Day 56: Love Hearts

I never know what is going to surprise me on any given day.  In fact many days I don’t expect anything to surprise me and I can find myself part way through the day experiencing a knot of anxiety in my gut as I realise that I have made a commitment each and every day for 100 days to be open to awe.  On this journey I have become aware that my default position is not one of open receiving but rather of focused survival.  When my attention is locked in on the minutae of getting through the day awesome passes on by.  I see myself then like one of those comedic movie characters engrossed with grappling with some inconsequential knot while all of life’s pleasures, serendipities and synchronicities sail on by in the background.

The beauty of this project is that it reminds me to stop and observe what is going on; I recognise the anxiety, I can observe myself as the observer and I can choose to suspend my need to know and to breathe.  In those moments there is space for the gasp of surprise like when I opened a long forgotten sketch book and saw this page of crayoned love hearts dancing in the fluid swirls of dawdling drawing.  It is naive and simple, unstructured and free, it made me smile and the innocence of it filled my consciousness.

I am reminded of the food I have prepared for a friend who has just had a new baby.  I am excited about my expedition to the burbs of Isleworth to see them, their new home and the new addition to their family.  And I am reminded of my meeting later with my friend Sheila*, Sheila who has opened me up to vibrancy of raw food and foraging without any of the dogma or drama, Sheila who loves life and all of what it has to offer; whether it be a smokey nip of whiskey or a raw kale salad.   My focus goes to the end result of honouring the arrival Amy and Sheila’s recent big birthday.  Time to get my ass into gear and the show on the road to step into the adventure of life right now.

*Sheila Gibbons, Wholestic Wellbeing at Kalikalos Holistic Holidays in Greece from 24 May to 6 June 2014 – spaces still available!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 55: My Trusty Steed In 1993 I came back from gallivanting around the world determined to be self-employed.  I got an IT training contract in Wimbledon (south west London) but I was living at the time in Hornsey Rise (North London).  My investment into my self employed status was to attend a number of the courses free of charge and then co-train before I could step out and earn a living from delivering them.  For a number of months I had to be creative about money, I worked in Camden Market at the weekend selling aromaptherapy oils and incense sticks and I made an investment in my Diamond Back companion to minimise my transport costs.  I remember determinedly cycling across London dodging articulated lorries and braving inclement Summer weather during the leanest times but as soon as I my earnings regularised I was back on public transport and eventually purchased a car.

My bike, however remained a part of my life.  Although it was infrequently used it has been by my side for over twenty years; in fact I feel a coming of age is due sometime soon.  Strictly speaking it is not the same bike I bought way back in 1993, I learnt to my chagrin that any part of the bike not locked up was a temptation to passing opportunists.  At some point I lost both the front and back wheels and two saddles before I permanently padlocked it to the bike frame.

Diamond Back was kept under shelter and in cosy indoor hibernation during the Winter months until I moved into the first (and only) flat I have owned in 1996.  Since then s/he has endured outdoor living without even a decent saddle cover though recycling plastic bags does feel quite worthy.  Until 3 years ago, when I forfeited my car, the routine was a bit of TLC every Spring and gentle Summer usage in the neighbourhood but now we have moved into year round usage.  Venturing to the edges of the Borough and even on occasion across the River, rarely a day goes by when I am not off to Portobello Market or popping down to yoga or pilates and even when I am using public transport I will hop on my bike to expedite the 15 minute walk to the Tube station.  Since I have started my 100 Days Of Awe project travelling around on my trusty steed has given me the pleasure of being able to observing and stop to capture the smallest of details like Micro Magic.  It is indeed time to honour my trusty steed with gratitude for 21 years of unstinting service.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 53: The Little Red Door

Scuffed and dirt weary the little red door of the Concert Artistes Association, Club For Acts & Actors on Bedford Street in Covent Garden is a portal to a throw back world of 1980’s bedsit land; gloss layered wood work in time muted cream, there was a feeling of vaudeville in the air, the open, friendly greeting somehow quaint and of a bygone time.  There is none of the sophistication of The Ivy or the cache of The Groucho Club but there is a certain je ne sais quoi; a layer of distortion that magically attires the guests in collar pointed shirts and crimpilene, momentarily I thought I too had been been restyled when I passed under the lintel into this in between world under the oxter of Adventure Bar. I wondered if Quentin Crisp perhaps was  holding court somewhere in the ether.

The bar is upstairs, the stairwell lined with faded, corner curled and wear torn flyers and posters for every possible play.  I was enthralled in a voyeuristic kind of way and the headshot lined walls of the bar pushed me over the edge of incredulity.  I didnt recognise any of the names or the faces, the smiles and the faces were shiny, happy people belonging here but from a different time and place.  I wasnt sure if I was the living visiting the world of the dead, or not yet born in a different slice of time.

I had been invited to a concert by Phyllis MacMahon actress and writer of Divorcing God? an autobiographical play about her life as a nun in Ireland in the 1960s and her escape to the bright lights of London.  She lives still on Charing Cross Road in the heart of theatreland and the CAA is a familar haunt.  Phyllis is a character with the energy and lifeforce of a firelighter – a spark of a fire, a party, a get together and she is up to burn brightly.  The concert was being run as a fund raiser for a yearly pilgrimmage to Lourdes by the student volunteers from Newman House, which provides accommodation for Catholic university students, in London.  And what a jolly talented bunch they proved to me; from a rendition of Michael Jackson’s Heal The World, a couple of original songs, piano and trumpet, classical and the piece de resistance in my eye’s Father Stephen Wang in his collar playing Aint Misbehavin’ on his tenor saxophone.  He was at pains to explain that misbehavin’ wasnt something that the students were encouraged to do.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 52: Little Pots Of Delight

Neal’s Yard Remedies Sample Pots

A smidgin of sleep squeezed in between late night reading and an early morning call left me loitering lazily until well close to midday.  I was zonked, the usual apple & ginger shot barely ruffled the surface of somnulence and my afternoon yoga class ended in deep snooze.  I had to succumb to a chocolate cookie to zap my adrenals to completed my errands on Portobello Road.

I knew I wanted to call into Neal’s Yard Remedies on Elgin Crescent to pick up a present for a friend who has just become a new mum.  One day I will be the knitting or sewing kind who crafts bootees or matinee jackets but right now my favourite present for a new baby is a bottle of Mother’s Bath Oil and a bottle of Baby Massage Oil; I just hope that Mum gets a chance to get into the bath and luxuriate and that there are enough moments in the day for the pleasure of baby massage.

Absently while queuing for the till I was drawen like a honey bee to the bright flowery 10th Anniversary packaging of the Wild Rose Beauty Balm – annoucing ‘try me once, love me forever’.  Forgetting, I think, where I was I applied a generous dollop to my visage; seeing my pleasure Mariam behind the counter opened up about the product and all its uses; I didn’t have the energy to foil her sales patter allowing it to shower me unobstructed.  And then in a pause she asked me would I like some samples.  I have never been offered samples in Neal’s Yard before so was momentarily stunned but never one to turn down free product I said yes.  What I hadnt appreciated was that each sample was put together on the spot in a little sample pot with a handwritten label, no pre packaged smear in a slippery little packet.  I said goodby to Mariam and Angel still feeling snoozy but a little more nourished.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 51: Optimisation at The Brompton

** WARNING: The topic of this post is Menopause.  There are some who may consider the subject to be more gruesome than awesome.

I am tired of being out of sync with life.  I am tried in the morning – all the morning. I come alive as the day moves on. I can party anytime from midnight onwards.  When I sleep I often have night sweats perhaps all my dancing energy being subsumed into my bed sheets?  There are other things I am tired about too but I  suffice to say that in the allopathic world my symptons coalesce to point a big fat arrow at the M word: Menopause.  Would you believe that there are cultures where menopause – the time of life when women, as I see it, transition from fertility to wisdom – is not medicalised i.e. there is no big deal, no fuss, no one looking for medication, no day time flushes/flashes or night time sweats, no grappling with atrophic vaginitis (sounds like a monster from the deep), creaking joints, sand paper skin, low libido – or should that be no libido etc. etc.  Japan is a case in point and research indicates that a diet high in soya and fish oil may be beneficial while a diet of meat and dairy may not.  Margaret Lock explicitly compares Japanese and North American experience of menopause in her book Encounters with Middle Age.

But coming back to my own experience I was in my early 40s when I had an abdominal ultrasound to check some persistant anomalies in my menstrual cycle that identified me as menopausal – a good 10 yrs ahead of schedule.  I was referred to a wonderful clinic run by Dr Nick Pannay at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Hammersmith, coincidentally a stone’s from my home.  The standard treatment for early (rather than premature menopause) is Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and Dr Pannay totally supported my preference for natural alternatives.   With the exception of a limited range of supplements e.g. red clover, there was little the clinic could subsidise.  The reduction of estrogen associated with the menopause affects calcium retention and the ability of skin and other membranes to retain moisture so I take a calcium supplement and local estrogen for painful vaginitis.  I have played with nutrition, acupuncture, chinese herbs and homeopathy all with some success but nothing I take has changed my libido, my interest in or desire for sex and intimate connection.

Separately I have been learning that regardless of my circumstances I am the person who creates my reality.  Perhaps I was just a little too proud of my status at the clinic of being the only person at the clinic not on HRT.   It had crossed my mind that my focus was more on standing in opposition to allopathic health rather than what is true for me so it was amusing then when at my last visit to my clinic I was offered the opportunity to participate in a low dosage HRT trial at The Brompton Hospital.  One of the pre requisites for the trial is that participants are NOT on HRT and have not been for at least 6 months.  I was an the ideal potential participant.

The Optimise Trial is a pill/patch comparison using half the standard dosage.  All medical and transport costs are covered and a full range of scans and tests at the beginning and end of the trial map the physical journey.  Today I started the trial.  I acknowledge I am apprehensive, that I am concerned about choosing to take a synthetically created pharmaceutical into my body but I also acknowledge that I tinker with my body in many different ways; whatever I ingest.  What I am more concerned about is my conscious choice to be a player in the game of my life; the life to love, be loved, to touch and be touched, to be intimate and share intimacies.

If you are interested in the Optimise Trial please email Dr. Marie-Odile Gerval on [email protected]

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 50: ROK Award It is always lovely to be recognised, more especially when it coincides with the halfway mark of my 100 Days Of Awe blog, and when my need for recognition and approval is combined with my love of decadent consumption well I am in heaven.

The Ripple Of Kindness (ROK)  award was one of the delightful surprises that came with the Sunday afternoon of conscious creation with master magicians mentioned in my last blog.  These get togethers were spontaneously created by Liz & Kathryn two of the graduates of Darren Eden‘s The Transformation programme and the hostesses of The Magic Hub (private residence).  Regular meetups that give graduates an opportunity to review where they are in terms of their creations, refine their intuitive skills and master the creative toolbox.

I made a suggestion to use a tool that is very powerful for completing on creations and leveraging learning to boost the next level of creativity.  As it happened it was a inspired suggestion that resonanted with a number of our group.  My experience of the tool meant that I was well placed to frame it up and it was my pleasure to share my insights and refinements.  One of two ROK awards given out on the day I was tickled pink with my chocolate bar.  My polite instinct was to share it but my fellow magicians insisted that I consider eating it all myself.  It didnt take too much persuasion to demolish the Galaxy delight leaving a crushed, creased and torn scrap of a wrapper that had to be reassembled for this photo.

If you are interested in learning how to make your life more magical Darren Eden is running a free two day Your Call To Greatness event in London on 31st May & 1 June.  It is full of tips and experiential exercises that gives you a taster of the full Transformation Training of 8 weekends over 8 months without any obligation to purchase.  I wont be able to make this work but do give Darren and all the other graduate magicians my love!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 49: Graduating Magicians

The Malificent Billboard, Westfield Shepherd’s Bush

Rory Patton, author of SpringingTiger the Autism Awareness blog, has said ‘magic is a technology we don’t understand yet’.  While it may be true that there isnt tried and proven scientific axiom to explain magic this hasnt stopped Darren Eden of the Academy Of Greatness providing apprenticeship programmes for magicians since 2009, the year I first graduated.  May the 10th was ear marked in my diary as graduation day and as a past graduate I am privileged to be invited to attend the graduation finale in Surrey.

I always love magician gatherings; we operate from a common set of premises, we share a commitment to be conscious, responsible creators and we are eager to master the layering of love, truth and service together to cook up joyful, fun connections and gatherings.  Magic may not be something that I can explain but it is certainly something that I expect to experience now that I am a practising magician.

It was no surprise that my journey started by being swept up into the giant sized portal of The Malificent at Westfield, Shepherd’s Bush, not a little dark and unnerving, but fortunately safely charioted by National Rail to my destination at the grand and turreted Victorian edifice of the Grand Hall of Horsley Towers.  Supper followed by close to twenty individual and unique performances was just the precursor to a very powerful sojourn down the rabbit hole. Bed & breakfast at The Magic Hub (a private residence) was followed by a Sunday afternoon of conscious creation with master magicians but more about that in my next blog!

If you are interested in learning how to make your life more magical Darren Eden is running a free two day Your Call To Greatness event in London on 31st May & 1 June.  It is full of tips and experiential exercises that gives you a taster of the full Transformation Training of 8 weekends over 8 months without any obligation to purchase.  I wont be able to make this work but do give Darren and all the other graduate magicians my love!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 48: Micro Magic

I usually succumb to the vanity of having my hair cut and coloured twice or maybe three times a year but I dont often go for a change of look.  I pushed the envelope a couple of weeks ago going for a shorter look and a darker colour.  Well today I took it one step further.  A hairdresser in distress, crying out for a model – What’s a girl to do?  Well it was a no brainer.  My look is now a little shorter, a little sharper and to use hair dresser speak a little more ‘textured’.  That in itself was amazing enough but even more so was my commitment to heading off down to Fulham Road on my trusty steed (read bicycle) at, for me the ungodly hour, of 9am.

Not only was it early but I was running the gamut of arterial London there and back.  On my way home, at the junction of Warwick Road and High Street Kensington, I caught the a flare of wild unbridled orange out of the corner of my eye, the fragile skirts of four or five giant poppies being buffeted by May’s boisterous breeze.  I had to pull over and capture a photo or two.  Now I am using my HTC One S phone for my reportage; light and easy to carry, multi-functional and I am discovering at times capable of  magical results.  I have to take a plethora of shots, hoping that nature’s whim will not rock the focus of my attention as well as pushing my little camera to the limit of its ability to pick up micro details.  Oft times my experiments are unsuccessful and I cant properly tell until I download them onto a bigger screen.  Today I was blown away by the series of poppy shots; OMG, holey moley, Horton Hear’s A Who – I could feel my heart jumping into this minature world!  Who would believe it from a token flower bed to dress up a dreary urban junction.  This was my Friday magic for today

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.

Day 47: Up, Up & Away

Helicopter Seeds in Little Wormwood Scrubs

Thursday was a strange day; weird strange not funny strange.  I was in hospital the day before for a benchmark ultrasound before starting HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) treatment. but when I arrived the ultrasonographer (isnt that a mouthful?) first of all said ‘We are going to look at your baby”…..”oops”.  Great to look young enough to be pregnant or then again perhaps she wasn’t looking?  But equally poignant as this is an experience I have not had but had never consciously realised, until this moment, that I would like to have had and most likely will never have.  Inadvertently digging her hole a little deeper she then asked ‘What is wrong with you?” before seeing eventually the detail on the appointment card identifying my visit as a benchmark scan.

A tiny and completely harmless exchange but my unconscious mind when into overdrive.  Like a meerkat kicking up the dirt of thoughts and feelings of fear and death and drama into my self-conscious mind.  Since I attended Alchemy 4 Success last month with William Whitecloud I have been working my new talisman overtime – as long as I am observing what is going on I have the power.  I was observing and I knew that it was the little part of me that was kicking and screaming to survive, burning the rubber of worry to distract me from the real work of being a creative spirit.  Knowing this was one thing but with the best will in the world I found myself resisting the sting of those pebbles of thoughts and stuck like glue into the deep throaty vibration of it all.

Slowly but surely I am realising the power of nature as a structure to bring me back to my heart, to the space and silence of innocence and not knowing so despite the wet wipes of cloying mists I headed up to Little Wormwood Shrubs where I seem to find a synchronistic gems whatever my mood.  Yesterday this was the only picture I took, smudged by the cloying mists (ok ok unfocused) a clutch of winged helicopter seeds (probably a sycamore maple though the leaves look more like those of a London plane) designed for flight.  It reminded me that I may not be flying high at the moment but I have the tools to create structures that are designed to propel me to higher vibrations. A good old chin wag with a girlfriend and pondering this picture I took brought me back to a sufficient equilibrium to ride the rest of the day – even the late night drama of the violent death of a key character in The Good Wife!

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo iPHone app.

Day 46: By The Old Gas Works Wall

The local super store is Sainsbury‘s at the top of Ladbroke Grove bounding the Grand Union Canal and looking over at Kensal Green’s All Soul’s cemetry.  I don’t often go there these days, it is easier to drop down the hill to Portobello Market than navigate the incline to the Barlby roundabout and peddle the hump of the iron railway bridge.  There is a deadend zone between the main line rail to Paddington and the canal, a elongated tapering strip of land, salted by death on both sides – this is the site of the 1999 Paddington Rail disaster and there is a plaque on the wall to the 21 victims.  The Western Gas Company built a gas works on the narrowest part land in 1845, and the ornate Victorian gasometers are still standing in studied silence a paen to a bygone age.  Despite their majesty you could be forgiven for not seeing them tucked away in obscurity at the very dead end of Canal Way and deflected by the hoarding of a new Crossrail site.  Twinned like Victoria & Albert a majestic sight against a surreal sky.  The security man in the Crossrail hut had a beady eye on me, a suspicious character on my rusty bike taking photos of god knows what.

100 Days of Awe is a playful project I set up to bring my attention to awe in my daily life. I see awe as wonder, a mixture of amazement and respect.  I expect the experience of awe to be about perception shifting awareness and that demands a reframing of some sort.  I am excited to see what will awe me on this journey.

Anne K. Scott is an imagination technologist, her work to teach, facilitate and deliver innovation for individuals and business.  She is the creator of FindYourMojo a FREE iPHone productivity app. If you are interested in what intuitive coaching can do for you please do contact me.  I support clients all over the world.