May I Be Empty and Open to Receive
What energies can you sense underneath the hustle of culture?
Do you hear the call to rest? Nourish? Listen?
What do the phenomenons in the more than human world have to teach us?
Here in Northern Appalachia, the deciduous trees appear dead, their leaves long gone, the branches stark, bare and awkwardly reaching up to the sky.
However, the life energy of the tree, during cold winter months, draws down into the root system where the absorption of water and nutrients slows down. As the soil warms, the growth in the roots slowly increases. The above ground part of the tree remains still and waiting. I gaze fascinated at the branches, the sanctuary the starkness creates perhaps oddly comforts me.
Rest.
We know rest renews and repairs cells. Slowing down and reducing the overwhelming amount of stimulus in our environment potentially transforms our nervous system into a calm state. Think tea! Comfy blankets! A book (or two, or okay, ten). Think social media breaks. Think bird watching- cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, swallows, crows and ravens all fly and perch on the winter grasses in our city yard.
Rhythm of the Season.
All of our ancestors from varied cultures lived in rhythm with the seasons and had practical practices of daily and seasonal living as well as rituals that connected to the relationship between lightness and darkness.
The turning of the Celtic Wheel with the Solstices and Equinoxes and cross quarter festivals give us space to reflect on the different energies each season brings/carries. This also changes as I age and observe the turning of the Wheel as an emergent elder.
Weaving together the energies of the natural world and the season of life we inhabit to me, counter balances the crass consumerism and bombardment of images of what my life is “supposed” to look like. Bringing the inner and outer worlds together to reflect during the auspicious liminal space in the turnings of the Wheel support me in living authentically.
For me, I honor and welcome ushering in my Wise Woman season. I honor and appreciate the holly bush, the winter grasses and the birds of winter. I welcome the thin light entering my yoga space slowly and some mornings, eventually beaming. I have a deep appreciation for the ritual of joy that involves tea and the clay mug made by my friend Dan that fits perfectly around my hands, warming but not burning on cold mornings and drafty evenings. I enter into the liminal space of my ancestors, particularly my grandmothers, both fiber artists, when I knit. It never ceases to astound me the potential existing in two sticks and a skein or skeins of yarn. I knit prayers/spells/well wishes into my creations. I wrap myself in the wool shrug I made with yarn from the Scottish Highlands gifted to me by a beloved friend. On really cold days, I don a tunic, made by me and knit from an alpaca (Named Rainbow Dash) that I know from a nearby farm.
This slow, deep time exists not in isolation but a different way of connecting in contrast to summer festivals, teaching Yoga in the park and gardening.
What nourishes you in this slow, deep time of the Solstice?
What do you notice in the natural world right now and how does that connect (or not) to your rhythm of living?
What practices can bring you closer to the rhythm of this season of the Solstice?
What are you open to receiving?
What needs released?
Invite yourself to sit with this inquiries, lean into the expansion of the inquiry rather than the desire for an immediate answer.
Be Well, Dear Ones.
May I Be Empty and Open to Receive.