OK, so A LOT of people are asking… it’s time to give you the full low-down.
Why am I moving to Dartmoor?
I could give so many answers.
The broadest, and one of the truest, is this: I need more nature. I need more space. I need more wild.
I hate looking down and not being able to see the Earth. As the inner work I do takes me deeper and deeper into my own wildness, my own nature, I have found myself struggling more and more with the concrete disconnection of London.
Yes, there are still places I love. I love crossing the Thames at Southbank at night and seeing the lights on either side of London. I love all the crazy theatre that happens here, and I love my friends and family.
But the side of me that loves nature is growing and I feel it like a yearning that can’t be ignored.
So I am listening and following my desire.
Lots of people have asked: ‘how will you do your work?’
Another honest answer is: I don’t know.
I am giving up, of course, my weekly yoga classes. I can no longer hold movement, drama or yoga workshops for children with special needs in the various schools and charities which I had built up relationships with.
I will miss my yoga students who trust me as I bring my own slightly unique take on yoga 🙂 and I will miss the amazing children who break into smiles as I enter the room, knowing I bring with me fun and games and freedom of expression for them, with no expectations.
The children and young adults with a variety of special needs – Downs Syndrome, Autism, wheelchair-users, plus many other multiple and profound learning disabilities – have taught me so much about life.
They have taught me that no matter what your circumstances, you can still laugh your head off. They have taught me that there is a game to be found in every situation. They have taught me about self-love for the vulnerable parts, the parts that don’t work as they ‘ought’… for in falling in love with them and their perfect imperfections, I was able to be softer towards my own. They have taught me that there is ALWAYS a way to communicate with another human being, and to ignore those who will try to tell you what others are and are not capable of. They have taught me to keep an open mind and know that everybody grows, and everybody learns, at their own unique pace.
The work I now do with creative and soulful entrepreneurs is, at essence, the same- it’s about creating a safe space for exploration. The work I will do will always be about deep and meaningful communication and a breaking down of the walls within ourselves and between each other. It will always be about finding ways to offer a space where true self-expression can emerge. The ‘audience’ is just different. It’s time for me to work in a different way – to bring all I have learnt and share it with those whose wisdom the world needs to hear. Those who are ready to live by their own code of conduct, rather than values of a world they don’t even agree with. Those whose journey of stepping up to speak out is what the world needs to heal.
Those children have truly opened my heart, and I feel myself welling up at the thought that I will not be going back to them this September. I co-founded and ran my theatre company, Cobblers, from a deep belief in the power of play to open doors of possibility.
I stand by that belief as I lovingly place Cobblers on the shelf, with the plan of re-opening it as a charity when myself and brilliant co-founder Elizabeth feel it is time.
For it took a lot of time. And it was never a money-maker. It was a labour of love for us both.
But it’s time now to move on.
There is fear. There is sadness. There is excitement. But most of all, there is a deep knowing that I am doing the right thing.
I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle (we never do) but I have the next step (we almost always know what that needs to be) and I am trusting.
I am doing a year-long training at the moment called ‘Initation into the Sacred Feminine’. Jewels Wingfield, my teacher, understands that our personal and spiritual development is inextricably tied up with the saving of our Earth. She brings together her life-experience as an activist, tying herself to all sorts of things that needed saving over the years, with her deeply human spiritual teachings. She teaches the spiritualists, the lovers of tantra and kundalini and ‘raising their vibrations’, that this is not enough.
That there must be a deepening of your intimacy with the world you live on – not just with the realms above. That we need to connect, not transcend. That sometimes, ‘spiritual’ paths are well-disguised ways of disconnecting, blissing out and escaping. And she teaches the environmentalists that raging at those who do not recycle is not enough either. That they must turn the care they feel for the world towards themselves also. Otherwise, what is the point?
On this course we spend a lot of time in the Forest of Dean.
One day, I found myself, bare-foot, stick in hand, running through the forest, an almost naked wild woman, anger and sadness freely flowing, allowing myself to get in touch with the pain of living disconnected from nature. From MY nature. My wildness.
Eventually I stilled, and sat. Skin to Earth. And I asked, ‘Where shall I go?’
The answer came back, clear as day. ‘Dartmoor’.
And an extra: ‘Phone Denise’.
I had found Denise a couple of months earlier, when I had a little holiday on Dartmoor. I found her on Air BnB and she said that when my request to stay came in she felt a little ‘ping’ of intuition; a ‘yes’, a ‘yes, this woman is meant to come here’.
We had had a wonderful 4 days together and said goodbye.
And then this message in the forest: ‘Phone Denise’.
The following day, as I was leaving, a friend from the course came up to me and said ‘I know someone in Dartmoor who might be wanting to rent out their cottage…’
You can guess who that friend was, right?
‘Ping’.
The following day I phoned her up. And just the day before, the day I had been running and crying and howling and hitting and asking in the forest, she had decided that she wanted to rent that room out full time.
If I had waited, it might have been too late. As soon as she’d promoted the room it would have been snapped up.
It was all about timing. The flow of divine timing; daring to listen to the whispers in the forest.
And act on them.
Even though I don’t know how it will work out.
Even though there are things and people and places I am so sad to be leaving.
There are so many practical reasons I could not go. I am in a wonderfully exciting transition of bringing all my gifts together and opening them with gusto, delighting in finally sharing them with the world and seeing the results my coaching clients are experiencing.
And no, it’s not ‘solid’ yet. It’s not sure and it’s definitely not certain (What is?).
Plus, the nearest village is a 10 minute drive away and I don’t have a driving license, let alone a car.
There are so many sensible reasons to stay.
But I choose to trust my intuition, which almost by definition doesn’t give us ‘sensible’ guidance.
This is freaking my parents out (sorry guys!) and puzzling some others… But it’s how I choose to live.
Every single most exciting and fulfilling moment in my life has come from following my intuition, and every time I listen, it strengthens.
Click here to tweet: “The most exciting and fulfilling moments come from following your intuition – every time you listen, it strengthens” – @KateWolfTweets
And life gets a little more magical.
Here’s to more magic, more wildness, and maybe seeing you in Dartmoor?
Over to you
Have you ever followed your intuition (even when it took courage) – and what magic did you experience as a result? I’d love to know – just leave a comment below.
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