Balanced Nature

After a difficult week—with my husband spending a night in the hospital—I found myself flung out of balance. Sitting for hours bedside, and lugging heavy bags filled with stainless steel bottles of filtered water, organic soups and juices in asceptic packages, hardcover books, needlework, my iPad, along with an assortment of essential oils and homeopathic remedies—and a couple of lucky rocks—had my body contorted like the filbert bushes in our garden.

Exhausted and cranky, even while grateful that things had gone well with my husband’s surgery, I needed an infusion of prana. So, the day after he got home, I got out my yoga mat. Gentle yoga: check. Settle onto bolsters for restorative yoga (not once, but twice): check, check. The yoga helped, but I still felt out of whack, barely able to breathe into the left side of my body.

And it wasn’t just physically that I was crashing and burning, but emotionally, and spiritually, as well. The worst part was that I wanted to be available for my husband—with all that he had been through—but I was turning into a whiny wench, so some negative self talk got stirred into the already toxic mix. Why can’t you just suck it up? He’s the one who’s suffering, what’s your problem?

On Saturday, I dropped my husband off at an appointment, and—while he was all floaty at the acupuncture clinic—I stole away to one of my favorite wild places. My daily infusion of nature was what I’d been lacking, of course! The full-on greenness of the landscape had me feeling expansive immediately, which was my intention. But just as I headed up the hill of my favorite urban oak savanna, to sit under one of my beloved trees, it started to rain. Cold rain.

The soupy weather didn’t bother me. Sitting under an old tree friend, that I hadn’t been with for awhile, had me relaxed and breathing deeply within minutes. I began to sing my very own healing song, which came to me many years ago by Lake Mahkeenac at Kripalu Center for Yoga in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, during a similarly challenging time. Just as I began to intone the wordless chant a raptor flew over the hill I was sitting on. Ahhh, the clenching in my body let go and I felt light for the first time in days. I sat for about a half hour, and though it rained steadily, not a drop bled through the canopy of my sister tree. With my back against her bark, my spine realigned.

All is, again, well!

Misted by the rain, I walked back to the car, sending love from my heart—in deep gratitude—to the oak trees. Thank you for the energy. Just a half hour after I had walked up the path, I felt whole again.

Tagged as: Be-ing, interconnection, Mother Earth, nature, receiving