Old Hall

I just left Old Hall early (I was meant to stay for two weeks) because I wasn’t enjoying it there. When I arrived last Friday the residents were all really busy getting ready for a ‘friends and family’ summer party. They were so busy in fact they didn’t have time to introduce them selves to the new ‘wwoofer’ or show me around the place. It was not a great welcome and as a result I felt completely ungrounded, it made me miss the friends I made at Gaunts even more than I was already. Kate and Wolf also arrived on the same day to volunteer so I did have someone to talk to, we decided to give the community residents the benefit of the doubt and put their lack of effort with the newbies down to the fact they were busy with their party. As the weekend progressed I began wishing they had told me about their plan as I would have chosen to come on the Sunday, if you’ve ever been invited to a party where you don’t know anyone you’ll know how awkward it feels. I did meet one lovely woman who was a friend of a resident and we had a chat about her edible garden in Wales and energy healing. She was the one person in the whole week I felt a connection with unfortunately she was only staying for the weekend. She sent me the Celestine Prophecy to read which my ex-boyfriend had leant me some years before but I hadn’t been drawn to read it at that time. It’s a book that describes a process for spiritual evolution interwoven with a standard adventure story. I’m only half way through but I really like the way it describes our connection with nature on an energetic level and reflects some of the experiences I’ve been having.

Anyway back to Old Hall, I could spend time describing the history of the house and how it used to be a monastery that one of the nuns escaped from many years ago etc but I don’t want to focus on that. It is basically a farming community so if you want to see the geese, pigs, chickens and cows, the vegetable patches and orchards and learn how to make butter and cheese it is a great place for that. The food as you would expect is lovely, really excellent organic food that again I was reminded has sadly become something that only the privileged few have access to. They are nearly self sufficient in vegetables and meat and have 8 cows to milk twice a day and this requires a lot of work so many of the residents work part time to pay their way. It is also very expensive to buy into Old Hall as it’s run as a housing association and each of the units are priced in relation to the local housing market and Colchester is a desirable commuter belt so only those with capital need apply. Starting with the positive aspects of my experience I did get to try out some new things like throwing heavy bales of hay around to make a hay stack, churning cream to make butter and making cheese so that was good and as previously mentioned the food was great but the people I found with a few exceptions (Thank you to those who did make the effort) to be a very unfriendly bunch who didn’t seem to have even basic manners with people they invited into their community as volunteers and not surprisingly this really put me off. The person I had been emailing to arrange my visit who apparently was the ‘wwoof co-ordinator’ didn’t bother speaking to me until day 4 of my stay. I heard various excuses that they were so busy, that they didn’t know who was who because of the party weekend etc but for me there was something deeper going on here and unfortunately I think it was just a bad attitude towards wwoofers. For some reason at Old Hall volunteering your time to support people who are privileged to be able to have land in living self-sufficiently means you are seen as some kind of serf, an extra pair of hands to be squabbled over to help them do what they need to do. There didn’t seem to be any recognition that people wwoofing might be wanting to learn more about community living like the structure, group decision processes, finances and other aspects of running one or be scouting for potential places to join or even that they may have skills and experience to bring that the community might find useful. I was left with the feeling that they saw so many ‘wwoofers’ come through their door they couldn’t be bothered making the effort to get to know them as they were only staying for a short time. Although understandable this attitude is poor, volunteering is after all an energy exchange and it doesn’t work if the energy is given out and not received. The memory of a feeling of goodwill, a friendly smile and a heartfelt thank you last a lot longer than basic needs of bed and food being met. If we are to successfully move towards a self-sustaining society that is not completely reliant on people working purely for financial reward then these subtle qualities of human communication will become increasingly important. If you are lucky enough to have people choosing to offer their time to support your project then expressing gratitude is really important, however many people pass through your door. Right I’ve got that out my system and now I’m off to Norfolk to visit a friend for a week before I travel to my next place.

Making butter pats in the dairy

Kate up to her arms in curds and whey

Community Living

I’ve just finished my first experience of living ‘in community’ at Gaunts House near Wimborne and as with all the other places I have visited so far I found the expectations I had were different from the reality. ‘That’s life then’ I hear you say so from now on I’m trying not to have any expectations at all and be the detached observer as part of my mindfulness practice, this is easier said than done but something that I feel deserves perseverance.  Community after all is just a word used generally to describe groups of people living together but beneath that word you find many different forms of complex human systems powered by emotional dynamics that are not always acknowledged by the people involved.  My short stay was enough for me to see they can be places of great intensity where the combined emotions of the group are magnified so there can be difficult times to navigate but I think everyone’s experience of Gaunts is the right one for them with the inevitable challenges being opportunities for self-discovery and growth if you choose to see them in this way.  Having said all this my overall experience was very positive so much so that I decided to re-arrange my trip so I can go back to volunteer at their summer gathering in August.

Gaunts lawn with beautiful sky and tree views

Plant Dowsing

I didn’t get to do as much organic food growing at Gaunts as I was hoping as there was a bit too much ornamental type gardening for me, although it was lovely spending time in their victorian walled garden. However towards the end of my stay I met Barbara, a friend of a resident who wanted to start growing food in her garden and luckily for me was very interested in permaculture design. I spent an afternoon in her garden doing some observation, needs gathering and coming up with ideas for her design. Barbara is a reiki healer and so one of the ideas was that the garden could be used as a healing space as well as a food growing space and I really like the idea of multifunctional plants and trees that provide food but can also be used in healing therapies. She also taught me how to do pendulum dowsing and gave me a book about the different types of dowsing you can do so I’ve been practicing quite a lot. Apparently you can dowse plants to ask them what kind of soil they would like to be planted in, how much water they would like and whether they prefer a sunny or shady spot. I haven’t tried this yet but have dowsed plants and the pendulum always moves in a circle when it comes into contact with the plants energy field, proof that we live in an energetic universe not a clockwork one as many people believed for a few hundred years. Barbara took me to Wimborne church to see the 24 hour clock based on the Ptolemaic system with the earth at the centre. A great example of the self-importance of humans who at the time thought they were the centre of the universe before Copernicus discovered the earth moves around the sun although having this knowledge hasn’t changed the attitude of self-importance and feeling we have the right to put ourselves before all other species on the earth. 

Wimborne church clock with earth the at the centre of the universe

My fellow wwoofers Alan & John re-building the greenhouse

Gong Bath

Gaunts has a lot of meditation and yoga courses running through the year but during the time I was there a ten day Gong master course to teach people sound healing with gongs was happening. Sound healing is a therapeutic practice that uses sound frequencies to bring people to a state of harmony and health. The college of sound healing who run the course use the analogy of a piano to explain how it works saying if a part of our body is out of balance we can retune it like tuning a piano with sound. If a piano is out of tune do we rip out the offending key or piano wire? but this is what we do to the human body with surgery. You can find out more if you’re interested www.collegeofsoundhealing.co.uk. So every night the whole community where invited to a ‘gong bath’ in the theatre where we would all lie on the floor and be immersed in a soundscape created by gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, shruti boxes and other instruments for 45 minutes. I found my first one was very relaxing and I drifted in and out of consciousness but other times I felt hot, itchy and restless so it didn’t feel quite so pleasant, though I was assured by the gong experts this was a good response as it meant I was releasing emotions. I really liked the gong group as they were so friendly and inclusive especially a Greek man called George who was always smiling. It’s amazing how such a simple thing can have such a positive effect on people. We were also taught the universal greeting which I really liked and have learnt the words to. There are also hand gestures to accompany each phrase but I’m still learning them, it serves as a timely reminder that beyond religion, race, politics and gender we are all one.  

Universal greeting

I offer you peace

I offer you friendship

I offer you love

I hear your needs

I see your beauty

All wisdom flows from the highest source

I honour that wisdom in you

Let us work together

For you are my own true self

In Lakesh Ela Kin “ I am another you”

The best thing about Gaunts for me, apart from the beautiful countryside the house is set in, was meeting others on their spiritual path who have also been drawn to this peaceful place. The small community of people living there full time is supplemented by a steady flow of wwoofers, employed staff and people coming for the various healing and spiritual courses held there through out the year plus the famous summer gathering which is the highlight of their events calendar. I met an eclectic mix of interesting people including someone channelling spirits to create paintings, an astrologist, a puppeteer and a harpist. It felt very good to be with my own kind (aka creative types) again after years in the corporate creative wilderness. All of this contributes to creating a unique atmosphere where people feel free to explore beyond the boundaries of their day-to-day lives in the company of like-minded souls.