Julia Chi Taylor

I was just finishing my conversation when striding towards me came five armed policemen with a dog... I felt like I was in a computer game or on a film set... They passed by, again it was as if I didn't exist.... I was simply the watcher of it all...

We are all the watchers of it all in truth... There is a place within us that is still; always still. The place that watches everything, absolutely everything we do.

A part is always watching. The more we can know we are that part, rather than believe we are the person living out the stories... We are free.

As my new book 'Girlfriend for a year' makes itself out into the world, it is re connecting me with old friends... My book on conscious relating is opening up dialogues again with people I met and enjoyed connecting with six years ago...

It was 2009 and Suzy Miller was creating the first ever UK ‘divorce fair’... It was called SOS which stood for Starting Over Show, and it was about Starting Over from divorce in a holistic and empowering way.

I am home, the flat is warm and Anadi is making me a cup of Chaga... It is a mushroom drink recommended by Eugene.... It is for the whole nervous system... Because every single mushroom is linked, and so are we.. I have yet to look up its properties, so my interpretation may not have done it justice... But Eugene's description inspired me... It sounded very magical mushroom indeed.

'I could live all alone in a desert island' he said... Yes, I love being alone' I affirmed, 'but the more I find I am able to be alone, truly alone, the more I find that this attracts people...' He agreed... Because we are all connected, the more we connect to ourselves then we are able to be alone and know the connection with others is not so much even about a connection, we are know and experience that we are one ... We are quite simply meeting ourselves in every person we encounter...

The timelessness of the never ending conversation, one I began with them over ten years ago, and it continues in circles around the South Downs... And what I notice in the main, is that the essence of all of us is more apparent... That as the years go by, we know one other more deeply, and there is a trust and truth, mainly born form our own self acceptance. There is something about journeying side by side with our friends, whether that is actually as we run in circles, or metaphorically as the years go by, that the love deepens as we know ourselves and one another better...

This has always been true... Running has kept me living a stiller life, and creating a lifestyle that includes a lot of time in nature and alone... Researching best places to run!

It didn't take me long to discover that if life is over full or over fast, then running gets squeezed out, gets slower, doesn't feel as good....and neither do I.

It is a truth often missed, that if we work to look after ourselves, and find out how to be at ease and clear, this has a positive effect on those around us...

Learning to be with ourselves and love ourselves is often deemed selfish, but if we are centred in our selves we have limitless love available for others.

This is very evident when we look at our relationships with one another...

Because we are now such a connected species, it is said that it isn't six degrees of separation any longer... It is three; and so this emphasises to me how vital it is to take responsibility for my every breath and thought and action as it impacts directly or indirectly on everyone...

By the same token I am committed to clearing my own emotional baggage so that I am as still and clear as possible, and can walk freely in this world, without being affecting by others or affecting them with my pain...  Like stubbing my toe...!

An ongoing commitment and journey.... 24/7

We exist in paradoxes all the time, and our emotional core is so affected by everything we experienced when we were little, that often it is very hard to distinguish what we like and what touches  our emotional set point. I know that if you ask me if I would like to go and watch a game of rugby, I would say 'no thanks', and yet two days running, I have sat with it all around me and liked it as a backdrop to my own world...

This is why exploring our own paradigms or maps of how we see the world is a very powerful transformational way of being...

At one point I had finished an interval, and a young woman was standing nearby... She said to me... 'One day I would like to run like you'.

She had just competed in, and completed her first park run... She was feeling very good about her achievement...

She is over from Australia and was happy to have experienced the park run...

'What is your name?' I asked her...'Kelly' she replied 'I'm Kelly from Australia...' It was a wonderful brief encounter.... Connection through the running step; the most natural of movements bringing us together, and we live on opposite sides of the world....

Discovering what is genuine sharing of information, encouraging us to make up our own minds, is a vital process for our growth, and asks that we take responsibility for our health and are prepared to explore.. Paul described those who say that 'Barefoot running is the only way', as the 'barefoot brigade'...

When it is a 'brigade' it generally seems to be about a certain way, being the only way... And so it follows, other ways are made wrong...

It is therefore important to read and research and ask questions and information gather, but with a view to finding out, experimenting...

This way we will find our own way...

We said 'Hello' to Poppy the guinea pig, and looked about for Octavious the tortoise, but couldn't see him anywhere... I have just looked on the 'Old Bakery' blog post, and the mystery of not being able to find Octavious has been solved....

'Our tortoise, Octavius, who has lived with us here at The Old Bakery since 1978, had removed himself from his Summer home to his Winter quarters beneath the roots of the Wysteria.  He is a very efficient weather indicator.  No need to feed him lettuce, tomato and strawberries again until he re-emerges in the Spring. Sleep well Octavius'

We are the experts on ourselves, and our needs at any one time may be different to another... All that is required is that we seek to know ourselves... And that we relax... That is it really... And that we make no one our authority... We are the masters of our own destiny... Because we are all one, so if we relax and trust in our unique drop of energy, we can flow free in our own dance that is perfectly in tune and in step with the whole, without needing to try, or seek, or search... Instead to simply let go and live... The only requirement is that we live our own life... This way if we are teachers, or sharers of knowledge, or we are creators of anything at all, it will be from the place and space of consciousness rather than mind...

As we arrived in North London the sky was streaking across suburbia, painting a picture full of nostalgic notions... Autumn arriving, the days shortening... Memories rising and falling because we may know there is only now, we may live mainly in the now...

But then this human journey tugs at us, reminding, reconnecting, rekindling... And so we let go again and again and again, in learning to live and let live... And to love where we are in the here and in the now....

I have always loved Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' and was fascinated by Prospero learning sorcery from books, sorcery so powerful that he was able to control even the weather... But of course that power is within us all... We are the weather, we are one another, and so we are all colluding in our energetic patterns...

Anadi and I explore a lot the idea that if we simply clear anything that is stuck, stagnant, and outdated 'stuff' from our past hurts and adaptations, and instead truly embrace the now - truly know that this moment really is all there is....

Then everything will be okay.

Life seems a strange journey sometimes... All of us passing this Illusion of time, when it doesn't exist and we have only now. Angst often arises from the concept of time... Not enough of it, worry over what to do with it, regret over what we might have done with it...

'There is only clearing' Anadi said, as I mused over the legacy of lives we might have lived, which can make this one harder than it needs to be, and hold us in the grip of spending our time in useful and productive ways... 'Only clearing and then everything flows, there is no time and nothing is hard...' So true, we have only 'now'... But it appears in the main this is only a concept that folk talk about rather than live... Living it now is about trust... Of now.

For the last twenty eight years I have generally had something hurting... Some sort of chronic injury has lurked...

It's been a long journey which I charted some of in my last book 'Running to Learn...' A left side imbalance appeared when I was twenty eight and I have been unravelling it ever since... This doesn't mean I haven't run, and I have had patches of more flowing running... But injury has always returned... I have continued to seek within my psyche, my held emotions and my body ways to release myself from my own chains...