The ‘Ouchie’ Path…
All my life I have been someone who has been known for treading the ‘naughty path’…
I remember being away alone in Tenerife one Christmas… I had just arrived and was getting my bearings… Which way to run? My neighbours suggested going down to the sea, and then taking the path to the left over the coastal route, they said it was well trod and I wouldn’t get lost…
The route to the right was more wild, they said… Not so many obvious tracks, more craggy, more rocky, less safe…
And it went on for miles and miles… Wild, glorious, powerful scenery… I discovered, when I went to the sea and found myself turning right instead of left…
I was relating this story to friends.. ‘Oh so you took the naughty path…’
The road less travelled.. Always.
I can remember the effect that one line in Scott Peck’s book ‘The road less travelled’, had on me… It was where he said that when he worked with people his only boundary was not to need the relationship for himself.
I took that on board and over the years came to see that this worked for me in my work with people..
It allowed me to connect as deeply emotionally as a person wanted, or needed in their therapeutic journey, without binding them in any way.
I learnt it particularly when for a few years I spent time with people at the end of their lives… I found the best gift I could give them was deep emotional connection without holding onto them…
So the naughty path and the road less travelled in my case were one and the same thing…
Because the naughty path was me honouring my connection to myself – and my own truth, rather than trying to live by someone else’s rules…
Of course the art of the journey to finding our own path, can mean that sometimes we react against someone or something… Parents, society, school… And so the naughty path, or the road less travelled, is not our true path, and can take us off course for a while… Rebounding us in the opposite direction to the route ‘prescribed by society’…
Both can be opposite sides of the same coin…
Neither our truth…
However once the centre point is found, after the rebounding settles and we journey instead inwards, listening always to find the true point within; our inner compass… Then the naughty path and the road less travelled become the path of our truth even if this is sometimes an ‘ouchie’ path!
Today we drove to Portugos and walked back across the mountain in our bare feet, ten miles on tough terrain…
And yet I knew it was what was needed today because my feet told me so…!
So the road less travelled might not be an easy one… But when we know it is our path to tread then it doesn’t matter how ‘ouchie’ it is, we just keep taking the next step and the next and the next, because we can trust for sure the way is leading us home…
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running. I ran for England and GB for some years. My first international was in 1979, a three mile cross country race; and I continued to run at international level until 1993. Two of my best results were first place in the Dublin City Marathon in 1985 and 7th place woman, 3rd British woman in the 1986 London Marathon in a time of 2.36.31, which gained me selection for the Commonwealth Games.
As a little girl I ran barefoot for many years, and then I put on shoes to race around the world. Fifty years later I am travelling the world as a nomad with my husband Anadi and I have taken off my shoes and I am running barefoot again….
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