INBLEUM x Bona Dea Series Part IV: REFRESH
INBLEUM x Bona Dea Series
PART IV: REFRESH
Refresh, in my opinion, is inseparable from discovery. The kind that becomes available once space has been made, after we release what has already shaped us and something has been allowed to close. Discovery arrives out of curiosity, inspiration and renewal in an undulating cycle.
Inspiration rises, gathers momentum, peaks, flattens, stalls. Eventually it asks to be shed. Then, without much ceremony, it returns again in a different form. This repetition is continuity with evolution, each cycle inviting us to loosen our grip on familiar identities, familiar strategies, familiar versions of ourselves. There can be a tenderness in this letting go, as the old shape dissolves. But there is also relief. Spaciousness. The unmistakable sensation of becoming permeable again.
Renewal is a practice of receptivity. To refresh is to create the conditions where inspiration feels inevitable. Where ideas arrive because there is room for them. Where the body feels safe enough to soften, reorganise, and respond. This sense of newness often shows itself in our physical space, our routines, the choices we make, the interests we gravitate towards and especially the way we perceive what’s already around us. It allows the edges of experience to blur slightly, creating room for something unanticipated to enter.
In my work as a naturopath, treatment often includes helping clients reconnect with curiosity and to feel permeable to new experiences. The most recognisable being habit shifts and health education, and beyond that, it invites newness through learning to read the body differently, developing a more attentive relationship with symptoms, introducing unfamiliar foods, herbs, rhythms, and rituals, and softening long-held narratives about what health should look like. It is also the direct prescription to seek out something new, a hobby, a place, a book, information. Each of these shifts creates novelty in the nervous system.
This novelty actively supports neurogenesis, the brain’s ongoing ability to form new neurons and integrate them into existing networks. When clients engage with new skills, perspectives, or ways of inhabiting their bodies, the brain is asked to pay attention, form new associations and loosen calcified patterns. An intentional loosening of what has become rehearsed. A signal to the body and mind that adaptation, curiosity, and growth are still required, and still welcome.
As my artist-in-residence chapter with INBLEUM comes to a close, I notice how it aligns with this week’s journal theme. There is a daunting but exciting rush when an ending or completedness is sensed. Each piece in this body of work unfolded in its own time, teaching me as it emerged, as all creations do. If they have offered anything to you, I hope it has been an invitation to notice what is asking to be repaired, what wants to move again, what needs nourishing, and where there might now be space to begin anew.
