I went for a long walk today in the beautiful autumn weather, kicking my feet in the colourful leaves and gazing through the trees to the bright skies and I found myself pondering on how much we can learn from Nature.

Nature never complains – it just gets on with life – allowing the seasons to come and go – the storms, winds and rain all have their place and give way to the sunlight and nurturing warmth. Everything is transient, the storms do not last forever. The trees shed their beautiful leaves, leaving the branches bare, and the leaves in their turn nourish the ground, feeding new life and growth. The shedding of the leaves allows the trees to bed down, hibernate, rest in the winter and then in the spring new shoots appear, renewing life.

The same can apply to us … we weather the storms and sadness of life, bedding down, turning inwards, allowing ourselves to be with the more difficult times. Then from this introspection and reflection, having nurtured and nourished ourselves through the challenges of life we can rise up with more strength and grow from our wounds. It is a wonderful way to look at the difficulties we have in life – to see them as a means of growth, of a way to learn about ourselves and others, to understand how we deal with challenges, how we are when life does not go as we had planned.

In addition to this, the people in our lives who we find the most challenging, the most difficult to be with can be our greatest teachers. These people are usually the ones to whom we are the closest, such as members of our family. When we observe ourselves struggling with these people it can be interesting to watch what it is in them that rubs us up the wrong way. Then we can reflect this back on ourselves – as if we are looking in a mirror. Often we will realise that what we see that is irritating in them, we can also see in ourselves and this is why it irritates us so so much. This can be a most challenging thing to do but most interesting and rewarding.

We can perhaps allow ourselves to sit with these feelings during our yoga sessions and allow them to sink into us and watch how we feel as a result. By allowing ourselves to be with our feelings, no matter how uncomfortable they are, can reduce the impact these emotions have on us.

There are spaces in the general yoga sessions tomorrow at 10 am and on Thursday at 5.50 pm so do let me know if you would like to drop in, I would love to see you.

I hope to see you soon – have a wonderful week!