Health & Wellbeing

58 The West Dorset Magazine, May 20, 2022 Health & Wellbeing Walking West Dorset

with retired Dorset rights of way officer Chris Slade

FROME VALLEY TRAIL: 5th WALK

This is a gentle walk of four miles mainly through pleasant parkland. Start at Frampton, parking opposite their Millennium Green on the road down to Southover. Walk down the road crossing the Frome (which is a lot bigger than you saw on the earlier walks) using the smart bridge, pictured. You’ll soon come to a junction. Turn left and walk eastwards past Frampton Court and the (much larger) Frampton House. After about half a mile, at a meeting of ways, turn right for a short distance, then left, heading south east for half a mile then crossing the parish boundary into Muckleford, part of Bradford Peverell. After a furlong, passing several houses, you’ll see a letter box. Turn right by it and head south up a lane. After passing a couple of fields the route splits. Turn left and head south eastwards diagonally across a field, following a well trodden path to meet a road on a bend. The Frome Valley Trail continues over the road, but we’ll leave that until next time. Head northward down the road for half a mile, crossing the Frome again over a narrow bridge which is the boundary of Stratton parish, continuing to meet the A37 main road. Turn left and follow the pavement through the hamlet of Grimstone. After leaving the village you’ll see on your right a splendid railway bridge built by Brunel. Continue alongside the A37 until you meet the junction with the A356 where you turn left and walk next to a wood until you come to the Lodge. Turn left and enter the parkland, heading south west along the bridleway and crossing the famous stone bridge. Soon you’ll meet the path you were on before so you can retrace your steps back to your car.

Garden plants can have their own healing reiki energy

Andy Cole is a reiki healer based near Melbury Osmund. He specialises in planting for healing.

Energy healing has been about for centuries. Most cultures have had their own form of it from Reiki to Shamanic, spiritual and chakra. One form of energy healing which is only just beginning to be understood is that of the healing energies of plants and gardens. While people generally know gardens are a space to relax and unwind and sensory gardens are used for the aid and treatment of those with more acute illnesses, the new trend is now on gardens for wellbeing for the whole mind, body and spirit. Sensory gardens always seem to focus on the old favorites of lavender to relax, roses for colour and scent, grasses for sound and touch along with Stachys byzantina – Lamb’s Ear for a soft velvet like touch and rosemary for taste. The sensory garden works on the five senses. The garden for wellbeing also works on the spirit, the soul, the mind and the body. To understand this, we need to understand how we interact with others. We must look at ourselves and how we interact with others and the tools we use to do this. We use our senses of touch, taste, smell, sight and sound. We also use emotions like love, joy, anger, hate etc. If you take your emotions and link them to your senses you will see that it is impossible to place any emotion in any of your senses. You can see and hear laughter or crying but these are the results of the emotion not the emotion itself. You feel emotions in your soul, heart or spirit.We all live our lives by our emotions. We have to understand our own personal space – if someone steps into your space too closely you automatically step back away from them. This is your own personal energy field (aura) or space. The next step is understanding this energy. Have you ever been to a meeting which is vibrant and lifts you up and at the end of the meeting you are geared up and ready to go? The meeting is full of energy. You cannot see it but you know it is there. So why have your spirits been lifted by this meeting? It is because your body and your energy field sensed this energy and you have absorbed it, lifting your spirits. So you have absorbed something you cannot see into your own energy field that you also cannot see, however you have physically felt the difference in your emotional response to this energy. Everything that has happened at this point is nothing that your five physical senses have had anything to do with. We instinctively absorb energy that we need. All of the above needs to be understood as this is the basis of the energy healing we obtain from plants and gardens it is not just the quiet outside space that provides the healing it is the plants and their energies and healing properties that these plant contain, the combination of planting and the overall structure of the area that provides the correct ambience to rejuvenate the soul/spirit which in turn works on the mind and body.