Grounding through Flying

Aerial yoga.

Over the past month or so, I've been attending classes teaching aerial yoga. It is something that has made me think about my body and its relationship to the earth in new ways.  This weekend I attended two workshops that solely focused on aerial practices. Grounding my body through flying might seem contradictory, but through these workshops, I started to understand how flying suspended and weightless provided interesting moments of clarity in understanding how my body settles into the earth.

I have always enjoyed the sensation of being upside down, so I have relished the moments in the aerial fabrics in which I can weave my legs through the material and rest my hands on the ground.  To feel my spine stretch, I have been learning to let go in new ways.  I have also been realizing how much I unconsciously hold on to spaces such as my hips and shoulders.  I have also been realizing that no matter how much I think I let go, there is still so much more I can let go of.  The loosening involved in inversions has provided a clearer sense of how my body shrinks in on itself, hiding and tightening not only when confronting moments of uncertainty, but also out of sheer habit.

In those upside down moments  I also get to put my hands on the ground and let them be my feet.  Pressing into the ground, my hands feel the solid ground with a sense of safety and comfort.  I can feel my shoulders adjust to the new pressure points, sinking into the earth with a strange experience of comfortable disorientation.  It is a truly beautiful experience that my body absorbs with a great deal of joy.

There were two wonderful moments during the workshop that helped me find my body in a new way.  The first was when we were in a position similar to the picture above.  Feeling the fabric across the middle of my back, I was able to lean into it.  My feet sank with deeper intention into the ground and my core held its center with new found commitment in order to keep me from spinning off to the side. Using my core in this way helped me focus in on opening the center of my spine in a way that is often unavailable to me in a wheel position.  The opening was very much like the sun breaking open and I could feel my heart give and receive with little restraint.  It was enlivening and incredibly joyful.

In the second moment, I was hanging from the fabric as it rested at my hip bones. The fabric sort of cutting me in half.  My head was toward the ground and my legs were bent into my stomach.  The instructor kept telling us to let go of our legs completely. I thought I had let them go; I felt relaxed. But she came to me and touched my legs gently near my hips and I could feel the tremendous amount of holding that was still in my body.  As comfortable as I am upside down, my body wasn't ready to let go, but then I could feel the muscles slowly loosen more and more, opening up to the earth in a new way.  Yes, only the backs of my hands were gently touching the ground, and not my legs, but I could feel my body melt into the earth in a way that I can't describe.  Giving myself up to the fabric left me feeling more grounded and connected the earth than I had felt in awhile. It didn't matter that my feet weren't on the ground.  What mattered was the way I could feel the earth cradling me even if I was suspended above it.   What mattered was the way I could let go and trust the earth beneath me as the fabric cradled me.

Yes, autumn is the time of grounding.  It is a time when we feel airy and untethered.  Although I do not advocate exacerbating that feeling, the experience of aerial, with a clear intention of opening and grounding, has been an incredibly powerful way to access some of the darker places that are often buried and untouched over the course of autumn's winds.  I'll take aerial yoga as a welcome breath of fresh air.

Planting Bulbs

Planting bulbs, I push down into the dirt. I panic a little as I lift the trowel-- a tinge of fear emerging in my stomach as I lift uncertain dirt.

The sight of worms and scattered roots and fiber welcome my vision into the unknown.  The dirt is moist, clay-like, and difficult to unpack.

Planting bulbs, I set in the bulb and slowly start to cover it with leaves and the unsettled dirt.  I think about the process of digging and then burying.  Unsettling the space and then resettling it with a small seed.

Each bulb has a unique shape and size.  The daffodils were like onions, with their skin peeling away as I pulled them out of the bag with my dirty hand.  The irises were small and tiny, like a spring onion.  The anemones were jagged, brown, and ugly. 

Planting bulbs, I press down the newly settled earth, taking my time to feel the wet clay-like earth.  I have no idea what will emerge from these strange rhizomes.

I can’t help but wonder how these bulbs will attach to the earth and find their way up through the dirt. I hope they understand that they are home as they nestle in for the long cold winter ahead.

The messiness begins

*****

Throughout the planting, I think about how rhizomes find their footing in the clay dirt.  So much has to be right, yet at the same time, these are resilient living things finding a way to survive.  I think about how much there is to learn from these strange small objects.  I intentionally decided to plant bulbs this year as part of my efforts to connect with the seasons in a visceral way. I wanted to feel a tangible connection to what goes on for all of us in the winter—humans and plants alike.  That seemingly dormant turn inward is anything but dormant. There is a lot of work going on deep in that dirt. Rhizomes must find ways to connect to the dirt—must establish a relationship with its surroundings.  There has to be some trust at it goes on to offer itself to the dirt, connect and tie its rhizomatic tentacles to the earth, worms, leaves, and all sorts of darkness.  That inward turn is where those rhizomes do their heavy work. Foundational work. The daffodils, hyacinths, irises, and other flowers become symbolic of my own shift in the season. 

I think about the rush to make sure I planted them all before the storm and cold weather set into the area.  As I planted those bulbs, I thought about my work to organize my own space so that I can turn inward.  Finding that space of trust, so that I can spread my own rhizomatic tentacles into the unknown and embrace the darkness that settles into winter. 

As I spent time with each bulb, touched each with my hand, I could understand the care that is necessary for my own self.  It is a care I don’t often take with myself as I typically try to function the same in the winter as I do in the summer, never understanding why I felt so miserable. I look out at the cold dark world with a level of dread.  But those rhizomes, those rhizomes don’t do that. They understand that this is where they must do the work in order to take root and push up and out into the world once spring arrives. But if they don’t do that work now and throughout the winter, they will not be able to revel in that juicy beauty of air and light and heat. 

I so often fight and kick to recapture the summer months, not understanding that each season needs its respect and honor and my body needs that same respect and honor.  To honor my body is to let it work through the seasons with acceptance as I embrace the changes around me.  To try to control climate and all that is around me is a futile task, one that takes too much energy. 

So, Christina, it’s time to take out the sweaters and the boots and the scarves and the hats, and curl up to drink that warm ginger, clove, nutmeg tea that warms me from the inside out.  And in that warmth, revel in the beauty of the monochromic world that is beginning to surround me.   

A Stream of Consciousness: Me, Bo(u)lder

It has been two weeks since I have posted an entry. Too much time has passed.  The seasonal changes have, in some ways, gotten the best of me.  It's funny how much the weather affects my perspective and the way I look at the world around me.  More importantly, I'm always surprised at how my body and mood shift with the weather in ways that I can't always control.   

Autumn is definitely settling into the world around me.  The leaves are various hues of the season.  Bright yellow and orange surround my gaze with scattered brown leaves rattling around on their branches, not yet ready to fall.  Inside my body, I am feeling a similar change of hue.  The warm fluid energy I felt in the summer is breaking into more scattered and choppy energy. The wind seems to be dominating my state of mind.  Drifting thoughts moving through me and floating off and away.  I feel ungrounded in many ways, yet still have some level of focus to get me through the tasks at hand.  What that has meant is that I was often too scattered to sit here and get an entry into the computer.  

In these past two weeks, I have had a variety of great moments that I wanted to delve into here on this page, but unfortunately, those moments have drifted away like so many of my thoughts. The specificity of those moments becoming fragile memories that are just not accessible right now.  

I did get the opportunity to go to Boulder last week, which was part of the reason I did not have time to sit down here.  It was wonderful to have a chance to see mountains again before setting into the flat tundra of winter here in North Dakota.  To experience the seasonal changes in a different place reminded me how each region experiences seasonal change, but there can be wonderful differences based on the geography of the region.  The temperature was not that different in Boulder than here, but the visual landscape of the mountains and the aspens were enough to remind me of the unique experience that is autumn.  

Leaving Boulder, Bolder

 Autumn is the time of harvest, the time of transition, the time of the fall of the leaf.... All these wonderful words for autumn signal the important shift away from external expressions of the world and into the slow turning inward. Autumn prepares us to explore the world that exists and thrives within the dark spaces of rhizomes, seeds, and the deeper undercurrents that are the very foundations of life.  I try to remember that as I look at the leaves changing and falling and drying up on the ground.  I think I often forget how much I rely on those external indicators to ground my own sense of self.  I need to remember that life is always flowing and transitioning. Embracing that can be tough when the world starts to move from vivid technicolor to stark monochromatic hues.  

The time in Boulder was helpful both for the change in visual landscape, but also for the conference I attended that was very attuned to self-reflection and introspection.  A valuable experience that I'm still absorbing and do not yet feel ready to write about in this context.  Nevertheless, it was a time that I'll be mining throughout the winter as I work through the deep dark work that is winter.  This time around, I do feel prepared for that rhizomatic journey.  In fact, I am excited for it.  But first, the work of autumn is still here.  It is present in the leaves and branches that I must rake and the bulbs I must plant.  

Exploring Gratitude as I Finish Pitru Paksha

The time of pitru paksha has been leading me to reflect more and more on my family and my lineage (both blood and intellectual-lineages)--particularly my relationship to my grandmother.  Doing a ritual such as this was new to me. I'm not one who has engaged in rituals with such clear intentionality.  I say this knowing that I have spent a lot of time with my yoga practice and my meditation practice.  This was something altogether different for me.

Also, I have spent a lot of time with my unhealthier practices. They, too, are rituals.  The ritual of television, Facebook, and a smorgasbord of binge/purge cycles that have entered and exited my life at various times. These are incredibly strong rituals, but they are qualitatively different and often they are practices with the goal of numbing, separating, and isolating.  Pitru paksha has been a practice that has asked me to think outwardly.  It was a practice that required me to think about the past, my family, my intellectual kin, my spiritual kin, and others in ways that do not ask me to dwell or separate or numb.  The practice asks me to connect as I remember to give reverence and gratitude.  

I began mulling over gratitude today after reading from Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection this morning.   She makes a clear distinction between holding onto the idea and attitude of gratitude and actually practicing gratitude.  This is significant, because as much as I may have an attitude that values gratitude, it was never something that I really practiced.  I gave a lot of lip service to it. I think in some ways that is why the pitru paksha practice initially felt so contrived and forced.  It was awkward to be actively practicing gratitude.  It was something out of my comfort zone. Holding onto my grandma and sitting in my memory of her, and all that she has provided my life, made me start to understand this practice more wholly. I spent time on the awkwardness of the practice and let myself stay unsettled and uncomfortable.  I let myself do the practice not really understanding what the black sesame seeds, and having them  run through my hands, meant.  But as I did it during the week, I saw that for me it as about doing something active.  And then after I read Brown's chapter on gratitude this morning, it came together.  I was actually practicing gratitude--something I really never do.  And I wanted more of it.  I want to practice more gratitude.

My goal, then, as I work through the final days of this juncture between early fall and autumn, is to practice gratitude. There aren't many days left.  Pitru paksha ended yesterday and the juncture goes through Monday. So for these final three days I will engage in a gratitude practice and see how I can take that with me into the autumn season.  I plan to settle in here each day and discuss my active practice of gratitude.

It is interesting, I woke this morning feel pretty blue about my work in the juncture, but I am seeing lightness and joy now as I just allowed myself to sink into it.   And rather than beating myself up for whatever imperfections and missteps I might have taken, I could still look at myself without judgment.  If this had been happening a year ago, I would have had a very different response.  I suppose it is a great reminder for me that even though we cycle through the same seasons each year, we are never the same person as we enter each new cycle.