I currently have a croaky man voice, courtesy of Edinburgh being a shit tonne colder than I was prepared for last week!

At the end of an awesome, tapas fueled, 4 week trip to Portugal and Spain with BGC, I flew to the UK for a whirlwind Featherstone family and workshop tour.

I spent a week catching up with the bloody lovely (and chatty) Featherstone family

(18 uncles, aunties, cousins and 2nd cousins!) as well as my god mother and god father, beers were consumed, pubs were attended, high teas were munched, expertly trimmed topiary was observed.

Then began a whirlwind mindfulness workshop/ meet-up tour of the UK –

I zipped all over the place in the course of 5 days, training through beautiful English countryside over to rasta-hipster Bristol, bustling central London, excellent-accent Leeds and then stunning mountainous-castley Edinburgh!

This photo is a few of the legends from Edinburgh when we went out for dinner after the workshop!

67 people joined us from all over the UK, the legends at Loving Earth sponsored us with delicious chocolates for everyone, many cups of tea and biscuits were consumed and a lot of laughs and hugs were had.

What started out 5 weeks previously as a small, 1 workshop pilot for running in person events bloomed into something a lot bigger than I had envisaged, and it was awesome!!

The people that joined us were just incredible, so open and courageous to rock up to an event not knowing a soul,

I received at least 100 hugs (including a few from the cute kids of a Bloody Good Life participant who wanted to hug “the lady from the videos”!

I stood up in front of the groups with my heart racing and was honest about being super nervous, and my fears about people thinking I’m a weirdo and way less cool than they had imagined.

We chatted about nervousness so that everyone could be honest about how nervous they were to be there,

and it set us up for some incredible, authentic, unfake conversations – we had honesty, hysterical laughter, and even a few tears.

After the workshops we went out for drinks and dinner in a couple of the cities, and people continued to chat and get to know each other, it was incredible to be part of, and I’m so grateful my two mates Jo and Rachel pushed me out of my comfort zone to run the meet-ups that I’ve been talking about for years but too stuck to actually implement.

When you’re feeling a bit stuck or stagnant, as I had been for a while – the likelihood is you know exactly what you need to do next.

You’re just shit-scared of doing it.

I can’t believe how much lighter, inspired and on-track I feel having finally stepped out of my comfort zone into something that scared and excited me in equal measures.

I had no idea how it would turn out, I was learning by fire, and certainly I learnt a lot that I can improve on for the next workshops and meet ups which I’ll be running in Australia and New Zealand in the next 6 months.

I waited years to feel sure and ready and calm about it – and I became more and more stuck while I waited.

So eventually I had to accept that the calm and the certainty was never coming, but I couldn’t keep keeping stuck –

the stuckness became more painful than the stretch.

Growing is uncomfortable – it feels painful sometimes, you feel out of your depth, flaily, uncertain. But on the other side, you come out having grown a new part of you, slightly wiser, slightly more certain, and definitely a lot more inspired.

And it feels bloody good.

Thank you to all of the wonderful humans that joined me in the UK workshops and let me test things out on you,

I couldn’t have asked for a better group of legends, half past Bloody Good Life participants, and half regular folks, some of whom had been bought along by a friend and had no idea what they were in for!

Feeling stuck? Stretch yourself towards what scares and excites you.

It’s the quickest route to feeling alive again.