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