Hello everyone,
I hope you had joyful and peaceful moments within the Festive Season, and New Year arrived with a calm sense of change. I found this poem and it feels relevant to this time of moving forward.
Maybe this will be 'your year'.
Maybe it won't.
Maybe you are exhausted from 2023 and you don't have the energy to jump into 2024, determined to claim it for your own.
Maybe you're happy for 2024 to pass gently, with no huge mountains to climb or valleys to negotiate.
Without the peaks and troughs
and the highs and lows.
Maybe you're simply ready for 2024 to be consistently peaceful and calm.
There is something incredibly freeing about feeling content with where you are. Without the need to keep chasing more, more, more.
If you keep climbing mountains, soon enough you'll run out of sky.
And when you do, you might realise that you never really stopped to look back at how far you've come; you never really paused to admire the view.
If there's a mountain in your midst and you're determined to climb it,
then go for it. Let this be 'your year'.
But know too that this can be 'your year' if you simply reach the end of it
happy and at peace.
Because life is not defined by the giant peaks and the constant climb.
It is defined by the tiny, every day things that add up to great contentment.
So you don't need to take the wheel if you're too exhausted to drive.
You don't need to steer this year away from where you are,
if where you are makes you happy.
Maybe 'your year' will see you climbing mountains.
But maybe - just maybe -
it will also see you sitting back
and enjoying just how far you've come.
By Becky Hemsley 2024
2024 events ...
FREE ONLINE EVENT with Vidyamala Burch
I am looking forward to sharing many different and varied mindful activities throughout the year starting with a Morning of Mindfulness 9th February. Come and explore Mindfulness, its concepts and ideas, and practice some meditations with me in a tranquil and light filled venue in the heart of Hereford.
MINDFUL PRACTICE MORNING
Feb 9th from 9.30-12.30.
Fee: £30 to include drinks
MINDFULNESS ALL DAY RETREAT
On Friday March 1st, join me in a Day Retreat, Spring Awakening, at Hellens Manor, where we will find deep nourishment of body and spirit in a range of meditation practices and activities, complemented with a healing immersion of a Sound Bath. Find solace and joys of Nature in the beautiful spring gardens and grounds of the venue in Hellens Manor, Much Marcle. Book your place now, limited spaces,
Fee: £65 with light lunch and all drinks.
Find support and grounding when you join my regular online Mindful Drop Ins, every other Wednesday evening, 7pm-8pm. Give yourself the gift of a regular practice to steady and re-align with the calmness within you that gets easily overlooked and stretched. Find the details in the link.
Cost: £10 per person (or pre-book 4 sessions for £35)
What I Offer...
Get in touch
Mindfulness crept into my life about 12 years ago after I completed a Mindfulness Based Reduction for Stress Course [MBSR], offered by my workplace, a Hospice. The teachings touched a need in me to want to experience life in a calmer and more enjoyable way; to find ways to be present helpfully to the way my life was unfolding rather than engage in battling with the automatic behaviours with repeating conflicting thoughts and emotions, with all the attendant emotional and physical fallouts.
Comments