Prompted by Nature

Something a little different for you this week!  This week's writing prompt asks you to spend some time with a tree in your local area, noticing all the little details that so often go unnoticed as we walk by.  This prompt is about telling the story of the tree, perhaps in the style of a fairy tale or a fable, or maybe something more modern, telling the story of everything the tree has seen in its life, the changes and people and so on.

Please do share any writing with me if you'd like!

Happy writing!

Helen x

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to my interview with Nana Tomova from The Story Apothecary. So, how are you? Things are changing quickly, aren’t they? I hope you’ve been able to find space to breathe, write, and do whatever you need to stay creative and centred.

Nana is a storyteller based in Sussex. She is a storyteller of oral stories, of poetry and of images through her photography. She is drawn to stories about nature and our relationship with her. Nana loves to tell transformational tales about strong women, and Bulgarian and Slavic Stories. Nana was born by the Black sea in Bulgaria and loves telling stories of the deep blue sea and translates and tells Bulgarian tales which have not been heard before. Her telling has been described as “An ocean of inspiration”, “Spellbinding” and people say that she "Has the power of making the audience feel in safe hands".

Nana’s background is in mental health where she worked as a pharmacist for a decade, and this inspired her to create the Story Apothecary podcast where she dispenses medicinal and healing stories for the whole world. Nana’s inspirations for her poetry and photography is nature, which she finds rich, beautiful, inspirational, wise, and healing. When writing about or photographing nature, she is in conversation with her.

In this conversation, we talk about:

Nana has the most calming energy and I loved listening to her thoughts and insights. Please do go and listen to her new podcast and get signed up to her new Patreon, and be soothed by her stories and words. Stories have the power to transform emotions and mindset and therefore the world, and I’m such a big believer in the impact that these stories can have on our actions, especially traditional stories, which, when we explore their teachings and bring them into our own contexts, can expose us to perspectives we perhaps hadn’t encountered before.

You can find Nana on Instagram @Nana.Tomova and her storytelling walks are @walkinthewild.uk. Her website www.nanatomova.com and you can find more information about her Patreon on www.patreon.com/nanatomova

As always, stick around until the end and I’ll pop back to give you an insight to the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

And if you use the prompts from any of these conversations, please do share them with me as I love reading your words and am working on setting up a section of my website dedicated to your writing. You can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram and Facebook @prompted.by.nature And please do leave a five-star rating wherever you are listening and, if you have a little review would be wonderful too.

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

Ps.  The link to Layla Saad's, Me and White Supremacy book is here.

A meditation and writing prompt for my interview with Tiffany Francis-Baker in which you will guided through a visualisation that takes you under a night sky.

As always, if you find your mind running somewhere you don't want it to go, stop, take a few moments and come back to it.  It that doesn't work, stop and come back another time, releasing all judgment of yourself.

Please do share any writing that you create from any of my meditations and writing prompt with me - I love reading your words!

Find me on Instagram @prompted.by.nature or on my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk

Happy writing!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to episode six of Prompted by Nature. How are you this week? It’s been a bit of a funny one all told, as we begin to tentatively emerge from our cocoons. I have to say, my little family and I are still remaining close to home and enjoying the delights our local area, learning about the newly-bloomed flowers and the bees, birds and butterflies around us.

In this episode I speak to Tiffany Francis-Baker, a write, artist and environmentalist from the South Downs in Hampshire. As with many people I interview, I came across Tiffany’s work on Instagram and was immediately drawn to her third book published through Bloomsbury, Dark Skies, which I quickly ordered and flew through. Here’s a little extract I loved from the book….

With a mixed background in the arts rural heritage and conservation, Tiffany’s work is fuelled by a love for the natural world and a passion for protecting it. She writes and illustrates for national publications and has appeared on Radio 4 and Channel 4 and was Writer-in-Residence for the Forestry Commission's centenary year in 2019.

In our conversation Tiffany speaks about:

Listening back to this this week has been a real tonic for me. Seeing images of how things have pretty much returned to earth-ravaging normality in many parts of the post-covid world this week has left me feeling bleak on so many levels, and reflecting on this conversation, which took place a couple of weeks into lockdown, has given me the little push I needed to pull myself up and remain active in doing what I can to be a part of the healing of our planet in any and every way possible, however small these actions may seem sometimes. I really do encourage you to get hold of Dark Skies, which explores our changing relationship with darkness in nature. Why not order it from your local small bookseller and then post a review on Amazon to help more people get to know tiffany and her work?

If you would like to connect with Tiffany, you can find her at www.tiffanyfrancis.com or on Instagram @tiffany.francis.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please do stick around until the end when I’ll pop back and give you a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode.

And if you use the prompts from any of these conversations, please do share them with me as I love reading your words and am working on setting up a section of my website dedicated to your writing. You can find me on www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on Instagram and Facebook @prompted.by.nature And please do leave a five-star rating wherever you are listening and, if you have a little review would be wonderful too.

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

In this meditation, I'll guide you through a breathing practice known as Bramhari, or bumblebee breath.  

In the first part of this episode, I explain how the meditation works; I then guide you into a state of focus and relaxation and then you will practice the breath in your own time.

For the breath, take a normal inhalation and then for the exhalation you make a humming sound until you have no more breath left to exhale (allow it to fade naturally rather than trying to make it as long as possible).  We practice three of these with hands below the navel, three with hands either side of the chest, three with hands either side of the top of the head.

Focus on the vibration that is created in your body and any images, words or phrases that come up.  You don't have to write about bees in this one, just allow whatever comes through after you've tried the breath to come through, without judgement or expectation.

Let me know how you get on.

Enjoy!

Helen 

www.promptedbynature.co.uk

www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature

Hello and welcome to episode five of Prompted by Nature! How are you? Have you been able to get out and enjoy the sunshine?

It’s World Bee Day this week so I thought, what better way to celebrate than to share my second bee-inspired conversation? A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with the lovely Faye, the Founder and Creative mind behind BeeVive. I first came across BeeVive via Instagram and was immediately drawn to their ethics and commitment to helping to protect and care for our bee friends.

By way of introduction to Faye and BeeVive, twenty-six year old Faye is an enthusiast for fashion design, saving bees and creating sustainable, healthy ways of living! Together with her partner, on the outskirts of Exeter, she founded BEEVIVE, a product-based company (and soon-to-be initiative - they have some exciting plans, as you’ll hear!) inspired by a spontaneous encounter with a tired Bee whilst on holiday in Cornwall. BeeVive is bee revival keyring that help you to be ready to help a bee in need. Each keyring is a plastic free pod that contains a glass vial of the same sugar solution used by beekeepers like Jonathan, who we heard from in episode four.

In the last year their community has grown and they are thrilled to have the revival kits stocked around the world, from Australia to Brazil team of Bee-savers, equipped to rescue a Bee in need and spread the word, meaning that even more people have an essential solution for a tired bee to help it continue its mission pollinating planet Earth. Faye and her partner design and assemble each keyring (by hand!) in Exeter, UK and have a strict no-plastic policy - my kind of people!

In this episode we discuss:

Their company ethics including their packaging and supply chain choices

What the product actually is and what’s it’s for

How to know if a bee is in trouble

Their vision for the future and future plans

How Faye herself stays creative

Her views on ‘fast fashion’ as a ‘sustainable fashion’ graduate

The joy of saying ‘yes’

Faye’s enthusiasm for her work was infectious and I was genuinely inspired by both the product and her company’s plans for the future. At the time I didn’t yet have a revival kit but I have since bought one and love it. My six-year old daughter especially loves it and is constantly looking for bees to ‘save’ - I’ve told her we’ll know one when we see one and that we can’t just go shoving sugar water down bees’ throats if they don’t need it! It’s on her next birthday wishlist too :-)

If you’d like to found out more about BeeVive and buy a kit, just go to www.beevive.com or you can go to their socials to found out how people are using theirs. I especially love their instagram feed, where they often share videos of their customers reviving flagging bees they come across in their areas - very much cuteness! Their instagram is @beevive_uk and their facebook is @beevive.

As always stick around until the end when I’ll give you an insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode. Remember to come and say hello on any of my platforms: my website www.promptedbynature.co.uk and on instagram or facebook @prompted.by.nature. And please do pop a five star review wherever you get this podcast as it really does help to push these conversations and prompts ‘out there.’

Enjoy the conversation,

Helen x

Meditation and Writing Prompt for my conversation with Jonathan Alawo (episode 4a).

As always, if you find your mind wandering off to somewhere you don't want it to go, and you can't bring it back to the focus point, stop and come back later releasing any judgement or expectation.

If you'd creating a piece from this prompt, I'd love to read it and share it on the blog.  Just pop to the website and go to the contact page www.promptedbynature.co.uk/contact or share it with me on www.instagram.com/prompted.by.nature 

Happy writing!

Helen x

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the Prompted by Nature. This week you’ll meet Jonathan Alawo, a bee-keeper with a quiet passion for bees and protecting our fuzzy friends. Jonathon tends to a hive in one of my favourite places, and where I’ll be holding my day retreats once we’re all allowed out again, the beautiful Wilderness Woods in Sussex.

As you’ll hear, Jonathan knew from a young age that he wanted to become a bee-keeper after seeing hives from the car window whilst out driving with his Dad. After his wife, Nina - who I connected with via Instagram last year, and who runs hypnobirthing classes at Wilderness Woods - bought him a beekeeping taster session for his birthday 5 years ago, Jonathan began to tend to his own hive and, in his own words, ‘has been all-in ever since.’ Jonathan sees his beekeeping as 'a small contribution towards a shared responsibility as stewards of the planet we call home.’

Jonathan’s passion for and dedication to the bees he cares for is clear all the way through our conversation and I loved learning more about bee behaviour and how we can ourselves tend to the bees in our own area.

In this conversation, we discuss:

How hives are formed and the science behind beekeeping

The symbiosis of beekeeping

His sadness at losing a hive and his sense of responsibility for the bees

Responsible beekeeping

How we can help bees

The meditative nature of beekeeping

And he shares his biggest teaching from the bees

I loved this conversation and to me it highlighted just how important it is to push those in charge for more wild, biodiverse spaces and also how we ourselves can help to ensure the safety and health of bees by creating these very spaces in our own back gardens - or even in a window box…nature doesn’t need much - in order to do what we can to see our fuzzy friends flourish. A one point, Jonathan shows me a photo of some wax, and I’ve put the image of this in the show notes on my website if you’d like to have a look and get a sense of what he’s talking about.

You can find Jonathan on Twitter and Instagram both at @bees_inthewild; on Facebook @beesinthewild (all one word) and his website, which is currently under construction is www.beesinthewild.com

Just a little note on the sound: There were a couple of muffled patches of the conversation, possibly connection-related, that I didn’t realise until I began the editing process so if it seems to jump in a couple of places, that’s why! Technology’s great when it works, not so great when it doesn’t!

Please do stay around until the end when I’ll give you a little insight into the meditation and writing prompt that follows this episode…all inspired by the bees, of course.

If you’d like to connect, as always my website is www.promptedbynature.co.uk or I’m usually to be found on Instagram @prompted.by.nature. If you like this or any of my other episodes, I’d love it if you’d leave a 5-star review, which I’m reliably informed by other podcasts I listen to helps getting the podcast ‘out there.’

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

Welcome to your meditation and writing prompt for my conversation with Nathaniel and Fiona of Weeds in the Heart.  There are two parts to this meditation, one gives you instructions as to the outdoor part of it, mentioned at the end of the interview, the second is the actual meditation.

For this meditation and prompt, you'll need:

Some time outside

A space in which you will not be interrupted

Your notebook and pen

Please do feel free to share your writing with me - I love reading your words and would love to share them on my blog as time goes on.

Happy writing and enjoy your meditation!

Helen x

I’m really excited about sharing this conversation with you as it’s with two people whose work I adore. Nathaniel Hughes and Fiona Owen are the writer and artist behind the incredible book Weeds in the Heart. As I mentioned in the episode, I found their book completely by accident in a little bookshop in Stroud when I was away with my partner and children over the new year. It was Fiona’s artwork that first drew me in and upon opening the book I felt myself transported into a world of plants, weeds and utter magic!

As they mention, Fiona and Nathaniel have been working together for around six years creating the Weeds in the Heart books, a living, breathing project that will continue to develop and change with the seasons and the years.

In this conversation, we cover:

Their paths into Herbalism

Working with plants as spirits and allies

Why we don’t always have to ‘consume’ plants as food (something I needed to hear, as you’ll see when I speak of my hunt for wild garlic!)

The need to find our own herbal medicine path that is unique to the place in which we reside

I really do encourage you to practice the meditation that follows this conversation to really get a sense of what Fiona and Nathaniel are speaking about. I also encourage to get their book - it really is the most therapeutic book to read; the combination of Fiona’s illustrations and Nathaniel’s words creates an ethereal experience and it’s a book I often sit and gaze at when my brain needs some time out. It would be a perfect gift for someone need some reassurance or comfort at any time.

You can find the book on the main website:

www.weedsintheheart.org.uk

And Nathianiel’s main school page is:

https://www.schoolofintuitiveherbalism.weedsintheheart.org.uk

And Fiona’s stunning artwork can be found at:

https://johnandfionaowen.weebly.com

Please stay around until the end when I’ll give you a little information about the meditation and writing prompt I’ve created in the follow-up to this conversation.

As always, you can find me over at www.promptedbynature.co.uk or on the Instagram squares with my daily writing prompts @prompted.by.nature