Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott,
Walking down through the village.
Really just listening to the bird song,
My goodness.
It's early evening,
The sun is beautifully warm and I'm walking through the cemetery in our village which we have allowed to become a wildflower meadow.
At the moment the grass is quite short and I can see lots of prim roses,
Yellow and pink prim roses poking through the ground as well as some yellow celandines and yellow dandelions as well and I just smile when I come here.
It's such a beautiful peaceful spot and today is a reflection on what it is to get back to that space of being authentic,
That natural space and it's the opposite of what we're often taught in our culture which is often we're taught to learn new things,
New techniques,
Things to try and shift and change the way that we are in the world.
Maybe it's to shift our thought patterns and shift our limiting beliefs but we're often taught ways to try and change ourselves,
Techniques,
Tools,
That kind of thing and I met a friend today and she gave such a brilliant example that I wanted to share with you because for me it's not so much about trying to shift or change things,
It's about allowing ourselves to return back to our natural state,
That authentic place within us and she was enthusing about singing lessons.
She has joined a choir,
She is an older lady,
She's always thought she couldn't sing but she's been getting singing lessons and part of this choir and she is quite literally radiating joy with singing and today she was telling me about something that she had been working on with her singing teacher and she said he was trying to get me to free up my voice and she said I just couldn't work it out,
I couldn't work out what he was trying to get me to do and we tried all these different things and exercises to try and free my voice but I couldn't work it out and she said and then what he did is he got me to stand against the wall with my shoulders against the wall and to sing and she said and suddenly I could feel the freedom in my voice,
It was as though I was singing naturally and she said from that moment I then knew what it was that he was asking me to do,
I knew what it was I needed to practice and now whenever I get a moment I am practicing singing with my back against the wall,
Experiencing and getting my muscle memory to remember what it is to sing with that sense of freedom and I love this because what the teacher was doing with her was not trying to get her to understand a technique or to learn something,
He was actually trying to encourage her to unlearn something,
Unlearn some bad habits that she had built up around the way that she sang or the way that she allowed her voice to come out into the world and as she began to see through what she was doing she was able to allow her voice to come with freedom,
So it's not about adding new tools and techniques to what you do,
This is about returning back to that natural space within you that allows you to be you and the singing teacher allowed her to be her with her voice and it's the same with limiting beliefs and stories that you tell yourself is the temptation can be to try and get rid of them or to try and change them and what I would love you to experience is not trying to change what you are and the characteristics that come up that you want to get rid of,
It's to allow yourself to sink back into who you truly are and to feel what it's like to operate from this place in the world,
So let me know your reflections on this returning to that natural place,
It's not about learning something new,
It's about unlearning old habits,
It's about seeing repetitive thought patterns,
It's about returning to that natural space within you,
Do let me know your reflections on this and as always do join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
