Wednesday morning - about 36 hours since we got back to Edinburgh and less than a week since we began the group.  The last half day started as usual with some of the "self-care practices" that quite a few us use (Tai Chi, meditation, running, and so on).  Good breakfast, then sadly one of the group needed to leave early due to a crisis at home.  He asked if we could meet ten minutes sooner than usual as a full group so he could voice his appreciations and say goodbye to us.  Moving.  Normally we're pretty tough that anybody who bids in to come for the group should make sure that they can stay for the full time - obviously though there are exceptions to these loose "rules".

I wrote in my last blog post how the group had begun to work more deeply/flowingly.  Yesterday was the final full day.  I've been dunking in the cold flood stream further upriver than during other groups.

And it's the third morning of the group.  Yesterday again I took time for a usual mix of "self-care" - yoga, meditation, stream-dunking, tea & fruit.  As I wrote yesterday, I was very aware of feeling frustrated and impatient with how I felt the group had been going and how, particularly later in the day, I hadn't felt much emotional engagement with it.  Then it was breakfast and the small groups.  I was ready to "pop" by then and came in pretty much right at the start to ask for a bit of time.  It's a good rule of thumb in the group - and often in relationships more generally - that if I'm going to find it hard not to be distracted from what other people might do & say by what's going on in me, then it may well be sensible to raise the issues that are distracting me.  Unmentioned elephants in the corner of the room make conversation about othe

Yesterday I wrote about arriving for this Men's Group in Cumbria.  It's the second morning.  Groups - particularly these residential interpersonal groups - seem a bit like rivers to me.  They move on inexorably, often full of surprises.  I may have some guesses as to how a group will evolve or what will happen next, but so regularly I come round the next bend of the river and where I expected rapids, there is a deep smooth-flowing straight section - or where I thought all would be beautiful and calm, the river plunges into a gorge and it feels like I'm struggling to keep my vision clear in the emotional spray.

It's a little after 6.00am and I've been up and about for a while.  It's the first morning of one of the four day residential peer groups that I've been coming too since 1991.  This is the autumn Men's Group.  In the Spring several of us also meet here in Cumbria for a Mixed Group.  The groups are about friendship, emotional/interpersonal learning, a chance to get a break in the country.  I love this time - with all its honesty, deep connections, pain, laughter.  The groups can be something of an emotional roller coaster.  I've written extensively about them before - both why describing these gatherings is relevant for a blog about stress, health & wellbeing, and also more detailed reports from last year's Men's Group and from the Mixed Groups earlier this year and

We have fifty to sixty people due for lunch today.  I better not hang around writing blog postings for too long.  There's still lots of preparation work to do.  It's great.  I love these midsummer potluck lunches that we've been hosting for many years now.  It's such fun to invite most of our local social network and see them all mixing up together in a chaotic "soup".  Hard work.  Heart warming.  If we invite ninety or so people we normally reckon that about half of them will be able to make it, so today's "catch" is a pretty good one.  Nearly all our closest local friends will be here and mixed up with them will be other friends, acquaintances, new partners, a couple of children.  Fantastic.  There's plenty of preparation and dear Catero has done a lot of cooking but, since it's potluck, we're not trying to feed them all just from our own efforts.

A couple of lines from the Bruce Springsteen song "Hungry heart" kept going through my head - "Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going."  Something was wrong.  I couldn't work out where I'd got to on my map.  The line of pylons shouldn't have been where they were - and certainly not where they were in relation to the stream and rough track I could see across the valley. 

I'd started walking fine in the morning.  I left Edinburgh early and before 9.00am was heading out from Dalrigh on the long walk up the valley to Ben Lui.  Two hours walking saw me at the bottom of the hill.  Then a steady tramp up and into the low lying cloud. 

Tomorrow I hope to head North and West up past Stirling, Lochearnhead and Crianlarich to Strath Fillan.  I should be able to park at a little village called Dalrigh just before Tyndrum.  From there I can walk in by the River Cononish for about 7 km to get to Ben Lui (Beinn Laoigh, calf hill).  The Scottish Mountaineering Club's Munros guidebook describes it as " ... one of the finest mountains in the Southern Highlands; it stands high above its neighbours, and its splendid shape is unmistakable."  They estimate a bit under 4 hours to the summit.  From there it should be straightforward to head on to Beinn a' Chleibh (hill of the creel or chest).  The forecast is mixed - hopefully low cloud will clear somewhat as the day goes on. 

We'll see.  It's very useful having an up to date forecast, but what it's actually like on the hill can sometimes be rather different.  If all goes well and my body holds up, I'll head back over two more Munros - Ben Oss (hill of the loch outlet or elk hill) and Beinn Dubhchraig (hill of the black rock).  If it's too tough I can always pull out after just a couple of Munros or even after just Ben Lui.

So I wrote yesterday about the cathartic, emotion-focussed work that I went through.  In their classic 1973 book "Encounter groups: first facts"  the authors, Lieberman, Yalom and Miles, describe their major research on the potential benefits of these kinds of groups.  One of their findings was that people who benefited most seemed both to get strongly emotionally engaged with the group and also took time to reflect and make sense of what they had experienced.  In the weekly-format groups I run in Edinburgh, I try to encourage this reviewing process by explaining its value and then askin