Your journal prompts this week:
Complete these journal prompts after you’ve completed your first Soul Walk, a process Miranda describes in this episode.
What did your soul notice on your walk? Can you describe your Soul Walk in detail, perhaps including a sketch or photograph? Remember to use all your senses.
What made you pause or slow your pace? What filled your soul with wonder
What do you sense your soul needed from your walk today? What nourishment did it take in?
If you were able to listen to your soul today, what did it have to say?
Welcome to our first guest episode! These guest episodes are part of a series that I am calling (at least for now) “Open Journal.”
You may remember that I invited you all at the beginning of the year to submit your own writing to be featured on the Soul Journaling Sessions podcast. This can be an original idea with accompanying journal prompts, or something you wrote in response to one of the journal prompts I shared with you.
In this episode,
is sharing an original work, guiding us through the process of soul walking. This concept wonderfully accompanies the concept of soul journaling, and I can’t wait for all of us to try it for ourselves.In this essay, Miranda shares more about what soul walking is and then takes us on a soul walk with her. After she reads the essay, I will be back to lead you through our meditation and journal prompts, which are meant to be completed after you’ve gone on your own lovely soul walk.
To tell you a little bit more about Miranda: Miranda is a writer who explores issues around soul, inviting others to join her as she follows her own soul quest, diving deeper into the essence of who we are. She has her own Substack publication called “Seeking Soul”:
. If you want to dive deeper into your soul and enhance your connection to it, I encourage you to check it out and join me in becoming a subscriber.Thank you all for listening, and I hope that Miranda’s submission will inspire you to perhaps share your own writing and voice on the Soul Journaling Sessions podcast! I can’t wait to share more of your work and hear your beautiful voices. Read more about the submission process, and when you’re ready, submit your work at the button below.
I hope you enjoy the episode!
Soul Walking with Miranda Marsh
Hi there. My name is Miranda and I am a soul seeker, on a quest to access, release and live from my own unique, authentic and precious soul.
I have explored many ways to connect to my soul but one that has become key to my practice is that of Soul Walking. Soul Walking, like soul journaling, is a way to access that deep, authentic part of ourselves that too often is crushed in the busyness and noise of today’s world. I am so happy that Marcy has invited me to share with you some thoughts on this practice which I hope, with the journal prompts that follow, will inspire your own Soul Walking reflections in your journals.
Like so many others in COVID lockdowns, three years ago I began a virtual walk. My destination, from my home near Oxford, England, was Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia where I had spent time living and working with street children, a place that had become key to my soul journey – but which was just over 5000 miles away! What I hadn’t realised was that, more important than the mileage I was to cover (just over 4500 miles to date in case you are interested!) would be the development of the Soul Walking practice that has become a daily part of my quest to live from my soul.
So what is Soul Walking? For me, soul and body are inseparable. My physical form embodies my soul and so the choices I make and the actions I take, from minute to minute, all speak of my soul. Soul Walking is the way I make the connection between my inner soul, my physically embodied soul and the external world that I inhabit.
When I Soul Walk, I let my soul lead, following where my soul guides me, pausing when it calls me to pause, look up or down in wonder, open my ears, my eyes, all my senses so that the boundary of my physical body dissolves and soul and environment become one. In the silence and solitude I can sometimes sense my soul speak, prompting me or filling my mind with wonder, or music, or poetry. Then, and only then, might I take out my phone (on silent mode otherwise) to make a note, or take a photo to record this moment of wonder before returning home and opening my journal.
Often I take the same, solitary walk from our house. It has a different quality to the walks I take with friends or family, full of chatter and shared experiences ‘look at this’, ‘have you seen that?’ or calling the dog from her hunting. Walking alone gives my soul space to connect to the landscape, silence to tune into the orchestra of birdsong, passing in stereo from one side of the path to the other. I can feel the sensation of movement through my legs and body, feel the aliveness, my feet on the changing surfaces of tarmac, mud, gravel, puddles or ice. No phone distracts me, my pace slows. I open all my senses to connect my soul to the world around me and somehow the birds seem to sing more loudly, the colours seem more vibrant, the breeze on my skin feels so fresh and pure.
Today I invite you to join me on my Soul Walk. We will walk through the village, past houses where I can think of friends, their joys and sorrows, until the path wanders downhill and the view stretches across the vale to the distant hills and the wide open sky. Today the sky is blue, the winter chill on my cheeks. On other days grey clouds hover or I can watch the storms coming towards me.
It has rained hard in the night and the downhill path has turned into a stream, rivulets forming where the rough tarmac has worn to an uneven surface. I take time to pause, instead of striding through the puddles, and watch the translucent patterns as they whirl and swirl in their dance, sparkling like light reflecting on glass. I am reminded of the preoccupation of small children as they wonder at the tiny details we adults so often miss. Too often we encourage a noisy, energetic splash, and what fun that is, but what joy too in just looking in wonder at undisturbed, natural beauty. A little further on a blackbird is enjoying his own splash, his wings sending water into the air where it catches the light before landing back in his bath. As I watch he gives a final shake and takes off.
At the bottom of the hill, the path turns right to run beside a small clear stream and past a tiny stone-built church where the graveyard is left wild for nature to flourish and where the gravestones tell of centuries of village life. The snowdrops, no longer tentatively struggling through the soil, stand proud amongst the grass, a shining crowd of white and green. A bush of catkin like flowers hang over the wall like some prehistoric monster, the raindrops hanging on their tips like pearls, suspended in time. I turn back, along the road to the old, disused canal, long abandoned and fallen into neglect. Along the bank, someone has planted flowers and each season brings new joys – snowdrops first, then daffodils, followed by the white flowers of the dead nettle until Autumn’s leaves fall and deliver fresh compost to the soil.
Trees have fallen across the canal where reeds grow. The water is murky now, green and full of vegetation but sometimes I catch sight of a family of moorhens who shelter under its shadowed edges. As the remains of the canal vanish under a collapsing bridge, I turn up the hill that leads me back into the village. So much to savour, to refresh and nourish my soul even on a wet winter’s day.
Another evening, I walked the same path at dusk where the silence enveloped me and the only sound was the low cries of birds going to roost. The trees formed a dark tunnel, through which I could just glimpse the last flickers of daylight. No dramatic sunset, just a slow fading of the light. It was a vibrant soul moment when my edges dissolved into wonder and I could only stand and let all my senses absorb the moment.
Some days, my soul feels buried beneath the busyness of life. Then my soul urges me to walk even slower, to pause more often, to respond with childlike wonder to the smallest detail on the familiar path. On other days my soul is energised and craving adventure and new experiences and we will range further afield, nourishing my soul with distant views, seascapes stretching to the horizon or hills unfolding into the distance.
The particular walk that speaks most deeply to your soul will be as unique as your own precious soul. For some it will be a wide-open space, for others a coast walk, for another a gentle woodland path. Even an urban landscape can nourish the soul – a tiny shoot pushing through a crack in the pavement, sunlight casting unusual shadows or reflecting off glass and steel, sculptures and other artworks bringing soul to soulless spaces, a street musician whose music speaks to your soul. Find your place and let your soul speak.
Soul walking thins that boundary between your soul and the world. As you breathe in, all your senses draw in the wonder and beauty of the world which speak to and nourish your soul and, as you breathe out, your soul becomes part of that community of souls that links us all, wherever we are.
For me, Soul Walking is a time when I can truly connect to my innermost being. When, by using all the senses of my embodied soul, I can listen to, nourish and live from my truth. I hope it may become part of your own journey to embracing your own unique and precious souls.
Thank you for joining me today and I hope you find that the journal prompts that follow bring you closer to your own unique soul. If you would like to share my journey further, my own Seeking Soul Substack link is here:
.
Bonus Prompts:
Take the same soul walk on another day. Did anything look or feel different to you?
Do you have a special walk that speaks to your soul? What is special about this walk?
Thank you so much to Miranda for sharing her work with us this week! Please feel free to leave a comment below and share what it was like to have your own soul walking experience.
With much love and gratitude,
Marcy
Open Journal: Explore Soul Walking with Miranda Marsh