My phone comes everywhere with me and makes my work and life possible through constant communication, maps, weather reports, taking and sharing of photos, finding of all information, making lists, checking email and so on.  While it is extraordinarily enabling, it also takes over my thoughts with its interruptions, twitching, buzzing and deliciously easy availability.  Too often I move from my desktop to my TV to my iPad to my phone in an endless dance of screens.  And so for a few weeks of summer holidays I’ll be reducing my screen dependency and taking a digital detox.  To that end I will be quieter on social media and slower to reply to emails until early September.

For me, there will be spending time with the children, reading, cooking, wine drinking and of course walking.  Walking in the city, on the beach, up the mountain and by the river.  There will be time to think, or not think, and just be.  I will be practicing mindfully walking and wandering building up to a longer medicine walk.  There will be time to recharge, look around, and play.  From there I expect to become full of ideas and energy for an exciting autumn of walking, connecting and creating.

One of my first projects on return will be the Medicine Walk Weekend Retreat in beautiful Scotland.  If you feel the need for some time to escape for a few days of walking, reflection and mindfulness, why not join us at the retreat in September?

I will leave you with encouragement to take your own time away and this quote, kindly brought to my attention by the Walking Reading Group:

“Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”

― Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

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