HEALTH and HEALING FESTIVAL - HARROGATE

It was the 4th Health and Healing Festival at The Pavilions in Harrogate (the Showground) over the weekend (26 and 27 September). DS had been to this event, with our friend Alex, last year and had enjoyed it and we were curious to see what was on offer, so we decided to have a trip over there on the Sunday.

As usual we had a slight detour (referred to in the family as: Smithy's scenic route! LOL). We did have SatNav but it seems that to get the updates with the latest roads added you need to pay a subscription..... and DH won't pay it........ so some of the roads weren't on there and it kept trying to send us off in all kinds of directions. So DH started ignoring it....... only he ignored it once too often and we didn't go down a road we should have done, had to double back and then had a bit of a tootle around Wetherby to get back to where we needed to be. It makes things interesting, I guess. Though any more than the 10-15 minutes delay we had before we reached The Pavilions and their much needed facilities and the car upholstery would have needed drying out! LOL

We grabbed our bags, along with the packed lunch I'd made, and headed in. After finding and using the facilities we headed for the second room full of stalls, as DH said he hadn't liked the atmosphere in the first room we'd just come through - can't say as I'd noticed: I was too focused on finding the little girl's room LOL. The venue was split between two rooms (Aire and Wharfe)that had a corridor running between them, giving it a U shape - in the U and outside there was a colonnaded area along each side with grass in the middle, where there were wooden chairs and seats for sitting out. The second room had the cafe area at one end and a stage in the middle, with a sitting area, where various musicians gave performances throughout the day - unfortunately Dragonfly Moon weren't one of them, as they'd had to drop out of the event "due to unforeseen circumstances".

We had a little wander around the room, taking stock of what was there. As we reached the far side I noticed an aura photographer with a difference: they didn't just do the head and shoulders pic like I'd had before but also did a full body one that showed your Chakras and a different full body one that looked like the Michelangelo Vitruvian Man with coloured areas across it - the area on one side was for the current situation and the other side for what was to come in the next 6 months. I zoomed in for a closer look and the lady started chatting to me, explaining a little about what each variation showed and that it was best to go with the one you felt most drawn to. I knew which one immediately: the Chakra colour one. So I took off my magnetic bracelet, sat in the chair, placed my hand on the hand shaped area on the box and looked into the camera. Here's the resultant print out:



There's an awful lot of information on it so I may do a separate post on it at a future date - it made interesting reading for me and seemed pretty accurate. I guess it explains why I'm drawn to sea blues and greens, with the turquoisey colours being particular favourites. The lady then pointed out that my Solar Plexus Chakra was closed up tight when it should be swirling (my stomach had been feeling iffy for a few days and I had done my usual pulling in/protection before going in the room - not surprising it showed somewhere in the pic). I said generally I could usually tell now when something was wrong with my Chakras as I felt out of kilter. She mentioned that there was a high level of Spirituality shown in my Aura - I smiled and told her I had recently started attending a Development Circle. She said that I needed to take in what was being taught but not to think I had to do it as told to - as I did most things instinctively I should continue to go with my gut instinct and find my own way...... and if things weren't clear I should ask "them upstairs" to make it clearer for me. I laughed and told her that, funnily enough, I had started to work with Angels more just recently - I think she sensed this, which is why she'd taken me aside to tell me all this. She then said that that was better: I'd opened up, it's how I should be and didn't I feel better for it? Actually, yes.... and my stomach felt calmer too. I took my pic and read out, thanked her and we carried on.

As we were both feeling hungry by this time we headed out to the outside seating area where we spotted our DS and Alex having their packed lunch, so we sat with them while we had ours. They hadn't arrived much before us but DS had had an annoying experience with a stallholder in the first room: he'd been stood by the stall, having a nosey at the crystals whilst Alex was having a look at something in particular. The stallholder (an woman in her 60's) had been getting real chatty with another customer, then she came up behind my DS, stuck her hands on his hips and moved him bodily out of the way. No manners used at all, just a real rudeness and a hint of bad attitude towards a young person.... from someone that was of an age to really know better. DS and Alex were so taken aback by it they didn't say anything - needless to say, they walked away and didn't spend any money there. I do wonder of this is what DH picked up on? Though DS and Alex also said they felt the first room didn't have a good feeling about it and hadn't spent much time in there, particularly after the incident - they felt it was far more commercialised than the previous year. By this time they'd done and went off for another wander, leaving DH and I to finish our meals and drinks.

When we'd done we headed back into the second room again. This time I spotted some fab wrist warmers that a lady on the Pendragon Crafts stall was selling - and knitting more of when she wasn't serving customers. Here's the pretty ones I succumbed to:

They are actually a bit darker than shown and that felt daisy lets you know which way on they should go. The thinking is that they'll be great to wear out when I'm shopping: long enough to curl my fingers back into, to keep them warm, but will leave them free for when I want to pay for things. They'll also be really useful when I'm sat at the computer and the room gets cold and my fingers start getting chilled: I'll still be able to type! LOL (In fact I'm wearing them now and they work really well!)

Next we headed over to the He Hi She Lo stall, which is one of my favourite crystal stalls. He didn't have any howlite - he'd had to leave some of his stock at home as the stall space given here was much smaller than that given at the Lincolnshire Showground event, so I said not to worry as we planned on attending it. Next I asked if he had any moonstone: he had some small tumblestones but he realised (without my mentioning it) that I wanted the blue moonstone. He said that the Sri Lankan mines were still flooded from the Boxing Day tsunami so the only pieces that were currently available were ones that had previously ended up on the scrapheap and they weren't worth having, so he wouldn't buy them. He said that he did have some nice ones in jewellery, if that was any use. Actually yes, as I wanted the use the moonstone as an Angelic talisman to wear. He handed me the first piece and it felt lovely and had a lovely blue shine to it, then showed me a silver pendant with a small piece of moonstone in it - I rejected that immediately as I hadn't liked it when I saw it earlier. Then he handed me a larger third piece.... but that had more of a lilacy sheen to it. The first piece it definitely was:

Unfortunately he didn't have a silver chain long enough for what I wanted.... so, as he polished the pendant before popping it in a bag for me, he said that as he hadn't got everything I wanted he would knock off £3. Wasn't that nice of him? Here's a chap who cares about the crystals he sells and his customers. :0) I thanked him, said we'd see him at Lincolnshire Showground in November and said goodbye.

Next we wandered over to the Shifa Meditation stall to have a look at the incense they had. I'd heard that using certain proper incense on a burner could aid the meditative state..... and frankly, at this point, it feels like I could use all the help I can get! LOL The chap opened some of the bags so we could sniff the contents and Oh, did they smell divine! I do have an oil burner but it's glazed, so is only suitable for use with oils, not with charcoal, so we took the last burner he had too.... and as it was one he'd been using for display and had got a little grubby in the burning area he knocked us a £1 off. Another kindness. :0) Here's what we came home with:

We can also put a lit tealight in the body, to make it look really effective or to use it as an oil burner too. Even kinder was my lovely DH who treated me to these. :0)

We finally headed through into the other room at this point, as the Magik Thread stall was in there and I wanted to have a look at a couple of things. They didn't have the Angel cards I was looking for but they did have the other item I wanted:

I find this a really useful diary as it not only lists all the Festival Days, the moon phases and planet alignments but also which days are best for planting and which for harvesting. A must for planting out and harvesting, especially harvesting of herbs.

By this time we were quite thirsty and ready for a break, so we popped to the cafe to get a drink and scone for DH and a cup of hot water for me - a Health and Healing event that didn't have a herbal tea in sight, would you credit that?!! Good job I carry a selection round with me so I can brew my own! We sat out in the grassed area again but it was a bit gusty by this time, so we had to keep hold of everything..... though it did help blow the cobwebs away and freshen us up. LOL All the while we were sat out we could hear music from Huellos (pronounced Wayas) - performers from Ecuador playing their native music. Fabulous!

We went back in pretty smart'ish after this and went for a better wander around the first room - the atmosphere in there seemed to have changed and it was much more pleasant in there. This time I spotted another of the items I'd been hoping to find at this event: a lapis lazuli pendant, as an aid at the Development Circle, on another crystal stall. As I was handling the piece I heard the stallholder say to her colleague "It's talking to mummy". I wouldn't have put it quite like that but I did get a nice feeling from it, so it came home with me:

Not the best picture but it will give you an idea as to the lovely colours and sparkle in it. It was satisfying to have found most of what had been on my list. After completing a lap of this room we decided to have one last look round the other room to check out the stand that Huellos had. DH had been as taken with their music as I had been and after a nosey at their CD's he treated himself to this one:

They both looked pretty impressive too in their costumes and with their faces painted (differently to how they look in the CD picture). We also had one more impromptu buy (not pictured) of a pair of Trayner pinhole glasses. They seemed a bit of a gimmicky thing initially.... until we both tried them. Normally I can't see a great lot when I take my specs off due to be short-sighted - I could read the blurry first and second lines of the opticians alphabet thing.... the third line I had to squint like mad to make out anything - put the specs on and I could read every line, including the last and smallest one. Wow! DH must have been impressed because he paid for a pair that we could share.... so we take it in turns to wear them for 15 minutes each day, so we can hopefully make our eye muscles a little stronger and stop any further deterioration in our vision. Who knows, maybe we'll be able to eventually swap the lenses in our current specs for a less strong prescription. Fingers crossed!

After a final visit to the facilities we headed back to the car.... just in time to wave goodbye to DS and Alex, who were just driving out of the car park. Thankfully the journey home proved to be much more straightforward and, as DS had let us know that he was eating at Alex's, DH took us out to a local pub for our tea. A nice end to a good day. :0)

Discussing the event later with DS we all agreed that, though it had on the whole been a good day, it had also been a little disappointing in some ways: compared to the Lincolnshire event (run by another group) it seemed much more cramped - despite being in two rooms - and seemed to have more of an emphasis on commercial stalls. There seemed to be more rude people there too: I lost count on the amount of times I'd been knocked or someone had pushed in front of me - at one point this was quite deliberately done too - though I hadn't let it aggravate or upset me (a big improvement to how I was just a short time ago). Some of the worst offenders were from the organiser's team! There were also way more readers (of tarot, runes or whatever) than usual too. DS said it had been much better the previous year.... a shame we hadn't gone then. It's doubtful we'll go again - I would like to try either the Buxton or Ilkley Holistic Fairs instead, to see what they are like.... but we'll wait and see what the future has in store first. :0)