Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Making my way very slowly up a hill in Exeter back to my mum's house.
You can probably tell this is beside a road so you'll hear the occasional car go by and potentially the chatter of people who overtake me because I'm going so slow.
I just don't want to break out into too much of a sweat.
As much as possible hugging the edge of the pavement where there's shade from the trees and I'm just taking one slow step at a time,
Taking a bit of shopping back up the hill to Mum.
And today is all about slowing down.
I am actually going very slow now,
But that's because it's so hot.
But I want to talk about slowing down.
It's something that I keep coming back to.
And I met a friend this morning for a cup of coffee and we had a wonderful conversation.
She's an old school friend.
And earlier this year she joined me on a long distance trail in Devon,
Which is where I live,
And we walked for 10 days around the area I live in called the South Hands.
And she subsequently has gone on to walk the Camino to Santiago and the Camino she walked was through Portugal.
And she's back from that now,
Having spent,
I think it was about 15 days walking.
So walking about,
I don't know,
12 miles a day,
Something like that.
And just getting up and walking each day with her husband and some friends.
And I was curious to know how she'd got on and we fell into a conversation which completely reignited and inspired me because what she was talking about just resonated on a deep level particularly with the pilgrimage I've walked last year.
Now last year I walked for 48 days one day after another on a pilgrimage in the UK.
It was following energy currents and I'm writing up a journal which I'm going to get published very soon so it's quite fresh in my mind reading back over the days that I was walking And it's almost like,
Um.
.
.
It's over a year ago and it's almost like I'm witnessing another person's journey because it feels so far away from my experience.
It's over a year ago now.
And so actually speaking to my friend who's only just recently got back sort of less than two weeks ago from a long distance walk,
I became inspired by what she had to say.
And in essence,
What she said is that as she slowed down,
She found that in slowing down,
Slowing down walking,
Her mind slowing down.
She began to experience life more.
It was as though her senses became more alive.
For me,
The way I see what was going on there is that as her mind settled and she had less to plan and think about all she was doing,
Was getting up and walking each day.
As her mind settled,
She began to experience a settledness and a slowness that is an absolutely nourishing,
Healthy,
Delicious space to be in.
And it reminds me so much of how I felt as I was walking my pilgrimage last year.
You see,
What seems to happen on these long distance walks or these times of repetitive actions over a series of weeks,
What seems to have happened for me is I began to slow down.
My whole world slowed down.
I began to feel healthy,
Not just physically,
But mentally.
I began to feel spaciousness and ease.
And this was what I was hearing and what she was saying.
And suddenly she began to feel an affinity towards nature in a way that was new to her.
She was talking about wanting to hug trees and just sensing or smelling.
She described smelling the eucalyptus trees as she walked through some of the forests.
It was a really visceral,
Real wonderful experience that she was explaining to me and I fell into her world and was reminded of what that was like when I went on a pilgrimage myself.
So today is a reminder for me really,
And maybe it will resonate for you too,
But I've kind of fallen into that habit now again,
Where I'm getting through a list of tasks and to-dos.
So it's like my world is full of things I need to do and then I'll slow down.
And what I'm being reminded is that it doesn't work like that.
The way it actually works is that as you slow down,
The world slows down.
It's not about getting through tasks and to-do lists as quickly as you can.
It's about sinking back into that essence of who you are,
That place before thought where thinking no longer is so noisy in your world.
And that's what I was reminded of today.
Let me know your reflections on slowing down and don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
