......reconnecting

Dear Yogis,

Buckle up……….   The doctor’s words as he diagnosed my pain as pinched nerves radiating out from the neck.  This – he said – may take some time. Ugh. 

It’s been two weeks now of my ‘forced stop’ and I assumed by now I would be back in action. Not.  Mind you I am tremendously better than I was, but if I make any attempt to act as if nothing happened, my body doesn’t hesitate to let me know that right now, it is the one in charge. I have no choice but to listen. Less doing and more letting go.  A lot more letting go.

In classes we are on the chakra journey once more, starting at the beginning.  Earth.  Staying low to the ground as we bend our knees and root our feet downward.  Connecting like the tree to the life source below.  Exhaling to empty.  Stopping so that we can notice where we are, because if you don’t know where you are, how can you possibly draw the map to where you want to be?  But as I have been leading – with voice only – I have come to realize that somewhere along the way I have completely lost my own grounding.  First thinking it must be the pain that severed the tie, but then recognizing that it was lost before all of this and was likely one of the sources of this ‘dis-ease’.   Earth has always been my connection, home base, but right now I have gotten lost. 

So……time to find my way back home. 

Nature is one of the best antidotes to being uprooted, unsettled and scattered.  Earth Medicine.  And wouldn’t you know it was Earth Day this week!  An article in the Post caught my eye as it provided the list of ways to “Nurture a Love of Nature”.  Hey, wait a minute!  This sure sounds like I am the one that wrote it. 

See if any of this sounds familiar:

·         Simply be in Nature (Oh garden I have missed lying in you)

·         Sleep Outside (Time to air out the tent and my bedroom window has already been opened for sleeping)

·         Be Inspired by showing awe and enthusiasm for it (I love you trees!)

·         Look to the Skies (The moon is always there for me but I haven’t listened)

·         Plant Something (All of my seed packs have been sitting on my table just waiting for me to able to dig and my nails cannot wait to have dirt under them again)

·         Go Barefoot!  (Mid-week I finally began removing my shoes as I saw the new family from CA taking their evening walk…all barefoot)

But then I realized the article was written for adults to teach their children how to learn to love nature.  What??????  First – we now have to teach children how to play outside?  My most vivid childhood memories are me and my friends spending hours alone down at the creek or in the woods. No published ‘to do list’ or training required.   Second – why the children and not us adults?  Everything above is for each and every one of us. When we forget, we live up in our head – always going but never quite sure where.

This article, although it certainly could have been written by me…. was written for me this time.  To help me remember. To help us all remember. 

So today I have been out here all day. Not a cloud in the sky as I look up.  Picking one plant at a time to sit next to, trim, clean up, touch and talk to.  Barefoot. And as I write this I am back on my rocks, a small spider resting on the tip of my big toe. Ever so slowly finding my way home.

I am buckled in….but will also be rooting down. Somehow I know that at the other end of this I will be wiser. Aaaahhhhhhh……………………

Getting dirty again,

SARAH