I have mentioned that I’m finishing off a book on stress and anxiety a couple of times in recent posts, well I’m pleased and quite excited to announce that the Kindle version is now available on Amazon! See link below. I will do a fuller post about the book when the paperback is available.

As for the paperback itself I am currently putting the final bits together for this and it could have been finished by now but I took a break as I hit a wall with the head nippy aspects of doing this myself (though I am indebted to my friend Ian Bailey- Scudamore for grammatical and flow of words editing, this man is a master of the English language and I would highly recommend his services as an editor). Last week after my second day going through the time consuming process of designing the cover, layout editing etc. I finally went out for a walk early evening and found that my head was buzzing for the first ten minutes. Not something I experience much of these days so it was interesting in the context of what I have been writing about over the past couple of months. What brought calm back fairly quickly was focussing on the nature all around me. I was walking along the River Avon and the sound of the river coupled with the sight of the intense greens of the trees and undergrowth was profoundly peaceful. I feel blessed that I live in this very pretty part of West Lothian, the photo in this post is a part of this river.

In today’s post I thought I’d write a couple of ways to quieten the mind by coming into the present moment through the sense of sight. The first way is through nature as mentioned above, if you can get outside anywhere with flowers or trees or water, stop and imagine you are breathing in the beauty, and order, of what you are seeing. Focus completely on what is in front of you, if it’s a plant fill your mind with the details – colour, size, shape overall and of the individual parts, notice parts you may never have noticed before, perhaps look at it the way an artist would, from the tiniest details to the overall impression, do this as if nothing else exists in this moment. As for water, if you are near a river let your mind flow with the direction of the river, the effortless movement of the water; if it faces an obstacle such as a rock it simply flows around it or perhaps the rhythm and vastness of the sea or the stillness of a lake.

The second exercise is more immediate, stop whatever you are doing and pick an object in the room, really examine the object, the shapes, the perfection of form, the colours, textures – look at it as a collection of the above, forget what it’s purpose is for a few moments. What else do you notice? Allow this to fill your mind; for a couple of minutes there is nothing else to think about. When you come back to yourself unless your previous thoughts were practical or deeply peaceful were they really that important?

I am writing this the day after Midsummer Solstice – if there was ever a time to focus on the awesomeness of nature and the natural order of the cosmos it would be the Solstice and eclipses this year! Below is a link to a five minute video detailing the geometry and astronomy of this weekends eclipse , it’s really quite mind blowing…