Coming home, green oranges & settling in

I TOOK THE early bus to Jerez and had a few hours to wander the old town before coming home.

The day was just beginning. I sat outside a cafe, on a cobbled street by an orange tree, eating Pan con Tomate and drinking freshly squeezed oranges; sweet, delicious and overflowing with whispers of, “don’t go, you know you want to stay and drink some more”.

I have been nourished by so much beauty this past week and every day I have drunk the sweetest oranges. And so, I spent this last little piece of time wandering the old streets of Jerez and photographing the orange trees, that seem to grow everywhere. The oranges were still green on these trees and I found a square full of them growing in neat rows. They looked incredible, especially when the sun shone onto them with the blue sky above and behind.

The day before I had my last swim in the softest of kind, gentle seas, that ebbed and flowed up and down, clearing out any last cobwebs in my mind. And then I walked along the shoreline and took photo after photo. The clear, deep blue sky above the turquoise sea, with green trees along the coastline, reminded me of the photos I had been looking at during the English winter, that lasted such a long time this year. And I thought, here I am, standing alive in my dream.

There is no doubt in my mind that when we are full of stress, and the world around us seems determined to feed us more; that is the time when we need to be radical, and refuse to drink it in.

This is when exercising our positive neural networks is so valuable. To do this for yourself you need to begin to practice before your stress levels get too high, otherwise the survival brain will cut out your ability to do so. If that happens you need to find someone to help you get started.

Three simple questions you can ask yourself when stressed about something are, “Well how would it be?” “How would it look? And most importantly, “How would it feel”. These questions answered over and over again, can create miracles.

Ayurveda has something to say about this too, because Ayurvedic nutrition includes what we feed our mind through our senses. To be well, we need to feed our mind good food too, through our senses as well as through the food we eat. It is easy to find ourselves feeding on junk sensory impressions in our consumer culture, with a diet of news and media that keeps our tired undernourished mind in a stressed condition. Seeing the beauty in the ordinary simplicity of life, is a powerful practice to counteract this. And living life to your own gentle pace.

Arriving back

I sit now looking out of the window at my overflowing window boxes. The night sky drawing in and the rooftops putting themselves to bed under a darkening sky. The cushions on my sofa the colour of Spanish sea. A warm glow of sweet oranges moves through my mind, as the slow pace of people living in a hot land with beautiful sea, seeps through my bones. And I think to myself, perhaps I can weave that sweetness of the oranges, and the ever so relaxed pace of everyday existence, into my life. I remember how struck I was when each night the bin men came along the narrow cobbled walkways, in a little van that looked like a small dumper truck. Two men picked up the rubbish left outside each house, while laughing and joking, completely at ease. As if they hadn’t a care in the world.

When I got back a few hours ago, I went to do a food shop, and I pretended I was walking across the hot, golden, softly, silken sands of that beach. In my mind I could see the friendly sea, and the coastline of kindness. And my mind, well it was still singing to the soft touch of kind surroundings, as my feet, ever so slowly, stepped to their own rhythm.

Viva la Spania

To end with, here are some of my photographs of that lovely place. On Friday I will return to warm words, Ayurveda and some more of that story ‘Sweeping Away the Moon’ (first part here and second part here).

I’m also intending to learn how to use my recording equipment this weekend, so that I can start creating recordings for you, using my voice to help return you to the calm, kind waters of your own mind, in case that would be of use.

Till Friday, warmest wishes,

Lucy x