Dreaming the land awake

Buddhafield, healing garden

Fluid nature, Buddhafield festival

I participated in many different dance and movement spaces throughout the festival, especially Contact Improvisation, but also Authentic Movement, 5Rhythms, and spontaneous dancing wherever music and connection naturally emerged.

There was something deeply magical about the way movement, songs and music appeared everywhere. Incredible musicians were playing on stages, around fires, and in small gatherings that formed organically here and there. People came together through rhythm, sound, and movement, creating temporary circles of expression and connection. Dance seemed to flow through the entire landscape of the festival.

Even in moments when I was not physically dancing, I felt that the whole festival itself was a kind of dance of humanity. Thousands of individual movements, encounters, conversations, songs, and moments of stillness were weaving together into one living creative, moving story.

The hot and beautiful weather throughout the week was so amazing. Under the golden summer light, especially during sunset, the whole land seemed to transform. The glowing skies, the warmth of the earth beneath our feet, the music carried through the air, and the gathering of people all felt like a dance of the Earth itself.

Buddhafield, beech tree

I went to Scott’s Fluid Nature session, a space of mindful movement where we were invited to allow the movement of life itself to arise and move through us. It was an exploration of surrendering to the intelligence of the body, letting go of outer forms and expectations, and turning our attention inward towards the rich, subtle, and ever-changing landscape of our own being.

At first, I found myself distracted by a small group of children playing in the same space. I naturally started to enter their world, they said that we were cats so we started to sound and move like cats. I began playing with them, rolling across the warm, dry grass, completely immersed in the moment.

I could feel the golden straws of grass brushing against my skin and the deep, earthy scent of the sun-warmed land filling my senses.After some time, Scott played a Scottish song and  something unexpected happened.

For the first time in my life, despite having lived in Scotland for 22 years, I felt as though I was hearing the sound of home.

The Celtic music touched something deep within me and I started to cry, I couldn’t stop and the tears began to flow, and then they became a river. I found myself on my knees, overwhelmed by an emotion I had never experienced before, a profound gratitude towards the land that had welcomed me, held me, and offered me a home for such a long time.

I cried for the generosity of this land, for the way it gives so much without asking anything in return. I cried for the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the soil, and the countless invisible threads that connect us to the places we inhabit. I cried because, after a lifetime of searching for belonging, I suddenly felt the gift of being received by a place.

I could not stop crying. I continued to weep in the arms of a beautiful friend, Ashley, who is also Scottish and a friend of Scott’s. In that moment, I felt held not only by another human being, but also by the spirit of the land itself.

Then, these words came into my mind:

“Dreaming the land awake.”

These words had already visited me a few months earlier, although I did not quite understand what they meant. But in that moment, lying close to the earth, surrounded by movement, music, friendship, and the living presence of the warm earth beneath,  I heard the land  in a different way.

I began wondering about the relationship between dreaming and the land. What does it mean to dream a place awake? Do our dreams, our creativity, our movements, and our imaginations be part of a larger awakening and can we awaken together?  Could we also be listening to the dreams that the land itself carries?

As I looked through the programme of this beautiful festival, I noticed that there was not a single space or workshop dedicated to dreaming. Yet dreaming feels like such an essential part of being human. Dreams connect us to imagination, mystery, memory, ancestors, and possibilities that have not yet taken form and reveal a much deeper and subtle truth we are unaware of and maybe the land itself can speak to us in a dream language that only the dreaming heart can reveal its messages?

Perhaps “Dreaming the Land Awake” is an invitation from the dreaming spirit to remember that we do not only live on the land and that the land dreams through us, and we dream through the land.

Buddhafield of dreams