We have tipped into the second half of summer and are moving deeper into August. There is a happy tiredness to the plants, as though they too are worn out by their own exuberance and taking some necessary rest, a little softer and more frayed at their own edges. Everything is crisp; with lawns turned to savannahs, telling the story of a summer that is bound to take its place in the record books, filed away next to 1976 and all its folklore. The evenings, like the flowers have - dare I whisper it- begun to draw in, just a little. And so too the mornings, which are now more forgiving of rest. The changes are minimal but we know which way it is going. It would be easy - but premature-  to lament. We are still on the very gentle slope of the light curve, with everything that came before still to come and much of summers finery to enjoy- perhaps at just a gentler pace. For August is just that. A gentler version of July, the calendar version of the mid afternoon, where a quieter existence is mandatory, and a pulling back still very much advised; the arrow in the bow of September. 
I am hoping to spending the next two weeks with everything switched off - myself included- but there is lots of yoga available below to keep you going. I hope you can enjoy them, wherever you find yourself. 

There are five different sessions below, all themed, for you to use as and when. They are £6 a view, payable by the honesty box button below. The videos are available until classes begin again on the 5th September. Password is AUGUST22

‘The month of May in England , so long awaited, is the flower studded crown of spring, the final rising of the curtain on all we’d been promised, the shimmering threshold to the mansions of summer’
Laurie Lee

This weekend sees the 1st May, which marks the midway point between the spring and summer solstice. It is, in essence, the very height of spring; the culmination of weeks of blousy and heady growth in the natural world; of flirtatious blossom and the unfurling of leaf.
We have this year, been blessed with an immense amount of blue skied backdrop to all of this celebration. The light of the mornings have been a particular joy, dancing as they do on the floorboards by my bed, but the glory of spring is that even on the duller days, when the clouds offer up a more sombre pallete, there is always something heart lifting that draws the eye; stray bluebells in the hedgerows, clumps of cowslips, that electric green of new leaf.
But much as I love the flowers- and who doesn’t- my favourite thing about this time of year are the trees. Most have begun to leaf, some more fully than others- but almost all are in this liminal place, where there is enough leaf for colour, but not so much that the structure of the tree has been rendered invisible. The thoughtful mother of a friend pointed out this particular window to me, when I was eighteen and - I thought- unconcerned by such things, but I have never forgotten it. Nor failed to notice that for a very short time it makes every tree look like a painting.
For the spiritual rather than the religious, and those still wedded to the cycles of the land, May 1st is a big celebration. Across the world traditions abound and have always done; ritual fire lighting and even leaping, the making and offering of flower garlands, parades and dancing abound. It is in many places, a day of merriment and off work.
Many of our own rituals have been lost to the passage of time and our disconnect from anything that doesn’t offer up a consumer opportunity. But in rural England of old, it was always the norm to go May walking, to crown a May King and Queen, to dance around maypoles ( a tradition happily resurrected briefly by my children’s little village school for several years and which was pure delight) and to feast and frolic, ritually and with abandonment.
Spring itself was being celebrated, but also all the things we associate with it; abundance, beauty, fertility and creativity- an acknowledgement that life, at this very point is at its zenith but also a marker of all that is still to come. Because as beautiful as the start of May is, it is also the window on the rest of the light part of the year and is celebrated as such. In a sense it is not just the leaves are unfurling but our capacity for hope too.

​Much is said without being spoken. Conversations and words are only a part of a much wider vocabulary of the body. Without even realising it, we communicate with one another as much with hand gesture, body language and posture as we do with speaking. It is entirely possible to read the mood or the feelings of person by watching how they move and we are often swayed by the atmosphere in a room even when we are not privy to what is being said. I read recently that of all the cultures, it is the Italians who speak the most with their hands. What probably began as a means to overcome differences in regional dialect, gesticulation has become an entirely normal and expected means to communicate. But even those of us with hands that speak less, rely more than we think on movement to support what we say.
Our body also speaks to us. Sometimes its in a whisper - small inklings, intuitions, cravings and sensations are all part of the language of the body. Others times, and often when the whispers have been unheard, the body might begin to shout. Injury, chronic illness, extreme pain or the experience of heartache are all wholly visceral and harder to ignore.
The problem is, we often live entirely disconnected from our bodies, and without the quiet or the space to listen in. So signs that something needs tending can often go unseen or unheard for longer than is good for us.
Our mats are the perfect place to restore the balance. Yoga is, in essence, a conversation. We live in a  state of constant call and response; between body and mind, heart and head. And our practice can provide the perfect opportunity to listen in. From the moment we come to the mat, our attention is guided inwards. We are encouraged to explore the landscape of the body, inner and outer, and listen to its very particular language. The correlations between tensions and space, feelings that we often find nestled in muscles and organs, intuitions that lie within our bellies and heart spaces are all powerful ways to establish what it is we need, and how we might taylor our practice and our lives to accommodate what our bodies are telling us that they need.

My last four weeks have been a whirlwind.  I have been heavily involved in a community project to bring a group of nine Ukrainians to the UK and it has consumed my every waking moment, and oftentimes keeping me awake. Coupled with travel and children on holiday and Easter celebrations and significant birthdays, I have been in near constant motion. I thrive on motion, and its has all been entirely fruitful, but it is also- I know- unsustainable. I took to my mat yesterday- just briefly and for the first time in longer than I might have liked- and the conversation was clear. A scattered mind and tensions in all the obvious places made a meal of my own practice. But it was as fruitful as any more peaceful version. Because it suggested, or maybe even shouted, that what I need is - just for a time- is to recoil and to rest. Like a kite that has been let out a little too far, and threatens to get entangled somewhere out of reach, I need to use this week to gently reel back in.
So the practice this week is a selfish one, because I am offering you what I most need; a grounding and steady practice, slow moving and thoughtful, and crucially a chance to listen in.

Counting Your Blessings ( even when it feels wrong to do so)

It was a morning of blessed sunshine. Being a Friday, when I often gift myself a slower day, I stayed in bed a little longer, cup of steaming tea in hand, to watch the sunlight dance in rectangles on the floor. I expected, when I finally stepped outside, to be met by the bracing air of the day before. At this time of year there is usually an easy tradeoff; crisp blue skies means cold air, or milder air but you pay in grey. But this was the welcome combination of a cloudless vista and a distinct lack of brace. The kind of day you willingly turn your face towards. It felt like another assertion of the imminence of spring, though with even more capital letters.
The birds were singing louder in response, and I caught the sound, intermittently and for the first time this year, of our resident woodpecker. It was hard not to delight in it all.

And this was despite the fact that not especially far way, the first European war for many decades was now in full swing. Like many other people I had listened, discouraged and despairing, over my marmalade on toast, to the grave announcements of the BBC correspondents, reporting on the invasion of the Ukraine that was then just two days old. It was full scale, an attack on three fronts, the nonsensical actions of a man who- the commentators were telling us- was drunk on too many years in power and the desire to write his own history for Russia. Ordinary Ukrainians, who until only a few weeks ago lived lives much the same as our own, were now fleeing their own homes for a destination entirely unknown or hiding in a network of underground bunkers. Someone reported that many of the children carried colouring books into the hideouts, which somehow felt both acutely and simply heartbreaking. Reports on the ground, from friends of friends, were of missiles going past their apartment blocks, of the sounds of bombs close enough to make the building shake, of husbands waving their wives and children off with a single suitcase each, whilst they stayed behind to take up arms. It was, it is, unfathomably and unequivocally awful. And in all likelihood, it will only get worse. It already has.
That life here remained ordinary enough to delight in felt decidedly strange, almost wrong. With all of that happening, how could I turn my face to the sun and smile? It felt audacious.

Fortune is a roll of the dice. Some of our lives we get to direct, but very often the fundamentals are happenstance. We don't get to choose them. And for the most part, we do not know what is coming. The line between bounty and tragedy is a paper thin one and all too easily leapt. A heartbeat is all that is needed for life, any life, to change wholeheartedly. Another time or another place and it could just as easily be us, all of a sudden facing unimaginable suffering.
There is a saying in Greece, wisely said by the older generation to the younger, that goes something like; 'where you are, I once was, and where I am, you will be’. It strikes me that along the same lines, ‘where anyone is, we could so easily be’. And the fact of it makes empathy both possible and necessary. But so too the need to count our blessings when we have them.

When others are suffering, it can feel feel acutely disrespectful to do anything other than mourn in sympathy and undoubtedly compassion should be our very first inclination. But then what? A friend of mine, whose book was launched Thursday, spoke of her discomfort at celebrating anything on a day that will now forever be inked in history books as the beginning of a European war. And I wholeheartedly understood her sentiments. Shared them even. Should I too have been cancelling the birthday dinner I was hosting for a friend? How entitled to happiness are we, when there is so much suffering. The question somehow felt fundamental.

The well being industry suggests, wittingly or unwittingly, that happiness is our birthright, and by default something is lacking in the world or ourselves if we don’t feel it. But Buddhist philosophy has a different premise. The first of the Noble Truths, which was the very first teaching of the Buddha when he became enlightened, is that Life is Suffering. Many would agree, but many also accuse Buddhism of being depressing as a result. But to my mind it is anything but.
The very existence of difficulty in the world, the fact of tragedy and the inevitability that we will all suffer- perhaps not at the hands of war, god forbid- but certainly at the hand of fate, makes us duty bound to help those in difficulty but also to acknowledge and appreciate the times when we are not. Caveated of course by due respect, quietly if necessary, but acknowledge them all the same. Because nothing, aside from impermanence, is ever guaranteed. Good moments, when they happen, are inevitably transient and so precious. One of the most remarkable qualities of the Ukrainians, alongside their immense and impressive bravery, has been the humour that they have managed to find in the worst of all circumstances. And already there are stories emerging of the kindness of strangers accompanying children across the borders and the rallying of strangers for their common cause. Throughout history, human beings have been defined not just by their capacity for inflicting horror, but equally and often more powerfully, their immense capacity for hope. In the context of the worlds suffering, happiness almost feels like a necessary act of defiance.
At the moment we might feel lucky. And there is no doubt we should be doing everything we can to help. But this is also a reminder that no one is immune to life vagrancies and the only thing we can count on is change. The fact and the inevitability of suffering makes it all the more important, imperative even, to honour its lack when that- by twist of only fate- is our luck.
Even if it that just means lifting your face to a sunbeam, on an unusually mild, late winters day.

WAYS TO HELP:
​
If you feel that you are in a position to and would like to help the people of Ukraine, in even a small way, I have gathered some organisations that you can give directly to.


The Red Cross has started an urgent appeal for the Ukraine. I am usually loathe to give to bigger organisations but the Red Cross are tried and tested in a crisis and always have an incredible presence on the ground.
https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/ukraine-crisis-appeal
To support charities that are on the ground, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain has started this appeal, which is giving directly to the charities themselves. It feels like a way to help quite immediately.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/helpukraine?qid=546c25e9bfc9c469b7f7a57691d3d7c4

I feel quite strongly that we should be accepting Ukrainian refugees into our country. If you do too, then sign this petition to help push the UK government to do more. The welcoming of family members is a start but not nearly enough. And the suggestion that others might be able to apply as fruit pickers is quite frankly insulting.
https://act.38degrees.org.uk/act/safe-passage-ukraine
I read in the Sunday Times this weekend that a number of schools are offering scholarships to Ukrainian refugees. If your child goes to a private school, it might be worth a letter to the Head to ask if they might consider doing the same. I have a template if anyone wants it.

Finally, this link is constantly being updated as the situation changes in the Ukraine and has a host of ways to help
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/ways-to-help-ukraine-conflict/

I have a very mundane superpower. I always know if I haven’t finished my piece of toast or have not drunk the last mouthful of a cup of tea, even if I have mislaid either.
I often eat breakfast on the trot, endeavouring to mistakenly multi-task. So often I will take my tea or toast with me as I stuff a washing machine, pair some socks or look for child’s mislaid shoe. And even if I am down to my last bite of toast that I have haphazardly balanced somewhere, or I have a single slurp of tea left in a cup that I have lost in the tread of domesticity, I know - somewhere in my mind- that something is unfinished. Which means I can reliably retrace my footsteps and find it, always with a sense of disproportionate satisfaction that comes not just from knowing my instinct was right, but with that last bite of anything.
In its simplest sense, this is an example of the Zeigarnic loop; the notion that unfinished tasks are better remembered than completed ones. It explains why it is impossibly difficult to get the attention of waiter in restaurant once they have served you your food and you’ve paid your bill. In their minds, you are a completed task, and they have busily moved on to the uncompleted ones. The notion has been used to devise strategies for better remembering things, with some psychologists even suggesting that regular interruptions to studying might help improve recall ( A fact -incidentally- that I am refraining from telling my teenagers).
But I am convinced that the concept also explains why uncertainty can be - for some- so difficult to live with. Because in a sense, uncertainty is an unclosed loop. It’s a question without an answer. Its a hypothesis without a conclusion. And as an interrupted thought form, it can take up residence in the mind, living there- like a stuck record- on its own merry loop. Why? What? How? When?,  Why? What? How? When? etc etc
There is no doubt some people are better at living with uncertainly than others. I have always been terrible at it. My indecisive husband, on the other hand, seems frustratingly good. 
For anyone who struggles with uncertainty, I believe there’s every chance that the situation we find ourself in might be proving especially tricky. 
We are living with unprecedented levels of uncertainty and a constant news cycle that feeds into it. I have had many a discussion with friends where we have concluded that if we had an end date, a time line where normality got drawn into the sand, then we’d be better able to cope with it. At least it would be something to work towards. The loop might still be - as yet- unclosed but we’d find solace in knowing when the ends might meet. 
Instead I have found myself regularly acting like some impatient person in a queue, constantly craning my head to see if I have edged closer to the front, only to slump when I feel I haven’t, or that worse still, that when I wasn’t looking a few more people queue barged and I found myself further away than I’d imagined.
And then sometimes I don’t feel like that. Sometimes, I stop craning. I stop refreshing the news, I stop thinking ahead, I stop making up spurious and pointless calculations based on population and vaccinations and case numbers, and instead I just take up residence in the day. And then- almost without fail-  I feel better. I might focus on a rare blue sky, the newly fallen snow, the sound of rain outside my window or even far less poetically the task of feeding my children, or mopping a floor, lighting a candle or simply following the steady rhythm of a weekday and my attention draws in and the anxieties fall away. This honed focus, this attention to detail, this living with awareness of the smaller things enables us to more fully inhabit the world that is still available and thereby naturally resist any unfruitful attempt to prophesise or catastrophise. We can- as the unlikely guru Laim Gallagher counselled us once- just 'be here now'. And if ever there was a time that called for present moment living, then this time, when life is at its most uncertain, is probably it. 
The truth is, we have no idea what might happen in this current future. But we do have some control over how we live in our present. Training in the art of staying focussed just on any singular day might prove a simple but possibly helpful state of mind in this moment. And because uncertainty is woven into the nature of things- we are always living on shaky ground just rarely see it in such stark relief- living a little more day by day could well prove a helpful tool to have developed, even when normality returns. 
As the wonderful Puma Chodren says ‘ “The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.”
(Incidentally, her books Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change and her latest one Welcoming the Unwelcome seem to have 2020/2021 written all over them- I highly recommend them both).

‘Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are’
-Benjamin Franklin

‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice then you have chosen the side of the oppressor’
- Desmond Tutu
​

In my most recent blog, I wrote about the tonic that is nature and the blessing that the coincidence of sunshine with lockdown has been. Which is all still true. But the truth is, its only half the story. Because if I am completely honest I have equally found the immense beauty of the weather and of nature over this time a little haunting. I have spoken to so many people who are relishing lockdown, attesting to loving it much more than normal life, willing it not to be over. I too have been one of the lucky ones, able to pick out the best of it, and concentrate on lockdowns silver linings.
But I have also never been able to shift the underlying feeling that this is no holiday. People are suffering , something that the beauty of the weather is in danger of masking - especially those of us who have the luxury of lovely gardens and incomes intact or government supported. There is the reality of global death tolls, of course, and the illness running rampant through care homes and amongst people at their most vulnerable and lonely. But there is also the much bigger picture of livelihoods lost, the backlog of urgent medical treatments been put on hold, the mental health of vulnerable children and the grotesque inequality in how this experience is affecting people- being in an ethnic minority has now been found catergoriacally to be a risk factor for COVID-19. And consider the horror of the lockdown experience for people who were already living close to the bread line or whose sunny days have been largely spent staring at what must feel like the cage of only four walls. We are in this together, but we are by no means experiencing it equally.
And then last week, whilst many of us we were no doubt basking in the twilight of another glorious day, the horror of horrors was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. A white policemen with his knee to the neck of an unarmed black man, killing him, mercilessly and without any hesitation in broad daylight. Watched by his police peers, and immune to being filmed by passers-by, whose lives too will be forever scarred by what they accidentally witnessed. 
8 minutes and 26 seconds of brutality that lead to the death of an innocent black man but also serves as the microcosm of a history, past and current, of police brutality, entrenched racism and a broken society. I echo the words of a fellow yoga teacher when I say, as traumatic as it is, every white person needs to watch the video of George Floyd’s death. 
When you do it is impossible to stop thinking about it. Or to contain the emotions it provokes; the horror, anger, shame, despair and utter utter unbridled sadness. And so, I would be lying if I said that the sunshine didn’t somehow feel bitter sweet. A shiny and unreal gloss over the very real cracks that need addressed by every single one of us if anything is truly to change.
I am fundamentally dedicated to well being and mental health. My quest in my work is to help you, and me, navigate life in all its messy glory and with all it inevitable suffering. Though I have always been deeply political, I have equally tried to keep politics out of my blogs. But this transcends politics and sits right at the heart of health. I feel I can’t write about anything else until I write about this. For it is impossible for us to be well when society is sick. And it is simply a mark of our privilege if we feel otherwise. Our well being is necessarily and inextricably linked to that of society’s. 
What happened to George Floyd might not have happened in our own homeland, but it is very definitely our problem. A few years ago, the journalist Caitlin Moran wrote a very compelling piece on date rape. In it she argued, with her particular brand of acerbic wit and fierce insight, that whilst it was largely women who campaigned against rape, the only way in which things would change is if men started to take part in the conversation. That it wasn’t enough for a man to protest that he would never, not in a million years rape a woman - in the same way that white people might proclaim, loudly and vehemently that we as would never be/endorse/accept/tolerate racism - they needed to do something about it. Their silence, like our silence is part of the problem. White supremacy, and that is what it is, is a white problem. We can’t hijack the conversation, but we can and we should listen, and we should call out disparity in all the places it lurks, both seen and unseen.
I grew up in Singapore in an entirely multicultural community. I had barely any friends who were from the ‘same place’ as me. I went to an international school - one of the now 13 United World Colleges- who aimed, in their own words, to ‘foster a global education movement that makes education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future’. There were 1200 students and 44 different nationalities and aside from United Nations Day when we deliberately celebrated our culture differences, we were a melting pot and our nationalities were an aside. It followed, almost naturally, that race relations and international understanding were at the heart of our thinking as teenagers. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were idols of mine, as much as Tears for Fears ( remember them?!), U2 and The Cure. I read about race relations, apartheid, the slave trade and segregation. I precociously  & relentlessly took people down over dinners - especially the older generation- if they said something that even sniffed to me of racist.
And then, at some point- and I can’t work out exactly when- I went quiet. I moved to the UK and found myself surrounded increasingly by friends of largely white descent. They were political and insightful and engaged, no doubt, so I didn’t notice the change to begin with. And then I got consumed with the largely white rave culture and with Brit pop, with an ever growing family and anti-capitalist marches, with the Iraq war and folk music and to the perils my growing family of children faced in mainstream education. I was still political, but very gradually and without realising it, I unknowingly hung up my racial injustice rage. I never actively decided that race wasn’t my problem anymore, but I behaved as though I had.
And then last week I read this quote from Martin Luther King, ‘In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends’ and I realised that my silence has been making me complicit. By default rather than by design but complicit all the same. Every time we don’t call out racism where we see or hear it, every time we don’t follow a news story because it isn’t about ‘one of us’, every time we say thank goodness the UK isn’t as bad as the US and then turn back to our comfortable lives, we are being complicit in a system that values white over black. And that is allowing white people to kill black people and get away with it. 
So - and its not much at this stage I know -  but I have become determined to re-educate myself. To contribute to causes where my means allows, to follow and listen to black activists and to take their lead, to educate my children in the ways in which racism can enter their lives insidiously ( because this generation is far more on it than ours has ever been) and the way in which they can, I can, we all can, call out racism every time we see or hear it.
____________________________
GETTING ENGAGED
I spent the afternoon of BlackOutTuesday researching where we can all start if -like me- you feel a need to engage.
The list below is by no means exhaustive. I find those just overwhelm me to such an extent that I file them away, alongside all my good intentions, and then unwittingly forget about it all.
So this is my whittled down short-list. 
There is still a lot here, so my plan is to try and realistically weave an ongoing education into my life going forward. A donation by direct debit, a book a month, one podcast series at a time, even just an episode a week. My teenagers are pledging to do the same. 
Things that take 5 minutes-
Watch this
The musician Dave’s performance at the Brits in February this year. Immense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXLS2IzZSdg 
Sign a Petition 
Color of Change
Petition that seeks the arrest and charging of the three other officers complicit in the killing of George Floyd
https://act.colorofchange.org/sign/justiceforfloyd_george_floyd_minneapolis/?source=dm_sms_optin_5-26-20
You need a US zipcode. Here is NYC one 11201.
Lobby your MP and the DofE to update their school syllabus’ 
Michael Gove stripped the GCSE English syllabus of all black female writers in his questionable overhaul a few years ago and Black History barely features anywhere at all. 
For those of us with UK schooled children I feel this is key. Follow links here. https://www.theblackcurriculum.com/action
and sign this petition 
Donate to an organisation or cause and consider setting up a direct debit
- Black Lives Matter Movement; to support ongoing fight to end state sanctioned violence, liberate black people and end white supremacy forever.
- Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust is named after Stephen Lawrence who was killed in a racist attack in 1993 in Southeast London. The organisation is a legacy to his memory, and aims to support young people to ‘ transform their lives by overcoming disadvantage and discrimination’, encouraging greater diversity in business and continuing to campaign for fairness and justice. www.stephenlawrence.org.uk or donate here


Broaden your social bubble by following these people on Instagram
@shaunking
@ggmadeit
@theconsciouskid
@lightwatkins


THINGS TO LINGER OVER
Podcast Series that have been recommended
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intersectionality-matters/id1441348908
http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/?t=1591121894427
This poetry
A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson.
Hauntingly prescient, and another angle on issues of race- his poetry about Grenfell is some of the most beautiful, and heartbreaking things I have read about it. 
Documentaries to watch ( while you still have empty evenings)
Ava Duvernay's 13th - fascinating and blood boiling documentary about racism and the judicial system. Details here & watch it on Netflix.
Ella Fitzgerald; Just One of those things. On BBC Iplayer now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jr4f/ella-fitzgerald-just-one-of-those-things
Toni Morrison -  recent documentary about Toni Morrisons life ‘The Pieces I am’. Available here.
A Book List
( I’ve piled them these by my bed and intend to read them, one by one, over what is now going to be the longest summer holiday on record. A massive list is here if you need more. )
Non Fiction
How to be Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi  ( out of stock but available as an audible book)
Why I am no Longer talking to White People about Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists forgot by Mikki Kendall  
Me & White Supremacy by Layla Saad
White Fragility by Robin Diangelo
Novels 
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An American Marriage  by Tayari Jones
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Queenie - by Candice Carty Williams, currently free on Soundcloud 
https://soundcloud.com/orionbooks/queenie-by-candice-carty-williams-read-by-shvorne-marks-1
And For Young Adults 
Noughts and Crosses ( also now a BBC documentary, but am told by my teens that the book is better)
The Hate We Give
And finally-
Pledge to call out racist commentary or assumptions, against any person of colour or ethnicity, when you hear it & even if it is an otherwise trusted friend or family member. There are areas in life where political correctness has arguably gone mad, but this is not one of them. ​

It seems silly, beyond the age of seven, to think about your favourite colour. But lockdown has, on certain days, reduced me to conversations of equal banality. Not long ago, and I am not making this up, I started a conversation with my twenty year old daughter with the words, ‘If I was a sheep…’, so pondering favourite colours is highbrow by comparison. 
If anyone were to ask me, I’d say my favourite colour is blue. The deep blue of Sydney sky and sea, the longing for which I have become used to carrying around with me, with the inevitability of a shadow. England has, admittedly, done an unparalleled job in serving up every equal to that usually unrivalled Antipodean blue. The coincidence of our lockdown days with the gift of an unprecedented spring almost warrants suspicion. Is it a reward for our resilience? Or god given to fashion it in the first place? Whatever the reason- and there probably isn’t one- it has certainly helped.
But for all a blue sky’s majesty, it is the green of the English countryside that has most bewitched me in the last few weeks. Watching the monochrome landscape become increasingly green- washed, and now wallowing in its almost insane lushness. My daily immersions in the natural world have been accompanied by little prayers of thanks, to no one in particular, for the tonic that is the green of nature.
And that it is a tonic is not imagined. Just the colour itself is said to be the most restful of the whole spectrum as it is is most easily seen by the human eye. Psychological research shows that just looking at the colour green stimulates the pituitary gland, which is responsible for cultivating feelings of calm and relaxation. 
Literature is littered with references to writers and thinkers who have sought solace in nature; to ease melancholy, to provoke thought and to inspire creativity. Thoreau, Kant, Nietzche, Darwin, Hemingway- and that list is by no means exhaustive- all used walking in nature as means to order their thoughts and provoke more positive thinking. Scientific findings now abound which back this instinct to seek out the natural world as artful help to living. In one study in 2015, researchers compared the brain activity of healthy people after they walked for 90 minutes in the natural world, as compared to those who walked in an urban setting. Those in nature were found to have much lower prefrontal cortex activity- which is the part of the brain most active during rumination and catastrophist thinking -so anything that reduces its activity is beneficial. Spending time in nature has also been also shown to lower blood pressure and cortisol levels- so much so that holistic medicine in Japan includes ‘forest bathing’ ( known as shinrin-yoku). So potent is the simple act of sitting or walking in a forest that it is prescribed - successfully and widely -  as an antidote to depression and anxiety. And so compelling are the findings as to the impact of the natural world on our mental health, that the psychologist Oliver Sachs said quite categorically, that after 40 years of medical practice, and alongside music, gardens were the single most vital non pharmaceutical therapy for patients with neurological illness.
It sounds simplistic, but if you are feeling blue, then immersing yourself in green - by walking, gardening or even simply lying on a grassy spot and staring up at the trees- would be a potent first port of call.
For those for whom green spaces are further afield, all is not lost. Even simply listening to natural sounds - real or recorded- has been shown to provoke the same soothing brain connectivity that naturally occurs when we are in wakeful rest or daydreaming. 
None of this should come as a suprise. And yet for many, it has taken so much else being stripped away for us to realise that much of what we truly need is actually already within easy reach. And free. Our disconnect from nature- stifled as it is by our indoor living, our rushed commutes and our pavement pounding - is only a relatively new phenomenon. This communion with concrete and cities, and with screens and their neon lights- which we up until now have taken for granted- is only really several generations old. For far longer we were farmers, our lives tied to the rhythms and actuality of the land. And for milennia, some 50,000 years or more we were hunter gatherers.
The truth is, our disconnect from nature is only surface level, whereas our need for it, and our deep-rooted connection to it lies deep within our DNA. 
If the gift of lockdown has been that we have been given a chance to re-explore this deep rooted need, then we can be, at least in part, thankful for the lesson. And as we emerge from lockdown, little by little, we would be wise to make sure a daily interaction with nature is the very last thing we give up. 


WAYS to COMMUNE with NATURE
Walk- on the doorstep for rural dwellers, but still entirely within reach for city-slickers too, whose green spaces are now entirely open and beckoning. Footpaths is a brilliant app to help you devise walks from your door. 
For Londoners this Green Chain Walk is an amazing resource https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/green-chain-walk and this article contains a host of ideas for green London walks.
And whilst long walks hold a particular charm, even twenty minutes a day walking in a green space is said to be notably impactful on the mind. 


Listen to the natural world - the dawn chorus at this time of year is a pleasure, and even those living in cities have attested to the fact that the birds have been louder under lockdown. Sleep with your windows open, and use it as an early alarm clock. 
This soundscape created by the Guardian has also completely captivated me - I have listened to it and scrolled down more times than I can count, and is lovely to show to children. 
Get Your Hands Dirty - It has been shown, in countless studies that exposure to a bacteria in soil, known as MYCOBACTERIUM VACCAE has been shown to encourage the production of serotonin in the brain, which is the chemical responsible for happiness. Planting up a herbs in pots to put in a sunny windowsill or tending to indoor plants will have the same effect. 
Watch these videos - the weekly videos by the florist Willow Crossley are one of the most soothing things I have found in lockdown. Utterly enchanting as well as so useful to the budding gardener. Follow her on instagram @willowcrossleycreates and scroll back to find the whole archive. 
Her book, The Wild Journal, is equally magical. Perfect for reading under a tree and inspiring you with countless ways to ponder & enhance  your connection to nature. 
Take your yoga mat ( and perhaps one of my recorded sessions) outside and practice under a tree. You might be more off balance if you are grappling with grass and root systems underfoot ( as I was this morning), but there is something entirely magical about doing yoga whilst immersed within the elements. And the breath is definitely more potent. It is best to follow the advice of the yogis and not practice in full sunshine if possible.