Lifescape

Dear friends

As I write, summer seems to have come, gone – and come again. In May, during that glorious spell, I, like many others, started to feel lifted in some way. We take it for granted sometimes that our moods are affected by so many things – the weather included, but it’s not often acknowledged that these subtle relationships between our bodies, minds and environment can have a profound effect on our health. In this letter I highlight a book, champion some beautiful new ambient music and reflect on the potential for joy and healing in our world and in the awareness and sensitivity of the ‘fey’ child inside us all.

Recently I read a simple and wonderful book by psychiatrist, Dr David Servan-Schreiber, entitled ‘Healing with Freud or Prozac’. Actually the book isn’t anti-therapy or anti-anti-depressants, but highlights the recent evidence showing that the body and emotional brain are a lot better at ‘self-healing’ than was previously thought. Stress, anxiety and depression are social, environmental and biological phenomena, he tells us, and with awareness and insight – drawn from what he calls  the new ‘emotion medicine’ – we can begin to heal ourselves.

Joy and healing are available to us in other ways. Most of us know the powerful and profound effects of music, poetry and art on the spirit and the soul, and one of the things that we seem to have lost in our culture is a sense of the innocence of creativity. When the Romantic poets were writing, their poems were paeans to landscapes and ideals – to ‘utopia’. As we have lost this idealism, so this has become deeply damaging for our culture, for us as individuals and for the planet.

Our disconnection from ourselves, each other and from the earth around us is often deeply painful to us. Many of those who come to talk in therapy seem to be most aware of this pain and it seems as if they are grieving for something deeply important to the human soul. There is, perhaps, a lost archetype of childhood in this sense of loss, remembered by us all, but most of all by the faery children – those who seem most connected with the magic in the world, and who are always stirring, rebelling against socialised norms and economic and political cynicism and greed; always trying to cross the veil between this world and the imagined. These wise, childish voices are our conscience – they carry the sadness of the world and also the knowledge of its potential for simple joy – and something else: the promise of discovering something of our true selves free of the constraints and denials we have constructed around our lives as we grow into adulthood.

So there is hope in rediscovering the simple, everyday magic of our lives and surroundings. The relatively new field of eco-therapy recognises this, building on the healing power of simply being in the world by using “the natural environment to enable us to make sense of our inner emotions and life experiences”. And though we may have lost much of the countryside that the Romantic poets were writing about, there are still whole swathes of beautiful landscape in the UK and beyond. With presence and wonder, even a small backyard or garden can become a paradise that offers us the promise of healing.

In one such small corner – in the idyllic valley of Hope Bagot in Shropshire – was born Utopia XO – an ambient music project which is the brainchild of Dave Hesketh. The recently released album, the Light, is a luminous and beautiful piece of music and one that is entirely without cynicism. Dave’s music reminds us is that even in the midst of an industrialised, commercial culture, we haven’t lost the natural beauty of the world. In his little valley, and in the hills and coastlines of Pembrokeshire where I spend as much time as I can, there still lies the promise of joy and healing for ourselves and our world. People like Dave, and the faery children who keep innocence alive can, perhaps keep for us the hopes and promises of Utopia – even in our damaged and cynical world that seems to breed so much despair.

You can read a short ‘work in progress’ article on the faery child archetype by clicking HERE, and you find out more about the fascinating UtopiaXO project  at: http://viewutopia.com/

So here’s to a new movement for innocence, joy and utopia!

Love as always

Steve