Have you noticed that a place can choose you as much as you choose it? Have you thought about that before?
You may notice, as you walk through a park, for example, that your body slows without your mind understanding why. You stop. Something has caught you.
For me, it’s a feeling. A feeling arises in my body that makes me pause. I have no conscious understanding of why, but I stop anyway.
When those experiences happen, I pay attention to them. There’s a conversation going on. Something is telling me – whether it’s my unconscious or the land – that I need to pay attention.
Not every place works for every person. We are unique individuals, and so a beautiful wild landscape that moves someone may leave you cold.
I experience that on Dartmoor. I look for nooks and dells because I’m quite hobbit-like in the landscapes I like. I’m named Robin after all, and so I like places where I can feel private and solitary.
For you it might be an unremarkable corner of a park, a scrubby bit no one’s ever photographed, and that might be exactly your place. I don’t believe there’s anything spooky going on when this happens.
It’s more biological. One living being exists among many others. The body notices things just below our conscious awareness, like how it senses temperature or balance.
Once upon a time, I lived in an industrial town in the south east of England, very close to a port town. I was homeless, and a woman befriended me and allowed me to stay in her house. I had come from the depths of the Devon countryside. I wasn’t used to these urban industrial environments, and I felt deeply unsettled when I first arrived.
I spent many days walking that town to find what I call sanctuary spots. You may have heard them referred to as sit spots, or as Stephan Harding, the Goethean scientist, referred to them – your Gaia place.
One day I walked into the park, a very small park, and I was doing my practice, feeling into where I felt at home. For some reason I found myself by a small copse, and as I walked into that area of the park I felt my body relax. I realised this was my sanctuary spot. It felt safe, warm, and nourishing.
The best way to describe it is like this: picture walking into a stranger’s house. They show you around, and when you enter the dining room, something feels off. It feels cold, unloved, and unlived in.
When they take you to the living room, where people gather, laugh, and love, you feel a warmth. It’s not about the temperature; it’s a warm, heartfelt response you experience. This is something similar.
I have a sanctuary spot no more than ten minutes away from where I live. I go there to be with the land, with the plants, with the environment, and with the elements. The place knows me now, and I feel I belong there. There isn’t any other place I want to go, and I did not travel far to find it.
Once you have found your place, keep showing up every day. It doesn’t have to be for long, but try and visit daily. It’s like a new friendship. Over time, a relationship develops, and you come to know so much about that place that a stranger, if they arrived, would never be aware of.
This is my place for this period of my life, until life and circumstances may or may not demand I move elsewhere.