Honouring International Women’s Day: Tuesday 10 March, The Beach in Nairn
The Essence – in a few words – relating to give to gain, wellbeing & nature, locations, career & workplace, education & learning, writes Morag Paterson.
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ix of us – including Misty our gentle dog companion – wander on windswept beach, spontaneous poetry, taste of gorse bloom, billy- kettle fire and tea and flapjacks in the shelter of
the dunes, conversation, listening, being together, tuned into ourselves, each other and the space, the joy of a sense of belonging, synchronicity, inter-connectedness, magic of nature’s natural rhythms which reminds us of what-is. Our conversation included and transcended:
POWER-OVER V POWER-WITH
A complicated, inter-connected, dynamic, multi- dimensional picture, with ebb-and-flow moving to all- of-us-interest from self-interest, in constant movement – and effecting our relationships with self, others, our communities, our politics, our world and creating our policies, structures and thence world-views and actions.
YIN-YANG Non-gender female-male characteristics, traits, principles, energies: how we toggle between, and have both within us (and in everything else). Female characteristics include being, stillness, rest, introspection, passive, receptive, rounded… And male include active, creative, sharp, positive, doing… Both are within us all, and acknowledging this toggling can help us create spaces and energies of hope, patience, transcendence – both-and rather than either-or. This moves us towards celebration and honouring of balance of both, and focus on imbalance to bring balance – for example, honouring women and their stories white-washed out of historical narrative. Virginia Woolf said “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman”.
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COMMUNITY V COMPETITION “Co-creating the fix in twenty-twenty-six” by supporting, being with each other, drawing each other up v pulling each other down, creating healthy boundaries relating to ebb-flow of yin-yang and core values, morals and principles gained through awareness and increased conscious thought and action, with kindness and inclusion-to-transcend habitual practice. The joy of simply being with others, heard and seen and acknowledged.
SHIFTING FROM HEAD TO HEART – A RADICAL REWIRE That is, moving from the brain-mind to the heart-mind assists us to create spaces and places for self and all on this planet, including care around the use of language and the energy and type of power within (see new B-level for example).
JOMO – FOMO Reframing Fear of Missing Out to Joy of Missing Out – pointing to adopting the pace and rhythm of nature, her secret being patience, connecting with the deep, unseen and forever present if only we can tune in, listen, reflect, remember… which requires tuning out of societal information hotspots and attractors that compete for our attention, taking our focus to Doing rather than Being. This strengthens our sense of heart-felt response and gives us hope, which ripples out into our being and into the world, wherever we find ourselves.
Acknowledging the simple joy of being in this space together as nature, contemplating all that is in the world, considering and integrating our hopes, we set off back through the dunes, and away, uplifted with freshness of spirit…
Morag Paterson –
morag@morag-paterson.co.uk
Co-facilitated with Stephen Wiseman of Nature 4 Health –
www.n4h.co.uk
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