Retreats & Walks

NEXT RETREAT WEEKEND will be from 10am, Saturday 18th - 3pm, Sunday 19th November.


Amidst the hurly-burly of life, we can often become detached whether from our inner selves, from a clear perspective, or from our sense of wellbeing. In these times, we can feel overwhelmed by circumstances or our environment, and what we need is to slow down our thinking, bring more clear light in our lives, get out of our heads and back in touch with nature in a complete change of surroundings.

My walking retreats can give you an excellent opportunity for some guided “me” time. Along the coastline where I live in North Devon there are some of the finest walks in the country – and these provide an excellent backdrop for some mental and physical renewal.

Usually incorporating stretches of the South West Coast Path, the walks, whether via some steep and hilly challenges or along stretches of beautiful sandy beaches – are always with the sounds of the seas and breaking waves close by, and the invigorating clear, clean air coming straight off the Atlantic Ocean. You can walk and talk, or mindfully reflect, whilst communicating with the awesome power of nature.

Like me, many people have experienced amazing shifts in their perspectives and, for some, it can be life-changing, as the mind settles down and we begin to notice our own wisdom and insights once more. The stage is set for us to get clear on those answers to important questions, problems, issues in our lives that have eluded us - back in the daily pressure-cooker of our “real” world.

Normally set over a weekend, the retreats involve either a one or two-night stay in accommodation of your own choice – with guided walks taking place on Saturdays and Sundays.

During our time spent together there is ample opportunity to talk over areas where you might be looking for more clarity and understanding, and at our meet-ups at the start of each day, I will talk about how our relationship with our thinking can frame every decision and every action we choose to take in our lives. 

This helps prepare the ground, sets up the blank canvas, for our collective walking experience and how we can, through directing our focus and attention, all use that experience to our advantage.

Each day, en route, we break for lunch, and on Saturday evening we all have dinner together at a suitably appropriate establishment near the “finishing line” of whichever route we have taken that day.

Perhaps you are feeling that such a complete change of environment and activity is the kind of thing that could bring about some transformation in your life, or maybe you are just looking for a short disengagement from the daily stresses and pressures and to get away from it all – either way, it would be great to be your guide and enable you to bring that to fruition!


Please do get in touch if you are interested in coming to any of the retreats. Also – if these dates are not convenient yet you would like to make a special visit to my part of the world at any other time, for one of my other one-to-one programmes then please do enquire!

Walking retreat on the South Pest Coast path No.2 - EVENTBRITE details

For all details of the Retreat dates for the current season then check out the EVENTS page at my website …  TheWrightWayLtd

Touching Lives

What is revealed when catching up with paper work

Today I was doing the admin for my cricket work time in schools this calendar year so far. The total exceeds 100 hours. Add to those hours some District Level coaching, plus voluntary hours at the Colts Section of my own Club and also at another Club in my home town where we are building the Colts Section; and then add in all the background stuff ... the meetings, the planning, the organising ... that would then probably double the 100 hours figure. 

In terms of my working life - and this year in particular - this a lot of hours. It is a quantifiable measure of the time I have spent in working at educating, building and improving upon the technical abilities of a considerable number of young people - albeit in one small part of their lives.


Influence below the Surface 

Of course in all technical coaching there is also a relationship in terms of rapport between players and coach. And within that rapport there is influence at play, an influence that falls into the area of mental and performance coaching. For me this influence translates into linguistic, somatic and temperament areas - and is going on ALL the time. Certain words, a chuckle or a smile, here and there are hugely important in the relationship and, particularly with coaching a group. 

I am often seen as being very patient, easy going and, to put it bluntly, a bit of a pushover in terms of my strictly managing the unacceptable. Yet this is far from the truth, and I don't allow my laissez-faire attitude to over-ride my values for I really do want my players to be influenced by my values. On one day this week, for example, I had (i) to both call a player out, and then report him, for bullying and later (ii) I had to reveal to a squad of under 11 players, in no uncertain terms, what was and was not acceptable TO ME in terms of their engagement with our practice game. 

In spite of these rare occasions, I'm delighted that my players reflect back their acceptance of my influences - mainly because I know that somewhere in the confines of their minds they have taken on the need to be grounded, and to not take themselves too seriously.
That ALWAYS seems to work best!


Conclusions

Yet because everything we do as coaches makes a difference, the next step is about going the extra mile. And so 5-10 minutes helping a little girl with her catching, at the end of her brother's All Stars Cricket session this evening is an essential component in making that difference a positive and worthwhile one. Of course receiving genuine and grateful thanks from her Mum makes all the difference to me too! When the extra miles are noticed it reminds me that being generous with our time is also very valuable at human level. 

And when we add up our EXTRA miles in a year for instance, they can actually be much more valuable than our "200+ hours". 

Never under-estimate the impact of YOUR extra miles!

True Vermin

After some therapy earlier this morning I took time out to "walk round the block" where I'm fortunate to live. It took about twenty  minutes, and one of my first observations was the seagulls in flight over the water.

They are much maligned birds in our coastal community because of their voracious appetites and fearless relationship with man. In our environment they revel in OUR voracious appetites by sifting through OUR waste, particularly food waste. They even dare to steal our food out of our hands - before it has become waste. We say they are "vermin."


Yet today I watched them in THEIR environment - over the waves, through the sea air, round rocky ledges. Wheeling, soaring, occasionally beating their wings yet mostly gliding using currents and thermals, they moved effortlessly and with grace - in their world. It was poetry in motion.


So, although their bellies may have been full of OUR waste - perhaps the leavings of  "Chicken a la Dust Carte" - they still only ate enough for their immediate needs. Their soaring flight patterns were not weighed down by excess gluttony, and when they landed on the azure blue of the inshore waters they did not sink.

No - they are still the masters of their own environment and adaptable masters of the interface where theirs and ours meet, here on the coast.

Plus - I'd venture to point out that in global terms, the true vermin is not the common gull but the common man; i.e. ourselves! The more we respect our environment the better it is for everything that lives - and that includes the environment. Is it HARD?

“Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes that's hard.” ~  Robert M Pirsig,
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - An enquiry into values"

From Excusative to Appreciative

I'd like to share with you two of my experiences this week, as I plied my "trade" as a cricket coach working with children.

The first took place at my cricket club's ground on Monday, where we staged a Kwik Cricket Festival for Year 4 children - which equates to those aged under nine on 1st September last year. We have a large ground and there were almost 200 children attending, playing Kwik Cricket on 9 pitches around the field of play.

Excusative

Ours is a private ground - yet when the gate is open (and even when it is not) the local public seem to think and feel that it is their ground and that they can do whatever they like on it. On this eventful day the sense of Public Right was firmly held, as usual, by the dog walkers of our part of Barnstaple. These people come, sometimes in cars sometimes on foot, sometimes alone and with one dog or sometimes in groups with many dogs.
Today's story involves a lady, probably in her early 60's, with her lone pooch. She observes the 200 or so children playing cricket, as they cannot be missed, yet she still lets her dog off the lead and walks him (or her) around the perimeter. At some point on this promenade she nears some unattended rucksacks belonging to the children - yet poochie is there long before her because poochie is not on a lead. And because poochie is a dog, and does dog behaviours, part of a child's lunch from one of the rucksacks is joyfully eaten, cling film wrapper and all.

When the schools event organiser confronts the lady pointing out the dog's theft, the lady dutifully puts the lead back on the dog, with some feeble and unconvincing apologies for her dog's behaviour. The event organiser brings lady and her dog to me - as I am the club official present who can tell her about club policy.
"This club is private ground," I say.
"No it isn't - it belongs to the Council," comes the barked reply - from lady, not dog I must add.
"It is PRIVATE," I reply raising my voice a tad. "Plus, I would have thought it was sheer common sense to keep your dog on a lead when you come onto private ground where there is a children's event going on."
"Well I'm SORRY," she barks again, "But you should have notices telling people what to do."
"Look, we aren't going to spend hundreds of pounds on notices so that people like you don't read them because you think you can do what you like. I'm amazed at your lack of common sense. None of this would have happened if you'd kept your dog on a lead - now a child goes without the lunch their Mum has lovingly prepared." By this time I was actually making eye contact with this woman - and I am quite good at laser-eyed eye contact.

Fortunately for both of us our Club Treasurer arrived and put the woman right about the ownership of the ground, the wrongness of walking an un-leaded dog through a field where 200 children are in the middle of a sporting day out, and the sheer arrogance of believing she was still in the right.
"Well I won't come here again," said the lady.
And so say all of us - Good Riddance to the Excusative Woman.


Appreciative

The next morning I am on an artificial grass court at a local secondary school, helping dispense more games of cricket to the youth of the town.
"Hello, Pete - are you doing cricket with us today?" comes the shout from thirty or so excited lads from Year 7, as they pour onto the play area for their P.E. lesson. When the sun is out and it is warm, there cannot be a child on earth (surely) who would rather not be out of the classroom. One of them even had his foot and ankle encased in a "moon boot" and was hobbling around on crutches. He, like the others, was determined to just have some fun in the sun - and both I and his P.E teacher were equally keen to oblige.

We split them into four teams and they each played two matches in the 45 minute lesson. It was fast paced, even manic at times, but was just what the lads wanted. No time to think - only do; plenty of cricketing action - plenty of fun; the games had winners and losers but nobody really cared about that.
"Thanks, that was brilliant!" said their P.E. teacher as we came off at the end of the lesson. He had no idea beforehand how adaptable cricket can be in terms of pumping up the levels of engaged enjoyment in a P.E. environment.

Pleasing for me as this comment was, from a fellow educator - my most rewarding experience came from the endless chorus from the boys as they all trooped back towards the main school buildings.
  "Thanks, Pete - that was great! See you next week!"


Conclusive Reflective

So why have I put these two experiences in juxtaposition?
There's a common thread of school children, play, outdoors, exercise, cricket, fresh air, hitting, running, catching, teamplay, organisation, education, joy and fun running through both stories. It is a wonderful example of how we as humans are, and can be, flourishing creatures.

Yet - the contrast for me is how the selfish, unthinking and endless excuse-making lady moves through the narrative like the "elephant on the pitch". The children - bless them - never even noticed the elephant walking with her dog off the lead. I suspect the child, who had part of his or her lunch nicked by the resourceful dog, never even noticed what had gone missing - for that child's mind was only really attending to other things! No, the only people who noticed the elephant were other adults.

You can bet that when the dog lady was at school that she was rather like the primary school children at the Cricket Festival, or the Year 7 lads at secondary school. If I'm right at guessing her age then she, like me, would have been inculcated through her childhood - both at home AND at school - about respecting people, property, common sense, and what is right and wrong.
So where, I ask you in whatever god's name her God has, did she morph from the carefree and caring young girl she was - into the person she had become and was evidenced to us as she visited our private cricket ground this week?

It is a very sad commentary on the world some of us have created for ourselves - witnessed by part of the lyrics from the song, "Cold Heart and Closed Mind" written by Nanci Griffith.

"... love is not in question when you're holding the answer
In your cold heart and your closed mind.
You've got a cold heart and a closed mind.
... like a hurricane I see that storm in your eyes.
One of these mornings when you're making your way
Just gonna wash you out with the tide."