.....the leaves

Yogis,

Anyone else feel like this?  To me, the day after the clocks turn back feels eternally long.  As if 5 hours were tacked on, not a mere 1.  It starts in the morning after I have “slept in” until 8 and drags on from there.   In the afternoon I glance to the clock sure it will say 3 and its only 1. By 5:00 the sun has set and by 7, well……… I begin to wonder if it is too early to go to bed.

Up until today I am able to pretend that fall will go on forever with winter only some crazy far-fetched idea. But this shift of the clock is a stark reminder. Change is a coming. Where are those fuzzy slippers?

Today I watched a leaf fall from a tree. Then another, then another and then another……  How does a tree make it looks so easy?  With grace and ease it simply lets the leaf go.  The leaves have served their purpose and they must be released so that the tree’s energy can begin its journey back down.  Back into its roots. Where for months it will lie in wait, gathering nourishment until the time comes to rise again and burst forth, creating new life.  

The plants too know when it is time to let go. Flowers don’t have an attachment to their beauty, as they allow their blossoms to brown and shrivel, exposing the seeds that will soon fall to the earth.  The herbs feel no pressure to remain upright, and any remaining vegetables on the vines are not ashamed to simply rot in place and return from where they came.

The birds leave town and the chipmunks have buried enough seeds and nuts to get them through a couple of years in case somehow spring gets delayed. Their social life abruptly comes to an end as they pull some leaves over their burrow opening, almost like a ‘closed for the season’ sign at the beach. Even the sun lays low in the sky no longer feeling compelled to take center stage. 

Fall is a death. A necessary one that provides us all the chance to let go as elegantly as the example the nature around us provides. The exhale that follows the tremendous inhale of spring and summer.  A time to reflect on what leaves we have that should be dropped. Leaving us room to nourish our own roots over the winter which will give rise to that which we choose to create in the light of spring.

Occasionally someone asks me how my neck is doing.  My rote answer is always that it is about 95% healed.  The 5% being the tightness I still often feel in my upper back.  No pain, but there whispering in the background.  Quite livable.  But how often do we do that?  Where we settle for ‘good enough’ after a healing.  Not only physical, but emotional healings as well.  But then over the years all of those little ‘good enoughs’ that we have learned to live with pile up. I don’t want this to be one of them.  And for as long as it is present, it takes up room for new growth. 

The back body is our past.  What’s behind us.  And because it is in the rear view mirror in our constantly forward driving lives, it often goes unnoticed.  I’m sensing that some leaves back there have died and I haven’t allowed them to fall. So I watch the trees. Their steadfastness and calm. The way they move from season to season so effortlessly. What am I clutching so tightly in my back body for fear that if I let it go I may lose it?

This change of seasons gently prods all of us to pick back up in the letting go department.  The imagery I use as I close my eyes is of leaves floating lightly through air as they descend down my back.  One, after another, after another……….

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let dead things go…………..

                ~Unknown

Exhaling,
SARAH