When Nothing Needs to Happen
Finding the erotic in presence rather than stimulation
Greetings from the Brocéliande Forest in Brittany!
It’s part four of my travels and now I can truly stop for a while.
The holiday so far has been wonderful:
A Scottish wedding filled with misty romance and celebration.
Paris in the summer, historic, bustling and impossibly hot.
Provins, wandering medieval streets, socialising with my partner’s old friends and revisiting the places of his childhood.
Each place has been rich with experience - wonderful, yet full of movement.
But now…
In this peaceful place there is nowhere to be.
We’re staying in a beautifully restored mill in Brittany, surrounded by forest, looking out over an expansive pond. The garden is an oasis of calm, and the loudest sound is birdsong.
This morning I wandered barefoot around the pond, feeling cool moss beneath my feet.
Then I read and meditated in the garden.
Later we wandered through the forest.
Nothing needed to happen. Nothing needed to be achieved.
For the first time since arriving in Europe, I wasn’t seeing somewhere, meeting someone or doing something. Even making love had had to fit into the schedule!
And while none of that was rushed or lacking in presence, now, I am simply here.
Now my being can catch up with the journey. The movement can settle, the experiences can integrate, and I can come fully into slowness and presence. I can truly just be.
Maybe that’s what slowing down really is. Not something we decide, but something we allow. Not as an end in itself, but as the doorway through which we become fully present to life.
Places like this don’t create presence. They simply remind us of it.
The moss feels softer.
The air seems fuller.
Time stretches.
Life becomes less something to experience, and more something to inhabit.
As I sit beside the pond this evening, I realise this quiet place has been every bit as memorable as the castles, cities and celebrations that came before it.
Not because more happened. But because, with nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, I could feel a different kind of aliveness.
One that doesn’t depend on novelty or excitement, but rather one that simply arises when I become fully present to life.
This is what I mean by the erotic.
Not something added to life. But something that awakens as we meet life, fully.
Note: no Salon while I’m on holiday!
October Couples Retreat
Writing these holiday reflections has reminded me how important it is to create spaces where we can slow down enough to reconnect with ourselves, each other and life itself.
If you’d like to experience that as a couple, I’d love to welcome you to my October Blue Mountains Couples Retreat.
There’s more information and bookings here.
Reading your words Jacqueline, I truly felt your ease, calmness and a reminder of the pause that brings both Alex and I back to our centered core as a couple too…. And that definitely feels exotic these days!