Wild Hearts Belong

04/11/2025

What if the one thing you choose today
is to do nothing?
what if all it took
was five minutes?
what if all the things that swirl inside
dark and stormy
were able to find calm
and stillness?
what if the moment you stop
when you feel restless
when you feel anxious
you breathe
let yourself be
just as you are?
what if you whispered to your heart
"I am OK"?
what if, in the quiet
and the nothing
you become no one
simply a vessel of pure being
and love?
because when you choose
stillness over chaos
being over doing
this moment over yesterday
or later
or tomorrow
you choose you
so choose
you

03/11/2025

A bowl of steaming, spiced root vegetable soup is so heart and belly warming at this time of year.

Also, super easy and quick to put together, and even batch prepare for a week of delicious, warming lunch.

My children and I enjoyed this with the tear and share monkey bread they made yesterday. Yum yum.

Here are my tips to supercharge your soup:

1. Select any root vegetable you have - carrots, pumpkin, squash, turnip, fennel, beets...
2. Sauté onion.
3. Add spices, like super strength anti-inflammatory turmeric, ginger, cumin, paprika.
4. Add water and lentils (lentils for plant-based protein)
5. Add mushroom stock or powder if you have it - porcine gives a great flavour. Then Simmer for 30 mins while you get back to work or play or rest
6. Crush garlic and add just before you turn the heat off. By crushing and adding last minute, it releases the allicin (immune fighting compound) and preserves all the benefits of this amazing herb.
7. Add grated ginger at this time also.
7. Add nettle or spinach for a hit of greens and let wilt.
8. Take off the heat, add either miso, tamari, pink salt.
9. Whiz up and serve with fresh coriander and/or some nutritional yeast.
10. Choose sourdough or homemade bread with olive oil.

09/10/2025

Amazing! This is my aspiration - to be 102 and still practising and teaching yoga.

Yoga has changed my life beyond measure. I have more awareness than ever, of my body, emotions, behaviours and of the natural world around me.

I practice nearly every day - whether it be a five minute movement session, something more focused or a longer session.

Note I said nearly every day - everyday-ish is where it's at! Sometimes time permits me to choose between a walk OR yoga, and sometimes I choose a walk.

Find an activity you love. Find time for it. Find JOY from it. Eat well. Prioritise keeping your stress levels in check.

And as this wonderful French Yogi says - "voila". 💜

For decades, Charlotte Chopin has been teaching yoga in Léré, a village in France. At 102 years old, she maintains a simple approach to aging well.Video by T...

06/10/2025

Hen of the Woods / Maitake - the most scrum-didily-umptious mushroom to find / cook / eat! Looking forward to a family harvest of this fine specimen in a few days. 🤞🏼☀️🍄

06/10/2025

Now more than ever we need nature. We need to be in nature, to love and protect it. We need to connect with real people and get outdoors as much as possible.

With AI taking over so many things, with tech being the focus is so many peoples lives - nature can give us gems that computers never can.

If we all take two hours per week minimum in nature, physical and mental health will improve and you will feel more at peace, with less stress, better sleep, better focus and more joy.

This is just a quick post after returning from my morning walk. After noticing the sweet solo of the robin in the hedge and the vibrant rosehips in the glistening sun...

It comes after watching my children return home with their father yesterday having spent four hours in the forest foraging for mushrooms and other goodies.

And my daughter self-soothed herself with robin song when she found herself to be upset for not having found the first porcini mushroom! Now that's a life skill!

Who knows, one day, I might take my work into this domain entirely - helping others connect with nature, especially children - so that we may wake up to a brighter future for us all. 💚

For now I leave you with the lovely Michael Mosley's Just One Thing. And I get on with my writing job while my 'unschooled' children design their story characters. And then we go out for a cycle with our dearest friend, Nature. 🌿

Dr. Michael Mosley explores the positive effects of spending time in nature.

28/08/2025

Just a little musing for this morning… I did a meditation and it suggested to look for a sign that I had connected with the cosmos.

When I opened my eyes, my cat, who was upon my lap, suddenly reached out his paw and placed it on my clear quartz crystal.

Then, when I left my house for a walk, I was greeted by a rainbow 🌈

As I came towards the end of my walk, I noticed a beautiful, solitary chicory flower, blooming from a bed of sun burnt grass. 🌷

Chicory is sometimes used in meditation to purify the mind and heart, offering a sense of inner peace. 🤍

So homeward bound to brew a cup of dandelion, burdock, chaga and chicory coffee and go about my day with a sense of ease and serenity, knowing I am exactly where I should be.

I hope this blessing may gift you with hope and positivity, too. And a reminder that slowing down and getting quiet is sometimes the best medicine. 🍁

26/07/2025

I've been researching medicinal mushrooms again, and in fact, not only for my family but for my cat, too!

Chaga is one such medicinal mushroom that holds a special place in our hearts. We discovered wild chaga in the spectacular Scottish wilderness on our first holiday there last year. They grow on the sacred Birch tree, demonstrating the beauty of the tree and fungi's symbiotic relationship.

I plan to extract its marvel benefits this weekend and bottle it in a tincture - we already enjoy chaga tea, but when it is double extracted, it gains both the water-soluble benefits (begta-glucans) as well as the alcohol-soluble properties (antioxidants).

And did you know that the chaga mushrooms is one of the most antioxidant rich foods in the world? (Second to cacao!).

For now, I shall go and brew myself a nettle and chaga tea. I will share my article on chaga when I have uploaded it to my website. :-)

Any questions? Just ask... 💜

24/07/2025

Health and healing aren’t just about what we eat or drink - they are so much about what we speak and think, too.

I've had some life-lessons of late and I have realised that when things aren't right in our bodies, rather than just treating the symptoms, we can look deeper than the surface and ask ourselves some questions, like...

+ Have I been under stress recently?
+ Have I experienced loss and grief?
+ Have I been taking care of myself?
+ Have I been lost in my head with thoughts?
+ Have I taken a break recently?

A real-world example is my daughter and I contracting a fungal skin infection from our cat! All of us have been through a lot of stress and worry and heartache over the past six weeks.

Our elderly cat died, then we adopted a kitten, who, it turned out, was not well, and she ultimately died, after so much effort and TLC from me - I'm talking sleepless nights, constant researching and care - BUT, not even that was enough, and I am the Queen of Cats!

And I was so hard on myself that she didn't live. And this is a big patten that I repeat on cycle!

I was really so broken from it, but have taken this latest setback as a reason to look inward, to reflect on my pattens that really don't serve me, how I spend my energy - how much I gave to her and neglected myself in the process - and asked myself what parasites I could cleanse from my own mind? What can be released? What has to go?

So we have been enjoying lots of rest, nature, slowness, baking, doing nothing, napping, along with herbal remedy support and so much TLC - to ourselves and our gorgeous cat, Mr Col.

It has become SOOOOOO clear to me that whole body healing requires the whole caboodle to make a shift. And that our health and happiness is absolutely worth the compromising, the saying no, the effort of actually taking a moment to look deeper and ask some meaningful questions, and then doing the meaningful work.

This is when true healing happens. 💜