So I met the future king, at his reception at Clarence House in recognition of social prescription.
After my last post, and upon adopting a ‘calm interiorised mind’ (CIM), I finally decided just to wear an outfit I’d worn for a wedding last year and thus not spend the doing last minute clothes morning shopping, and thus have a good nap before heading to London.
Despite my CIM and a good nap, I still had to pull over for a good cry as I walked, awash with anxiety, through London. I went in to an empty-looking art gallery near Clarence House and asked the person at the desk if I could look around, but also use their loo to get changed. I mentioned I was going to meet Prince Charles and was feeling a bit overwhelmed… and promptly burst into tears. The kind woman pulled out a chair for me to sit on, and then had the good idea of offering me the cleaning cupboard under the stairs for better privacy. It was perfect. I had a fulsome cry, and also got changed in tranquil peace and quiet.
Arriving at the gates of Clarence House, again I nearly keeled over, and had a good cry in the care of one of the other guests. All the emotion passed through me and then I was fine and ready to go in. In we all went to the beautiful house, relinquishing phones as we entered. We were guided to take position in groups dotted around one of the elegant downstairs reception rooms. The Secretary of State for Health came by to meet us all, and was interested to hear about my mental health recovery story. However, my group of people was the last to be met by the Prince. It was late and I didn’t expect him to linger, but bless him, he did, speaking to each of us in turn with focus and interest. Hearing I was ‘a patient’, he took my hand warmly and asked all about my journey, and how social prescribing had played a role in my wellbeing. He was terribly gentle, soft-spoken and attentive, leaving me, and all of us I should think, feeling enormously witnessed and heard.
Next we all gathered in the long corridor to hear speeches, given from the staircase, by our convening professor followed by the head of NHS England, the Sec of State for Health, and HRH. While the first three speakers touched on the benefits of social prescribing and achievements of its proponents (many of which unsung heroes were present), Prince Charles’s speech was something else. He spoke compellingly and passionately about the therapeutic effect of ‘beauty’, and its impact on ‘mind, body and spirit’. The line I remember perfectly was this: ‘And the good news is, beauty can be prescribed.’ Yes! Beauty can be prescribed. ‘Prescription’ is a complex word, sounding like ordering/commanding, but the wonder of ‘social prescription’ is that, with a good facilitator (aka link worker), the person finds their own form of beauty, or uplift, or connectedness, or wonder (whatever ‘beauty’ is for them)… and makes practical arrangements to get lined up with it. This is often about reconnecting with the simplest, most available things – nature, our singing voices, our communities, our creativity… Getting back to ‘beauty’ is not about paying our way into an expensive gallery to see art on the wall. It’s about revealing, and reconnecting with, the inside part of us which resonates with joy, wonder and awe.
My reflections this morning, a couple of days later, are that connecting with beauty is, for me, about reconnecting with my senses. I am prone to getting too much in to my head / thinking, which is to say too far from my body and my senses. My senses are my beauty receptors and resonators, I guess. How can I come back to my senses more fully?
Embodiment is a useful word.
Thanks. I looked it up – ‘tangible or visible’ is helpful:
And The Embodiment Channel – Mark Walsh applies the principles of yoga to daily life and coaching. He talks of embodiment as ‘the way we are’.
Help me to settle so I can hear you, sense you, interpret you, in my body, dear inner being.
Your sense of beauty is finely interpreted through your body. You are sometimes prone to shutting off your feeling body, and letting your thinking mind ride rough-shod over the subtler impulses and messages of your body. It is good to learn to tune in to the body daily, as this practice enables you to switch channels – from body to mind, and vice versa – at will, to access different fonts of wisdom.
If I were to tune into my body now, what would it tell me?
Body says: Unwind! Unwind!
Am I wound up?
Hugely wound up! Can’t you see or feel that?
I guess I can. I’ve just become so accustomed to it, it feels normal.
Unwind from your very core. Shake it out. Reset. Quickly please!
Oh golly, I’ve heard this before, haven’t I?
Yes! Unwind by hook or by crook, or you will roll on forward like a steam train without a driver, just moving down the signals in front of you. Slow down! Hear your inner self! Take the steering wheel and apply the brakes. You have normalised speeding recklessly. It is not just that this is bad for your health, but also that it causes you only to make very short term decisions. You fend off the fast-incoming missiles, as if you were playing space invaders. You have no sense of a planning horizon. Those ideals of setting up strategies are senseless when you are constantly rolling at breakneck speed.
Hey! I’m doing my best!
Slow down, and you will do better. Unwind. Unwind. Get into the body, and harness its energy. Work with your meridians. Stretch your muscles out. Breathe into the corners of your being. Not just to ‘relax’, or ‘lose weight’… but to stop being ‘out of your mind’ with speed and the wound-up-spring state. ‘Slow down, you move too fast…’
You want to know the inherent benefit to slowing down and getting back in to the body, and having access to the senses again? A return to a sense of beauty. The driverless steam train has no sense of beauty. It can’t because there is no observing mind, there is no control, there are only frightened passengers being dragged along for the ride.
The body is the route to being able to sense beauty?
The body is the route back to a sense of beauty. Come back to the senses to come back to a sense of beauty.
Thank you. I like that.
I am coming back to a sense of beauty (via embodiment)
PS. Bless qigong… That moment when thinking subsides, and one is in the flow of qigong. That is beauty. I feel beauty and I feel beautiful when I am practising qigong in a body/sense-orientated state, with thoughts gently decommissioned for a while… Qigong is the embodiment of beauty for me. It’s a reminder, a resetter of frequency.
PPS. I am enjoying the ThinkVitality youtube channel, with Jeff Chand, for qigong practice.
‘My senses are my beauty receptors and resonators, I guess.
How can I come back to my senses more fully? ‘