The Restory Retreat Centre

Illustration by Henck van Bilsen in The Socks of Doom We want to live consciously. That we stated right from the beginning of The Restory. We want to believe that it describes the way we are living here at Barrowfield and in essence it is also the golden thread running through our writing. It might therefore seem strange to write about conscious living at this stage. Almost like stating the obvious. True. But I’ve been carrying this beautiful phrase for so long that I only want to put it somewhere and look at it. To practice the art of stopping. Author Nguyen Anh-Huong introduced me to it in her slim book Walking Meditation . She says: “By practicing the art of stopping, we can enter the present moment and be nourished by the beauty and wonder of life in and around us: the smell of flowers, the warmth of sunshine, the color of the sky. To practice mindfulness is to begin to realize that we have a choice – to stop and rest or run, to be angry or happy. Once we ...