Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and today you find me on Dartmoor which is where I live actually in the southwest of England.
It's a moorland and I can just walk for five,
Ten minutes from my home and I am on this expansive open land that we have access to.
I can walk across it and I'm standing beside a finger post,
A wooden post which has got three pointers in different directions pointing out public footpaths and it just seems very apt that here at the beginning of the new year as we're looking ahead today to the new year that's what today's reflection is all about that I'm standing beside a signpost.
So today as every day this January I am reflecting and settling into nature and what nature,
What wisdom is coming from nature that I might reflect on for myself and share with you and today at the beginning of this new year we're looking ahead.
We're looking ahead to what may happen in the new year.
Yesterday we reflected on the previous year and we reflected on our learning and the gifts that we might have learnt from the situations,
Circumstances,
People and experiences that we had of the previous year.
Today we're looking ahead but not in the traditional way of a new year where we might plan or strategize or write down resolutions and things we want to get done or to do.
There's nothing wrong with that it's just that it's not what I want to share with you.
For me it's about settling so my request is that you settle into yourself and you bring your awareness inwards in towards your soul and you just allow yourself to gently imagine this year ahead at the moment it is just in your imagination it doesn't exist.
It's a space,
It's a potential,
There is a rich nourishing open space that is waiting for you to step into it and very much like in nature as I look around me there is a lot of potential.
There are the leaves that are composting back into the earth,
There is the darkness of the soil that's awaiting new growth and new shoots.
It feels as though it's a blank canvas and like nature I'm not asking you to force things to happen or to try and make things happen.
Instead sit with what is,
Sit with this potential,
This creative potential that is the new year that is stretching ahead of you and be present to it.
Allow your mind to settle,
Allow your thinking to still,
Bring yourself back to the present moment to now,
Feel that in you.
When we aren't lost in our thoughts of what happened yesterday or last year and when we're not lost in our thoughts about what may or may not happen in the year to come,
We are present and this is the richest and most nourishing place to be.
Be present,
Be in the now and feel that gentle curiosity of wondering what might emerge for you this year,
What are the nudges that you might follow,
What is the learning for your soul and your soul's journey this year.
Allow nature and the natural rhythm of the world and of you navigating your way through the world,
Allow it naturally to unfold and to create and be present to it as it unfolds.
I hope you've enjoyed today's five minutes in nature.
Please do join me in January as we listen to nature's wisdom and discover together what we are being asked to see and to feel and to experience as we move through the new year.
