To find out more about this month’s online workshop, or watch my recent interviews with writer and TV producer Stephen Moss, and grief coach Hannah Rae, please scroll down to MY OFFERINGS.
“Whether we had ancestors who were shunned or destroyed for their oddness – or whether our ancestors did the shunning themselves or simply chose not to speak up – our bodies carry the lessons: our true sound can get us killed.”
THE HORIZON WAS a luminous pink when I came out onto my balcony this morning. Already, I was listening – there were the tingly, repetitive chirps of house sparrows, and the deeper, more resonant calls of wood pigeons. I sipped my tea, watching the sun rise above the surrounding houses, aware of a wheezing thrum of geese overhead. I heard them long before they came into view: a pair in synchronised flight near the river, racing past a row of golden poplars.
I’ve been thinking a lot about nature’s sounds since my interview with writer and broadcaster Stephen Moss who brought us the wonderful Springwatch – BBC2's flagship programme about British wildlife. The final chapter of his new, astonishing book, Ten Birds that Changed the World, discuses extinction. We learn about Australia’s Regent Honeyeater. Few of these birds remain because their distinctive mating call is being lost. The young birds are mimicking the calls of other species, unable to attract a mate.
EVERY VOICE HAS a distinct vibrational frequency that’s perfectly aligned to positively influence and heal our body and mind. The trouble is, many of us learnt our voices were unacceptable, too loud, too stupid, too boring, or ‘out of tune’ (whose tune?). All this has led to a mass restricting of the flow of our unique frequency.
We constrict our throats, tighten our jaws and become like those Regent Honeyeaters – making a sound that deters rather than attracts without awareness of what we’ve lost.
If the Honeyeaters can’t mate, they’ll eventually disappear. What’s disappearing within us?
I set off for Grovely Woods to find a tree and discover what wisdom I might receive around how we can give voice to our unique truth, even if we’ve forgotten what it is.
I’M SURROUNDED BY birdsong as well as a very distant drone of sheep. It’s been a few months since I’ve been to Grovely Woods and as I walk I remember there are three, huge beech trees in the forest steeped in myth.
In 1737 there was a lethal outbreak of smallpox in Wilton. Four sisters from Denmark, who lived near the woods, were accused of witchcraft as a result. Without trial, they were dragged into the forest and bludgeoned to death with farming tools. They were buried apart from each other – so they couldn’t conspire against their killers after death.
Four thick, gnarly beech trees appeared over their graves – whether deliberately planted or mysteriously growing is a matter of conjecture. One of the trees has since been blown down, but three remain.
This is our inheritance. Whether we had ancestors who were shunned or destroyed for their oddness, their foreignness, for speaking out or acting strange – or whether our ancestors did the shunning themselves or simply chose not to speak up – our bodies carry the lessons: our true sound can get us killed.
My own mother moved here in the seventies, having grown up on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, and felt deeply ostracised – not just because of her accent, but also the tone of her voice, which people still mistake for anger, rather than the intelligent passion she oozes.
My healing journey has taught me that I carry the echoes of her exclusion and misunderstanding in my body.
I FEEL THE cool morning air on my face and listen to the hoarse, rasping bark of a deer. It repeats, over and over, as I make my way down the gravel path into the woods. I don’t realise how loud my steps are, on the rutted, stony track, until the shingle turns to earth that’s softly coated in pine-needles. In the sudden hush, birdsong rushes at me.
One noise will drown out another. We all have our unconscious ways of drowning out the inner song that – for a myriad of reasons – we were taught to dismiss.
This is often the reason many of us have such incessant thoughts, including a loud inner critic. I’ll often catch myself having abandoned the present moment – and the sweet wisdom my body can sing to me – for the raucous thoughts in my mind.
We can’t think and feel at the same time, you see. For those of us who found their feelings difficult to deal with as children, we chose to focus on the words in our head instead.
Thankfully, I’ve found my way back to attending to my feelings. It’s such a relief to me that I can step away from the vortex of overthinking, which only ever churns me up and spits me out exhausted!
This morning, I catch myself listening to my thoughts, which are berating me: how could I have come to Grovely woods with the intention of seeing what the forest can teach me about the unique sound we all contain without looking up the location of the witches’ trees? They would have surely had an interesting story to share.
These critical, berating, belittling thoughts are not our true voice. They’re a ‘cautionary recording’ that’s now out of context. The caution still serves a purpose – enabling us to sense-check a particular moment, like I do now, but we must be able to understand this recording isn’t our truth.
There’s a vast difference between making a mental note to return to the forest another time when I know where the witches’ trees are – thankful for the suggestion – and being unable to stop berating myself for always having an idea too late. Imagine a life lived according to that second interpretation: always less than, always behind. I know that life. I used to live it before I was able to step free of my thoughts and hear the birdsong, once more.
A FLY DRONES past my ear, and I feel grateful for the undulating buzz, the way it brings me into closer connection with the air. There have also been times the incessant drone of a fly has irritated me. There are other sounds too that yank at my nerves. We carry the buried histories of having bothered someone with our sound. We learn to tone it down, shut it up, seal it away.
When we give ourselves to the soft experience of nature’s embrace, those histories have a chance of emerging and healing.
Suddenly, I remember at school, aged nine, a friend turning to me with her forehead furrowed, nose wrinkled.
‘God!’ she groans. ‘Do you even know how to say a word other than “guys”?’
Her accusation hit some truth: I was aware of my enthusiastic way of wanting to grab the attention of a group with some story, or game. ‘Hey guys, did you know…’ or, ‘Hey guys, let’s do such and such…’
As the memory fills my awareness I feel my throat locking. I recall how I pressed my lips together, my insides clenching with shame. Later, when I wanted to announce something to the group, I opened my mouth with an excited inhale, but then clamped it shut. What could I say, if I wasn’t allowed to use the word ‘guys’?
These memories can be tiny, the briefest moments in time, and yet buried they become a lesson we can’t forget. Consciously, these scenes fade, but our body remembers. It maintains the painful instruction and clamps down on the natural urges that want to rise up.
‘Hey guys, guess what?’ I suddenly shout into the forest.
You see, I’m learning to no longer be confined by shame!
I PASS A wide path and spot an old friend: a huge beech tree whose mothering branches I’ve sat in. As I sense this tree – who I’ve come to know as Diana – it suddenly makes glorious sense I’m here, rather than trudging to the witches’ trees.
This feeling of rightness makes me realise that if we live according to the ‘cautionary recording’ in our heads, we’ll never find reprieve from the life it demands we live. My commitment is to keep tuning into a different sound, enabling something far deeper and more intuitive to guide me.
As I sit myself down at Diana’s roots I wonder, What kind of world would we be living in if we all made sounds from the deep, intuitive realm within?
I CLOSE MY eyes, allowing my body to hear the voice of Diana and the decades this wise tree has lived through. After a while, I see a beam of golden light coming from the ground, travelling through me into the sky. I feel how my body is an instrument, being played by something more infinite and resourceful than the remnants of the past.
An image of a flute appears in my mind. I understand that we can either close or clench, shaping our voice from fear or shame, or we can open ourselves to allow our unique vibration to sound out.
I’m certainly learning to feel the difference, and now Diana offers another little piece in my healing puzzle.
I see the beam of light that shines through me and how it’s suddenly constricted at regular intervals, so that it looks like a string of sausages. The points of constriction sit at each of my chakras, or energy centres. It’s suddenly clear how the wounds we hold in these areas of our body can choke our vibration, our unique sound. Instead of truth, we can only splutter. Our voice can’t connect to the earth and flow through the magic of who we are. That beam of light, fettered, constricted, can only dribble and leak. I understand that our complaints, the bursts of anger and untruths we indulge in, are not our truth, but rather signs of the traumas our body carries, those buried histories that have taught us to sound other than who we are.
Our voice, when it’s able to flow from the earth, through us, reaching the sky, is an entirely different song.
By immersing ourselves in nature and paying attention to its sounds, we can reconnect with the unique vibrational frequency of our authentic voice. Not only will this free us from the cautionary recording of our inner critic, encouraging us to embrace a more compassionate, truthful inner dialogue, it will drop us into an intuitive realm that will guide us to a more genuine and harmonious existence.
As always, wishing you creative contentment.
Gabriela, tree goddess.
Offerings
In this section you’ll be able to hear about my offerings and events.
JOIN ME FOR my next online workshop - ‘Journaling, Breathwork and Nature Healing to Transform your Creative Process’ - on Thursday 18th July at 6.30pm.
This month we’re exploring the element of SOUND and the theme of 'Speaking our Truth'. Working with this element can enhance creativity and self-expression, enabling us to express and release pent-up emotions with full awareness.
As a subscriber to Wild Muse, you can receive 20% off by using the code Wild01 at checkout.
WATCH MY LATEST YouTube Interviews with NATURALIST, AUTHOR AND TV PRODUCER Stephen Moss, as well as GRIEF and LIFE COACH, Hannah Rae.
“WE TALK ABOUT NATURE AS IF WE ARE SEPARATE FROM IT, BUT WE ARE A PART OF NATURE.” Stephen Moss
We chatted about reaching a diverse audience in nature writing and the challenge of representing nature in documentaries.
We also discussed how the relationship between humans and birds is shaped by cultural interpretations and behaviours that can sometimes overshadow the true complexity of animal behaviour.
“WRITING ALLOWS FOR THE EXPRESSION OF THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS WITHOUT JUDGEMENT.” Hannah Rae
We discussed how creative practices like writing can be a powerful tool for processing grief and facilitating healing.
Hannah also shared how grief is not limited to the loss of a loved one, but can also be experienced in other types of endings and transitions.