One of the highlights of my year is teaching for the wellbeing programme at University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum.
I recently introduced a new mindful journalling class, working with the plants in the garden and going deeply not only into sensory awareness but also relationship and reciprocity.
The feedback I had was just beautiful.
- “It opened up a whole new world of noticing I’d never experienced before.”
- “I felt the whole ecosystem in the tree, not just the tree itself.”
- “You invited me to see that all Life is here just living all around us. Even the tiniest flower suddenly feels important.”
- “I journal about my life and feelings regularly, but this is something altogether different.”
- “You gave me the confidence to be poetic with my descriptions – colours and so on – and to be free with it.”
I believe (with passion and sometimes frustration) inner development is the beginning of regenerative design. That you can’t embody and express your creative projects unless you’re connecting with Nature, both in it and of it.
The ‘of it’ is the revelation of our time; this is where we realise we belong within but not above. (It’s also the truth being trampled on by those seeking to push our separation even further to posthumanism – hence the frustration.)
This doesn’t have to be difficult. Nor does it have to be some abstract thing that puts navel gazing where active focus should be. Far from it – inner work is intrinsically practical because it arrives at purpose.
It just means slowing down, paying attention, and then turning what you notice outwards with full appreciation of your part in the whole. It’s a little bit like a breath: you breathe in space and breathe out words.
Those words then become your stories: living and relational as stories are meant to be. They are your stories of yourself, your people, your products and your projects. And all in a place AI can’t replicate.
If you like the sound of this, I’m currently rolling these immersions out to organisations and companies, merging my professional experience as a copywriter and a meditation teacher to help others be storyists – storytelling activists – for change.
Image: the extraordinary mandalas of the water caltrop (Trapa natans) at Oxford Botanic Garden. To borrow from storyteller Martin Shaw, what 12 names could you give these?
