The spirit of place

There’s no question that some places make you feel like you’ve come home. Wander through them or sit in them and you’ll soon find that breathing slows, muscles relax and all’s right with the world. It’s the spirit of place or ‘genius loci’, as the Romans termed it at work. For me, a Celt now settled in Wiltshire the Avebury landscape (pictured by my friend Ann Slaymaker) has it in spades, the lanes around the village of Holt, which I walked every day with my infant children, the wildflower meadow near Great Chalfield Manor and any number of old, abandoned churches, woodland glades and walled gardens.

I’ve been harnessing the "spirit of place" in my sessions with bereaved clients