Many of the people who attend the retreat for transformation have been labelled a life-long addict and are looking to be free. We approach addiction in a holistic and fundamentally different way and see amazing, life-changing results. Being labelled an addict means you adopt a whole role and personality but getting that label seems to very much depend on the means of escape you choose. We are all addicted to repetitive loops that we have chosen as a means to escape the life we perceive we have and feel trapped in. Some use drugs or alcohol, others chase money, relationships, freedom, travel, things, sex, social media and more but all are united by the way they are seeking to find happiness and to escape the way they currently feel about the life they feel bound into living. This discussion looks at new ways and perspectives to create a life you don't need to escape from and thus dissolves the need of the vehicles of addiction, most of which are selectively labelled and applied to certain compulsive escape driven behaviours. Zen Jungle offers life-changing, perspective shifting wisdom. An awakening and release from the conditioned lives we live. We look at every limiting belief and unlock total personal transformation by helping you to let go of all of it, bringing permanent peace, freedom and happiness. A life from which you don'y need any escape.

When I first became a mother, I had no idea of the complex, messy, beautiful journey ahead of me. In all honesty, I hadn't even really considered what to expect. I knew I had no clue what being a mother would entail, so I didn't think about it until it happened. That's the way I tend to roll with things these days, think only about what you're facing in that moment, don't project needlessly into the future with "what ifs?". My baby is 16 weeks old now. A part of me cannot believe how quickly the time has passed. My precious newborn has disappeared and an incredible young girl is emerging in her place, bringing new delights daily. It actually brings a tear to my eye writing this thinking about how much of a journey we have shared so far, and it's not even been 4 months. And while all that is true on the one hand, there is another side to this mothering journey that is newer. This side is not one I witnessed in the first weeks when I was in some kind of limbo between awe and shock at the change of it all. This is the side of mothering where time stands still, things feel difficult and you wonder if you are strong or capable enough to do it. At no point have I ever felt Bodhi is a burden. I am forever filled with love every time I see her face or hear her little squirms in the night. But there are new experiences that come with this that I'm still learning to navigate. Living in the present moment, never overthinking and taking life in my stride had become second nature to me prior to having Bodhi. It was easy, just how I lived my life and it felt like there was nothing to it. That has changed now, there are new challenges I wasn't expecting and times when I find it very hard to achieve. Like now for example. It's 5.45am, Bodhi is fast asleep but I've been awake since 4. I woke when she stirred and my brain began to think at full speed, and no matter what I couldn't switch it off. It feels almost fraudulent to say that because we teach how to have a quiet mind. But in the face of huge life changes, this is a process that I have to relearn. It's nowhere near as hard as it was the first time round. I have much clearer perspective on it now and can see my thoughts for what they are without engaging with them too much. But it's still a new learning nonetheless. I've always stood by the fact that this journey is never a complete one. There is no finish line, nobody standing in the distance ready to give you a certificate and say "well done, you've passed". There is no test. There is only you and your mind, and your ability to control what goes on in it. Different points on the journey will feel like regressions to you. Right now, I could easily believe I've gone backwards. But that's not true at all. Having a child has reached places in me that I never knew existed. I am learning how to feel into those spaces with love and compassion. I am learning how to quiet my mind in the face of huge change and new life circumstances. These are skills that will stay with me when I master them, and make the next transition smoother and easier than this one. Every day is a step forward and I invite that with open arms. Even when it feels difficult. Even though everything has changed. Even though I haven't yet mastered this new reality that's playing out. I write this not to share my troubles with you but instead to reassure you that you're not alone. If you feel like you've gone backwards on your journey, know that it's not possible. Every new situation and every reaction to it is a learning curve, allowing you to bring mindfulness to new areas of your life. You don't have to master it overnight, or all in one go. One step at a time is enough. Don't beat yourself up for it. Acceptance and self compassion goes a long way. If your mind is noisy, let's not add to that noise by berating yourself. You're doing great, and better days are on the horizon.

We often get asked if we do yoga at the retreat, which in the western world often means the physical, asana posture based yoga but yoga is so much more than that. At the retreat everything we do is yoga. Our reason to be is to help with the inner journey that an increasing number of people now find themselves without ever choosing it. We are born into a world with no structure and no ideas confining how we think, speak and act. We are essentially free to live as we please and could in theory think, be and do anything at all without there being a right or wrong, good or bad, should or shouldn't. Yet for most of us the structure quickly and relentlessly arrives. There appears to be a right and wrong way to be and do this life we are given. The ideas and limitations are thrust upon us quickly and soon we start to live within the confines of what we should and shouldn't be doing as a good human. In reality however, what we are shown and programmed with is simply a collection of subjective ideas of how to live our lives. The fact that we are all simultaneously programmed with it both at school and through all forms of media, creates an illusion that it's the way humans live. The creation and submersion in maya Maya is the subjective, idea based illusion that we build and accept as the structure of life. It is laden with rules, labels, concepts and false truths that in the end appear to be "real". It's as if there is no other way to live and includes the things we take as facts such as breakfast, lunch and dinner, work, money, family and holiday. All are a subjective idea that have become truth for so many humans. The maya is everywhere and where it fails to exist already we create our own, locking ourselves into chasing and avoiding things outside of ourselves as if they will bring us joy and happiness. We subjectives project our happiness into the people, places and things on the outside giving them responsibility for how we feel now and how we will feel later. So what is yoga? Yoga originated over a thousand years ago in Rishikesh at the foot of the indian himalayas and far from being focussed on postures and positions it was the science of self interrogation and the mind. The mind however in this case was far more broad reaching and existential than simply being related to the body and brain etc. Yoga is the journey to realising the true self, the awareness and experiencer before the ideas are needlessly created. It is the unpeeling of the concepts and subjectivity to reveal the origin of it all. Yoga is an experiential exploration into the ever present awareness of what appears to be. The core of perception and the peaceful, thoughtless foundation of our being.. It turns out that this exploration is part of the journey of human life. It's inherent and happens to most of us at some point whether we choose it or not. We are born free of ideas and limitation, we build the subjective structure by accepting it and taking it on as a fact of life until the confinement becomes too much to bare. Often called a mid life crisis, we experience the reality that in projecting our happiness and hopes of peace into people places and things in the outer world, we at some point realise that it really doesn't work. After a lifetime of trying idea after idea, we at some point get tired and start to question the logic of the search. This is the start of yoga and self enquiry. The journey back At the retreat we help you to take the journey back to the peace and joy that you had before all the subjective ideas and limitations become a rigid structure that forced you to chase what you needed to be, do and have. Yoga is part conceptual realisation and part experiential realisation of the awareness and true self that exists before any idea is created. Fist we experience, then we create an idea about the experience, then we think about the idea, then we act believing that it was the experience itself that forced our action. Of course however, it was never the experience that created our actions and behaviours or even the way we feel. It was the ideas we created about the experience that made us act and those ideas are always polarised and subjective. They tell us there is a good and bad, a right and wrong, a liked and disliked and we believe in the truth of those manufactured stories of polarity. These polarities and the will to chase and avoide them is the construct of the maya or illusion of our lives. Given the exact same experiences a group of humans will created an individual and unique opinion set that becomes their personal truths, and they will live according to them. Yoga is the process of seeing this for what it is and ceasing to be submerged in it all as if it were truth and "real". This is a progressive journey with no means of return. Once seen you cannot unsee the maya and you are exiting it moment by moment until it all becomes irrelevant and an obvious condition where balance is lost. The retreat is a centre for this exploration and to take this irreversible journey out of your subjective truths and into the true, experiencing self where it is peaceful and joyful always. There's no thoughts of bad or good, liked or disliked, in fact there are no thoughts at all. Just connection and peace, intuition and flow. So in answer to the question "do we do yoga at the retreat?" the answer is yes but if you believe that simply means posture then here's where you learn that it is so much more. Yoga is everything that helps you to realise the self, become permanently present and exit the maya that our life's journey has built so densely around us.

As the world changes from what many of us thought it was to something very different, there is a movement inwards for many toward self inquiry and seeking both answers and purpose. At the retreat we see this up close and personal, seeing also the connection is has to deep and often very challenging personal crisis. When life becomes a struggle Humans are in interesting example of a whole species that has essentially ended up following their "leadership" into an engineered life, one that simply doesn't work for many of those taking part in it. We have essentially and over time, created an existsence that has some key idea based pillars that are now the foundation of life and obsession for almost everyone. These pillars are for most, inseparablke from life itself as a human. Pillars like money, careers, relationships, posessions, family, life and death, holidays and travel, religion, health, asthetic and diet have been embedded so deeply into us that many of us believe them to be natural and what life actually is. The truth is however that these elements of our current existence have been created by humans as a set of subjective ideas that we "should" attach to and find importance in, and whilst we may not all be interested in all of them, most of us are deeply engaged with a core subset. So why the struggle? The truth is that naturally or inately we are not born bound into a set of ideals and beliefs such as the above pillars. These ideas falsely confine our thoughts, actions and behaviours into a very small fraction of what is possible, taking our attention and focus obsessively to the exclusion of all else. This means that our minds are no longer free to meander and adventure within the infinite set of possibilities available to us. After all, if you didn't have to manage your life within those confines, where would your thoughts and existence be? Having been given these ideas intensively, to run as a kind of program since we were born, we are mislead into believing that human life is all about this limited space of thought and action. More than that though, we become so focussed on them that they become like fragile balls to juggle, balls that we must never ever drop. We become all about them and get lost within them, overthinking it all and trapped in the thought prison they create. It is this confinement that creates the struggle and the crisis, and the feeling of being trapped. And whilst it's true that some humans are layed back and free of the stress of it all, most are obsessed and tied in like an unseen contract that they must uphol,d for a whole lifetime. At some point this often get to be too much. It creates a need of escape and a need to let go, often causing addiction, depression, suicidal tendancies or other patterns readily observable in a vast majority of the global population. The great news is, it means you're not alone but how do we escape it? Transformation is innevitable At the retreat, our purpose and reason to exist is to facilitate and help the process of letting go of those programmed ideas and pillars, to reveal the amazing human level of freedom beneath. The only true freedom that exists is that which happens when we are released from the bonds of our own deepest held ideas and beliefs. The truth is that even if all of the ideas in our society and the framework in which we live were other peoples ideas originally, the act of agreeing with them or accepting them as our own truth, effectively makes them our own. This means we become them and identify with them as if they are who we are. Freedom is not what you think Meaning that we become prisoners to our own beliefs, not life. We feel trapped by and limited into our ideas about life and not life itself. Imagine being born free of belief and the structures you were givien to live by as a child. Imagine that there are no rights and wrongs, nothing is good or bad, there's nothing you should and shouldn't do and there's no job or amount of money you need to have or person you need to become. That's what freedom really is. It's the release of the bonds that say you must live your life a specific way and release from the bonds of ANY idea at all whether you perceive it to be your own or someone elses. It means you are free to do anything, go anywhere, be anything and enjoy it. Importantly, this means that if you are currentl;y of the belief that freedom is "doing what I want" it's well worth questioning how you gained the ideas that currently tell you what you "want". For instance, did you want a relationship before you were shown what one was or saw an exapmple of one? Did you want money before you understood what it was? Did you want to travel before you were shown other places on the travel channel? And which things did you want before you saw that they existed? As we consider "wants" we see that they are all a result of what is suggested to us at some point, often in the media or at school. The nature of these wants and the relationship to your programming with ideas can be quite a challenge to see or accept. It can seem like your wants are your own and that they are naturally part of who you are but on honestly tracing it all back, it reveals that they were assumed and accepted, rather than any being of your own creation. It turns out that ideas are the most transmissable and contagious thing on the planet. We blindly believe what we are told or shown and what is inferred to us and we make it into a rigid framework of concepots to live by without ever questioning it. Transformation is a journey to true freedom It turns out that for us humans, there's only what's actually happening in this existence before we create labels about it or polarise it into good or bad and then there's a huge layer of ideas sat on top of it that we are at liberty to believe in or not. None of them are actual truth, they are simply subjective concepts that we create as stories to sit on top of something that otherwise has no meaning. Money is one, relationships are one, what you look like is one, what you have is another as is success, diet, life, death etc. The list includes everything that most humans are commonly thinking about. Transformation is a journey to clearing the idea based program completely. A jounrey to finding who you were before the ideas were added and before they became a prison for you to live within and obsess about. It is the journey to release from all subjective concepts and to a state of complete surrender to the unplanned, thoughtless flow of what is. A return to the what is that has always been there before you decided to get involved and try to plan, control and manage it to fit the ideas you adopted about it. The outcome is to finally feel light and free, to let go and find the joy in whatever comes your way, whether you "wanted" it or not. It is also what happens when your life loses all restriction and limitation because that's what all concepts and ideas bring. When we gain an idea of what we need to do, be, have and think we instantly become limited by it and lose a little more of our freedom to do anything and enjoy it. Beware of false transformation, the exchanging of one idea set for another set of limitations. When we are in crisis or feel trapped we become avid searchers and seekers. Our lives are almost a perpetual journey of searching for what will bring us peace and happiness, looking for the next things we can do, be or have that will bring it. This means that while trapped and feeling slightly desperate we are at our most vulnerable. It's a time when we really do need to escape and as such will take anything we can get that gives us a hint of that illusive peace or happiness. This means that in order to escape the confines of the ideas that bind us, we often paradoxically add more ideas into the mix in the hope it that will somehow set us free. This is when we find and add new idea spaces such as spiritualism and yoga, rituals and devinity, astrology and more. Having been trapped in a societal, money driven, consumerist, relationship driven world of chasing and fear, we opt for a whole new set of routines, practices and confines that come with the new spaces we are inocently exploring in order to find our peace. Before you know it, you are meditating morning and night, entering into new postures and contortionisms, going through ritualistic dogma in ceremony and have become dependent on the astrology and stars to tell you how to feel. You may also buy into never drinking alchohol again, becoming a vegan, a life of service, gratitude and trying to love everyone whether you really do or not. At the time it';s hard to see that these are all just the new ideas from the space you are choosing to explore and at least while new, they feel way better than the old ones. Then comes your dependency on them. When it's said out loud this may seem really obvious. It is the exchange of one idea set that you've decided doesn't serve you for another one that feels better, but when you are submerged in the process this can be anything but visible, with many of us getting trapped in the middle as part of the final journey. How will I know? Transformation is freedom. It is a total removal of limitation and it's a relaxed ability to experience your life in peace and joy no matter what's happening in it and around you. You become untouchable, absent of fear and happy no matter what. The rules have gone, there are no rituals, there's nothing you must be thinking, nothing you must be doing and nowhere to go and nothing to be. It is a total letting go and surrender to the flow without needing to plan, think, react, worry, serve, abstain or partake. As we awaken to the truth that we live in a reality with no rules other than those that humans make up, where nothing is right or wrong, where there is no specific way to be human and nothing you should do or not do to feel ok, we realise that how we feel is about the inside and not the outside. It is our own inner responsibility and has always been under our own control. As we realise that no ritual or idea is needed to keep us feeling ok and that our journey has been all about realising that, we liberate ourselves from all restriction and allow ourselves the ability to be happy no matter what. We don't need the stars, or the absence of the drinks, we don't need to become vegan and we aren't bound into daily rituals, thoughts of gratitude or devotion and we don't need to positively affirm endlessly in the hope of combatting how bad we feel underneath. Look out for the next 10 day transformational retreat for more information.

Here at the retreat we often talk about inner peace in the assumption that others can truly appreciate what that is, however in most discussions it becomes clear that most of us are so far from it, that we can't even imagine it. A life anything but peaceful For most of us, life began and almost immediately became a perpetual "learning" journey of the things we "should" do, be, want, have, think, fear and more. Born free of limitations and constraints, we quickly accumulate lots of rules and objectives, goals and destinations together with so many things to be feared and avoided too. Human life has become a complex navigation of the ideas that we are given as the right or wrong way to live our lives. The way our parents wanted us to live and the way we are influenced and inspired to be by the role models we are bombarded with on TV, film, in books and on social media. It quickly starts to appear that there really is a good and bad way to be a human and that it really matters how we live our lives, especially in what we do, where we go, how we think, what our job looks like, family life, the list goes on... This is a structure of conceptual ideas that are applied to humans quite immersively and systematically, as well as unintentionally by parents and peers who have been persuaded that those ideas really matter too. What does it mean? The result for most people in the western world especially is that we spend most of our time navigating that minefield that is this structure of who we should be and what we should do in the limited time we are in this life. We are inspired to find things that will represent being successful and happy and to chase them, such as money, family, travel, career, fitness, hobbies, health, diet and so much much. Very soon after this indoctranation starts we find ourselves on a sort of treadmill, taking a very planned journey towards having that perfect, fulfilled life. We quickly start to embed what that "should" mean and we are clear that life is about doing this human thing well and to the planned method. What does that mean? It means that we need to perform, work hard at school, behave a certain way, say certain things, think certain things, get a "good" job, earn a specific amount of money, travel to some key places, eat certain things, do certain excercises and avoid too much of what is "not good for us" which is a set of ever changing contradictions coming from many sources. This chaos of subjective ideas accumulates and becomes for most, a life of endless planning, overthinking, careful management of words and actions and a huge pressure to be the thing we are "supposed" to be. Triggered by everything The interesting thing about these strong ideas about how to be, do, have, think, fear and live is that each one creates a trigger within us to such an extent that if the world or people, places and things in it deviate from the structure, we are bound into endless thought and reaction. The expectations are strongly set and as soon as they are tested or broken by the world outside, we are forced into inner and outer conflict and overthinking as a result. Triggers are simply attached ideas that react to the world outside and create thoughts and reactions as a result. Anything that disagrees with or touches those ideas becomes important and as such creates lots of thinking and involuntary reaction. This means that even when we are not intending to think, the minefield of the world and the structure that "should" be being complied with by it and others and especially by ourselves, creates a thought storm every time it deviates from expectation. The interesting thing being that the biggest culprit for deviation is usually ourself and when that happens we become the biggest self critic too and disappointed by ourselves ,which seems to eventually create more thoughts than anything else. It's all about importance and truth These triggers and this rigidity of the being, doing, having, wanting and so on comes from a pattern that has taken over the human species like a virus. It is our habit and compulsive ability to decide that anything, no matter how subjective or on a grand scale meaningless, is very important or very true. We create personal truths that really, really matter to us out of deeply subjective ideas. Ideas that really don't matter to many others but that can then govern almost everything in the way we live our whole lives. At this point we end up in a compulsive fight for what we believe is important and true. Decide you need good grades at school and it becomes like the world depends on it, decide you want a relationship and you become obsessive and lonely and feel bad about why you can't get one. If meat is murder, you need to fight for it and if your pronouns matter then you become triggered when anyone fails to address you as needed. It's all so important and true. The underlying reality is that we can make anything true and make anything matter, no matter what the evidence is of the opposite. On a planet that's reportedly been here for 13.8bn years and where humans have been present for only 200,000 of those years, which by the way is the tiniest of fraction of the whole time, we can decide it really matters that cows fart, believe it's true that we are changing the climate catastrophically and limit our lives dramatically to save something which on the grand scheme of things could never be impacted by us. After all, the planet has been here long before humans and will be here long after but what about "protecting the species" I hear you say, well we can make that important too if you like. Our choices of what really matters across all areas of our lives and the sheer number of ideas we hold about what we want to be, do or have create non-stop thought chaos and endless planning to reach what we want and avoid what we don't. On our search for inner peace, this couldn't be further from the goal. So what is inner peace? What if by default your mind was totally silent? No thoughts and no inner conflict? What if you had nowhere to be, nothing to do and nothing to have. How could that ever happen and would it be ok with you? Most people reading that are probably triggered already. The very idea of wanting nothing, being nothing or needing nothing in their lives just doesn't fit. It sounds scary and meaningless, especially when you hold the strong idea that it would not be "right or OK" to have no wants or aspirations, to accomplish nothing or to do nothing. But where did those ideas come from and is that what would actually happen in the absence of all those thoughts? The truth is that we are so programmed and indoctrinated that even though at some level we all know that what we are searching for is inner peace, we deeply believe that the description above can't be the right way for a human to be and anticipate that it would leave us doing nothing meditating in a cave somewhere. The truth is far from that and our journey to and at the retreat has revealed that inner peace comes when we truly let go of and drop the conditioned beliefs that represent all the things we "should" be doing, being and having. As we realise that we have been falsely making almost everything important and true when nothing actually is, we see that we have spent a lifetime chasing and avoiding, planning and thinking, fearing and reacting for no reason at all other than the subjective ideas we were given or more accurately programmed with, along the way. Inner peace comes when you see it for what it is and allow yourself to take a leap of faith, surrender to the flow and let go. No more triggers, no need to plan or think As we see that nothing we previously thought was important actually is, that what's already happened is gone and the future is an imagined destination or projection that we believe needs to be a certain way in order to be happy, we see that we are missing the biggest poiunt of all. The only moment you ever have is now and if you can't be happy there, then you will never reach the future projection where you've decided your happiness actually is. At somepoint the future will become the now and when you get there you will still be completely missing the now in favour of projecting the next imagined thing that you've decided will bring you happiness. As we see it all as it really is, we allow ourselves to see that it's all just happening and was never within our control anyway. There's no good and bad, right and wrong, shoulds and shouldn'ts because they are all just subjective ideas that in the main others have made up about it all. We are alsways at liberty to say things are true or really important but in truth our belief in them won't make it so, and others will always believe the oposite as is the nature of subjectivity. On letting go of it all, the planning stops and the triggers disappear, leaving the mind quiet and the true self, the experiencer within, able to enjoy this moment and the next without the endless, thinking and planning. There's no more expectation and no more self criticism as a result, there's just what's happening and full, immersive engagement with it, with nowhere else to be and nothing else to be doing or being. There is only joy in thoughlessness As we start to find the peace inside we also realise that in the absence of thoughts there is only joy. When there are no thoughts are telling you to be somewhere else, do something else, be someone else, have something else you realise that you are deeply fulfilled in this moment. The only thing to then do is enjoy this moment and the next withought judging it in thought. Inner peace is when you deeply realise that nothing you previously thought is true, that the ideas you had of what you needed were a made up story and that none of it will ever really matter unless you say it does, which will always be your choice but also a commitment to lost peace. In this unattached place you are happy inside no matter what the outside brings, and you are at peace and untrggered no matter what too. It is then and only then that you will truly see and feel what inner peace actually means. It means that you are in balance, peaceful and joyful, and that whats outside of you really doesn't matter. This has been your life-long destination but it's been impossible to see beyond all of the thoughts telling you that your happiness was to be found somewhere in the subjective idea structures you were given. Was it? You decide but in their absence we can tell you there is deep joy and fulfillment. We share what we do at the retreat because this journey has revealed itself to us and we can help you reveal it to yourself too, at which point you will become truly independent of the world outside, deeply fulfilled in your true self and nothing will ever truly matter again. This is lifes journey into and out of subjectivity.

Independence is at the heart of what we teach here at Zen Jungle While our transformational retreats cover what inner independence means, our land is becoming a demonstration of outer independence.and what it means to live outside the system. With the largest private solar supply in the UK and a borehole that provides us with enough fresh water to feed 6 dairy farms daily, we are well on the way to living self sufficiently, independent of the need to rely on the outside world to provide for ourselves. Of course, energy and water are just two aspects of this picture. A third and very primary area is food independence. When we bought the land, it was neglected and had not been maintained or looked after well. It was a shame to see such a beautiful, natural haven in this state, so we dedicated ourselves to creating something truly magical here and working with the land to help both us and it to thrive. What jumped out to us most was the 3 acres of wasteland situated at the top of the retreat. A stunning area with unbeatable views that had been swallowed up by overgrown thorns. This was the area we chose to focus on for our initial permaculture set up. First up was a huge excavation project. We had tonnes (literally) of thorns, dying bushes and overgrown grass to clear, and we decided to dig down a couple of metres to protect the land from the severe winds common in Devon. Then, we split the area into three sections: The Hive, The Eye and The Farm. Even though it would be a good 2 years before these areas would be complete, this was the start of the vision. In the picture above, you can see the first stages of The Hive, an outdoor perennial fruit and edible flower garden. Consisting of 22 growing beds consisting of 2, 11 bed circles, The Hive is inspired by sacred geometry. Next to The Hive we have a tiered plateau which we are reserving for beehives to provide pollination and honey. Below, you can see a picture of how we have transformed The Hive into something incredible, a lush green paradise for guests to hang out and learn about sustainable living. Next came the chickens. Their primary role above all else is for compost as soil health is a top priority for growing produce. That said, they also serve the added function of providing us with an abundance of fresh eggs daily. To protect them from an endlessly hungry doberman, we built a huge outdoor pen for them to roam free in, allowing them to nest in trees, bathe in dust (they love it), play on swings and ramps and forage for wild treats. With a little trial and error, we also successfully hatched our first chicks last summer, with 7 healthy and happy new additions to the family growing up at Zen Jungle. This year we held off on hatching more as we came head to head on what happens when you have too many cockerels. Now that's back under control, we're hoping to hatch more next year and enjoy the fluffy cuteness, allowing the family to expand and keeping us self sufficient in terms of compost and eggs for the years to come. This little chick here was called Charlie. As is sometimes the way when it comes to nature, Charlie was the only chick to survive of our second batch after her siblings and mum passed away. She couldn't be integrated with our other chicks as they were several weeks older and much bigger than her and she would have been bullied. Fortunately, one of our team volunteered to take her home and raise her with her own chickens. Charlie has now grown up to be a full sized, very happy hen! Finally, on our mission for food independence, we installed 2 commercial sized polytunnels with an outdoor ground space for growing between them. The picture above shows the tunnels in progress with the beds being hand built by our talented team of carpenters. We filled them with soil from our land excavation and have been working to improve its health and fertility each year, composting the leftovers from what we pick back into the earth and introducing worms. Despite starting this with very little experience in gardening and growing our own produce, we've had tremendous success harvesting an abundance of vegetables daily every year throughout the summer. If we have learned anything through this project so far, it's that nature mostly takes care of itself. As long as you plant the seed and offer some love here and there, your plants will thrive. You don't have to have knowledge or experience to get started. All you need is a small patch of land or even a planter on a windowsill and you'll be amazed with how much you can provide for yourself.

The retreat now has the UKs largest privately owned solar farm and off grid battery setup, or at least according to victron the manufacturers of the control systems. As we accidentally unfold this beautiful place into a retreat, community or whatever it ends up being, we have been moved to opt to take as much of our energy off grid and self supplied as we possibly can. Maybe it is our anticipation that energy, water and food costs will rise, or maybe it's a simple belief that we need to be in control of as much of our essential resources as we can moving forward but here we are. What it is not is an attempt for us to be green or environmental because we realised long ago that none of this technology is. The materials and methods of manufacture are far from friendly to the environment and their short life span with no method of disposal leaves no doubt that it's independence we seek and not green kudos. So is solar and wind a sustainable source As we watch countries across the globe agree to dramatic changes in their sources of energy supply, in the name of an invented story climate change or a climate it's been amusing to say the least. Listening to how carbon dioxide, the gas that feeds every tree, plant and all vegitation, without which we all die is the enemy is a constant source of fascination. Pump it into your green house and watch you plants outgrow anything you've ever seen because it's actually a tiny part of the atmosphere and they all want more not less but that's an aside. To keep to the point, we have a relatively unique and specififc experience of these new energy technologies, having now had them for a while and those experiences have been enlightening to say the least. We rely upon our solar installation to power a limited area of the retreat, including our bistro, water pumps and bars which is currently a fraction of their intended use but we have already realised that we have become fully dependent on a diesel generator for many weeks of the winter so far. Our major solar array for the technically minded is a large 56kW capacity system, feeding no less than 104kWh of lithium batteries, which we had anticipated would mean we would need very little diesel generator usage, even through the winter. Our installers warned of the wintertime calculations and reality but it's not until you are living it that you start to see it for what it really is. That's what we're sharing here. The truth of solar in the UK is that in the summer it is very helpful and generates an over supply, filling the batteries relatively quickly on most days. More often than not it allows you to go into the darker evening with full batteries, which are more than enough to carry us through the night and beyond, but then comes winter. With very short daylight hours and our Devon rain and weather, we must generate our daytime usage and enough to fill the 104kWh batteries in only around 6 hours of less than sunny daylight. It turns out that on the duller days, of which we have had many weeks already this year, the 56kW capacity of the huge solar panel array we have can drop to less than 1kW of actual output. Which by the way is less than 2% of their rated capacity, and these are the good panels, not cheap ones. What does that all mean? It means that for weeks now the array has supplied only a fraction of what's needed for the limited load we have on it and our large diesel generator has had to supply the rest. I like to think of us as more of an off grid diesel powered retreat than a sustainable solar one at this point in winter, and our power needs have been quite low so far too. Cars, solar, wind and no more coal, gas and nuclear I was moved to write this article because I now see way better than most, who don't have the experience we've had at the retreat, that there is utter madness happening in the world around shifting the sources and what's using electrical energy. Having owned several electric vehicles including the Teslas and hybrids, I have also experienced the sheer amount of electricity that they use. There's no point discussing their green credentials here, so if you are interested in those look up the cobalt mines and disposal of the batteries to get you started. No, it's the power they use that has me transfixed when I look at the proposed and active changes in world energy supply. Solar creates power when it's very sunny and wind when it's very windy. If niether of those conditions are true, then there is no power at all, even from our 60m x 3m solar table at the retreat. So here's where experiences converge and we see a slight issue with the cars, wind and solar becoming a thing all at once as we ditch gas, coal and nuclear across the globe. The cars use a lot of power and in winter the solar creates almost none. If the wind blows you can use wind if your turbines are working but if the wind stops you get nothing from that too. Why did i say if your turbine is working? Because they often don't and also need diesel engines to start them in most cases. To place this into perspective, our 60m x 3m array would have zero chance of powering a single car in winter. In fact for the past 3 weeks you would have been going nowhere at all, which is the greenest thing you can possibly do in an electric car and maybe it's the plan. These cars often have anything up to a 120kWh battery and in order to generate power for each one on the road you'll need lots of panels or wind in winter. More than is possible. What does that mean for global energy? When we chose to go with solar at the retreat it was because we saw that energy cost inflation was and is going out of control, and also that we could not be sure that we wouldn't get switched off or rationed at some point. We were right and wrong to go solar all at the same time. Our huge solar array and batteries have brought us a level of independence from the unpredictable mains supply and it's brought a level of free power generation that will minimise our exposure to the market prices but what it has not brought is energy resilience or a way to avoid using diesel to power our stuff. What we see now is that on a global scale the shifts in the energy production methods, the loss of coal, gas and nuclear, and the new found reliance on solar and wind will bring limitations in supply, soaring costs and rationing at some point. This is especially true as global governments move to force the use of electric cars. The lie that the cars, the solar, the batteries and the wind are actually green just makes this whole thing look both crazy and carefully planned out. Unsustainable wind farms that use huge amounts of energy to forge immense steel monoliths that give unfortunate dressing to our hills and seas, and use huge amounts of concrete for their foundations, only to be unmanageable and unreliable is surely no accident. A crazy move for crazy times Whilst we are pleased to have a level of resilience and to have a backup power supply, whether reliable or not, we are also more sure than ever of the intuiitive and accidental reason we were guided to do it. There is a time coming soon that will see energy shortages and rationing. As the cars, solar and wind converge, and as the current "sustainable" generation systems become unworkable to maintain there will be an inevitable tipping point. The maintenance issues are already happening for both solar and wind generation fields, with many of the biggest companies such as Siemens who have built them losing billions trying to keep them running. The rollercoaster that is the world we live in, is almost at the top of the highest peak and soon we will all get a chance to hold on for grim death or throw our hands up and enjoy the ride. I definitely advocate for the latter because it's all a great experience and quite possibly the best ever time to be alive ever but maybe a bit of preparation or anticipation would make it feel just a little bit better. Together with food supplies, jobs with AI, a financial system on the brink of obliteration and wars and government turmoil, the energy supply is now to be added to the list of spaces to watch. It's exciting and special all in one and whether we realise it or not, it's coming to all of us pretty soon I suspect, so being ready is better than it being a surprise. The question for most of "is it really all about climate change or is it even green?" has been and gone for us here at the retreat now. The answers being no and no. This is a moment where we all decide what we are willing to see and we all get a choice to notice or to ignore it in denial but either way the prognosis for cheap or abundant energy looks truly bleak on all levels based on the facts. So whilst we don't get the power we wanted to in winter, at least we are prepared on some level and we can safely say we can switch the lights on for a while yet, no matter how it all turns out. The question is can you and is there anything you can do about that?

Having just had our new baby girl Bodhi, this question and the existential questions about the imminent and profound paradigm shift our society is about to experience are getting louder by the day. Our whole way of life is currently founded on an idea, whether you believe in it or not, of educating children to become useful cogs in the wheel of a society based on working to live and in the businesses and organisations that represent it all. As an aside, Hannah and I are of course more focussed on teaching Bodhi to have inner peace and live a happy life, so we have little or no requirement for her to learn the "normal" skills and subjects taught at school. Why? Because the definition of madness appears to be to teach every child the same skills and information, then to release them from education on some future day unable to actually do anything practical and having to compete with the many others, released on the same day, who are setting about the task of becoming useful in a specific work environment. No, school will not feature at all for her, as it is both life skills and a unique toolbox of abilities that is required for a happy life, none of which are actually offered by any school we can see. The question of which skills and what toolbox however still matters and may not be the easiest question to answer for any of us, let me explain. The primary lessons for happiness seem to be to be fully engaged with living life. Even the differentiation of work from play, including the labels and the learned feelings of hating work and craving play are of course self defeating. Choosing parts of your life to enjoy or to hate seems like an odd, subjective choice to be making, especially when how you feel every moment within those odd choices will later be governed by the ideas you created. Meaning why choose to hate something you will spend a large proportion of your life doing? Engaging with life for us is actually all about the basics. Grow food, live independently and in the way that serves your souls with inner peace, peeling back the needless and endless opinions about it all to allow yourself to enjoy every single bit of it, not just the bits you've arbitrarily judged as best. With that aside, at least for the moment, it appears to leave us all having or needing a job of some form to earn money or to engage in energy exchange in order to live, including the eating, clothing, shelter, warmth etc This appears to be the reality of life for most of us right now but a paradigm shift of dramatic proportions is almost upon us, and it's both unstoppable and irreversible. So what can't AI do and how safe is your job? It's only as we more deeply consider the above question, having slightly researched and maybe started to use AI that the magnitude of this cataclysm is revealed. It turns out that AI is already here and it is growing in capability exponentially. It has also already been woven into the plan of the future of our society and it will explode in the coming weeks, months and next few years. It has taken hold strongly in the marketing space, creating copy, images, videos and campaigns and is set to completely change spaces like medicine, law, administration, analysis, computer programming... actually I need to stop the list here because there are almost no career spaces that shouldn't be added to this list. AI and automation combined are set to take over almost everything. Cars and driving jobs are about to be replaced, factory and assembly, so distribution and fulfilment, even answering the phone will imminently be taken over. In fact almost everything is ready to become part of a revolution that will almost instantly (within a few years) render in excess of an estimated 80% of the jobs humans currently do, redundant. If you haven't been following or using the emergent AI then this may all seem like science fiction or so far away that you don't need to be concerned with it. But the truth is, it is already here and it's taking over with our enthusiastic help. In fact, the uptake is incredible in the spaces it is now reaching and it's loved for it's simplicity, ability and labour saving alike. Ironically I could have even used it to write this whole article with much less effort and far less time spent. Have we let the genie out of the bottle? The answer to that is a firm "yes" and this statement is often met by nostalgic comments that say we shouldn't have done it or that if it takes our jobs it should not have been allowed to happen but is that true or is it simply the first fear based response we are bound to give? The truth is that the debate is moot. The genie is here and to suppress it would stifle human progress and condemn a whole species to an eternity of needless tasks and labour, so what sense would that make? Coming back to our programmed matrix of a previous article however, this version of human society has been fully programmed to live within a formatted existence that includes working to live and almost living to work. Meaning that they gain income from the jobs they have and they need those jobs and activities in order to gain purpose in life. The majority have also been that deeply programmed to do and not be, that they find it almost impossible to do nothing or spend time alone and without activity or stimulus. This matrix really is not set up or ready for the number of jobs that are to be made redundant to be quickly removed with no gentle transition or aclimatisation time. This emergence will be a shock of the deepest proportions. This situation is going to become an existential one for almost the whole species, and it will merge with what appear on the face of it to be many other seemingly unrelated happenings across the globe that question the way a whole civilization is implemented. Questions of energy, polution, government and food. Are they unrelated or converging upon us by design in line with the advent of AI, that's a question for another day. For now it's simply worth noticing that they are converging. Which skills do we need then? The truth of the matter is that if we think in terms of jobs and skills we will be left with such a short list, there's only going to be opportunity for a few of us to work in those areas. It's hard to see how AI and robotics won't take over almost everything given a little more time. The question we need to be asking is way more existential. What does life look like when the AI gains traction and how do we gain purpose, stay happy and sustain ourselves in the absence of the doing to earn wages. It's here that we see that a very difficult transition is coming, one that can't be softened easily or in all likelihood be avoided. As this paradigm shifts, as it will quicky, the bulk of the global population will move into an existential crisis, quickly becoming dependent on external help to live in the absence of being able to earn an income. Most have not and cannot grow their own food, many are in debt that must be paid back and many live in cities where there is no growing space or ability to hunt and forage to eat and survive. The truth is that without jobs and the money they generate, everything needs to be reconsidered. Sounds like I'm talking about a survival situation doesn't it? You can decide that for yourself but one thing is for certain the coming and imminent transition is going to hit most of us, very hard. Unemployment will explode in an uncontrollable way and family incomes will all but disappear. Billions of people will hope for and assume the help of their state to sustain them, becoming quickly aware that the financial status of their governments and the financial system itself is far from ready to step in without it totally collapsing but all that stuff is for another article, coming soon. Are you ready for the change? If you are then well done you, you are in a small minority. You have been insightful and clever in anticipating a siesmic shift in the way we live, work and sustain ourselves but it certainly appears you are one of the few because clearly most are blissfully ignorant and don't see it coming at all. This change will leave a huge proportion of the global population essentially left with no way to pay for food, shelter and warmth, and it will happen way faster than you can imagine. AI and it's associated replacement of human function and purpose is a fundamental and foundational shift, and not just the latest shiny new toy invention. It will change everything, for almost everyone. If your family is deeply programmed to live in the current matrix, bought into the consumerism, the need for work and money, the safety net of government dependency and the security of the world as it is presented, this change will shake the foundations of everything you have come to rely upon. It will also feel like someone is to blame but the question is who? And you'll find that there are many with that same feeling of blame and frustration, coupled with ultimate desperation. Together fear, desperation and the needs of life are likely to converge in a form of chaos never seen before or at least mentioned in the history books, so planning for you and your family now, is worth your deepest consideration. All sounds a bit pessimistic or bleak I hear you say, it's not a forecast or a speculative thing. It's there in front of us all to be seen if we choose to detach from the many other narratives that are currently being played into the polulation for just a few moments. Our own answer is to exit the program right now and to focus on moment to moment happiness, sustainable and independent living and not income. Our lives have been changing for the better for many years now and we have become independent both inside and out. We have learned that non stop work and effort to pay for the creation of a societal plan that's on a track for destruction is not a way forwards for us and that living sustainably with an ability to simply be is going to be key moving forward. More than that, we have l;earned that the skills we need and location we need to inhabit, converge upon us finding as much natural space as possible and setting up to independently grow our food, drill for water, forage and hunt. To many that may sound like a path back to the dark ages but we have seen already that it is actually the path to freedom and to release from limiting beliefs that are part of our conditioning. It's a path to doing less and being more, finding the joy and that's with or without AI, which may well come in handy along the way. It is our very idea of who and what we are and how we exist that needs to change as this particular paradigm shifts. In realising that we were never the hamsters in this invented societal wheel anyway it becomes ultimately easier to exit the programmed existence of work to earn money, to eat, to be fulfilled by things external to ourselves. As we begin to take responsibility for our own state of being and remove the program and responsibility of things outside of ourselves for how we feel. In doing so, what we are left with is living this beautiful life by engaging with it deeply, and not with the work or the money that exists only as a ficticious metaphor for something that will make you happy in the end but never does.. Bodhi will learn to be happy independently of being someone, having things or what she does for work. She will learn the skills for life itself and they will be diverse and thought through. They will not be abilities and skills that place her into a life where she must compete (and doomed to failure) against a machine because we see clearly that humans working in jbs as they have done un til now is a paradigm that will soon hardly exist. That ship has already sailed even though it may not seem like it to all of us just yet, so it's time to find and embrace a new way to live as fast as you can. Prepare yourself and your children for a dramatic shift, some chaos and a more simple existence at the other end. Prepare them to have peace throughout and to be happy and grateful to have this amazing experience, at this amazing moment in human existence. Not all of us will see the other side because it appears that there will be little or no escape from a very harsh transition. What does that mean? Enjoying the journey to the maximum is all that we can really do. It's time to learn to stop, to be and find the joy in it all without the doing, the money and the things. #matrix #parenting #school #permaculture #balance #meditation

Firstly, it's a good moment to say that we don't do fear or speculation at Zen Jungle. Having been working to transform our inner state to peace over several years, fear just doesn't feature within us but in finding that calm we become ever more aware of the reality in which we exists without all of the polarised thoughts about it. That means we watch the world at a distance and with only a practical eye. The question always being "what is actually happening, and is there anything we could do to prepare?". After all, better to be prepared and nothing ever happen than for changes to present themselves quickly and there is no time to plan. With that in mind I decided to write this article as a means to bring better awareness and also to help activate those who have been in a long state of anticipation that things are about to change. Follow the money Whilst many of us may believe that financial collapse and even tolerating a conversation about it is all the domain of conspiracy theorists, it may be worth us doing a quick review of things financial. Almost every day now in the media there is talk of billions and even trillions being spent by world governments as a matter of routine. Hard earned tax money is flowing all over the globe for a variety of reasons, much of it to causes we as the people didn't sanction and don't agree with or support. In turn the national debts of almost all western countries is spiralling out of control, with the US now in excess of $32 trillion dollars in debt to private banks, which essentially means that private banks have control of and own almost all countries in the world through debt. The word trillions never feels descriptive enough either, 1 trillion being a million millions. $32 Trillion looks like £32,000,000,000,000. That's what the US owes. Almost all other western countries are in a similar situation. Interesting then that these governments are spending so much as if they have money to burn. Whether it be billions spent on vaccines or sent to the Ukraine or Israel, it's all going somewhere other than to the people paying the taxes. The climate change plan to shift energy sources and many other initiatives including uncontrolled immigration seem to be further dark if not black holes. But the central banks (privately owned) seem to have an endless supply of it and keep lending it all happily don't they. Or do they? The reality is that in order to feed this beast, behind the scenes money is being printed at unprecedented rates, which is interesting in and of itself in its demonstration that private organisations can simply print money at will. The more tangible issue for all of us is that as the money is backed by limited true value, every bit extra printed reduces the value of that in your pocket. Money is a means of holding human energy, and it represents a number of working hours of human time and labour, meaning that as they print more your time and labour is becoming more and more worthless. They call this inflation but what it really means is devaluation of your energy and when coupled with government spending and debt at scale it means exponential growth in the cost of everything you buy and that there's more tax payments needed to cover the spending and the cost of debt. Everybody is doing the debt game It's not just the governments growing the debts, it's the people too. Money was cheap and interest rates were low, so mortgages looked easy to service, as did cheap bounceback loans and other business debt, so personal debt and business debt has spiralled. The debt game is OK while interest rates stay low but as inflation rises, the measure used by the central banks who if you remember gave lots of loans and printed unlimited money, is as you may have guessed to raise interest rates. The more inflation the higher the rates. So what then happens to the debt repayments? They spiral upwards. Imagine owing trillions and your interest rates rising fast. What does is mean to print fast and spend faster with rising interest rates? It means that the whole system both nationally and personally becomes fragile and at some point the repayments cannot be made. What happens then is foreclosure. The seizing of assets to cover the debt. It's worth noting that the situation as it stands right now is way past serviceable debt and beyond what tax increases could achieve. The guys who own the banks that print the money are setting up for global bankruptcy, and while this may be a fairly well kept secret, it's there to be seen easily if you scratch the surface. This means the level of fragility in the world is at the peak and that the question of if this will happen is not the one we should ask, the question of when and what will it look like is way more salient. I haven't written this article to provide the answers, not least because I don't have any really good ones but I do believe that most are sleepwalking into an unprecedented situation without any level of planning at all and it's for their awareness I write. The great taking For most normal people living normal lives, the inner workings of our banking and financial systems may still be a consciously ignored mystery that they choose not to understand or feel that they never could. That perspective will only take you so far in these unique and exciting times we live in and hopefully reading this helps at least a little. Together with my simplified explanation here, I deeply recommend that you watch and listen to this film by David Webb. It comes from someone with a verifiable history and someone who has made significant personal preparations for what may come. It is also helpful in showing the tangible nature of the prevailing situation and it raises another big question, "can you trust the central bankers?". These are the very same central bankers who want imminently to convert all of the currency in the world to a programmable, digital currency. This is often called the central bank digital currency or CBDC. These currencies will link to a global biometric ID system and will be programmable, meaning that the bank can decide where, when and on what you spend your money, even setting time limits for its validity. When answering the question of trust, do so after watching this video and in the knowledge that the current financial system is currently hanging on by a thread leaving almost all countries in the world beholden to the central banks. What that means in translation is that the prevailing situation that has been created leaves almost ALL of the people in the world beholden and under the control and in the end benevolence of those banks. If the financial system collapses, what will you need to agree to in order to get the money you need for you and your family to live? David Webb explains here what those very same bankers have been doing behind the scenes to prepare for calling in their debts. Prepare or don't, it's up to you but it's well worth noticing that you do still have a great opportunity to create some independence and free yourself too. We have been naturally guided toward both inner and outer independence, and without choosing have prepared for much of what may come. As we watch the world unfolding or maybe unravelling before our eyes our motivation for that independence only grows.

At 11 pm on the 3rd October 2023, I birthed a beautiful daughter into the world. My first child, my first experience of pregnancy and birth and my first initiation into motherhood. I chose to do it differently. I chose to freebirth. The picture above was taken on 30th September. I was 41 weeks and 3 days, heavily pregnant and waiting for baby to decide they were ready for arrival. I knew that if midwives had been involved in my journey, they would have wanted to start hurrying things along by now, believing that a "late" baby was one in danger. I didn't birth our child until 42 weeks and 6 days, but I trusted my body and my baby completely, knowing that it would all happen in divine timing. I don't believe in the concept of a baby being late, they simply decide when they are ready to be born. The night before I had been up for several hours experiencing various sensations. No pain, but strong enough to keep me awake. However, they disappeared with the rise of the sun so I spent the day making final preparations in my chosen birth space and walking around the lakes. Towards the evening I started experiencing sensations while we were chilling on the sofa. We entertained ourselves watching Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, a childhood favourite of mine. Jason and I were excited, but not rushing. We went to bed after the film and I woke around 2 am with cramping feelings in my belly. They started out mild and slowly got stronger. Similar to the night before, they were nothing overwhelming, but enough to keep me awake. I found myself feeling uncomfortable in bed so got up and stood in the bathroom, breathing and swaying with the sensations. By mid morning, they had completely stopped and it was as if nothing had happened. I knew birth was coming closer, but I anticipated it could still be a long while (and it was!) so I didn't let anyone other than Jason know. It was our plan from the beginning to keep the process calm and personal without too much disturbance, so even though I wanted my mum to be here by the time baby arrived, I didn't feel it was yet the moment to announce that labour was on its way. The morning passed and we carried on as normal, saying goodbye to the yoga retreat guests that had been staying here and doing our usual rounds of the site. As the afternoon came, sensations started again but only mildly. I knew things were happening but it was slow and didn't interfere with my ability to carry on as normal. It was around 6 pm that it started to ramp up slightly and I asked Jason to let the other people staying at the retreat know that we wouldn't be joining them for dinner. It was time to hibernate and prepare. We watched another film together that evening but I missed most of it as the sensations were requiring more of my attention. There was nothing painful or too overwhelming about them but they did demand my presence. I think it was my body and mind working together to ask me to turn inwards and become quiet, ready to surrender to the flow of labour and birth. By the time 10 pm loomed, I was on the toilet experiencing the purge that I'd heard many other women speak about. Sensations were much stronger at this stage and while I knew we still had a while to wait, we also decided it was time to start preparing. Jason called my mum and asked her to drive down (which she did immediately despite it being a 6 - 7 hour overnight drive on little sleep) and we headed to the cabin next to the lake where we had set up the birthing pool. I considered that I may have left it too late for my mum to arrive on time for the birth. She had very quick labours with my brother and so I assumed mine would be similar. Lucifer our dog came with us to the birthing cabin and we spent the night doing what we could to pass the time between sensations. When my mum arrived in the early hours of the morning, Jason dropped Lucifer back to our cabin to stay with my mum as by this point I was concentrating on deep, slow breathing while I swayed, squatted and danced intuitively with the feeling of labour. Throughout the night, I got in and out the shower but refused to get into the birth pool until I really needed the help. I was growing more tired as I didn't feel like eating and while the sensations had gotten pretty strong, they also didn't seem to be progressing much anymore. When the sun rose, it brought a new sense of relief and a fresh start, so we wandered over to our cabin where my mum was staying and looking after the dogs. It was so good to see her and she gave me the most enormous hug. We chatted in between breathing and squatting and I asked her to pop to the shop and get me some strawberries as they were the only thing I felt like eating. We passed the day with short walks up and down the road by the cabins and pacing around the decking whenever I felt too hot (which was quite a lot). It was a long few hours, but eventually it felt like things were moving. At one point I remember a real step up in the intensity of the sensations. I had been labouring for about 18 hours by this point and was feeling the exhaustion so I looked over at Jason, saying quietly under my breath "I can't do this anymore". This was far from the truth and he gave me the encouragement I needed to power on, helping me to focus my attention on the present moment by putting all my awareness into the low moaning sounds that came with each sensation. Focusing on the soft noise coming from deep within me and continuing to sway, rock and squat with the feeling, we really enjoyed the next few hours. They were deeply intense and we knew baby would come soon enough. Staying present and in the moment, not judging the sensations as painful and allowing them to wash through me was what got me through these long hours. I have never known something to be equally so intense and delightful, exhausting and life affirming. I recalled reading someones experience of freebirth where birth was not described as something you do but instead something you become, a state of being. This really resonated at this stage. I was so deeply into the vortex of birth but it was wonderful. There was no separation between me, baby, Jason and everything else. I was simply being, entirely encompassed by the surges sweeping through and within me which were beautifully overwhelming for my physical body but also reached so far beyond the physical into a space of oneness. Mid afternoon came and we started filling the birth pool. I laboured in and out of the pool for a while until 5 pm came. At this point, Jason text my mum to say it would be any time soon and we called Jo, our doula to come and help. In all honesty, I knew baby was not ready to arrive at this point. But Jason had noticed another big increase in the intensity of the sensations I was experiencing and thought it was a sign baby was on the way. I was so tired after 2 nights of pre labour sensations followed by almost 24 hours of labour on my feet without rest that I was eager to believe him, hoping the end was in sight. There was no distress within me, just a deep desire to rest. Nonetheless, there was a lot of excitement at this stage, my body was opening up and preparing to birth our child. My low moans were transforming into roars by this point and every sensation took me to a place beyond the physical body. Jo arrived and kept herself in the background, allowing me and Jason to be alone with each other as we had wanted. Then, all of a sudden, everything began to subside and the sensations eased off, not stopping but dramatically decreasing in intensity. I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I was ready to meet my baby and it felt at this point like it was never going to happen. Jo assured us this was normal and Jason helped me out of the birthing pool so I could pace around the cabin. Lucifer escaped our cabin and appeared at the door looking for me. The scene must have scared him because he took one look and ran away with his tail between his legs. Walking brought the sensations back on in full swing within an hour or so and I started to reach my breaking point. Jo helped with hip squeezes that brought some relief but it was as if I had been doing the most intense workout of my life for over 24 hours and I needed to stop. I hadn't eaten anything other than a small handful of strawberries 12 hours prior and there was no energy left in me. I'd heard of women reaching the transition stage, where things pause for a short time before the moment arrives to bring baby earthside. This is the most common time to believe that you can't carry on. I didn't recognise at the time that this is where I was, but looking back it's clear to see that I was at the last hurdle. I collapsed onto the bed in hope of a rest but my body started to push. I did not have the energy or desire to push with my body, I just wanted to sleep. I ended up retching uncontrollably as my body worked to push baby downwards without my help. This was the first point in labour that I would have described what I was feeling as pain instead of a sensation. Between the physical exhaustion and lack of food, I started to go delirious. It's quite amusing in hindsight, I remember laying on the bed looking at a huge picture of the Buddha I had hung on the wall and it was so trippy. It was swirling and moving as if I was on mushrooms and the whole room seemed to be wobbling between dimensions. Between surges I kept telling Jason I was confused and didn't know what was going on. At one point, he said "Hannah, you're having a baby" and my answer was "am I?". This made him worried and he turned to Jo, our doula and asked if that was normal. I have very little recollection of what happened next. He called my mum to come over who stayed with me and held my hand while I told her I couldn't do it. He also rang an ambulance although fortunately, as he was describing what was going on, he realised that it was nothing more severe than complete exhaustion as I hadn't eaten anything to fuel me through labour. The ambulance said they couldn't arrive for several hours but fortunately Jason told them there was no need for one as he knew I just needed some energy. He spoon fed me honey for a sugar rush while Jo, our doula, made me a concoction of coconut water, salt and honey to sip on. Despite not remembering it well, this period of time felt like hours to me although I'm told it was only about 40 minutes. The honey and coconut water brought me back around and while I was not particularly amused by being back in the room after my funky psychadelic trip, I had the strength I needed (somewhat) to carry on. My mum made a pile of cushions and helped me to heap myself over them so I was upright on the bed and I started to push with the waves of sensations. A few pushes in, there was an enormous pop and my waters broke like a tidal wave. It was finally the beginning of the end and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Wishing to birth my baby in the water, I asked for help to get back to the pool so Jason and my mum supported me as I shuffled from bed to water. The support of the water surrounding me was incredible. It held my weight and I slumped over the edge, holding both their hands as I pushed with every sensation that came while Jo filled the kettle with more hot water to make the pool warm enough for babies arrival. By this stage, the pain had subsided again and while it was the most intense sensation I had ever experienced, pushing with it as opposed to retching took the pain out and allowed me to flow with it. There were no thoughts in this space, time stood still. It was just surges and pushing with every ounce of strength I had left. Throughout pregnancy, I read many stories of women who "breathed their babies out" without pushing. I'm not saying that's not possible, but it certainly wasn't my experience. I pushed harder than I ever thought I could with every surge coming almost immediately after the last and it still took just over an hour for baby to arrive. Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, I could feel her head coming. Surges seemed to roll into one continuous flow by this point without any pause and I pushed non stop, gasping for a quick intake of breath whenever I could. Baby arrived like an unstoppable force, head first and body immediately after. Relief swept over me almost instantly and I reached into the water and brought my baby (who emerged screaming with plenty of life) to my chest for the first time. For a long while, I didn't say a single word. I simply watched my child in shock and amazement, looking at Jason and my mum for reassurance and support. The magic and surreal nature of this moment is not something that can be described in words so I won't even try. It was just incredible. After the pause, I lifted baby out the water and discovered we had a beautiful baby girl. Jason and I were over the moon and I was amazed that quite literally my dream had come true. About 4 months into my pregnancy I dreamed that I would birth a baby girl on the 3rd. Here she was, my baby girl, born 3rd October. Jason climbed into the pool to lift me out as I couldn't stand up and her cord was too short to stay in as it was hard to hold her head out of the water. I sat with her on the sofa, shaking with a sudden chill as the heat of labour wore off. More surges came and I hoped her placenta would arrive quickly but it mirrored our daughter, taking its sweet time to arrive earthside. Jo offered me some angelica tincture to help the placenta come along. I only drank a little of it as the taste didn't appeal to me after birth. I tried everything, squatting by the sofa, sitting on the loo, all fours on the bed. Eventually, my mum suggested sitting on a camping toilet I had bought when I intended to birth in the yurt. This helped as it allowed me to rest so I didn't have to hold my own weight and kept me in a low squatting position. At 3am, 4 hours after our baby was born, the placenta arrived with a huge release. I asked my mum to take baby as my shaking, exhausted arms were struggling to hold her. Jo prepped the salt, rose and lavender mix I had made for the lotus birth and together they wrapped baby's placenta and placed it in a basket next to her with the cord still attached. It took 6 days to fully dry out and detach from her and we have now buried the placenta here at Zen Jungle under a newly planted blue spruce tree so it can grow alongside our daughter. After a quick rinse in the shower, I flopped into bed with a much needed slice of toast alongside Jason with our brand new baby girl between us. Shortly after we discovered we were pregnant we had decided on the name Bodhi for a boy or a girl, but this now was the moment we gave the name to her. Our baby girl Bodhi was here, we were now a family of 3. No matter what, I will forever be grateful that our Bodhisattva was born unassisted, in freedom and authority, here on our magical land. With no interventions, examinations, drugs, bright lights, gloved hands or strangers, her arrival here was one of peace and family. It's the best start I could ever have wished to gift our precious girl.

In many ways the retreat exists to help people find the answer to this question. It's been a journey that we have been on and mastered, and it is central to the masterclass and our transformational retreats. Overthinking however is not a cause in and of itself, it's a symptom of something more fundamental and the result of what is essentially a compulsive, conditioned habit. The spoiler here being that all overthinking is unconsciously self inflicted and perpetuated in almost every minute of ever day. Whether you are unable to sleep with racing thoughts at 3am or thinking while you are driving, jogging, cooking and sat on the toilet, the cause it never what you "think" it is. Understanding thought more fully In order to understand what causes us to lose our peace to constant thought, worry, anxiety or a need to compulsively plan, we must better understand what thought actually is and who or what initiates it. In order to understand this we need to understand a bigger and slightly existential observation. This observation is that we all have access to two realities, one being simply what is happeing before we label it or give it any meaning, the other being the reality built from the ideas we have about the "what is happening" reality. This points at the fact that there is a line where what's happening becomes what I think about what's happening or the ideas I create about it, and creating ideas about what's happening in our direct reality is a favourite pastime for most of us. Ideas are simply polarised statements that we arbitrarily say about what is happenening or what we experience, such as "I like it" or "It's boring", or "It shouldn't have happened" or "I want one of those" or "I need a relationship to feel ok". They are essentially subjective stories that we make up and tell ourselves about the things in our life and about ourselves. They always have a polarity, meaning that they inspire us to go twards or away from something, to chase it or avoid it. Once created or adopted an idea becomes powerful and gains our attention, one single idea can then generate many thoughts. What is a thought? It's simply the consideration of an idea. It's what our mind does automatically in order to reconcile the ideas we have, especially when we have several ideas that conflict with each other, the favourite one to quote being "I want lots of money" held together with "I don't want to work" which causes an existential problem for so many. The basics are though that ideas generate thoughts and we gain ideas through judgement. All we have to do to judge is either create an idea about something or adopt someone elses ideas as our own simply by agreeing with it. In this way ideas are the most contagious thing in existence and they transmit from person to person in every conversation, when we consume media or through inferrence and behaviours. What does it mean? We are all in a pattern of non staop judgement and feel bound to have a give out an opinion on almost everything. Attached ideas create the most thoughts Are all ideas equally likely to create thoughts then? No, some create way more than others and this is as a result of attachment. What does attachment actually mean? It means the level of truth and or importance we place on an idea. The point to note here in the distinction between "what is actually happening" and the "idea based thought reality" is that all we can have is opinions on what's happening. An opinion being a subjective statement that is NOT true and cannot be proven and one which when tested across the whole population will gain many different answers. This means that truth is subjective in and of itself, so we are always at liberty to believe anything to be true or important but it does not make it so. To some of us money is important, for some it's values, for others it's relationships, for others it's diet, health or being vegan etc. Judgement and attachment together create both the fuel for thought and the triggers that inspire us to bring certain things into our attention space. Meaning that the more important and true we decide something is, the more we think about it, and the more important and true we believe an idea is, the more we get triggered into thoughts of that idea. Back to stopping the ovethinking As you can hopefully see by reading the above, overthinking or any kind of thinking is not the cause of itself. Thinking and overthinking are cause by creating and adopting ideas, then attaching lots of truth and importance to them, even though none of them are true or important. The transformational journey or awakening process is all about starting to see the difference between the two realities mentioned above, then becoming conscious enough to see it happening in realtime. It often requires a real shift in perspective and to experiencetiall see that our previously heald truths are niether tru or important and that the habit of making them so is self defeating. The journey to inner peace has been quite profound for Hannah and I. We have moved from lack of sleep and constant thinking, coupled with mind chaos and hopelessness to becoming almost thoughtless as a default state of being. Sleep is sound and our minds are now peaceful. More to the point, we are almost never triuggered into thoughts or reactions and so live peacefully no matter what is happening around us. That is not the situation for most and making the journey to peace, first requires you to understand it's nature and start to let go of what were previously your deepest held beliefs. The challenge being that we as a species have come to believe that our ideas and opinions, which also encapsulate our life of past experiences (because all that is left of your past is the ideas about the experiences you've had) and our aspirations for the future which is all attached ideas too. To end your overthinking is to transform and awaken The end of overthinking is the end of the belief that everything in your life deeply matters, it's the end of the habit of making up stories about what happens and it's the end of arbitrarily needing to chase certain things and avoid others. It's the end of creating feats and desires and it's the end of dependency on the outside world for how you feel inside. Overthinking is a symptom of a habit. The habit to judge and attach strong to things. The more you create ideas about and the more importance and truth you give those ideas, the more thinking you will do. While we live in the idea based, thought reality our lives are full of thoughts, full of resistance and fully of consideration. We often feel trapped and unhappy because our uncontrolled thoughts and attached ideas tell us that's what we "should" be in a given situation, and we constantly re-enforce that feeling with our thoughts. As we let go of those beliefs and see that the meanings that we've been giving to anything and everything are our own or have been adopted from others, we can take a journey to becoming more conscious and learning to see ourselves judge and attach. As we do, we have the power to choose what will and will not be important and true, under the deepest realisation that it is a self defeating decision we make in doing so. With practice and commitment, as we let go, surrender and allow what is to be what is without deciding that it all means something, we find a progressive inner peace and freedom from our thoughts and resistance. The retreat exists for this transformation Everything we do at the retreat embodies this journey and is there to help all who visit take progressive steps out of the mind chaos we have been conditioned into by the life we accepted since we were born. Practices, meditations, experiences and the most intense teachings to shift the foundations of perspective work together to offer the freedom to become peaceful, thoughtless and not to involuntarily behave according to the ideas we have accumulated.

We bought Zen Jungle Retreat (at the time known as Wooda Lakes Fishery and Holiday Cottages) back in August 2021. Jason and I arrived with fresh eyes and eager excitement. The cabins however, which had not been touched since they were built 15-20 years prior, were tired and in desperate need of attention. Our first mission was to renovate and give them a new lease of life. The universe had other plans however and provided us with 6 months of fishing and family guests which we had inherited from the previous owners. So, once we had thrown ourselves in at the deep end and waded through a winter of housekeeping, hot tub maintenance, fishing competitions, 6 am bacon butty sales, setting up admin protocols and keeping guests happy, we got to work. Fortunately, we found an incredible team of local carpenters, electricians, plumbers, decorators and more to help us along the way, starting with Pete who is a woodwork magician. After an initial inspection (and 4 months of experience living in one of the old cabins), we decided the best course of action was to start from scratch. All interiors were stripped and re-plastered, bathrooms refitted, fresh flooring laid throughout the whole cabin, new kitchens and lights. You name it, we did it. In fact, in the first 7 cabins we renovated, everything except the walls came out. Although it turns out that 7 apparently identical cabins can have some quite interesting and unique quirks that made the renovations much slower than initially anticipated. One of the cabins even had the electrical box installed directly under the kitchen sink! So, the next 5 we renovated we took even more drastic action and removed everything, including the walls, windows and doors. No stone was left unturned. As for the exteriors, we clad all the cabins in oak and douglas fir giving them a totally new look. The deckings were pulled apart and extended, creating expansive areas to hang out on. We opted for rope balustrades which felt natural and spacious as opposed to the dated appearance of the ones here when we arrived. Half of the cabins were completed with large, double ended bathtubs while the others were fitted with huge bi-fold doors spanning the width of the cabin, bringing the outside in. It took much longer than we had initially anticipated, and with the rate of inflation on building materials it cost far more than we had budgeted for. At times it felt like there would never be an end, but the day loomed when it was ready to put the finishing touches in place and the whole project came together beautifully. After a trip up north to buy furniture thanks to Jason's contacts from his previous business, we came back with mountains of stunning decor to create the homely, boho vibe we'd been envisioning for these cabins from the beginning. As we furnished the cabins like they were our own homes, we finally knew we were ready to open the retreat and reveal what we had been creating to our audience. Although the rest of the retreat was far from ready with no bistro, yurts or chilling areas, we began to host small retreats to showcase the cabins and what we do here. The first stage of Zen Jungle had well and truly begun. From here, the only way was up!