Prompted by Nature

A meditation that takes you through the five layers of the energetic body to the space of oneness that we all have.  

First I guide you into the visualisation of moving through each layer surrounding the body and then into the centre of the rib cage, the still, unchanging space in which we can find peace and unity.

You are then left for 3 minutes to focus on this space and then invited to write whatever comes up and through.  As always, no judgement, no expectation, just write in whatever way you feel drawn to at that moment.

Enjoy!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of Prompted by Nature.  This week you are in for a treat as I’m releasing the conversation I had with the wonderful Dr. Sheree Mack a couple of weeks ago.

Sheree is the Project Coordinator for a Heritage Lottery Funded project where she works with Northumberland National Park Authority, Durham Wildlife Trust and the National Trust, to offer opportunities to BAME communities to spend time outdoors to develop and deepen their relationship with nature.

Sheree’s practice manifests through poetry, storytelling, image and the unfolding histories of black people. She engages audiences around black women’s voices and bodies, black feminism, ecology and memory and facilitates national and international creative workshops and retreats in the landscape, encouraging and supporting women on their journey of remembrance back to their authentic selves. She is currently writing a mixed-genre memoir around a black woman's body with/in Nature.

In this conversation, we discuss:

Sheree contacted me a couple of months ago and I jumped at the chance of having her on the podcast. We had had the conversation ‘booked in’ about a month before it happened and the week we spoke turned out to be a real tipping point in our history with the death George Floyd happening just a few days before and the Black Lives Matter campaign ramping up with protests and marches across the globe. The conversation then became all the more pertinent and important in discussing the link between social justice and environmental justice.

You can find Sheree at www.earthsealove.com and on Instagram @earthsealove and also Sheree’s personal page www.livingwildstudios.com and on Instagram @shereemackwrites

As always, if you enjoy the interview, please give it a five-star rating and a positive review - it really does help to push these voices out there. And you can find me over on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on my instagram @prompted.by.nature

Remember to stay around until the end when I’ll be giving you a little insight to the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!

The Climate Reframe list can be found at www.climatereframe.co.uk

For this meditation and writing prompt you will be taken on a journey to connect with a 'wild' character in your imagination.  This can be used as a creative writing exercise, to develop a character you may be working on in your own writing, or as a journal prompt for your work around wellbeing.

I guide you into the meditation through visualisation techniques, leave you for 3 minutes and then guide you out.  You can use this as a 'traditional' meditation or as an exercise in free writing by using the questions as prompts.

Enjoy!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Hello! Welcome to episode 11 of Prompted by Nature. I hope you enjoyed your Solstice and were able to make the most of the extra long day!

In this episode, I’m speaking to Jan Stannard, founder of new rewinding charity, Heal Rewilding.

Jan Stannard is a co-founder of Heal, the new UK charity which is crowdfunding for rewilding. Jan has a business background and is a resilience specialist and former coach. She still serves on the boards of two businesses she helped to found. Her work with wildlife has been local and very practical. She founded a swift group which has the world record for the most swift boxes installed in under a year; she was a co-founder of Wild Maidenhead and leads the group's Wild About Gardens scheme; and she project managed the largest installation of amphibian rescue ladders in England. Nature is what makes her heart sing, she says.

Heal's mission is to buy land for rewilding in the English lowlands, to help with nature's recovery, to combat climate change and for wellbeing.

In this episode we discuss:

I’m really excited by everything that Heal are up to and the possibilities that it could open up for the UK. If you’d like to donate to the charity, as I did, you can find them at www.healrewilding.org.uk You can also find the team on Twitter and Instagram @healrewilding

As always I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram @prompted.by.nature. Remember to stick around until the end of the episode to hear about the meditation dn writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the episode and I’ll speak to you after!

Helen x

Welcome to my meditation and writing prompt for my interview with Jini Reddy.  For this one, it's more of an explanation.  You'll decide on your own prompt - fractals, patterns, similarities, synchronicities, details, reflections and such - and use a walking meditation to help you to slow down body and mind into a state of deeper 'noticing.'  

At the time of recording we are in the latter part of 'lockdown' and so if you are still shielding, this is still possible to do inside your house, in a community garden or in your own garden.

Please do let me know how you get on - www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature or www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Happy writing!

Helen x

Welcome to episode 10 of Prompted by Nature. I hope this one finds you happy and well wherever you are!

This week I’m excited to release the conversation I had with the lovely Jini Reddy back in mid-May.

Jini is an award-winning author and journalist, originally born in London to Indian parents who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa. She was in Montreal, Canada and has a passion for writing travel, nature and spirituality. She has been published in publications such as The Guardian, Time magazine, The Times, Sunday Times Style, National Geographic Traveller, and BBC Wildlife to name just a few! Her first book Wild Times, which I highly recommend, was published in 2016 and she is a contributor to the forthcoming Women on Nature anthology.

Her book Wanderland, which we discuss in the episode, is utterly beautiful and charts Jini’s search for the magical ‘Other’ through her travels around the UK. From the blurb, ‘along the way she tracks down ephemeral wild art, encounters women who worship the goddess, falls deeper in love with her birth land, and struggles, but mostly fails, to get to grips with its lore. Throughout the book she rejoices in the wilderness we cannot see and celebrates the natural beauty we can.’ This is a book full of magic and if you’re feeling a bit disconnected from nature, I highly recommend this as a gentle nudge to get back into it and remind yourself that you and nature are both as magical as each other!

In this episode we discuss:

Before we get started, we had a few connection issues, which you’ll hear in the episode, it doesn’t detract from Jini’s words, but explains if there are a couple of fuzzy bits.

If you would like to find out more about Jini, you can find her on her website www.jinireddy.co.uk and on Instagram @jinireddy20 and Twitter @jini_reddy Jini also offers mentoring and consultancy for writers which you can find out more about via her website www.jinireddy.co.uk/work-with-me

As always, you can find me on the website www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on the ‘gram @prompted.by.nature and if you like this or any other episode, please do leave a five-star review wherever you are listening or share with your circle via social media or in real life. I’m passionate about getting these words and voices out there, so anything you can do to share the podcast is always welcome!

Remember to stick around until the end when I’ll give a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you soon!

A meditation centring around envisioning a utopia constructed by your hope and optimism for the future.

I guide you into the meditation and then stop speaking for three minutes.

The prompt is to create a description or other piece of writing around the world that you see in your imagination and to then write a set of action steps that can help to create this world.

Happy writing!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to episode 9 of Prompted by Nature. Today I’m speaking with Lucy Jones, the author of the amazing book ‘Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild.’

I came across Lucy via the Extinction Rebellion Rewilding group on Facebook, where someone shared the book when it had just come out. The title took me and I immediately bought it from Waterstones. What I love about the book is that not only is it beautifully written, mixing forms and genres, but it is also thoroughly researching, covering every aspect of the argument for ensuring accessibility to high quality green spaces for all in our journey to see everyone in mental wellness.

Lucy Jones is the author of Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild (Allen Lane). She previously worked at NME and the Daily Telegraph, and her journalism on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, The Sunday Times, the Guardian and the New Statesman. Her first book, Foxes Unearthed, was celebrated for its 'brave, bold and honest' (Chris Packham) account of our relationship with the fox, winning the Society of Authors' Roger Deakin Award 2015.

In this conversation, we discuss:

This is such a pertinent conversation to be having right now. Lucy and I had this conversation back at the end of April and the subjects we cover show just how complex a topic this can be whilst at the same time highlighting that more needs to be done not just by governments and local councils, but by us as individuals and communities. This conversation follows on beautifully from my conversation with Ian, which I released last week, and is the scientific grounding we need to prove why projects such as his work. I urge you, whenever possible, to get this book and be inspired by all the amazing things people are doing to support those facing mental health challenges. And I really did mean it when I said a certain someone in power needs to read this book! Maybe I’ll send him a copy!

Lucy has given me permission to read a little extract from the book, which begins as a look into a collective dystopian future (after which it switches form to non-fiction) so I thought I’d start with the opening pages.

You can find Lucy over on her website www.lucyfjones.com and on Instagram @lucyfjones You can buy her book over at Waterstones. Why not buy it from here or from your local small bookshop and then post a review over on Amazon?

As always, I’m at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram @prompted.by.nature and if you’re local to Brighton, keep a look out for some new small-group meditation and writing events for women popping up from July onwards in woodlands in and around Brighton and East Sussex. And if you’re able to a 5-star review wherever you’re listening to t his would be amazing and really helps gets the podcast and these voices and conversations out there!

Remember to stick around until the end when I’ll give you an insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after

A guided meditation in which you will be invited to create and explore your safe space.  This could be done just for your own self-care to help with your creative writing or if you are working on creating depth in a character, narrative or setting.

I begin my guiding you into the meditation and then there is a gap of 5 minutes for you to explore and spend time in your space before you are guided out and invited to begin writing.

Enjoy!  

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello, my love! And welcome to episode 8 of Prompted by Nature - episode 8, can you believe it!

So, this week, I’m sharing with you the conversation I had with Ian Solomon-Kawal, co-founder of the May Project Garden in 2007 alongside Randy Mayers, back in May. Ian spent his youth as a carer for his mum who suffered from mental illness. When she died he wanted to do something positive in her memory and to set an example to others facing similar social and economic hardships.

MPG work with urban communities, to address poverty, disempowerment and access to resources and influence. They provide practical, affordable and collective solutions for people to live sustainably and disengage with power structures that don't serve their interests. In their own words, MPG thrive for an alternative system and lifestyle based on nature, community, biodiversity and creativity. Despite recent formalisation, they've remained independent, informal and egalitarian in their values as well as in how they work with people and interact as a team.

Some of the topics we discussed were:

It really was an honour to speak to Ian, who serves a community in an area with which I worked as a teacher for a long time and many of his frustrations at the education system in particular echoed my own both during my time teaching in South London and now as I watch my own children move through the system (albeit the very early years). The work that Ian and the whole team at MPG does is of vital importance to our young people and I really enjoyed hearing about his commitment to diversity and inclusivity, and how he has created a safe space, something I speak of a lot, for the young people he works with to express themselves creatively and to enjoy and learn about nature, permaculture and biodiversity in an urban setting.

If you would like to find out more about MPG and their work, or to donate to them as I did - it’s really simple and you get a nice than you note from the team after, you can find them at www.mayproject.org where there are also links to their shop to purchase tracks and t-shirts, and what you can do to help them grow. To find out more about Ian and his creative work, garden workshops and opportunities to hire him as a speaker, you can go to www.3kmt.co.uk

If you’d like to get in touch with me, as always, my website is www.promptedbynature.co.uk or you can find me on Instagram @prompted.by.nature And if you’d like to leave a 5-star review wherever you’re listen to this, or share it with your friends in real life, that would be an amazing way to support all of the people behind the voices on this podcast.

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll speak to you after!