'When People And Nature Are In Perfect Harmony....'
It is 6 o clock in the morning, another day is dawning and Anadi and I are both up in readiness to run to meet Rob in the Park...
I never find it that easy to do the actually 'getting up' bit of early get ups, especially as since I met Anadi, the getting to bed the night before bit is much later than it ever used to be....
Anadi and I had a carpet picnic in our room last night, amongst Anadi working on a part of his platform that needs finishing by next week... And me writing my blog at the end of a lovely, but full day with not a window appearing to write until late....
But once I am up, it is always okay... It is remembering this truth, which is the key to keeping getting up to run morning after morning... Knowing the getting out of bed bit can be hard, but doing it anyway.... And then the getting out of the door bit.
Once those two things have happened all is well...!
I developed many techniques to manage these two stages, when I lived in the UK, for running mileage in the winter months... The main one being to 'not think about it and just go...'
This was so effective that one winter a few years ago, I was running along Eastbourne seafront on a very cold, wet and windy day... I was even running into the wind, which anyone who has lived in a seaside town will understand can be a challenging thing indeed!
I felt fit and alive and a part of this watery, wintery, windy day, I was of the elements rather than battling them...
And suddenly unbidden an unexpected thought rose in my being 'I love winter...'
I realised then that my quest had been successful...!
What I hadn't considered was that me, my very being affects the weather ....
"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."
— Charles D. Warner
Instead I surrendered to it and embraced it and became comfortable to find ways to be in it, rather than think in terms of me affecting it, I rather let it not negatively affect me and I discovered that the other way to ensure 'running happens' was to meet another intrepid soul at an allocated time and place and know that they like you will be there for certain....
Fi and I once went through eleven straight days of running in pouring rain one November when running big miles in preparation for the next marathon... And JIm and I ran five hour runs in preparation for an 'ultra Marathon' through a bitterly cold winter, starting our long runs before it got light so that we could get back with some day left to do other things...!
I was never a winter person before.... Being born in West Africa seemed to set my thermostat high and when we came back to the UK my mother fed me cod liver oil and malt in the winter months to 'build me up'.
'She is such a pale, thin little thing' she would say... I came to like the fishy malty taste of my 'tonic' and eat it by the spoonful....
But as a runner I learnt that if I didn't 'get with the programme' I would not be a runner at all, as fair weather running is not really an option in the UK, even in summer, as was evident last Sunday in the muddy run round Bewl water...!
And now we are mainly in the sun, which has different challenges....
Being in a body we can get affected by the elements, but I am interested in the shamanic way of becoming the sun, the rain, the wind, the early morning sunrise,....
And therefore recognising how we may affect the weather, not just by all the factors such as pollution, but even by our energetic make up, our psyches, our emotions, and sense of connectedness or disconnectedness from the natural world. And truly embracing that everything is related to everything and rather than feeling that everything is happening outside us, being curious as to the inner reflection both collectively and as individuals
A Salish word from the Pacific Northwest, skalalitude, describes what life is like when true kinship with nature exists:
'When people and nature are in perfect harmony, then magic and beauty are everywhere'
