Category: Land Of Anne


100 Days Of Awe: Day Fifty Two – Little Pots Of Delight

Day 52: Little Pots Of Delight

IMAG4572Neal’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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Fifty One – Optimisation At The Brompton

Day 51: Optimisation at The Brompton

IMAG4523** 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Fifty – ROK Award

Day 50: ROK AwardIMAG4575 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Nine – Graduating Magicians

Day 49: Graduating Magicians

IMAG4448-001The 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Eight – Micro Magic

Day 48: Micro Magic

IMAG4407I 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Seven – Up Up & Away

Day 47: Up, Up & Away

IMAG4402-001Helicopter 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Five – By The Old Gas Works Wall

Day 46: By The Old Gas Works Wall

IMAG4365The 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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Four – Nature’s Candelabra

Day 44: Nature’s Candelebra

IMAG4361Little Wormwood Horse Chestnut Candles

Thank God we didnt have the Ryanair On-Time fanfair on Sunday night.  The downside was that the flight was late getting in which compounded homeward bound travel plans.  It took me longer to get from Gatwick to West London than it did from Cork to Gatwick.  By the time I got in I was ready for popcorn and caramel fudge chocolates that had been intended for a friend.  No surprise I was still awake at 2am.  Wide awake.

Although my diary was clear on Monday the irritation of not being able to get to sleep chewed at me like a dog on a bone.  Bleary-eyed I let my 10.30am pilates class slide and eventually rose to meet the day as it started its slide from its zenith and I tumbled with it; letting time tumble like rushing water through my fingers, focused on the frustration of failing to catch and hold it and make it productive, missing out on the tickle of its joyful falling.  Eventually as the light began to fade I huddled myself out the door and up to Little Wormwood Scrubs, the knobble of a park at the top of my street separated from its big brother scrubs by Scrubs Lane a gash of tarmacadam running a rivulet of traffic from North to South.

I knew I was irritable.  I was struck by how the big letters of irritablity, frustration scratched like a briar across my frontal lobe consciousness tearing up my emotions and fanning the fires of dissatisfaction.  I knew I had the power to shift and that is why I had to take each leaden step to somewhere green, somewhere I could be surrounded by nature doing its thing, where anything my small mind could latch on to would be so irrelevant as to be laughable.  I wasnt sure that nature would be enough, this park is a familar place, I love its pretend wildness in this rather sedate of neighbourhoods but I wasnt expecting too much awesomeness.  I definitely wasnt expecting the rush of joy I experienced when I saw the avenue of Horse Chestnut candles – a breeze of kisses on the wind to blow my cobwebs away and nourish my heart.  When I got home I was inspired to check out if the horse chestnut, Aesculus Hippocastanum, has any medicinal properties.  It turns out that the chestnut bud Bach Flower remedy is prescribed for those who fail to learn the lessons of life, who find themselves repeating the same mistakes over again.  That is a sobering thought but it leaves me grateful for my heart that ensured that I received the remedy.

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.

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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Three – A Day At The Races

Day 43: A Day At The Races

IMAG4351

Under 11 Girls Sprint Final, CIT

Sunday May 5th Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) hosted the first day of the 2014 Cork County Juvenile Track & Field Championships.  A big event in for my niece Ella.  She loves running and playing the violin though, not as yet at the same time.  Hail or shine, she is eager to get out for training three times a week.  No one knows if this is a lifetime commitment but her passion and dedication drives on her weary parents and it is only right and fitting to turn up at the stands to cheer her on when the occasion demands.

The Counties are being hosted at the home track of Leevale, her club, so we dont have far to go, troops are galvanised and sandwiches are made straight after Mass on Sunday morning.  Heats are scheduled to start at 12.30pm.  It is a wet, cold and blustery day; friends, family and atheletes are clogged together on the stands for warmth, Irish sociability reigns and pronoucements, denoucements and speculations are shared over chocolate bars, cookies, lukewarm cups of tea and steaming smelly noodle pots. Down on the track a bevy of volunteers manage hurdles, sprint and middle distance runs as well as high jump, hammer throw, long jump and turbo javelin for all junior age groups. There is a plethora of activity from fast starts and false starts to photo finishes and long drawn out finishes.  I find that I have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes for the striving runners and want to cheer them all on even though I only know my niece and her little knot of musketeers – who together are close to the fastest relay team in the Country.

Sprint heats are eventually called at 2pm.  It takes 3 hrs to line up the final. It is 5.10pm, just minutes before I have to leave to make my flight back to London.  I am down at the finish line, I dont want to miss this race and I dont want to miss my flight.  This is an event fraught with anxiety and tension and although it is all over in 9.22 seconds it is no surprise that there is a splutter of parental outcry at the finish line of a false start percipitating loser’s tears, but it is a controversy without legs; the kids are cold, there was no second gun, they all ran the race and they all crossed the line. Ella is the number one finisher in her club, a mere .17 of a second behind the winner, and stoked for next week’s training session.

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.

100 Days Of Awe: Day Forty Two – The Doings Of Little People

Day 42: The Doings Of Little People
IMAG4319 - Copy
They were circling the bus station in Cork to pick me up and I was swallowed up on Friday evening into a world of little people and their doings.  Friday night’s excitement turned into Saturday’s fractiousness.  There were distractions, ditherations; new shoes, music practise, homework, Cloze tests, painting robots and tying shoe laces, walking in puddles, picking curly ferns, making cards of glitz and glam for Tony’s birthday; Tony being Grandpa turning 80 this year.   Mini tantrums, arguments, disagreements, chocolate, popcorn, pancakes, chilli burgers and chips. Sunshine and showers, twinkles and scowls, Britians Got Xtra Talent and finally Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2.

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.