381 Helen Forester ~ How Getting Outdoors Can Help Us Release Creative Blocks

Transcript

Holly: Hello adventurers! welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 381. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another guest. This week I am super-excited to introduce this week’s guest, Helen Forester. I was inspired to invite her on the show by one of her recent Instagram posts about nature and creative blocks. Now, nature is fantastic at getting me to relax, get into flow, and get back in touch with my creativity so I wanted to be sure to touch on this topic for the podcast.

Helen is the founder and presenter of the podcast ‘Prompted by Nature’ and she lives, works and creates in Hove, UK. She is usually to be found wandering the forests and seasides of the South Coast and South Downs with her two small children, as well guiding writing and meditation groups in her local woodlands and natural spaces.

Helen worked as an English teacher for ten years in South London, Sussex and Spain and she is a qualified yoga and meditation teacher taking inspiration from each of these specialisms to create everything you see in her work at Prompted by Nature. She is dedicated to making nature writing and meditation accessible to all, helping to connect you with your own creativity – and voice – using nature as your prompt by creating safe spaces for wandering and creating.

Her instagram feed is dedicated to nature-inspired writing prompts that help you gain confidence in your own creative voice and connect to the nature around you in a more profound way. In her spare time, Helen runs a local community conservation group caring for and protecting a local green space.

So what are you going to learn in this week’s episode? We talk about: what are creative blocks? How you can tell when you’ve got a creative block? How do you know when you are stuck? Possible causes of creative blocks. Helen’s top tips for getting outdoors and into nature to help get past creative blocks and finally, how nature can help with creative flow.

I really hope you enjoy this week’s episode, as you know, nature is important to me and expressing myself creatively is also important to me and so I love how Helen brings together the two of them to help people express creatively through getting out into nature, this is really a topic that is very, very, close to my heart. But before we get into this week’s episode I wanted to say thank you to new patron Joanna Penn, thank you so much supporting me on Patreon. And if you would like to join me on Patreon you can head over to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton and join me there, membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff I don’t share anywhere else.

So without further ado let’s get into this week’s episode.

Holly: Hello Helen.

Helen: Hi!

Holly: How are you doing today?

Helen: Yeah, I am good.

Holly: Good! I am really looking forward to our conversation here.

Helen: Yeah me too, it is my first podcast interview where I am not the one doing the interviewing.

Holly: Oh how exciting!

Helen: Oh, I am actually allowed to talk in this one!

Holly: {laughing} You are allowed to talk – yes! So I wanted to talk to you because of this Instagram post that you posted about creative blocks and nature and how nature can help us with creative blocks, so the second I saw that I was like, ‘this is really juicy’. Before we get into the actual topic I wanted to talk to you about nature and your relationship with nature. So how do you like to get outdoors and get into nature? What is your outdoor adventure or activity of choice?

Helen: Most of the time I run, or I am on my bike. I have always been a very active, outdoor, person, from when I was very, very, young, and then all through my teens I was very active: I was a rower, and I used to do a lot of running and stuff. And that kind of always had a knock on effect with my adult life and right now, obviously with everything as it is, before I would go for a few runs and it would just be something that I did, something that I have always done because I just enjoy it. Then I realised during lockdown that actually it was something that I had to do. So for me right now, I have to say more than ever, I am really enjoying being on my bike and I have done a lot, I did the London to Brighton a few years ago, it was pre-baby, so it was 2012 I think. I absolutely loved it, but I wasn’t really a cyclist, it was more that I would run and then do some yoga and then the cycling was just what I did to get to and from places. And then I did the London to Brighton and I was like ‘oh wow’, there is just this freedom from being on your bike isn’t there? And then I think with everything that has happened this year and having the children around a lot more, which has been lovely, but I think I have needed that sense of freedom that you get on your bike, that you get when you are running, but there is something about being able to go fast under your own steam, that you can’t go that fast when you are running – well I can’t anyway!

Holly: No, neither can I – I am not a fast runner. {laughing}

Helen: So I think other than getting out into the forest with the kids and stuff I think just being outside on my bike is really…and I live near the South Downs, so it takes five minutes to cycle up to the South Downs and then it is just hills, so that has been a really, really, nice way of feeling adventurous, even though it is not like what I would really love to do (which is to disappear into the Scottish Highlands and not come back for a few weeks!), but it is kind of yeah, at the moment I am really, really, loving my bike.

Holly: Excellent! So how did you go from riding your bike as a means of transportation to signing up to the London to Brighton, because that is a big leap.

Helen: Yeah I didn’t really consider it as a big leap until I actually did it. And actually, because I was always on my bike as a child, and I was always outside playing generally with the boys in the neighbourhood, because they would always go outside, and they would be playing football and climbing trees and that was what I liked doing. So we would be cycling up and down the road and stuff and it was for fun and then I went to Uni, it was before that actually, I started rowing when I was 13 and then it was, l like I say, to and from, same thing when I went to Uni. And it was really at Uni, I think, when cycling, our coach would build it in to part of our training. And so it was like another way to build the muscles in our legs and build endurance and stuff like that, but I still didn’t really appreciate it, and then I think it was – do you know? I think actually it might have been, I did the marathon in 2010 and I did not have a good experience and it put me off running for a really long time. It was my own silly fault, I went off too fast, I did a half-marathon PB in the London marathon (you don’t do that, it is not how it works!). After that I kind of didn’t want to run again for a bit, I was cycling to and from yoga and I was a teacher at the time and at school and stuff and then it was, ‘I might just start doing this (I lived in London at the time) as just something to enjoy’. We lived in South East London and my mum was in Kingston-upon-Thames, so I would cycle from we lived in Peckham Rye, from there to her and I would just do that for fun and would be ‘oh my God I can cycle this far that’s amazing’. And then, I can’t remember who suggested it first, either myself or my partner said, ‘should we do the London to Brighton?’, and we both signed up for it together and did it together. We started doing spinning and all of that sort of stuff and I think it was that period, probably from about 2010/11, London to Brighton and then beyond, that was when it became something where I would be like, ‘I am just going to go out on my bike for an hour’, ‘I am just going to go out for the morning’. And now, my world has got a lot smaller because I don’t have to go to work every day because I work from home, I am not a teacher anymore, as in a school teacher, so I work from home, my kids go to school which is a five minute walk from our house. So now I don’t have commuting as a reason to be on my bike and it has become just something I do for pleasure, and for exercise, but I think more just to feel the wind.

Holly: {laughing} That is really, really, lovely, I think a lot of people have reconnected with nature and reconnected with moving their bodies outdoors as a result of this lockdown and now of course we are going into another lockdown, so I think it has really helped people forge a connection with the outdoors that they hadn’t had before. At first it was kind of a shock to go out onto all the trails that I usually go on, and see all these people, when I wasn’t used to seeing all these people, but it also made me really happy to see more people outdoors.

Helen: Oh definitely, and that has really been the case here as well. We have a local green space near us, and I have taken the kids over there a few times, but it was really during lockdown that we started using it more. There is a little bit of woodland, there is a little bit of open space – and unfortunately, it is under threat that part of it might be developed, but I have set up a project to try and help, at least work with, whatever they decide to do, so that we can still consider nature. But what I noticed was, like you say, we were going there almost every day and we were doing the Wildlife Trust did so much stuff, it was amazing – we were doing butterfly hunts and all of this sort of stuff, ticking on our little sheet. And the amount of people who were going there was increasing as the weeks went on and you would see people, not just with their dogs, you would see people out with their families, similar to me, like a mum with their kids, or a mum and dad or parents with their kids. And people out for a walk by themselves, which always makes me so happy, because even if you are walking from one place to another, just the fact that you are by yourself – and actually in in this space you don’t have to walk in – it is not a cut through to anything, so people are there just to enjoy it – so that always makes me really happy. But like you say, you don’t always want to be like, ‘this is my space’, but it is a bit, oh all these people are having what I have known for a while and it is really wonderful actually, because the more people that feel that connection with nature, I hope the more people that will help protect it.

Holly: Oh my god, you sound like me, I have said that! {laughing}. I 100% agree with that, absolutely. So what have you learned about yourself through your connection with nature over the years?

Helen: I think the biggest thing is trust, that I can trust myself in a kind of, I don’t know how to put it, in trusting nature I have learned to trust myself, and also self-confidence and kind of building that resilience to know, ‘okay, obstacles will come up, but I can get through them’. And I think, I don’t know if that has come about from having been outside for most of my life, but I know that, for example, going out when I was a kid and I would row and we would be going out in the water at half past six in the morning and we would literally be cutting through ice with your boat, because it was so cold, but that resilience of, ‘yes, it is really cold, but I will be okay, because I know that this won’t last’. That idea of ‘this too shall pass’, everything, and that is the biggest lesson from nature for me that everything passes, every season changes and every season in our life will pass and change, whether that is a good thing or not: the good things won’ last and the bad things won’t last, and-actually that is reassuring. And when I left uni I worked very, very, hard for a year and then I took myself off travelling and I went to Mexico Central and South America. I deliberately went by myself, and a couple of. Friends said, ‘oh I am going to go to Australia, do you want to come?’  or ‘I am going to go and do this gap year project, do you want to come?’, and I was like no and no. And it was not that I had anything against going to Australia, or doing a gap year project, but I knew that I needed to do something by myself and to step into what I already knew I was that I had to almost ignore when I was at school, maybe it was ignoring it, or maybe it was not being confident enough to step into it and then when I went travelling, so much of it was nature, so much of it was me stumbling upon a little village somewhere and being totally taken in by the people there, like climbing a volcano and seeing the sun rise at four thirty in the morning and standing at the top and seeing the shadow of the volcano in front of you as the sun is behind you. And I remember the biggest thing that I learned that nature taught me, about being able to trust myself. I have this really vivid memory – it was such a long time ago, all the names fade, but I think it was in Nicaragua, it was somewhere there – and it was a cloud rainforest, I really hope it is still there, it is one of those things now when I look back, I am like: what’s there now? I hope everything is still there.

Holly: Well Costa Rica has actually done a good job of expanding their rainforests. I lived in Costa Rica in 1996 for a few months and I think in the 1950s they started protecting the rainforests and giving more space to them and even since I lived there, in the mid 90s, they have grown the rainforest – so there is good news in some parts of the world!

Helen: That makes me happy! There was this cloud rainforest – so cloud rainforest is basically a rainforest that is up a mountain, so you are literally going up into the clouds – and there was no path, (I don’t know if there is [a path] now, I would hope s, because I got lost), and the only way you could get to the top there, was following these ribbons and that was literally it, and this was in 2004, 2004/5 when I went away. I followed this trail, and I was so nervous and thought, ‘what if I get it wrong? I don’t have a map’. There were all these stories about people getting lost in the rainforest and stuff. But something in me, I don’t know what happened when I went away, but it was almost like my intuition and my instincts got turned up a notch, and I honestly believe that it was nature. She was like, ‘you are going to need your instincts, so I am just going to turn them up, I am going to turn up on it a bit because you need to start listening to it more, because it has always been right and now you need to learn to trust it’. And I remember, I got to this point and there was a little wooden sign and it said, ‘waterfall, this way’, but it was taking me off the track and I was like, ‘I would love to see it, I have heard about it’ and I thought ‘if I can go and retrace my steps and then I will be okay’ and then I came back and I lost my path and I ended up falling down the side. I fell down the side of this… (I have never told my mum this!) I fell down the side of this mountain, not all the way obviously, it was only a short path, and I skidded to a halt right in front of this cobweb with this massive spider in it. I was just like, I screamed and ran back up to where I was, because I could follow where I had fallen. I got back up to the bit where I had slid and I just remember – this was before I started practicing meditation or anything like that – I just remember closing my eyes, stopping, breathing and then just thinking, ‘right what do I remember seeing?’ and almost retracing my steps and just going really, really, slowly and eventually I found my way onto the path. I think experiences like that – I was 22 when that happened – and I think that had such a massive impact on my self-confidence because I was quite shy when I was at school, I had a really close group of friends that I felt comfortable with, but when I went outside of my friendship group I was very shy. So that taught me so much about, like I said, knowing that I could be okay, trusting that I could get myself out of difficult situations and then – kind of on a broader scale – just being around people that I didn’t know and that it was okay, you know? That kind of… I think so much of the way that I see myself now comes from something that I have learnt from being outside. Yeah, so I think, that is the biggest thing I think.

Holly: Solo travel is so fantastic for teaching us how to trust ourselves, how to trust our intuition, confidence, self-esteem. I am such a fan of solo travel.

Helen: Same, same.

Holly: It is just, it is really life changing, it has absolutely changed my life, I was so quiet, so shy, and I think solo travel was the thing that gave me the confidence to start breaking out of that shell.

Helen: It is funny, because I remember before I went, so many people were like, ‘why would you go by yourself? You are a woman in your early 20s’. I remember I used to work in a pub before I left, I used to work there, I was at Uni and stuff and they gave me extra shifts so I could start building up some more money. I remember one of the guys was like, ‘oh you are saving up to go to South America are you? You know you will come back in a box’. And I was just like, ‘thanks for that!’

Holly: Oh that is encouraging!

Helen: Exactly! I think there was either that attitude, the real fear of what was going to happen to me, ‘you are not strong enough’, ‘you won’t last’, ‘you will be up after a month…’. And then there was the, ‘why don’t you want to be with anybody else?’

Holly: What is wrong with you that you want to be alone?

Helen: Or ‘what is wrong with everybody else? Why do you think you are too good…’ But actually, for me, a really big takeaway from it was, yes, I went by myself but I was never really alone, I was either in nature, and you are never alone in nature or I was meeting new people and we would travel together for a week and say goodbye and there were no hard feelings, it was like, ‘oh I am going this way’, ‘okay I am going that way’, ‘okay, bye’. You know? I never really felt like I was alone, and you can be, you are not tied to anyone or anything, you can just please yourself and that is so rare, to be like, ‘no I don’t like this’. I remember waking up at, I went somewhere, a similar thing, I was going to do a trek, I had heard about this trail, got to this place, found a hostel and booked in, and I remember really distinctly waking up at five in the morning and going, ‘I need to leave’. I don’t know why, I just had this really strong feeling that I shouldn’t be there and so I left and went somewhere and even to this day I am like, why did I leave? But it was such an overpowering feeling that I had to go that I got up and I got the 6 o’clock bus and I went to the next place. And it is just like, you know? If I had had someone else travelling with me, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like that in the first place, but also I would then had to have justified it to them and you know?

Holly: Yes.

Helen: I think it is quite an underrated thing.

Holly: Yes absolutely, absolutely. So we are here today to talk about creative blocks and nature, how do you express your creativity in the world? Like what is your form of creative expression? Or forms?

Helen: I think my biggest thing has always been communication, being able to communicate in some way. My biggest thing has always been writing, I have always loved writing, I have always been a writer, but I have never really taken it seriously, it was just something I did, whether it was journalling or writing poems or writing stories that I have never finished. That has been… I like drawing and that kind of thing, but I don’t do it enough, I should do it more, but the writing aspect of it has always been my thing. I still have books, from when I was I don’t know eight and upwards, I guess, of really rubbish poems that you write when you are eleven years old and then I went through my slightly gothic stage when I was in my teens and everything was about black roses and you know all that sort of thing? Writing has always been, yeah it has always been my first love I think.

Holly: Mine too! So what are creative blocks? Is this writers’ block or…?

Helen: I think creative blocks is just when it is when whatever it is that you are trying to do creatively, you can’t see a way forward in it, for me that is what a creative block is. I feel, for me, I don’t have to be creating something in order to get a creative block, sometimes for me the creative block comes before I have even put pen to paper and it is like this physical, I can’t even start it, sometimes it is because I don’t know where or how to start it and sometimes it is because I am scared of the outcome being rubbish. It is that whole, almost that self-fulfilling prophecy I guess, in a way, ‘well I know it is going to be rubbish, so I am not going to bother because it will just be rubbish’. Then the block continues, you know? Writers’ block is a form of creative block because it is… a lot of people will talk about getting writers’ block when they are half way through something, then they will hit a wall in whatever it is that they are doing, but for me, yeah, it is very much about something blocking that flow. And often, most of the time, it is something that literally could just be removed. If you think about a water pipe, if you shove something in the middle of it, or a hosepipe if you twist it, it will cause a block and then the water will be able to flow, but if you untwist it, and you figure out how to untwist it, it will continue to flow and it all comes back. That is very much how it looks for me in my head of what a creative block is.

Holly: And how can people tell when they are blocked? How can they know that that is what is going on for them?

Helen: Well I think – obviously it depends on the person – but, for me, it is very much about a lack of…I suppose there can be different ways that they can manifest in different people, lack of motivation, so, ‘I just can’t be bothered to start’, ‘I can’t be bothered to continue’, ‘no, no, I can’t be bothered’. Procrastination – finding something else to do, ‘I am not really sure where I am going with this so I will just do something else’ – and then the thing that you are supposed to be doing never gets finished, because you are always doing something else. Feeling quite unsettled I think, like tetchy. Often I think for me that comes from a frustration that I know I want to continue to do whatever it is I am doing, or create whatever it is I am creating, but because I feel blocked I get frustrated and then I just get a bit unsettled and I can’t sit still, I just can’t find that calm that I think you need to almost accept that the block is there and move through it.

Holly: Yeah.

Helen: And then, just like I said, not even wanting to start and just being scared of a blank page, so looking at a blank page, you know when you just get really overwhelmed, if someone has asked you to write something, the expectation of what they or what you think they are looking for. The expectation of what you think they think it is going to be, because they have asked you to do it, and the blank page can be really quite overwhelming. I know people who – I don’t know what it is called formerly, this kind of creative journalling and you can use pictures and it is mixed media – some people will actually paint on their page, almost like a canvas, paint on their page first, so that there is no blank page, it is just…it has got something on it already and then they are creating on the top of it. But yeah, I think that can be a big thing, I know for me like I say, that is a really big thing of I am not sure I am going to like what is there when I have finished it. But actually what comes with that is just accepting. I have been recently, especially because I have been trying to reach out more with my writing and write pitches for magazines and put more stuff on my website, because I have always kind of hidden my writing. So I am trying to be a bit more out there and I think one of the big things for me has actually been removing the pressure of the final produce in the sense of saying, ‘this is just a draft’, just allowing the draft to be and actually I love writing by hand and quite often if I am drafting something I will go very old school like I used to when I was writing essays at school I would write everything by hand, and when I was at school we didn’t write essays on computers at all really.

Holly: Me neither.

Helen: It was only when I went to Uni that I started writing on a computer, and then it is like you know it is a draft because it is not on the computer and I think once I put it on the computer it feels like it needs to be polished and final.

Holly: That makes sense.

Helen: But when it is in a notebook I feel like I can scribble all over it if I need to.

Holly: Oh I like that, that is a really good technique. So what are your top tips for how people can work through their creative blocks, whether that is by getting outdoors to nature, or other things?

Helen: I think if it is possible identifying what the cause is, whether it is comparison-itis, you are worried somebody else’s is going to be better, or yours isn’t going to be better than somebody else’s. I think, there can be like, are you too busy? Are you tired? Are you too distracted? Do you have a radio on? Have you got the tv on? Is something happening in the background while you are trying to create whatever it is that you are trying to create? Is there a deadline you are stressing about? I think once you have identified the cause you can then remove those things, or at least try and work on those things, I think. The biggest thing in terms of working through a block and giving people tips of working through blocks is almost like accepting that the block is there in the first place, when you just go: do you know what? I just feel really…I just can’t carry on with this at the moment, I don’t know what it is, I just know that I need a bit of space from it, and then taking that space if you need to, going outside, having a bath, going for a run, going for a bike ride or whatever it is that you do to switch off a little bit and doing that. And then setting up, creating a scenario in which whatever it is that you are working on can be created so turning the tv or the radio off, because I love listening to podcasts and the radio – and music especially – but actually, when I am in that mode of ‘I want to work on this’, not finish it, just work on this, everything has to be off. I need to be in my little space with my computer or my notebook and I just need to get it down without that distraction. So I think having minimal distractions is really, really, important. And then, just allowing whatever it is that you are writing to be a draft, if it ends up not being a draft that is great, but having that pressure of, ‘this needs to be the final piece and it has to be perfect’, that is enough to cause anyone… perfectionism is like, that is enough to give anyone a block.  

Holly: Yes.

Helen: So I think just taking that, ‘this is my first draft, some of it is not going to be right, I might even take out entire chunks, I might take out a whole paragraph, I might have to reword a few phrases, that is fine’. I am going in with that expectation and then kind of working from there. Oh yeah, turning off the phone…

Holly: Yeah, absolutely.

Helen: I mean that is the biggest thing, or even just the alerts, because even if you look at your phone just to look at the time and, ‘oh someone has WhatsApp’d me’ (because it is on silent), ‘I will just quickly check that’.

Holly: Don’t!

Helen: Exactly, just don’t. And also I think experimenting with a different medium, so if you are finding yourself, I often say and find with myself, if I really can’t write something I will just do something else that is also creative. Maybe I will just do a doodle or even on my Instagram I do my little bullet journal things – I will even write one of those, it is still creative, but it is in a different way. So working with a different medium that is not the one that you normally work with.

Holly: Yeah that makes sense.

Helen: And becoming inspired in a different way.

Holly: So you mentioned getting outdoors into nature to help with creative blocks, whether it is running, or cycling, do you feel like getting outdoors into nature and moving is what helps us move through those creative blocks? Or do you think maybe also meditating in nature and being still, would that help as well?

Helen: I think it kind of depends on the person, because I run outdoor retreats locally and I tend to do a kind of – I have been finding a lot of people coming on the retreats are people who will say, ‘I used to really love writing and now I don’t do it anymore and now I don’t know how to start because I am too x, y, or z’. Or painting or whatever it is, someone came to my last one and she had watercolours with her, and I find that different people will need different things and I kind of do all of them. One of I think the main things which is really lovely to do is going for a walk in your favourite space, preferably wild-ish, like a forest or by the sea, if you have got the sea nearby and walking very, very, slowly so one of the things that we start off with when I run the retreats we do a ridiculously slow walk to the shelter where everything takes place. It is actually only a five minute walk, from the entrance to the shelter, but we do this big looping walk, we do it super slowly and everyone has to keep their space in the line that we are walking in and it takes us about 20-25 minutes. And I find that the biggest thing is that you hit that barrier of, ‘I have to walk fast now’, you are walking so slowly that something in you is like, ‘and now we need to start walking faster, aren’t we?’. I say to participants before we even walk, I say, ‘ you are going to hit that point and it will be in a minute, we are just going to keep walking at that slow pace’, and because they are following someone, walking at a very slow pace, they have to and that is almost the ‘it has to be finished now, we are finished now aren’t we?’, but actually staying with that pace.

Wherever you go for a walk, and allowing the time to let everything drop because I think often, ‘I am going to go for a walk now’ and we are slow for a bit we go on our phones, or we are thinking about whatever, and we don’t necessary give ourselves that time to really drop into the body and out of the mind. And actually, particularly this year that is what helped me, I would put the kids to bed and say, ‘right I am going to go for a walk now’, it would be eight o’clock at night and if I walk in a very direct route it will take me fifteen minutes to get to the South Downs. I take the first 15-20 minutes as just everything is just moving around in my head that is fine, then after that that is my being in nature and it is almost like if you are feeling blocked and you want to get outside you have to allow yourself, to have that first chunk of time, five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever, to let the mind just chatter at you and that is how, when I teach meditation, that is how I teach it. Your mind can’t switch off it is your survival mechanism, it is there for a reason, it wants to keep you alive, it is that ego thing, meditation is a lot about, ‘we are going to to drop the ego, we are going to get rid of the ego’. Well the ego is the thing that keeps us alive. So we need to keep a bit of it, we just don’t need the negative one, the bit that tells us that we are not good enough and all of that sort of thing. So when you get out in nature, don’t expect it all to happen, don’t expect that it is all going to be like, ‘and now it is all perfect and I can get on and write’. It is actually about spending time and allowing that sense of calm to come rather than forcing it, and I think one of the other things I like doing – and I did this with a home schooling group a couple of weeks ago, and I like to do it with young people in this way because they really do struggle with walking slowly, because of their age and the way their brains are it is all… So then it is very much about the sense and engaging with each of the senses and taking it one at a time and, ‘okay for the the next two minutes, I am just going to focus on what I can hear’, ‘on the next two minutes I am just going to focus on what I can smell or feel’ and you go through each of the sense and that helps the mind to slow down a little bit and you can start to come into the breath and it is just then about one step, one step, one step…

I often find is even if I haven’t gone out for a walk to think about the thing that I am blocked in, or that I am struggling with, when I come back, it might even be a day later, ‘oh that is what it could be’ but I think the important thing is getting outside in the first place and making it a regular thing and then just seeing what that does and how it helps.

Holly: Yeah, absolutely. So how do you think that nature can help us to get into that creative flow?

Helen: I think just by being in nature…

Holly: Yeah.

Helen: …just by being there. There is so much about being in an outdoor space, the colours, so for example, when I am writing the prompts, like the bullet journal prompts, I am always thinking about how does nature feed into this? If someone were going to take this prompt and take it outside, what are the things that are around us that can help us move into that state through the blocks, whatever it might be, and it is always about the colours, the colour green is known to be calming to the nervous system. When we are feeling a bit anxious, or wound up, or whatever it might be, we are in our sympathetic nervous system, and we need to drop back into that parasympathetic nervous system that is the rest, repair, all of that lovely stuff, rather than being in fight or flight. When you are in an outdoor space, especially when there are trees, grass, whatever it might be, that green is like the first step, studies show that that helps the blood pressure to lower, the heart rate to lower, we start to notice the breath. Even if it is like if you are sitting by the beach, what I quite like to do, if I sit by the sea, just watch the tide coming in and out, I live in Brighton, so I am quite lucky, I have got the beach by five minutes on my bike. Listening to the sea, so it comes in and I inhale, it goes out and I exhale. It comes in and I inhale, and it goes out and I exhale.  And so literally just being in nature and observing, watching what is there, watching the birds flying and chattering to each other, and also I think there is a real…it is really reassuring seeing how the seasons keep coming and going.

Holly: Yeah.

Helen: And like I said before, getting that inspiration from nature, which is ‘everything passes’, the leaves will die and they will drop and this block is temporary and just be sitting, listening, whatever it is that is around, that in itself is enough to move us out of the state that is the thing that is blocking us in the first place, you know?

Holly: Yes nature it is like it completely resets my system, whether I am going on a hike, or whether I am going on a run, or a walk, it just, it is just so relaxing and it really gets me into that space where I feel like I can do anything, I can write my books, I have ideas for a new podcast episode, tons of stuff, so it just yeah, very restorative.

Helen: And I would also say, I always take a notebook with me, if I am going for a walk I will take a notebook with me just in case something does come in, I will just quickly write that down and it also means that I don’t have to write it on my phone, which means that I don’t have to look at my phone.

Holly: Yes.

Helen: I think deliberately, I quite often…I am not weather bound, a lot of people think that if they are feeling frustrated and blocked, ‘oh it is raining, I can’t go out’, well why not? There is an expression, ‘there is no such thing as bad weather it is bad clothing choices’ or something like that. [‘There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes’]

Holly: Yes, yes, I was just thinking that.

Helen: So I think that as long as you are warm.

Holly: Waterproofs!

Helen: You can get decent waterproofs for not that much money and just get out because actually also I think focusing yourself out of your comfort zone, is it that Wim Hof guy, you know The Iceman and he says we are all too comfortable, we have all been brought up to be comfortable and to seek comfort and sometimes pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is when the biggest inspiration can come in, especially if you are out in nature and it is so unpredictable, the wind and the rains and stuff. Obviously, not putting yourself in any danger , if you are not feeling well obviously not going out, but even just opening the window and letting the wind com in, I love doing that, especially down here we get really strong winds. Just having that wind coming and standing by the window and letting it come in if you can’t get out of the house.

Holly: I was running a race on Saturday, last weekend, and the rain was just pouring down and the wind was just pelting the rain in my face and it was that rain that hurst, and it was muddy, and I was sliding all over the place and I was like, ‘why. Am I doing this? I don’t have to do this; this is a choice. But then I was like, ‘but it is fun!, it is kind of miserable but also it is fun’. {laughing}

Helen: And you are doing it, it is like, ‘but I am still doing it. I really want to stop but I am not, oh my goodness! I am still running, and it is still raining’, it is amazing.

Holly: It is and it was one of those races where it was 5k loops so you could do as many loops as you want, or as few loops as you want, so you could do one loop and still finish it and so my goal going into it is to either do three or four, because I knew that I could four, but three is a stretch. Half way through the third one and I was like, ‘am I going to do the fourth one? I am going to do the fourth one?’, it was like, ‘I am going to do the fourth one even if I have to walk it’ and I didn’t I ran most most of it. It was a really interesting thought process of, ‘I am here in the elements, the elements are not being kind, but yet I am still enjoying it, so let’s do another loop’.

Helen: Exactly, so much of if is that why not? Why not just have a go!

Holly: And I was definitely outside of my comfort zone and that definitely put me in a different place for this week, I started on Mondays and I was getting through my emails and like doing all my stuff and I just felt in a different place this week because I had a great stretch outside of my comfort zone over the weekend. So you also have a podcast? Can you tell us about it?

Helen: Yes so it is prompted by nature and it very much, I kind of see that and what I do on my social media – really only Instagram, because I can only manage one at a time! – I see them as almost like sisters, because essentially it explores the link between nature and creativity, it explores people that work in and/or with nature in a creative way. So I have interviewed nature documentary makers, eco therapists, nature writers, herbalists, just like a really broad range of people and yeah we talk about their work, how they are inspired by nature and their creativity, how they are going to do what they do, and every conversation is punctuated by a writing prompt and a meditation which I do. It is partly because I am a meditation teacher, and I am a writing teacher and I kind of wanted to bring those two things in. For me it is about engaging in more deeply with the conversations the person might have just heard and so using the conversations as a creative prompt and then the meditation is part of that, dropping into that creative space and trying to still the mind enough to be able to write or paint or whatever creativity it is that they do and also the meditation also for me, ‘this is a bank of meditations that anyone can access whenever they need to and it might be that they have done a few of them and only one of them has helped them but then they have got one meditation that they can listen to or go back to and memorise and then use in their daily lives. Yeah for me also quite an important part of it to use the conversations as a starting point actually for people’s creative work or life or whatever it might be.

Holly: Sounds very juicy!!

Helen: Yeah I love it, I had been thinking about doing a podcast for years, I used to make Marla beads which are beads from meditation and did that for six years and loved it and just never, in terms of the yoga world is just very fraught at the moment and it just didn’t really interest me. And then last year, middle of last year, I started to think,, I need to get back to teaching and just being outside again, because I wasn’t outside because I was working so hard making the beads and then this just started to drop in: oh I could post creative writing prompts, xx with nature, because they are my two favourite things, I can do this podcast, with meditations, and now I really love it.

Holly: And it is very much needed in this world and especially now we are in this weird Covid thing, we are coming in and out of lockdown it is great to have online resources that people can access without having to go to a yoga class or go to a meditation class and I think that is going to be really supportive for a lot of people.

Helen: Yeah, and I think that is just a crazy year so if there is anything I can do to help in anyway, and I have had some really lovely feedback about it and that kind of gives me a push to keep going because I edit it, and do everything myself, because I tend to say silly things in the interview so I don’t want people to hear that so I edit it out!

Holly: {laughing} You haven’t said any silly things today, it has all been really good stuff!

Helen: Yeah I love it and it has become part of my own creativity now.

Holly: Exactly, so where can people find you online?

Helen: So I have my website that is kind of the main, where everything that I do is, and it is: http://promptedbynature.com And there is a blog that I am kind of trying to build up and I put my own writing on there and it has got all my events and I have got an online, it is just a Monday evening, nature-inspired, it is essentially the podcast and the Instagram account in a weekly class so I am starting that next week. And then I am on Facebook but it is only really put the events on there and I do my Instagram and feed the events into that so I don’t do a lot of social media stuff but what I do is on Instagram and it is @promptedbynature and my podcast is ‘Prompted by Nature’ wherever you get your podcasts.

Holly: Well thank you so much for joining us today.

Helen: Thank you so much for asking me! It has been really lovely.

Holly: Excellent, well, have a great day!

Helen: You too!

Holly: Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, I hope you found it interesting and useful, you can contact me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. Thank you so. Much for listening.

Next week’s episode… I think is going to be a solo episode but I have got some really exciting interviews coming up so I might switch things around we shall see.

Remember to visit: https://hollyworton.com/381 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.