Author Archives: amanda

I don’t live alone, the house is often full. So time in the early hours, before the little one awakes, is often spent with a poetry book. Good poems bring me into conversation with myself (and the poem) and remind me … Continue reading →

Simon Parke’s new book – ‘Solitude – Recovering the Power of Alone’ is out in time for Christmas. Or join Simon with Breathing Space in the yurt on Thursday 15th December and Thursday 22d December – 7.30 – 9.30. Alone … Continue reading →

They loiter in my study, intrinsically antisocial. Some gang together on the window-sill; others, in exile, are jammed in crevices around real books. The real books travel, they have beginnings, middles and endings; they are catalogued. But these are my … Continue reading →

I have been busy preparing for The Red Shoes Retreat that will take place here in the Breathing Space Yurt this coming weekend . Inspired by an exploration of the colour red in the Thesaurus, I have written a few … Continue reading →

Yesterday, Iona and I took a trip to the farm where we watched two velvet coated baby Rex rabbits share a length of cabbage. It was an entrancing ‘Lady and the Tramp’ moment with a little twitchy nose collision at … Continue reading →

I have three daughters. The eldest is 19, the now middle 16 and the youngest approaching her second birthday. So whilst my youngest has voraciously eaten her way through one strawberry and most of the way through two pears, my … Continue reading →

I have a dilemma. Iʼve been to see three wonderful films recently all of which attempt to release us from the predominance of words. The first was ʻPinaʼ, a tribute by the film-maker Wim Wenders to the radical contemporary choreographer Pina Bausch … Continue reading →

The exam season is upon us; this prompted me to write the following few lines: Five ways to crush a leaf – an education Remove it from the sunlight to constrict its breath. Confine it to a room where it … Continue reading →

In his delightful  book Word-catcher – An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words, Phil Cousineau gives a quirky and  multi-layered back story to the word ‘Contemplate’: The act of thinking deeply, observing attentively. The ancients described it … Continue reading →

Breathing Space events hope to uncover a spacious stillness at the heart of activity and to nurture a way of being in the world that respects our natural rhythms and those woven throughout creation; patterns of activity and rest, of … Continue reading →