Soul Food

I've recently returned from two weeks holiday in the English Lake District.

Whenever and wherever I go on holiday I am always reminded of how lucky I am. In all sorts of ways - being able to be able to go on holiday at all, having great holiday companions, living in a country that has such varied landscapes. And that's just for starters.

For me, one of the great joys of going on holiday, whether at home or abroad, is to walk. Preferably in the countryside. I love the way it helps reconnect me with my body, my natural environment and my sense of self. This holiday, on one of our walks, we stopped for lunch- perched on a craggy outcrop above a lake, and munch happily in silence drinking in the view. After a while my companion turned to me and said, 'this is soul food'. And I knew she wasn't talking about my lovingly crafted picnic (although that got rave reviews, too!)

And she was right, it WAS soul food. Just as the sun was topping up our vitamin D supplies, everything else was reaching deep down into other parts of us, blowing away mental cobwebs and restoring us - physically and emotionally to some kind of equilibrium. Pure magic.

As we treated ourselves to foot massages (a different type of sole food!) that night we pondered, not for the first time, why we didn't do this more often. 'This' in this case didn't necessarily mean taking two weeks off in The Lakes (though that would be nice...) but taking time just to 'be' and enjoy what's around us.

So now I'm back in the small seaside town in which I live I've promised myself that I will pay more attention to keeping my soul food supply topped up. Different people get their soul food in different ways. And it's not uncommon for us to neglect it. And, in the long (and sometimes not so long) run, that does no one any good.

So, where do you get your soul food? And what are you going to do to make sure you keep your supply topped up? And even if you don't know the answer yet, it's certainly food for thought.