Do something different every day!

Do something different every day is about stepping outside your comfort zone. Inside the comfort zone we know what, how, why. We know when, who and that-we-can. Inside the comfort zone we are relaxed and often happy, sometimes however it can allow boredom to seep in under the doors, frustration to breed like mold and given half the chance, killer complacency will climb down from the gutters and stifle life love and learning.

Doing something different can be something like cleaning your teeth with the opposite hand, taking a walk in a place you have not been before. Saying hello to a stranger or chatting to the person next to you on the bus. Stepping outside your norm awakens your senses, brings sparkles to your eyes, adds spice to life, lifts the blankets to allow air and sunlight to penetrate the known and lets you feeeel something new. It then lets you be someone AWAKE.

Sometimes a gem comes out of the challenge to do something different …. Something that is completely energising or healing or soothing… whatever it is your body needs right now can be found in the discomfort of NOT knowing. The mystery. The unknown. Magic. That gem may well be the start of something you want to continue to deeply experience her teachings, to really feel her in totality. Perhaps this gem can be bought into ritual.

Ritual may sound like a return to the comfort zone, and perhaps it is…. But with sacred intent, loving kindness and a will to go deep, this gem in ritual offers us depth to grow and the possibility to transform the shallow puddles in which we splash to deepen into pools of magical healing. Allowing time for ritual, time for observing our own self in that place, time for noticing the sacred world around us….. this is healing.

I am lucky enough to live by the best swimming bay in the world, int eh Clutha River. At evening when the light dims and bugs come out to play, the fish jump for their dinner, a sight we never see by day. With winter here is full force… and still I swim in the Clutha.

What draws me to the river daily is her mood, her power, her ability to cleans my emotional turmoil, release stresses, wash away pains. I stand for a while, up to my waist. Rocking from side to side I feel the cold water enveloping my hands, the movement shifts the water level up and down my forearms. I feel the cold at my skin and notice the warmth within. I am warm inside. I feel my feet on the gravel ground, they are warm, feet and stones connected are warm. I take a breath and slowly dive under, opening my eyes to the blue water and light above. I swim into the current, find a place in the flow where I am swimming and staying stationary, guided by the willows above me, the river, willows and I play here in our dance of flow for as long as my breath allows me. The cold feels warm. I lie in the current and float away from the trees, back to the bank and float upstream in the eddy.

Noticing when I am in the flow of the river, and when I am resisting the flow. “If it is too hard, you are going the wrong way” she says. I learn to listen and see and feel the river, watch her for hours, know that she changes her mood, just as I do, she is both calm and wild, just as I am. Knowing we ARE nature. Everything is as it should be.

Do something different every day, do it in nature, with nature, BE nature. Nature is a healing path.

With love,

Sonia.