Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and you find me leaning up against a boulder on Dartmoor,
Perched on this boulder.
The sky is quite cloudy and the sun has risen so that all I can see are these shafts of light coming through the grey clouds and there's sort of a mistiness in the air and a yellow of an illumination as I look out across the hillside.
It's a cool time of day and I am just on a very very slow walk.
Yesterday I was moving furniture.
If you know from or have listened to me recently you'll know that we're in the middle of decorating and moving a couple of rooms around and yesterday I was in what's going to be my new office and it suddenly occurred to me how I wanted the furniture that's all sort of scattered around the room and so I started heaving it into place.
My husband wasn't around to help me so I thought I'll just do it on my own and although my back was a bit achy because I've been doing quite a lot of lifting and moving things around I ignored the signs and my back just suddenly seized up and has been very very painful ever since.
So I've been out today walking and I'm just treading very gently and carefully.
I'm grateful to be out in the fresh air but knowing that any sudden movements are quite painful it's all fine and I'm not telling you about my back to get sympathy although I do feel very sorry for myself at the moment.
I'm telling you about my back because it was actually a really great metaphor for me about some of the things I do which is yesterday my back was a bit achy before I started moving furniture around but I ignored it.
I ignored it.
I overrode that feeling and carried on anyway and it got achier and I overrode that feeling and carried on anyway and then eventually I think the only way it could get me to stop was to give me quite a bit of pain and it certainly has stopped me and I'm going to give my back a rest now.
But it reminds me of that's a really good example with physical pain but to be honest it happens as well with emotional unsettledness.
I was talking to a client yesterday and she was telling me that she'd had this sort of sense of really feeling overwhelmed.
We talked about it before and each time I sort of remind her the conversation and she's like oh yes because the overwhelm that she feels is not telling her about the outside world.
The overwhelm she feels is reminding her to rest her mental mind,
To look within,
To nourish herself from a settled space and then from that space engage with whatever needs to be done.
So in the same way you can override that feeling of overwhelm and get busier and do more as in the same way I overrode my feeling of pain with my back and just carried on but if you do that the overwhelm or the unsettledness will ramp up until it gets your attention and I think it's just really wise to remember that.
So whilst I would prefer not to have an achy back I am really grateful for the message and the reminder.
For me it's a reminder to respect my body,
It's a reminder to respect the signals that my body gives me and that relates not just to my physical body but to my mind as well and to be kind.
So I'm going to be really kind to myself walking very gently,
Not doing anything too arduous physically.
I'm just going to nurse myself back to health and remind myself of the importance of really tuning into my psychological system and my physical body because that's where the information lies and that's where the wisdom lies and then making some wise choices once I tune in,
Making some wise choices about next steps.
