Maybe you're not bad at meditation!

Do you practice meditation?

Is it something you’d love to master?

Or maybe it’s something you keep returning to, feeling like sometimes you’ve “got it”… only to feel back at square one again a few days later.

Perhaps you meditate every single day, whether it feels easy or not.

I’ve had a meditation practice for years now, but honestly, at the beginning of my journey it was not a kind thing I did for myself. It became another way to judge myself. Another thing I felt I was failing at.

At the time, I was moving through an incredibly painful period in my life after the end of my first marriage and the breakdown of a close friendship. It was what eventually led me to leave the Midlands and move to Wales around 16 years ago.

The whole experience left me with crippling anxiety that took a long time to move through, and during that year I tried every meditation and personal development technique I could find.

My mind raced constantly.

And every time I sat down to meditate and couldn’t “clear my mind,” I felt even more broken.

Eventually I realised that what my body actually needed was gentleness.

Gentle yoga helped my tense muscles soften. Time in nature became my meditation space.

I was helping a lady poo pick horse fields early in the mornings, caring for my aunt’s chickens, my mum’s alpacas and Shetland ponies. I was safe with my family in Wales and slowly healing.

What hindered my healing was trying to rush it.

Over time things began to shift. I volunteered at the local community woodland and eventually met James, my husband.

Around this time I also received an accidental ADHD diagnosis while working at a university as a Mental Health Mentor. I didn’t pay much attention to it initially, but it started turning the cogs around my own inner struggles and why traditional meditation had felt so difficult for me.

I was now training to become a counsellor and doing a huge amount of supported inner work myself — which is an essential part of the training. You cannot ask someone else to bare their soul if you’ve never learned to do the same yourself.

Many days I came home from college in tears, feeling raw and exposed. But it was a necessary path to become someone capable of holding space for others.

And still… I felt like I was “failing” at meditation.

Then something clicked.

James and I began running an after-school Forest School club and we noticed something fascinating. Children who were struggling in classrooms were thriving with us outdoors. Many kids turned out to be autistic, ADHD, or neurodivergent in some way, we just hadn't noticed in the outdoor setting.

We realised:To stop children bouncing off the walls… sometimes you simply remove the walls.

That insight changed everything for me.

It led me into my training in Mindfulness in a Woodland Setting, where my two worlds finally came together — therapy and nature.

I stopped trying to meditate against myself.

Instead, I began practicing a gentler form of meditation outdoors. Regulating my nervous system through the support of nature itself.

Watching a spider weave its web.Listening to birdsong.Feeling the wind.Using my senses.

For the first time I thought:“Yes… this is meditation too.”

Nature became the gateway.

And now, years later, I can sit quietly in my living room every morning and meditate with much more ease. Not because my mind is empty, but because I’ve learned not to cling to every thought that passes through it.

I’ve taught mindfulness in nature techniques for years now to help others find practices that work with busy minds rather than against them.

And this is something I’ll be exploring much more deeply inside my upcoming Inner Compass Mastermind in the premium space.

A gentler approach to nervous system regulation, mindfulness, meditation, and reconnecting with your own inner wisdom.

Because healing doesn’t always happen through force.

Sometimes it happens through softness, safety, slowness… and trees 🌳

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