S2 Ep9: RELEASE (reflect + dream)

Welcome to The Hush – that precious, liminal space between Christmas and New Year. In today’s episode, the final one of this series, we explore the idea of ‘less doing, more dreaming’. These are the days in-between. This is a precious time to breathe deeply, savour moments with loved ones or alone and feel the world slowing just for a moment. It's a time for reflection and releasing, meandering, and dreaming. This episode includes a very special visualisation to help you open up to what might be calling you, along with some prompts to explore in your journal ahead of the new year. With inspiration from Susan Coolidge. I hope you love this final episode, and that it ushers you gently into the new year, with a heart full of hope. Beth Xx

PS Don’t miss my free poetry challenge #tinywinterpoem coming to my Instagram feed @bethkempton in January!

Featured in this episode: 

• New Every Morning by Susan Coolidge in The Poetry Pharmacy, edited by William Sieghart 

Download a FREE copy of my Perfectly Imperfect 2022 Digital Planner here and start visualising what might be next for you.  

Transcript

0:05

Every day is a fresh beginning;/ Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, / And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning, / And puzzles forecasted and possible pain, / Take heart with the day, and begin again. Welcome to The Calm Christmas Podcast with me. Beth Kempton. That lovely poem was New Every Morning by Susan Coolidge, which can be found in The Poetry Pharmacy, edited by William Sieghart. We are here in the final episode of Series Two, the less doing more dreaming episode. A new year is almost upon us but not quite. And until she arrives, we find ourselves in this precious special time between Christmas and New Year, which I call The Hush. These are the days in between a time of long walks hot coffees, languid lounging with leftover chocolates, adding birthday dates to the new diary, telephone catch ups, old memories, new plans, making time telling stories, everything on pause. This is a precious time to breathe deeply, savour moments with loved ones or alone and feel the world slowing just for a moment. It's a time for reflection and releasing, meandering, and dreaming. I encourage you, where possible, to stay away from shopping malls and online sales to stay out of your inbox, to avoid mindless scrolling on social media, to keep your distance from loud and aggressive people, to go easy on alcohol and sugar, and to avoid making too many plans. Light and loose is the theme of the day. And to avoid travelling to busy places, if possible. If you must, take some earphones and a good book. If you do all of those things, you're going to get a deeper sense of hovering here in this in-between time before the old year has left, and the new one has moved in. So why not take a moment today to ask yourself these six questions. If you like, listen to a question and then pause the podcast and write whatever you want to write. And then come back for the next question. 1) How would you sum up this past year in three words? 2) How did you grow during the last 12 months? 3) What particular synchronicities did you notice this year and what do you think they're telling you? 4) Where did you bring light to the darkness for someone this year? 5) And what unexpected blessings did the year bring to you? 6) What would you like to release or leave behind as we move towards the new year? So those are some questions to ponder as you reflect on the year that is coming to an end. And now let's turn towards the new year. If you want guidance for in-depth planning for the year ahead, and for bringing a particular dream to life, it's all there in my book Calm Christmas. So if you've got yourself a copy already, flick over the last three chapters of the book, and that is a whole section all on manifestation. For today, I'd like to offer you a very special visualisation to help you open to what might be calling you. I actually wrote this visualisation for my Winter Writing Sanctuary class last year, and everyone really loved it. Some really powerful things came up for people and they found it really inspiring. So I thought I'd share it with you at this particular moment as you are looking ahead to next year. The visualisation is called A Walk in the Forest. And it goes without saying that you should of course not do this if you are driving while listening. Okay. I hope you enjoy it. Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the next 10 minutes or so. Come into a comfy seated position either sitting tall on a chair with your feet flat on the floor, or cross-legged on the floor, perhaps sitting on a cushion or on a prop to lift your hips above the knees. This is going to help you relax the hips and lengthen the spine, taking any strain off the lower back. Close your eyes or lower your gaze and let your hands rest in your lap. palms open and facing upwards. Find length up through the spine. Engage your belly and feel your spine as a channel of energy, allowing that energy to flow up and down your body. Allow your shoulders to relax down and soften your face. Soften your jaw. Soften your brow. Soften behind your ears. Relax your arms. Relax your hands. Relax your legs. Relax your feet. Relax anywhere in your body that you are feeling tension. Breathe into that place and let the tension melt away. Bring your attention to your breath, observing the inhale and the exhale. Notice the rhythm. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. A gentle steady rhythm inviting you to arrive here fully in this moment. Today, I invite you to take a walk in a beautiful snowy forest. You woke early this winter morning in a cabin that you rented for the weekend. You made a simple breakfast while it was still dark, filled a flask with a hot drink and put it in your rucksack along with a few other supplies. You put on your coat, you wrapped your scarf around your neck. You pulled on your gloves, put on a hat, put your feet into warm socks, and then into boots, which you tied up and then you headed out of the door for a long hike. A fresh batch of snow had fallen in the night and you savoured the crunch beneath your feet as you walked. The only other footprints were those of small birds and perhaps a fox. The air was clear and your heart was happy as you soaked in the beauty all around. After walking through the forest for three hours, you have now stopped here by this fallen tree. The sky is blue and the sun is out. But there's a chill in the air. It's time for a hot drink and a snack. You pull a small blanket out of your rucksack, lay it over the tree trunk and sit down. As you're pouring your drink from the flask a robin flies down and perches nearby, head at an angle, watching you. You notice his tiny beak and his red chest and the way his head twitches from time to time. He seems familiar. And then you remember what a friend told you about robins last winter, a friend who believed in animal symbolism. Apparently the appearance of a robin means that the correct path has been shown to you and you can make changes in your life with joy, laughter and a song in your heart. A visit from a robin is a reminder to let go of personal drama and exercise compassion and patience, allowing you to enter a new beginning with faith and trust and hope. All the while, as you're thinking about this, the robin is watching, and then he starts to hop towards you, and comes and perches right next to you, sharing your blanket. You continue to breathe gently, so as not to disturb him and allow his message to enter your heart. After a little while the robin gives you one last glance, and flies away. You pack up your things and get walking again. You're in no hurry as you contemplate what just happened, and you take time to notice the colours on the trees, the light and shadows on the forest floor and all the woodland life around you. You take a deep breath to inhale the scent of the forest, and notice a hint of wood smoke. You look up to see where it's coming from, but you can't see anything other than the path ahead of you so you keep walking. The scent is getting stronger as you walk. The path turns a corner and opens out into a small clearing where you see a tiny cottage as if from a storybook with smoke winding up from the chimney. You feel drawn to the cottage, and as you walk towards it, you take in every detail: The shape of the small building; the windows; the roof; the old door. You can't help but go up to that door. Something tells you this place is friendly, and you're safe here. Standing in front of the door now, you notice the unusual shape of the door knocker. You raise your hand up and knock three times, a little quietly. No answer. You knock again, three times, louder this time. And then you hear a voice. A familiar voice. "Come in," the voice says. The door isn't locked. You enter the cottage through a small flagstone hallway, and into a homely room with a woodburner, small sofa, and a table between two wooden chairs. There's someone sat in one of those chairs with their back to you."I was wondering when you'd come," they say.You can sense the smile in their voice. As they slowly turn around you realise who it is. Just be here for a moment and allow the person to reveal themselves to you. You've come here to have an important conversation. This is your moment. There's either something you need to say or something you need to hear. Stay here for a while and allow the conversation to happen. This person and this conversation is offering you an important clue to something in your life. Only you know what the message means. Now you've received that message. It's time to thank the person in the cottage and take your leave. You bid them farewell, go back through the flagstone hallway, out the door and back across the clearing towards the forest. As you reflect on what just happened, a small bird flies past you and lands on a branch up ahead. It's the robin again and he's at the opening of a small path you hadn't noticed before. Something tells you that the path is a shortcut back to your cabin. So you follow it and find your way home. When you're ready, slowly open your eyes and come back. And so to our final journaling prompt First, you might want to write down anything that bubbled up in the visualisation. And then perhaps you might want to answer this question: "What is your intention for the year ahead?" Feel free to come and share your thoughts with me over on Instagram @BethKempton, where I will be asking the same question there this week. And if you want to dive deeper into plans for the fresh new year, help yourself to a free digital planner that I've put together for you. It's called The Perfectly Imperfect 2022 planner. You can download that for free over at Bethkempton.com and I hope that will help you dig deep into your wonderful ideas for the year ahead. And with that, we come to the end of Series Two of the Calm Christmas podcast. Goodness me, my friends, it has been a real delight and an honour to share your experiences of the festivities, both light and shadow, and to walk through the season with you. I leave you with these final words and I hope that you carry your new-found sense of calm into the new year and beyond. All of life is a story. Myths and legends, folklore and fairy tales. Imagination and memory, diaries and dinner dates. Catchups over a pint and family chats around the kitchen table. Fact and fiction, hope and expectation, truth and dream. Each detail a sentence, each conversation a page. These are the days of our lives my friend, live them fully. Write them well. You have been listening to The Calm Christmas Podcast with me, Beth Kempton. If you've enjoyed it, please do leave a rating and a review to help others discover it in future. This was the final episode in this year's series, but do be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future series. I would love to hear from you and hear what you've taken from the podcast this year. Come and find me on Instagram @BethKempton, where I regularly share writing and life inspiration, peeks into my own perfectly imperfect life and I will soon be starting my free Winter seasonal poetry challenge so I do hope you'll come and join him with that. Wishing you a very special year ahead. Thank you for sharing this time with me and take good care, my friend.