So having the spent the day with some intense meeting stuff, I thought I'd wonder back to The Hundred Acre Wood again. http://pixiedusthealing.blogspot.com/2012/01/bach-lessons-from-hundred-acre-wood.html
Ernest Shepard, the illustrator of "Winnie-the-Pooh" drew a map of The Hundred Acre Wood. One of the places marked on it is "Where The Woozle Wasn't". In my opinion, that might be a pretty important place to remember on a day like today.
As the story goes, Piglet found Winne-the-Pooh going around and around a Larch tree with his head down searching the ground. When Piglet asked what he was doing Pooh declared he was tracking "something". He had no idea what the "something might be" but this didn't bother Pooh at all. He seemed pretty confident in his tracking abilities. Piglet, who hadn't been circling the Larch tree, wondered if it might just be Woozle tracks. Before you know it, Pooh and Piglet are off on an adventure to hunt a Woozle in amongst the Larch trees. The thing is that the more they walked around, the more paw prints started showing up, and the more they talked about the possibilities of Woozles, the scarier the hunt got. Piglet, who's imagination had been fueling the hunt pretty well, decided he might want to get out of the hunt all together in order to get away from what he had convinced himself was something very scary. He made an early exit and bowed out of the hunt. Pooh carried on and eventually realized the Woozle prints had in fact been paw prints made by Piglet and Pooh!
Once Pooh discovered his mistake, he lost his confidence for a moment. He decided he might just be "A Bear of Little Brain". Luckily, good ole Christopher Robin was there in his non-judgemental way to soothe, support, and perhaps distract a bit. Pooh regained his confidence very quickly and went off in the search of a snack.
Once again, I'm rather amazed by the coincidence between A.A. Milne's, and therefore Winnie-the-Pooh's, choice of vegetation. Dr. Bach, in perhaps his own Hundred Acre Wood a few years later, found the Larch tree a very helpful Bach Flower essence. Larch is indicated when you are feeling low in self esteem. It's a confidence booster. It's especially helpful when you know deep inside you have what it takes but are having trouble bringing that feeling to the surface and are afraid to try in case you fail. It might be just the thing you need when you are embarking on a Hunt for a Woozle or two.
But back to that map. The location is marked as "where the woozle wasn't". On a gloomy, heavy day like today, it seems kind of easy to get trapped into the Piglet type fear, anxiety and worry. You don't really know what you might be chasing down, or what those tracks might mean and it's easy to decide they aren't a good thing or you won't be able to handle it when you find it. That's the type of energy that can start to tear down your confidence a bit and you feel like you might be "of little brain". You can get trapped into creating something like a Woozle to fit the feeling so that you do have something to be worried, or anxious about. Once that anxiety takes over you might bow out of the hunt due to fear of failure.
I might be wrong, but I don't think there are Woozle's around- at least not in my part of the world. And there are no Woozles in The Hundred Acre Wood. There are only places where woozles aren't. Those are the places and situations that you know you can handle. Those are situations where you are confident and secure in your abilities. If you haven't got your Hundred Acre Wood mapped out as well as Winnie-the-Pooh, you might still have to got hunting a bit to discover where the woozle's aren't. You'll only find those places if you find the courage to try. A trip around a Larch tree or two, or a few drops of the Larch Flower essence might be all you need to map your Woozle-free area.
Happy Hunting!
No comments:
Post a Comment