Why Worm Time?

Feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, discombobulated, disconnected, in need of some good quality being and less rushing around and doing? Maybe you need some Worm Time 🪱🪱🪱 Our value and meaning as human beings does not need to be governed by a relationship to a patriarchal, colonial, linear, mono time...we have many experiences of time that can help us connect to what it means to be human, and also part of nature. I invite you to recognise and give yourself permission for Worm Time.

Worm Time was born on September 20th 2022. Gestating in my soul-soil for years, it  emerged through a conversation with my friend Susie Talbot. Meeting one late summer day, I shared my need to ‘do nothing,’ which in the past has been accompanied by a feeling of guilt. The guilt originated from some internal sense that I was not allowed to ‘do nothing’, that I must be ‘productive’ all the time.  Susie wisely suggested that I give the time I take to do nothing a different name, in the hope that this could shift the feelings of associated guilt. The next day, the language of Worm Time emerged, quite naturally, as if it had been given permission to articulate itself fully into the world. I define Worm Time as a period of creative rest, where we can metabolise our experiences, compost our thoughts and feelings, and turn over new ideas.

For the next few years, whenever I shared Worm Time with others, I received recognition of how deeply they needed creative rest, too. Responding to this need I began hosting Worm Time Dialogues in 2025. I combined the emergent philosophy of Worm Time with Bohm Dialogue, the Wheel of the Year and my decade-plus experience as a professional facilitator.

The important detail to acknowledge is that like the stillness of bare trees in winter that are still very much alive, we are never ‘doing nothing.’ Like the magically complex world that exists in the soil under our feet, allowing ourselves creative rest, is the time for the invisible ‘work’ to take place. The integration of our outer and inner worlds; from which new meaning and potential change can emerge.

This creative rest can take many forms, it may be a walk in nature, a creative activity, a movement practice. You will recognise it for yourself in your own way; an experience of gentle presence; flow; mind-body-spirit connection; an unfolding and enfolding of yourself, nature and the cosmos; an intentional and cultivated space for reflection and creativity, for new thinking to emerge, and the recognition and letting go of old thinking that no longer serves you.

If you are in or near London, I invite you to join a Worm Time Dialogue, and experience metabolising, composting and turning over the soil with other worms (humans). Find out more here.

“Psychological experiences that are not properly “digested” can work in the mind as viruses do in the body. ”

— David Bohm