The Eclipse that had Nothing to Do with the Sun

How much of life do we miss because

we're looking for what we expect to see?
 

Last Wednesday felt significant. A solar eclipse was coinciding with the Perseid meteor shower.

I didn’t have eclipse glasses. Nor did I want to faff with a colander or making a viewer. 
I knew I couldn’t look at the sun. 
But what about everything else?

What about the light? What would happen to the oaks? 
And to the fields?  I wanted to be there. 
What might I see if I couldn’t look where everyone else was looking?

The eclipse hype was huge here in the UK. Still, I was surprised by how many people gathered. I'd never seen so many people waiting in the Great Park.

Families lined the flood defence banks. Children held cereal boxes converted into homemade eclipse viewers. People sat alone and together with picnics, blankets, drinks and, yes, colanders.

In the way the smell of bread baking can fill a home, expectation drifted over the fields as the sun moved into position for its date with the moon. 

I headed towards the west-facing back field to see what would unfold.

As I walked, I looked up into the wide, clear sky.  
Above me was a single, large and unusually distinct cloud.
It was unmistakably shaped like a dove. 

In that moment, my father was with me. 

I hadn’t been thinking of him particularly, thought I know he would have loved the eclipse. 

As I followed that dove cloud, I felt my father’s presence around me. 

I walked into that golden light with my shadow stretching away to the east. 
My grief danced with the beauty of the moment.  

It’s been more than two years since my dad passed. I miss him.
Yet, I no longer experience grief only as something painful that arrives to remind me of what I've lost. Moments like this bring him close to me again. 

Grief belongs to life because love belongs to life.  

On Wednesday evening, I didn’t need grief or beauty to disappear.
They belonged there in the field, together with the cloud, the oaks and the light of the sun. 

In that moment, even before the peak of the eclipse, I felt complete.
The evening, the light, the landscape had given me back to myself and connected me with my father.
I wrapped all of that around my heart. I didn’t mind what was to come. 

As eclipse time approached, I considered sitting down with everyone else.
But something in me wanted to keep walking. So I did. 

The light grew thick as golden syrup and played in the branches of the oaks.
Shadows stretched themselves to contribute to the very slight darkening of light. 

Around me, people sat with cardboard glasses pressed to their faces.
Everyone was facing west. 
I watched everything around it. 

A flock of starlings appeared in murmuration over the next field.
They flowed together before flying up overhead to somewhere only they knew. 
No one looked up. 

I looked East and north and south. 
I looked up and I felt my feet connect with the earth. 
I noticed the light. 
I felt my breath.
I felt my father. 
I felt joy. 

And a wealth that can’t be counted. 

In the richness of this moment, I knew this would be one of the ones that last.
A pinned memory that outshines all of the other evening walks I have taken across these fields. 

Not because of the eclipse.
But because of everything that wasn’t the eclipse.
Everything that was around the eclipse that I opened myself to receive. 

By 7.30 the full evening brightness was back after dimming only slightly. 
Around me, I could hear people saying how disappointed they were.
We'd been promised 93%.

I understood. If I had gone expecting darkness, I would have been disappointed too.

Instead, I came home filled with awe. 

I hadn’t really seen the eclipse. 
I had seen everything around it. 

How much of life do we miss because we're looking so intently for what we expected to see?

I don’t know if I would have experienced that evening in quite the same way eight months ago. 

My relationship with the ancient oaks has changed the way I pay attention. 

They have taught me to notice relationship. 

Between light and shadow. 
Between tree and soil. 
Between what is living and what is dying. 
Between myself and what is happening around me. 

Life expresses itself through relationship. 

This month, I’ve been exploring what happens when those relationships come into greater harmony. 

Coherence. 
Not the absence of difficulty, but our capacity to remain connected to ourselves and to life when a moment contains more than one thing.

Beauty and grief. 
Presence and absence. 
Certainty and mystery. 
Pressure and possibility. 

Coherence isn't something we find beneath an oak and leave there.

It's something we learn to carry into the whole of life. 

Perhaps there's somewhere in your own life where you're looking intently for what you expected to see?
An outcome you're waiting for. Something you're trying hard to change, achieve, resolve or understand.

Just for a moment, I look somewhere else.

Look around.

Feel your feet.
Notice your breath.
Notice what's alive.
Notice what's already in relationship with you.

What becomes available that you couldn't see before?

This is part of what happens in an Oak Presencing Experience.
The oak isn't there to give you an answer.

It offers another place from which to see—yourself, your life and what might be possible from there.

Experience an Oak Presencing Session

Let Yourself Be Here Too | The Quiet Oak

The Oak Letter

Let Yourself Be Here Too | The Quiet Oak

August 2026

Letters from an ongoing relationship wth the living world.

Before you begin reading, pause here for seventeen seconds. Listen…

There was something about this second Oak Letter that made me want to make it extraordinarily beautiful and profound.

I wanted to write this to you in such a way that you felt it. Too much focus on the result dried up my pen.

Drafting this letter was like being in an old jalopy — a very long ride, full of fits and starts, hiccups and stalling out.

Then I was reminded that I don’t need to make this letter more beautiful. I only need to tell the truth.

And so I did. This is the story of the Quiet Oak.

For Six Months this Oak Shared Nothing

On the edge of the field that is home to The Sacred Glade, an oak stands and waits. It has been doing this for a very long time. At least seven or eight centuries by my guesstimate.

This oak is big. So big that when my daughter was young, and liked hugging trees, her little arms would barely span a quarter of the trunk.

I’ve been by this oak a thousand times. Almost every walk takes me near it. It is my familiar anchor.

Seven months ago I decided to experiment — could I connect with the oaks in such a way that enabled a shared, felt experience and a communication?

Then I wasn’t sure it would be possible. Today I no longer wonder.

Because I knew this tree, it felt right to include it in my experiment. All in all, I visited five trees that day, never suspecting that my fledgling idea would turn into a massive research project that would change my life and begin to change the lives of countless others.

On that cold, grey January day, I visited five oaks. Four of them shared with me.

But this one….this one, big oak that I knew best, didn’t.

I only felt….a quietness. A stillness….A presence.

So I kept trying. Stopping again and again.

Connecting. Asking. Offering.

For six more months, this continued.

Always quiet.

Nothing shared but a sense of my belonging. A sense of being received.

There is a well of quietness that waits deep inside you.

Somewhere during those months, I changed.

The Quiet Oak’s quiet began to feel enough to me.

And then, only then, did the oak share just a little bit more:

There is a well of quietness that waits deep inside you.

It is waiting for you.

It is like a lake spreading between its shores.

The shores are the edges of your skin.

And the edges of your knowing.

They are at the edge of your seeing.

They are at the edges of everywhere that you spread your service — through your work and your love.

They are at the edge of your presence.

And your being.

Until then, I always thought of quiet as the absence of noise.

Librarians tell us not to talk.

Mobile phones are banned in the quiet train carriages.

We try to meditate to quiet our minds.

We get so busy trying to overcome the noise that we forget quiet may never have been about silence at all.

What if quiet isn’t an emptiness?

What if it is a place?

What if it is a place inside of me that I simply get to reconnect to?

Let yourself come to the shores of this lake…

It used to be that the main walking path passed right by the trunk of the Quiet Oak.

One April morning, with the fields nearly dried of the winter mud, I came across the park team lifting fallen logs into a wide circle around it. They explained that too many passing feet had compacted the soil. The logs, hopefully, would invite walkers to give the tree more space so its roots could breathe again.

This, Wendell Berry says, is How to Be a Poet.

“Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet…

Breathe with unconditional breath….

Accept what comes from silence….”

The Quiet Oak offers its own invitation:

Let yourself come to the shores of this lake and sit in the breeze.

The birds have always loved sitting in the branches at the top of this oak. From that height they have a grand view over the adjacent fields in every direction.

Today, people now stop. They sit on the ring of logs that encircle this tree. Their dogs wait for them, sniffing in the grass or practicing their agility as they walk the logs like a balance beam.

I wonder…

Did the park team happen to put the logs there?

Or did the Quiet Oak inspire them to do this?

So more of us might stop long enough to be received?

To remember that we belong?

Listen to the calling of the birds.

Let yourself watch the waves gently lapping at the shores.

Listen to the calling of the birds.

Yesterday, before writing, I went out for a run that finished at the Quiet Oak.

I sat in the shade, on one of the logs, and waited.

As my heart slowed, the heavy heat lifted and my sweat faded.

“What will quiet give to me today?” I wondered.

“What wants to come through?”

My thoughts started to match the pace of my breath.

A soft wind appeared.

The tree began to move.

It’s leaves remembered the steps to an old and very gentle dance.

A yellow dog came to greet me.

As it flew overhead, a parakeet called loudly.

An older man stopped to sit on an adjacent log for a few minutes.

Another dog, this one black, came to say hello.

Groups of people passed.

I was quiet.

I started writing this letter wanting to make something beautiful.

But beauty isn’t something we make.

It’s something we become available to receive.

As I wrote this, I realised that quiet is like that too.

Maybe the practice isn’t building the lake.

The practice is walking back to its shore.

I am here with you.

I am here within you.

Let yourself be here too.

-The Quiet Oak.

What might become possible if you let yourself return to that shore today?

Listen to this letter…

Continue the conversation

If this letter stirred something in you, I'd love to meet you among the ancient oaks.

Oak Presencing Sessions are quiet, one-to-one experiences held in Windsor Great Park (or online, wherever you are in the world).

→ Explore Oak Presencing Sessions

Away from home. Away from the oaks.

From Denise

What happens when we leave the place where we feel most ourselves?

I’m writing this from the North Pembrokeshire coast in Wales.

For the past week, I’ve been away from Windsor. And away from the ancient oaks that have become such an important part of my life and work.

Yet during this holiday, I’ve found myself noticing and connecting with the living world everywhere.

At Carreg Samson, a Neolithic burial chamber, I stood in a farmer’s field (replete with cow pats!) beside five enormous standing stones supporting a giant capstone.

In those rocks, I could feel two kinds of memory.

The weight of grief for the person who was lost.

And the weight of the human effort it must have taken, without mechanised tools, to move those stones and place them where they still stand today.

To me, it felt as though those stones contained the fingerprints of people whose lives we can barely imagine.

They connect past to present.


Perhaps this vast span of time is part of what draws me so magnetically to the ancient oaks, too.

Their lives span centuries.

They’ve lived through our lifetime and a large sweep of human history.

And despite all they have lived through, they remain entirely themselves—rooted in place and in relationship with the living landscape around them.

They connect us to something that existed long before us and will, hopefully, continue long after us.

But I’ve felt the living world in smaller things here, too.

In the droplets of a tiny waterfall turning the rock face above Newport Sands into a verdant vertical garden.

In the swallows darting in and out of their cave-like nests in the cliffs above Abermawr beach.

And in the campsite cat who apparently adopted us—waiting for me each morning, climbing onto my lap as I wrote, and lounging on our picnic table when we returned from the day’s adventures.

This coastline is a different landscape.

Different living systems.

And yet, perhaps not so different at all.

All part of the same Living System of Being that surrounds us—and that we, too, are part of.

I've found myself wondering:

What does it mean to embody what the oaks teach us?

To take it with us.

To have it available to us, wherever we are.

Ultimately, this work isn't about the oaks.

And yet, the oaks matter enormously.

They are a mirror. And a doorway.

They don't offer us something we don't already possess.

They change our relationship with ourselves, with life and with the living world.

And in doing so, they change our experience.

They remind us of something most of us have forgotten.

That safety, security, impact and joy are not necessarily found through accumulating more.

More knowledge.

More achievement.

More control.

More certainty.

The things we most deeply long for emerge through relationship.

Our relationship with ourselves.

With one another.

With the world around us.

And with whatever life is offering—and asking us to meet.

When I talk about expanding capacity, I’m not talking simply about creating more space so that we can hold more and more.

At a deeper level, expanding capacity asks:

Can we maintain our connection to ourselves when life becomes full?

Can we remain open when pressure rises?

Can we continue to access who we are when circumstances become uncertain?

Can our inner and outer worlds remain coherent?

Perhaps the first step is simply remembering that this place exists within us.

That the possibility of reconnecting to it is always there.

This is a question we continue to explore and practise inside The Practice Space.

What would it mean to live with greater coherence—not occasionally accessing who we are, but increasingly living, relating and leading from that place?

One of my clients brought this to life beautifully.

We began working together fifteen months ago. She is an entrepreneur and a mother. Practical, pragmatic—and someone who freely admits that some of my work with the oaks initially felt decidedly "woo" to her.

Three months into our work together, she had her first Oak Presencing Experience.

She was willing to trust me enough to try.

Her experience was emotional.

Afterwards, she told me it had "really anchored" her.

But what fascinates me is what happened next.

She began engaging more regularly with the work I share inside The Practice Space.

One practice invited her simply to connect with a living thing.

Through that experience, she became aware of how much judgement and negativity she was unconsciously carrying into different situations.

And once she saw it, she began to catch herself.

She didn't force herself to think positively.

She simply noticed.

And in the noticing, she found more space.

More choice.

She described what followed as a "gentle upward spiral."

Her shift didn't stay beneath the oak.

It rippled into her relationship with her husband.

Into the way she experiences herself.

And into her business, which is now thriving.

She tells me she has the energy and presence to support her growing client base without draining herself in the process.

This is what fascinates me about this work.

The experience itself may happen beneath an ancient oak.

But the person you reconnect with comes home with you.

If you're curious about this work—if you want to reconnect with the part of you that knows itself, that is spacious, that is whole—I invite you to experience a Presencing Experience.

You might assume that the most powerful way to experience this is here, in person, among the ancient oaks of Windsor.

But I've discovered that this work can be experienced just as powerfully—sometimes even more so—virtually, from wherever you are in the world.

The oak isn't the destination.

It's the doorway.

And the person you reconnect with is available to you everywhere.

In the meeting room.

With your family.

On the school run.

In quiet moments alone.

In connection with others.

And in those moments when life feels pressured or uncertain.

This isn't about finding something outside yourself that you might later lose.

It's about remembering something that was already there.

And once you've felt it again, you always know the way back.

This is the first step.

With love & peace,

Denise x

Our First Freedom

We spend so much energy trying to change our circumstances.

Our jobs.

Our relationships.

Our health.

Our homes.

We have difficult conversations.

We navigate uncertainty.

We work hard to improve the experience of our lives.

Again and again, the ancient oaks show me something different.


Our first freedom is rarely to change our circumstances.

It is to change our relationship with them.

When our relationship changes, our experience changes.


The mind moves away from worry and opens to peace.

The heart begins to move beyond fear and opens to love.

The spirit softens its contraction and opens more fully to life.

The body opens to the possibility of wellbeing.

Hidden possibilities start to appear.

Nothing outside may have changed.

Yet somehow, everything has.

Perhaps this is where freedom begins.

Because we changed the relationship first.

The Woman, the Children, the Overcrowded Tube and Leadership

What does an overcrowded Underground platform have to do with leadership, pressure, and the way we shape our lives?

Nothing.

And everything.

On Saturday, I travelled into London by train. All went smoothly, until I tried to catch a Tube on a line backed up by signal failures.

At the entrance to the platform I met a wall of bodies, with people crowded six layers deep.

Around me, people began to react. Some complained. Some sounded anxious. Two men loudly discussed alternative transportation (There wasn’t any!)

A young man pushed his way through the crowd, his movements made with sharp frustration. I felt his anger before I saw his face.

I waited with my backpack heavy on my back. Its size was reassuring, making me more solid, but unfortunately also vulnerable to being bumped as people tried to move past.

Sweating, I began to regret the jacket I wore. In the crush of the crowd, there was no way I could remove it without elbowing someone.

With each passing minute, more and more people arrived behind me.

I heard someone say, “I hope there isn’t a stampede. We can’t move anywhere.”

I noticed my system begin to react to the situation: My body felt tighter. My mind was alert. I scanned the room looking for anything that might be an exit.

The crowd shifted together, like one body in turmoil, as each overcrowded train came, and went. Disembarking passengers fought their way through the crowd. A lucky few pushed against them to claim the few spaces available on the arriving trains.

Suddenly, I found myself standing behind a mother and two young children. Surrounded by the crowd of adults twice their size, the children held their mother’s hands and looked to her for reassurance.

Every few seconds, the girl looked up at her mother’s face as if asking a silent question,

“Are we safe?”

Every time, the mother answered before speaking a word. Through her steadiness, she held her children. Despite the situation, she was calm, “We’re OK,” she repeated. Peace radiated from her and extended palpably beyond her children into the crowd around.

Slowly, I positioned my body to be a shield for the child who was closest to me. I marvelled at this mother’s presence in a situation that could have quickly become dangerous for her little ones. I felt awe at their trust in her when I could easily imagine them panicked and crying.

I could feel my system responding to the situation. But I also knew that my reaction did not have to become my identity in that moment. I stayed consciously attentive to my breath and the sensory awareness of my feet on the ground. Intentionally, I stayed in my body. Over and over, I kept returning to myself.

How we meet moments like this becomes how we meet life itself.

The patterns we practice unexpected pressure situations are the patterns that will appear as we lead ourselves in business, or as parents.

I could see that mother’s leadership. Its power was based in her softness, not reactivity. Despite the crush of bodies, she exuded spaciousness.

One steady human being can change the atmosphere of an entire environment.

Not through force. Not through strategy.

But through presence.

And most of all, through the capacity to remain open inside pressure.

We were all together stuck in the same experience — the press of the crowd, the building heat and the edge of panic that lined the platform.

And yet, people had radically different experiences.

Some shifted into anxiety.

Some into frustration. Or aggression.

One mother became steadiness.

As for me, I consciously worked to remain internally open.

People do not see the world as it is. They see the world as it occurs for them.

And how it occurs is shaped by context. Context can be consciously chosen.

You may not be standing on an overcrowded platform right now. But perhaps you have your own version of this experience. Perhaps it looks like:

  • deadlines

  • financial pressure

  • parenting challenges

  • holding everyone else together

  • health issues

  • making decisions when exhausted

  • never being able to fully switch off

Yes, your external circumstances matter.

But your inner capacity shapes how you experience any situation.

This is the deeper work of capacity.

Of learning how to remain open, steady, and fully yourself, even inside pressure.

This is the work I do privately, with leaders, parents, and high-capacity humans who are no longer interested in simply “coping” with life.

If you feel drawn toward this kind of way of living and leading, you’re welcome to explore my private mentorship spaces or Oak Presencing Sessions.

The Practice of Not Knowing (An Oak Walk) -- On curiosity, surrender, and being led by the living world

Often, I head out into the fields feeling jangly with frustration, or energetically tired from holding space. My body is tight from sitting at the laptop. You know what it’s like after hours in the office.

My habit is to head out with a rough destination in mind. Our culture engrains this in us — have a purpose! Be productive! Make use of your time! Go for a walk to relax! Take exercise! Absorb sunlight! Release stress! Track your heart rate, or hack your time by also listening to a podcast!

These are the messages we have absorbed in our cells.

When I walk, I have several choices in both length and location: upper fields, bottom fields, a loop of both, or across the road up onto the Long Walk, if time is spacious.

The deciding factor that initially shapes my walks is often time. But not always. Because I’m in midst of a creative project involving the ancient oaks, I might have a tree in mind: One I want to visit for the first time, or revisit to continue the connection, and if possible, the conversation.

However, the more I do my research, the more I connect with the oaks, the more the unfolding of my walks has changed.

I have learned to stop directing my experience.

I am a solo entrepreneur and a single mother. I am used to directing everything. I’m sure you know the feeling. To let go of control was uncomfortable for me. It felt foreign. After all, our brains are wired to protect us and protect what we know as familiar. Even when we don’t want the familiar.

Familiarity always trumps desired change.

We will always be pulled back to what we know, and what is keeping us safe, especially when life feels too much or too unsafe.

Once I get outside and allow my body to move, my mind will usually surrender as my energy to unfolds. Once I pass through the creaky, metal gate onto Crown Lands, I am able to shift. Initially, this process took longer. Because I’m now more practiced, the window of time and space for this transition has collapsed.

It wasn’t always easy. In the beginning, I wanted to check my Apple watch. Or, I would feel the need to push my pace, get my heart rate up. In the beginning, I was uncomfortable with the silence of not having a podcast in my ears.

I needed structure, direction, purpose and control to feel safe.

Over and over, I have practiced surrendering control and settling into letting myself be held by the Great Aliveness of the Living World. It took time, but it is now the most comfortable place to be — even when I have a full and busy day.

What was the lifeline that pulled me through the swampland of surrendering my logical process-based orientation?

Curiosity.

Curiosity is the thread of safety.

How do I use it?

I ask these two questions: What is here for me today? What wants to be discovered?

Then what opens for me is an experience I would never have anticipated, or predicted.

The more I let myself stand in the Land of I Don’t Know, the more I find more safety in that space. Certainly more safety than my controlled, predicted, outcome-based walk ever could.

Somehow I find myself tumbling into a connection that catches me by surprise. I become part of a resonance with the Living World. In doing so, something opens inside me. And this space is peaceful and wise.

And the tree I originally set out to see? It’s never the same as the one I end up visiting. Never.

An experience like this feels luxurious and unproductive — certainly nothing to do with leadership or successful entrepreneurship. Actually this experience is essential and foundational for being able to hold the inevitable ups and downs of entrepreneurship, leadership and parent-ship.

It is from this state that you can expand your capacity to hold it all.

Every time, I head out on an oak walk, I arrive home more supported, more alive, more connected and more ready to create the next part of the rest of my day.

I feel clearer. I find myself responding rather than bracing. This is the kind of capacity that doesn’t come from effort, strategy or discipline. It comes from my willingness to stand, even if briefly, in the unknown and allowing the safety that is there for me to reveal itself.

This is the simplest form of the work.

COME WITH ME TO WINDSOR

Have you ever been to Windsor? Have you ever spent time in the Great park, walking the paths across the fields? Or stood under the canopy of the great ancient oaks?

Today, I thought I wanted to write to you about something serious, like the power of presence, or dispelling shared loneliness, or stress and its impact on leadership.

But as my fingers move over the keyboard, I find that I simply want to bring you here — to the fields that I have walked for 19 years. I want to give you a little bit of what these acres regularly give to me.

I think of you reading this from your desk in one of the big cities, wishing for less concrete, more green, and a slightly less soggy sandwich. Or maybe you sit with tea, in your home, in a small town with a romantic-sounding name, like Beacon, or Aurora. Or perhaps — as my imagination gallops off with itself — you live in a villa, with a view of the sand dunes of the Sahara, or on the edge of a rainforest in Thailand, near the elephants.

No matter where you live, the news, today, is full of war, and bombs, and sunken ships. There is a serrated edge to the alertness in the atmosphere. Sleep is being disturbed. Even in the rainforest, and in Aurora.

Please, then, come with me to Windsor.

This week, little by little, the thick-woven winter’s grey is being drawn back from the fields. There is an expanse of blue that feels bigger, and wider, and clearer than I remember. Perhaps, simply, because we haven’t seen it much in the last several months. The birds determinedly try to pull everyone’s gaze upward with their delighted swooping, as they search for bits and twigs to build this year’s homestead.

I know that it’s important to write about peace and presence, and how to connect with your own authentic leadership.

Those will be topics for another time.

Today, you get to be here with me. With the ancient oaks, who have been standing in these fields for 500 - 1000 years. They have been through all of it — the wars and the peace treaties; the astounding discoveries, the miracles and the most radical of human mistakes.

I would love for you to feel held by the majesty and strength of these oaks. Each of them is unique with their branches patterns, like fingerprints.

This is your invitation to place your hand on the thick, buckled bark of the oak that calls to you.

Close your eyes. Raise your face to the sunshine. Fill your ears with the birds. Let the oaks welcome you, even as your feet sink slightly in the soft, muddy earth.

I want you to be delighted to discover two, chocolate-brown mushrooms in the grass at your feet. I would like for you to see the way the Spring-strengthened sunlight is caught, and split, into streaming beams by the winter-bare branches.

Feel the slowing down. In your breath. In your cells.

This morning, the fog was so thick, it made the world a smaller place. Once the sun rose, the smallness disappeared into a clearness that calls the bees to the blossoms in the hedgerows.

Ask what you need most as you unplug. From all of it.

There will be an answer, if you listen.

Return to yourself. Move from your head to your heart.

You have time before you need to pick up the next thing in your day.

You are, for now, in a place protected.

Feel what the oaks feel. You are safe.

This is a place where the double rainbows choose to shine.

Beaver Dams, Tadpoles and Stress

When I was ten, my class went on a field trip to a beaver dam. I remember all I wanted to see was the beavers. Instead I found myself staring at a jumbled pile of trees, twigs and mud and a pond behind it. Those beavers were smart enough to high-tailed it into hiding as soon as they heard the excited sound of twenty-eight chattering children.

In compensation for the lack of wildlife presence, my teacher equipped us with little nets and jars to gather the frog spawn clumped along the edges of the pond created by the beavers. Over the next few weeks, we hatched this spawn into tadpoles which, I believe (I hope!) my teacher liberated back into the wild to grow happily into frogs.

On that day I saw what beavers can do to a creek.

It’s much like what stress does to us.

In the beginning, a creek flows unimpeded, making its way from source to sea. The water winds its way along the stream bed, sometimes bumping up against a fallen tree, or over a large rock. But ultimately, the water moves, glinting and glimmering to its far away destination.

We are like the creek, flowing in our bodies, thoughts, feelings and creations.

Our lives are meant to be like watery currents, meeting obstacles,

yet moving around them with ease.

When the beavers choose a prime piece of real estate for their new home, everything changes quickly. It takes only a few days to a few weeks for the dam to be constructed. In the beginning, the initial debris impacts the flow of water, but doesn’t stop it. If the wood were to be removed at this juncture, the creek would resume its former path.

Eventually as the beavers build up the mud, wattle and wood, the creek’s flow diminishes. The water begins to build up on itself, creating a backwash of motion. This swirls in eddies and whirlpools.

On the outside, it looks and feels like the creek is motion. But the water goes nowhere. It is only looping back on itself. Eventually, the water rises, the flow slows, the energy stills and it becomes stagnant. The stream is now a pond, or a wetland. The ecosystem and habitat change from what it once was.

This is much like us in stress.

In stress, we contract: in our body, our fascia tightens to activate our force output. This is the force, we need to survive the enemy. We might fight, make a speedy escape or stay frozen in the face of danger. To survive, we also contract in our mind. Our thoughts and ideas narrow to keep us on track, on target and alive. This narrowing means we see the world, and the options available to us in a certain way.

We become like the water, believing we are in motion, but actually only swirling and looping back on ourselves. We work hard but end up experiencing the same results, no matter how much we try. Eventually, we find ourselves well and truly stuck.

We stagnate in our living without the movement and flow

needed to go in the direction of our dreams.

At first, it seems the obvious solution is to simply remove the dam. It might take humans twelve hours to deconstruct a beaver dam. The beavers will rebuild it in only a couple hours.

Like stress in our lives, the problem isn’t the dam. It’s how we relate to ourselves and the dam. When you know how to work with the beavers, more life becomes more possible.

Here are just a few cool eco-facts:

  • Beaver dams help to trap silt and improve the quality of the water.

  • Dams create wetlands. The wetlands create more biodiversity.

  • Frogs prefer ponds for breeding and their tadpoles are a bit of nature’s magic.

  • Tadpoles are able to adapt their metamorphosis timeline based on the food and living conditions in the pond. They can stay tadpoles longer, if they want.

  • Like starfish, tadpoles can regrow lost limbs.

  • Even in their not-quite frog larvae states, tadpoles have the ability to communicate with each other. (Apparently, the first known example of underwater larvae using sound for communication.)

So from stagnation, there is movement again.

The flow happens in a different way, through live force vitality and interspecies thriving.

Just as we, with the right support, practices and understanding, can transform how we move with and through ongoing stress in our lives.

I am in love with the Oaks

This year, I have fallen in love.

Not with a man. But with the trees. More specifically, I have fallen in love with the ancient and veteran oaks that live in large numbers, in the Windsor Great Park, near my home.

As I write, I feel some of you rolling your eyes at this idea of being in love with the trees. At one time, I might have done the same.

After all, how can you compare loving a tree with loving a human, especially one that stands by you through the significant challenges and joys of life? With a human, you can share conversation and common experiences. You can raise children together, or travel to exotic places. You can build a home or sit by each other’s sides when needed. You can put your arms around each other. Or hold hands as you walk along a beach.

None of this is possible with a tree. At least in the way humans do things.

I know that thus far in my life, I have been less than successful in my attempts to create a partnership, or marriage.

But just as I know that I have fallen in love with the oaks, I also understand WHY I have failed in human love. (Except, of course, for my daughter. She has a huge piece of my heart and always will.)

Over the years, as I learned more about the nervous system and the effects of chronic stress, I came to understand that we cannot love fully, completely and open-heartedly when we are chronically stressed. As much as I wanted loving partnerships in my life, I lived 30+ years chronically stressed, fighting against life, and love.

Stress is where we go when something inside us believes there is something to fear. Stress is where we go when our brains believe that some part of our current life is unsafe. When we are unsafe, we feel fear. The opposite of love is fear. I have lived the opposite of love for so long.

Living the opposite of love literally shapes us and our hearts. When we fear, our hearts shut down and retreat. They hide away in the fortification of the ribcage, blanketed deep within the lungs. Our fear shapes us so that we lead from our heads, not our hearts.

Over the last many years, I did the work that I call Moving Well. (The work that I offer to my clients.) The more I did the work, the more I eased myself out of my own perpetually stressed existence. I moved into a way of living that felt more peaceful, joyful and present.

As I shed my patterns, my heart moved out of its hiding place. It took up residence front and centre, just behind the top of my breastbone. Slowly, I learned to stand available in life. I learned to lead myself from my open and vulnerable heart — safe enough within myself not to need the old defences.

For many years, as I walked in the fields, the oak trees have been sentinels for my living. Now that my heart is free, they have come to claim it.

I find myself enchanted by these trees and all that they offer and represent. I am learning tree facts and fables. I am spending time with individual oaks — Getting to know them as friends and listening to the wisdom they have to share. For they do have wisdom. And they do want to share it.

So this Valentine’s day, I am in love.

It is a love that won’t be offended if I don’t bring roses, or prepare a meal.

Instead, all it wants is for me to offer my presence and time.

How lucky am I?