back home and discover I’d lost three pounds.  Forget detox, the SoL diet is much more fun.

Travelling in a group is always an alarming prospect but thankfully it jelled well here.  There were eight of us in total (three from the centre and five pilgrims) – three men, five women, ages ranging from early twenties to seventies.  Everyone had an interest in holistic healing but thankfully there were no zealots.  While ‘on the road’ we stayed in pleasant small Greek hotels while on our return to the Spirit of Life Centre, ‘home’ was a large house in the seaside village of Stupa, a few miles away from the centre itself.  At first I was unconvinced by this arrangement – how do you immerse yourself in the healing experience while surrounded by the lures of a package holiday?  However, it actually works very well indeed.  Having ‘time out’ away from the delightful but more rarified atmosphere of the centre and temples was therapeutic in itself.  Breakfast overlooking the beach, mid-afternoon swims in the silky waters, late-night giggling over drinks back at what was swiftly dubbed the ‘Big Brother house’ were beyond beneficial.  We disparate band of pilgrims shared our stories and, despite our wildly varying ages and experiences, bonded well.  It was a kind and caring group and, in the way of travellers thrown together, we quickly fell into roles and routines.  

Be warned, there is a lot of travelling (in a minibus made as comfortable as possible with piles of cushions and a large ice-box of drinks and fruit).  But the scenery is stunning and the myths come to life as you roll past the mountains where the Spartans trained or break for lunch in sleepy ancient Corinth.  There were scheduled stops to visit temples of Asclepius at Athens, Corinth and Epidavros – all very different, all quite mesmerising.

There’s something quite different about visiting ancient sites as a pilgrim.  You turn from tourist into supplicant – instead of perusing facts and pondering the merits of the architecture, you try to tune into the feel of the place, learning to keep your senses open and your intuition on full alert.  At Epidavros, the major Asclepian sanctuary, we scattered like leaves around the site.  I found myself in a shaded ruin, away from the main focus, and lay down on the cool stones.  Crickets chirred in the background and a soft breeze ruffled my hair.  I dozed and, surprisingly, dreamed.  A man with gentle features and strong arms walked towards me and cradled me in his arms.  Then, plunging his hand into my stomach, he pulled out a snake.  It lasted seconds but felt extraordinarily real and pleasantly purging. 

Leaving was the hardest part – it was a serous wrench to tear myself away from the peace, the fun, the total acceptance and tranquillity.  I think we all left quietly changed in subtle ways.  I know I did. 

For more information on the Dream Healing Pilgrimage and other courses at The Spirit of Life Centre see http://thespiritoflife.co.uk

My own personal star-disco...

So last night…I went outside to get the SP in and I paused, as I always do, to look up at the night sky. And…wow. Just…wow.  There was this huge star – right in front of me – and it was flashing, pulsing…unbelievably huge and unbelievably flashing and unbelievably pulsing.  And I thought…plane…or space station or whatever.  But no.  And so I checked out the other stars and they were all doing it too – it was like being in some enormous cosmic disco. 

I’m not talking twinkling, by the way, but full-on flashing.  And they were so clear, so bright…  And I thought how odd it was that, while I can barely see something right before my nose, I can see these stars so clearly when they’re so very far away.

And, I confess, I had a bit of a moment of ‘what the hell?’  As in, am I seeing the last hurrah of the universe?  Am I going to watch that huge star explode and set off a chain reaction?  And I felt…curiously calm about it.  

But then I thought…maybe it’s just me and my crappy eyesight.  So…

‘Hey, James. Come out here,’ I called.  And he wandered out.

‘Look at the stars.  What do you see?’

‘Huh?  They’re flashing.’

‘Ah, you see it too?’

‘Yeah. Weird huh? Atmospherics or something.’

And he wandered back inside, back to Facebook.  But I was mesmerized, entranced. Whether or not it could be easily explained away, it was so beautiful.  I wanted to share it yet there was nobody around with whom to share. 

So I fired up Twitter quickly, scanned my timeline, expecting to see exclamations of awe, explanations of atmospherics or whatever and…nothing.  People were getting excited about some sewing show on TV.

-          Why are the stars flashing?  I asked. 

-          Bad contact. Thump the sky. They’ll come on properly, said one wag.

-          Seriously, if you have dark sky, look up.  I said.

And, out of the 3339 people who follow me on Twitter, three did.  Just three people got up and went outside and looked.  And, you know, that kind of shook me.  There was the sky, doing this amazing *thing* and barely anyone could see the wonder of it.  But hey… I may not plug myself into the TV but I certainly float around anaesthetized in other ways.  And then I thought, hellfire, Jane, what’s with the judgemental stuff?  You like stars, they like…felting. So what?

Anyhow. Eventually I realised I was freezing cold standing out there, and going star-blind, so I came in and ran me a big deep very hot bath and slathered on the last of the Connock body oil – which makes your skin feel sooo silky it’s untrue.  Because after all that looking, I needed a bit of feeling.  And I went to bad and let my mind wonder through the universe…going far enough to be able to look back at Earth and see it quietly pulsing

And this morning I checked up the flashing star thing and Google told me that it is caused by ‘disturbances between your eye and the star.  If disturbances are as big as the star, the star will appear to twinkle.’ And that if you hitch a ride in a spaceship, there is no more twinkling, cos you’re outside the atmosphere.

So, given all the stars were ‘twinkling’ there was a lot of big disturbances out there. But we’re still here, eh?  Aren’t we? 

And then this morning, at the gym, as I put my iPod on shuffle it played me first this...

followed by this...

Stars eh? 

When winter won't let go

So. The cold continues to bite. Two of my fingers keep turning numb and white. As if I’m turning to ice. Why? I ask them. But I know the answer – the cold is not just physical; it echoes through my emotional bones.  And it’s not just me.  It seems that, right now, so many of us are enduring the bone-cold, a spiritual ice winter.  

You can say it’s the lack of light, the absence of sun, the harsh economic climate – you can claim a gazillion reasons.  And we hustle around looking for solutions, for sticking plasters, for ways to push away the cold, to make it back off for a little.  We can dose ourselves with alcohol or food, we can cry Prozac, we can distract ourselves in a hundred different ways. Me? I fight the urge to swathe myself in blankets and dogs and huddle the fire – I make myself go out and exercise like a loon.

But then, I wonder. What do we lose when we seek to avoid?  Life is a process; a circle; a spiral. Yes, we can blitz ourselves with positive affirmations; we can go Zen and remind ourselves that it’s not really real, hence it doesn’t really matter but…  Is that missing something?  Is this process just a case of existing, of passing time in as pleasant a manner as possible?  Sometimes I think so.  But then thinking…can be overrated.  So what do I feel?

I go back to Alchemy. Calcination. Dissolution. Separation. Conjunction. Fermentation. Sublimation. Radiation. Seven steps. Circling. You reach the end and start all over again, just on a different coil of the serpent. And it’s not just you, or I – it’s us. “The human heart is the crucible of the cosmos.” I can’t remember who said that but it chimes – our inner lives are not our own; they belong to the cosmos.  If we want to change the world, we start with ourselves. 

Is the world served by squashing down bad feelings; by denying them; by refusing to countenance anything except light and bright as ‘good’?  I don’t feel so. If we push away the ‘bad’ it festers – not just in us but in the world around us.  It’s like foisting our dirty laundry on the world, leaving our smelly socks in the hallway.  Bad housekeeping.

The dark nights of the spirit and soul (yes, I feel they are two different things) are not mistakes, not aberrations, or so I feel – they’re not signs that we’re not good enough, not spiritual enough, or whatever.  They’re a vital part of the process.  Sometimes we have to be cut off from everything that gives us joy, everything that makes life seem worthwhile – every height has a corresponding depth. No?

So what do we do?  Nothing much. Abet the feelings, amplify them even – we so rarely listen to the messages written in the body.  Our bodies, our subconscious (the two in cohoots, or maybe the same?) are trying, I feel, to communicate with our conscious minds all the time. Yet we refuse to pay attention.  Sleep. Breathe. Daydream. Wonder where the body and mind wander. Try a secondary process (if you're primarily visual, turn your images into sounds; if you're a musician, maybe you need to move, to work with the somatic?).  But mainly...wait. 

Well, that’s what I do. Hmm.

Carshalton

I hadn’t thought about Carshalton for ages.  The town in which I grew up.  But I went looking for a picture to post with the words on my previous blog post and stumbled into a time warp. So many memories crowding in, one after another. 

Carshalton – a small suburban town in what was once Surrey (now Greater London). Nothing special. 

My family had drifted there from southern London – I’m not sure how or why.  A curious place to be.  But as good as any other, I suppose, and far better than many.  When I look at the pictures gleaned from an idle Google search I am amazed at how green it was/is, and how much water there was/is. 

I’d forgotten it was a place built around springs.  Yet, now I ponder it, I remember that as a child, I spent swathes of time poking around Carshalton Park, around The Grove, the Ponds (oh how I wanted to row out and camp on the tiny island), Beddington Park (The Grange) and the Wandle river as it wandled its down from Carshalton Park to the High Street.  My mother said she remembered when the water even ran alongside the High Street. There’s even a well – Anne Boleyn’s Well. 

Yup...did a lot of that... 

Carshalton Park is interesting.  All kinds of odd earthworks and concavities. As children we called them, variously, The Frying Pan, The Saucepan (aka the Little Dip) and the Big Dip. Water seeped out of springs into the Big Dip and I spent hours doing…what?  I can’t remember really – just that the emerging water was an endless source of imagination and wonder. I could spend hours there. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.

So much water here when I was small. :(

The river had once been presided over by a Victorian pseudo-grotto – with a largeish cave and two smaller ‘sentry boxes’ either side.  Once there had been statues there, or so I’m told but they had long been removed and, when we were small, the place had a sinister air – we thought it the home of vampires and never turned our backs on its black interior.

My grandmother is buried in the churchyard of All Saints.  Originally outside the hallowed ground (she had converted to Plymouth Brethren so was considered outside the remit of the Church of England).  

Next to the church sits The Greyhound, one of my father’s favourite pubs. When I was small, very small, I’d go with him and sit in the little tiny back bar.  When I was a teenager I came back, with friends, and graduated to the main bar, overlooking the ponds.

And this (below) was the somewhat hideous Methodist church to which I shamelessly switched allegiance at an early age, on the promise of a free book of Bible stories and a chocolate bar.  My brownie and girl guide hall was around the side and, the moment I type that, I can smell the musty tarpaulins and tents underneath the stage.

I used to walk to school (we had no car and, anyhow, everyone walked everywhere then). First to Stanley Park Infants and then a short hop over the playground to the Junior school.  Next to Stanley Park (obviously) – a somewhat inferior affair with only the small saving graces of a lacklustre playground and a cut where the railway passed.  Distinctly lacking in water. 

Yes, we had green buses, as well as the red London ones.  This one would take me all the way to my senior school in Cheam, if I let it. 

And this was the pub I hated, with drunks falling out of it, men leering…I used to cross the road and walk swiftly by.  Now, apparently, it is quite different – a pukka beer pub, beloved of men like Adrian.

Anyhow, enough of all that. The past.  Funny old place, huh?  

But it makes me wonder...do they affect us, these early places. Would we be different people if we grew up elsewhere?  What do you think? Where did you spend your childhood and did it affect the person you are now?  

A Very British Writer Blog Tour

I don’t usually go in for blogging round robins or memes.  But Vivienne Tuffnell asked nicely and I was needing a break between two projects, both equally unappealing, so I figured, why not? 

It’s about being a British author – a concept I confess had never occurred to me before.  About looking at whether national characteristics (whatever they may be) influence our ‘work’. Now, see, I don’t really feel of myself as British, or English, or anything really, so I’m on a sticky wicket (ho ho) from the start.  But I’ll give it a whirl. There were questions and I like being asked questions, almost as much as I like ticking boxes.  Click here to read Viv's responses (and do check out her books). 

Carshalton Park - there was a river when I was small.

Q: Where were you born and where do you live now?

A: I was born in Surrey, in a place called Carshalton, which has now been swallowed up by Greater London.  When I look at it with my adult eyes (which is not that often) I see bland suburbia.  It seems so small, so trammelled, so claustrophobic.  But, as a child, I managed to find endless magic. I poked around old Iron Age works, explored grottoes and springs, climbed hills, mapped woods. I saw minute worlds in walls and wasteland, in parks and back gardens. I made myself a small fiefdom in the arms of an apple tree; a cave under the roots of a lilac bush.

Now I live in Dulverton, a small town in the Exmoor National Park in South-West England. It’s wild and really just ridiculously beautiful – a land of echoing moors, steep combes (valleys), tumbling rivers and the crashing sea.  You should visit, you really should.

Q: Have you always lived and worked in Britain or are you based elsewhere?

A: I have mainly lived and worked in England. Apart from a year’s sojourn in the USA. However I have severe travel lust. Both for places inside the British Isles and Ireland and also abroad. 

Q:  Have you highlighted or showcased any particular part of Britain in your books, a town, a city, a county, a monument, well-known place or event?

A: My non-fiction books are, by necessity, universal, not tied to place.  However the Somerset Levels were inevitably an influence on the books written while I lived there – The Natural Year in particular charts a year of living consciously with nature. 

When it comes to fiction, Exmoor is a natural muse.  Both Walker (my shamanic novel) and Samael (the as yet unpublished first part of my YA Angelsoul trilogy) are, in part, extended love poems to Exmoor.  The second part of the trilogy shifts to London, a city I lived in throughout a large part of my twenties and which I also love. 

Q: There is an illusion – or myth if you wish- about British people that I would like to discuss. Many see Brits as ‘stiff upper lip’. Is this correct?

A: What is British?  Britain is a melting pot. It’s a mongrel country on the whole now. I feel that ‘stiff upper lip’ idea is well and truly defunct. It describes a clichéd view of an upper/middle class Britain that no longer really exists.  However, where I live on Exmoor, there is a certain reticence, a pretty well entrenched sense of privacy. People tend just to get on with life; they don’t whine and, when life goes tits-up, they tend to turn quietly to the bottle or just get out the shotgun.  Anything rather than go talk about it.  Psychotherapists don’t tend to set up shop here.

Q: Do any of the characters in your book carry the ‘stiff upper lip’ or are they all British Bulldog and unique in their own way?

A: No. No stiff upper lip, no British Bulldog.  There are some characters who are, reserved, shall we say – the strong silent types…Ruth in Walker and Eden and Zeke in Samael come to mind but then they are, variously, shamans and mages, and those types tend to keep their own counsel.  And my books also contain characters with less savoury characteristics - small-minded racism, sexism and a tendency to domestic violence. Sadly those aren't just prevalent in city life. 

Q: Tell us about one of your recent books.

A: Let me talk about Walker .  I wrote it because a few things collided. I started practicing shamanism and, at the same time, I discovered an amazing place on the Exmoor coast – Culbone – it was just numinous.  On a subsequent visit, I found a small hut offering DIY refreshments and some very old books for sale by a woman who’d lived there which confirmed my conviction that it was seriously magical.

Walker is the story of a teenage boy, Hunter, who nearly dies in a car crash and comes to live on Exmoor with a grandmother he has never met.  It’s a pretty classic quest yarn – on the outside Hunter has to find the lost kashebah, a non-physical temple that can help protect the world’s soul. On the inside, he has to find himself, or – if you like – his own interior kashebah.  That makes it sound a bit worthy and it’s not (at least I hope not).  I’d like to think it’s a fast-moving adventure yarn that just happens to be based on esoteric fact. 

Q: What are you currently working on?

A: Making money to fund my travel habit. *smile*

Q: How do you spend your leisure time?

A: Meditating, exercising, tramping the moor, sitting by the fire musing, listening to music, mind-wandering.

Q: Do you write for a local audience or a global audience?

A: I’d like to think global.  Certainly my non-fiction books have sold all over the world – The Detox Plan was translated into over 20 languages, if I recall (it's now available in an updated e-edition).

Q: Can you provide links to your works?

A: Of course.  The easiest place to find all my books in one place is via my Amazon author page.  As I said before, my fiction titles are still books in search of a publisher – but you can read the first few chapters here and here. 

Q: Who’s next?

A: Ah, I’m not good at picking and choosing.  A lot of people who read this blog are writers, I know, spread across the length and breadth of the British Isles. I’d love to know their thoughts.  If anyone takes this and runs with it, let me know and I’ll post a link to your answers.