How can we create the New Growth & Healing we wish to see in our lives at this time? Learning from Nature's Wild Wisdom:
Spring Equinox is a time when the Darkness of the night is Equally Balanced with the Light of the Day;
And we can feel the culmination of the energies of Spring Rising, as the play between polarities of Darkness & Light… the In breath and Out breath... Action & Receptivity… there is a moment when we can Feel… An extended moment of Mystery & Magic…
Hanging in the Balance
A cleansing exhilarating wind rises from
A pregnant pause... as the Mystery of new life begins to burst forth.
…And as the Light grows, you can feel the surge of vital energy, delighting our senses, causing plants to grow, animals to mate, babies to be born, and children of all ages to play... Yet many of us forget how to play.
Lack of play and recreation is a sign of being stuck in overdrive and adaptive overstrain. So is lack of desire to play. This kind of state is erosive to all aspects of health, growth, and regeneration.
In modern society, personal and collective consciousness is weighted heavily toward active productivity.
So,
to pause and open to a state of calm, receptivity is an act of Balancing that brings Healing and generates the fertile ground for New Growth on all levels ~ body, mind, heart, spirit, including what you are able to experience and create.
Out of Balance: A path of Rapid, Constant Growth
The message we constantly receive is: “Push harder to be Better, Smarter, & Have More of the Best (at any cost).” And, as we’ve seen, the cost is high… very high.
Yet, we push harder to keep up with digital speed while societal definitions of Better & Best contribute to keeping us in states of perpetual judgement, shame, striving, and dissociation from ourselves and Source.
Its common knowledge that anxiety and depression are on the rise, people’s
physical health is waning, and we are facing mounting global crisis of the climate, species, and humanity.
So, is following the program of pushing harder to achieve even our most lofty goals really the solution?
Fertile ground for new growth is generated in the dark; in receptive stillness like the womb space and the medicine bowl of the night sky, and the slow time it takes to compost the dead leaves of winter / habits that need pruning. ...And the generative energy of play and creativity come to life like a child waking up from a nap, fresh and ready to explore, innocently initiate contact, and create.
New growth cannot take place with activity and sunlight alone. Children sleep when they are tired. For New Growth & Healing to take place in our lives, for Life to flourish, it requires both the in breath and the out breath… and the pause in between each… the entire journey of every moment within the cycle of: in and out; To conceive new life requires the friction of polarities - the movement on the spectrum between them.
We must experience both activity and restful receptivity. Otherwise there is burn out and then a dustbowl, a dying away.
Stillness will come on its own terms if uninvited. Every part of the cycle will take its place.
Everything in Nature moves in cycles and seasons.
Will we move with it and receive the benefits? Or will we continue to hurt ourselves and one another by perpetually pushing ourselves?
Beyond Pressure, Anxiety, & Resistance to Stillness, Feeling, & Healing
Even the current trend of promoting Self Care tends to focus on doing something
Yet what many of us need most in this day and age is doing nothing, being still, & receptive, daydreaming, or playing like a child does (without the serious uptight energy that so much adult "play" tends to have)
Not: doing nothing as in: chill out and scroll on your phone or watch your favorite episode of something, but actually stopping all activity, especially that of the mind, which is so accustomed to latching on to anything it can, (a distraction from actually feeling).
To daydream, get bored, and meander playfully in childlike states of wonder is what so many of us actually need and can barely imagine doing yet science has actually proven the benefits of this. ...And it is an age old law found in the Wild Wisdom of Nature.
Even with my devotion to and love for timeless receptive sensing and following the flow of the natural realms, I still find myself, at times, captivated by the allure of constant motion.
Most of us are influenced by the chaotic rhythms of an urgent society.
Today many of us struggle with anxiety, even those of us that never did before.
The big fear that keeps cycles of anxiety going is the fear of slowing
down enough to be still and feel.
We fear the pain of our vulnerable feelings …When we slow down we might actually feel the pain of our grief …our shame, our terror, confusion, hurt, rage…
…a grief that was once collectively metabolized in community through regular ritual dance and sacred song, timed and tuned to the cycles of nature. …and this is not fully out of reach.
We need safe caring connection as part of our healing process. Connection with ourselves, our emotions, with caring people, with Nature, and with Source.
Yet, as we align with the societal push to constantly be productive and achieve, we increase the tendency to unconsciously deny, exile, or suppress the painful emotions of our deepest struggles. This is compounded through generational Trauma and family systems where there hasn't been the needed support to metabolize, feel and heal old wounds.
Anxiety is perpetuated as we feel the constant tug of unprocessed painful experiences & emotions but, by resisting the feelings and not processing their messages fully, it is as though we’ve created an invisible force field around our vulnerable feelings and the tug of our awareness gets pulled toward them, continuously bouncing off the force field back at us.
Often we don’t fully know or understand what’s going on behind the “force field”. We just feel the nagging energy of anxiety - and it gets louder the more we resist the vulnerable feelings underneath. This is one of the ways we perpetuate anxiety and, like anything, these cycles can become habits & patterns.
Relief surprisingly comes in the surrender; to dis-inhibit and relax the
tension and defenses, contact the hurting parts of you that have been consciously or unconsciously crying out for space to express, be felt, and be loved. Qi Gong is one of our favorite ways to combine the energy of Stillness & Play.
With Compassion that flows from inner connection, connection to Source, Nature, and/or caring human beings, these vulnerable feelings and emotional energies can flow toward healing.
I know first hand, that finding the courage to reflect deeply, to touch in with what’s actually going on inside, isn’t always easy and often we need to choose to create time, space, and support.
Strangely, the Mystery of the Unknown can be quite supportive, even though we often fear the unknown.
The Unknowable is the realm of the Mother Goddess of the Universe, whose womb of creation lives in between every particle of existence. She can hold and nurture us in Mysterious ways.
Without Her we would not have Life.
So may we continue to offer our songs of gratitude and praise.
An Act of Balancing creates fertile ground for new growth.
The vulnerability of reaching out and asking for support is one of the greatest acts of Courage. …And our world needs it.
Independence is a myth of a mechanistic society which has forgotten that it too relies
on the cycles of nature to survive.
We are Interdependent.
We need to connect vulnerably with one another.
Giving and Receiving; Receptivity & Activity are equally valuable and essential to the continuation of Life.
I invite you to tune in and reflect with me, what step can I take toward Balance in my life that would help create fertile ground for New Growth & Healing?
As we plant our Sacred Seeds this Spring, may we continue to tune our lives ever more deeply with the Balancing Wisdom of Nature.
Blessed Be All my Relations
Tree, Rock, Moss, Roots, River Photos & Writing by,
Rebecca Goutal,
Registered Therapeutic Counsellor
Free Initial 20 Minute Consultaion
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