As we creep along the forest floor, the seasons change and unfold around us. Pulsing with nature, we move and shift; we change and grow– spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
Within this muted metamorphosis, we often stumble over discomfort and resistance as we comb the forest floor and search the skies for the expansion our beings crave.
In yoga, we revere the body as a companion to the soul – cradling and swaddling them through the forest of life. The body isn’t glorified; it is esteemed and honoured as an enigmatic expedient for the soul. But there are times when the forest grows thick around us, distorting and darkening our view. The seasons change, but we lose sight of our place within them. Without that sacred knowing, the fine thread binding body and soul frays.
And beneath the heat of the summer sun, so often that thread unravels for me. Shedding layers reveals hidden feelings of shame, scars reflective of past pain, and the dappling of the deep rivets of time. A body so beautifully resilient and faithful, so brutally abandoned.
When much needed inner words of benevolence and mercy are displaced, I show her no tenderness. Yet, under the dark, hibernal blanket of my mind, she always turns towards the sky – burrowing in the safety of nature, seeking the solace of the skies above.
She carries forgiveness and embodies earnestness; she is prescient, aware, and finds her way through the thickening forest, back to the sun. Within the womb of summer, swaddled in spiritual practice, we become one. Alongside climbing roses and reaching trees, we become whole again.
Lying beneath the blistering summer sun, I could feel my body coming back to me. It had been so long since I felt heat radiating from earth, and breeze from the skies gently grazing my temples. Cool, refreshing, a welcome relief from the heat of tempestuous thoughts rippling pressing against the edges of my mind, tearing through the tenderness of my body.
A faithful emissary, she deserved more than what I’d offered her. The seasons never seemed to align for us. When it was summer on her skin, it was winter in my mind.
On this day, I felt the heat of the summer cleanse me, the aliveness of my soul emanating from within. Her messages loud, her sacred words comforting.
There is a sanctuary in your heart if only you choose to embrace it. There is a sanctuary wrapped around you, if only you could see it.
I swallowed back the nauseating swirl of my racing mind and paused the percussive beat of the world around me. Lights and sounds dissolved and there was silence. Suspended in this emotional void, a tiny tweet pierced through the barrier around me. As I walked towards my yoga mat, I felt the earth humming beneath my feet. Timorous beasties danced delicate steps atop my arms, leaves rustled and wreathed the crown of my head.
Nature was bringing me back to myself. Nature was showing me she remembers who I am – heart, mind, soul and body.
With the sun high in the clear cerulean sky, I supplanted myself from my melancholy and onto my mat, beneath the monolithic oak tree who stood sentry at the bottom of my garden.
A sacred spot for a sacred practice, watched over by a thousand eyes carved into a handsome trunk. He knew what I needed and patiently waited for my mind to catch up.
The heat was heavy. I knew these next moments would be different than before. With so much oppressing us, we had to unite as one.
Arduously, I flowed through postures. Assiduously, I watched, listened and learned from within.
I leaned into the pliability of my body but honoured her cues and respected her wishes. I kneaded out knots and nodes of self-doubt and fear. Of pain and shame, loss and gain. On the command of trembles and twinges I took a pause, silencing the struggle. In the breaths between my rhythmic body, I understood where my attention had been lying for so long. How I’d aberrated away from my true self, in favour of my machinating ego. Fatuous and wry, he was always lurking in the shadows of winter, ready to lead me down a cold, slippery path.
Not today, ego.
My soul spoke.
She knew my body deserved better than that.
With the sun gleaming high in the sky, I drank its energy. Rays fell between the stretching bifurcating branches of my oak tree. Silent and swarthy, his heady scent intoxicating in the thick air. I swallowed sunlight and felt its tenacity.
Even on the toughest of days, in the greyest of winter skies, the sun still shows up. Even sheathed with clouds, he is there, determined and devoted – like my body is for me. On the darkest days, she shelters me. As tears roll to the earth, she cries with me. Always loving and watching; always remembering.
Rolling through my asanas and sequences, I fell and rose, oscillated and vacillated, noticing how the buoyant breeze embraced me. I was volant with the birds circling the sky above and grounded with the roots of the tree beside me. I’d found a womb in which to regrow.
Held in nature, the world dilated around me. The tempo of my movements matched by a concert of summer song all around me. I watched the daisies in my garden sway rhythmically and purposefully in the wind – vibrant platforms for fat bumble bees to launch off in frisson, performing mid-air dances.
Even as the wind tried to steer their course, they knew where to land – just as my body remembered where she needed to be. Each hand and foot, the head and heart centres, the spine imprinting on the earth; she’d embedded the memories needed for them to get where they were supposed to be.
The whimpers of the wind a gentle semaphore for tuning into the volant positions. I freed my body within space and air. In ecstasy. In adulation. With each posture I eased into, and each sensation nature gifted to me, the more I untangled messy webs of anguish and regret. I felt a greater pull than that of my emotions. I felt the threads of being repairing.
Reinforced, I felt nature hug me and I remembered: I am one with her. I am a reflection of her. I am her.
Heart, mind, soul & body.
Every time my mind wandered and heeded to give up, she reminded me she was there. Together, we were illimitable.
Each heavy breath, a susurration of surrender, a release of energy. I felt the delicate steps of butterflies landing on my back. Timely metaphors for the feelings fomenting within me. The Red Admiral with his magnanimous cloak and captivating eyes; the purity of the white Brimstone, and the majestic makeup of the Painted Lady. Divine reminders of duality of form – fragile but beautiful, impermanent but special.
I honoured my body in the strain of summer’s heat. I stopped when I needed to. I rested. I took time to drink, and to be, and feel the things that I was here for. As I drank, the trickle of water quenched the desiccated paths of sweat tracing down my back. Together, sun and water enriched me. Soul and body cured, replacing the sweat of self-loathing with the light of knowing.
With each unclenching of the jaw and dropping of the shoulders, my body released herself from the grips of pain.
Hugging and embracing, invisible arms of wind wrapped around me. Menacing faces carved into tree trunks shrunk, regrowing as charming companions to travel home with.
There’s no need to hide or shrink away anymore. Like the roses osculating the swirling sky above, it was time to look up. To rise.
The creaking of the tree’s branches a reminder to move and flow with the way of the wind. His weathered face watching over me, his arms sheltering me, and his broad, brilliant body climbing to heaven alongside me.
In the cradle of nature, we are reminded we are one, we are whole.
In her tender embrace, we are divine in heart, balanced in mind, united in body and soul.
“Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And just let yourself just be
Even in the uncertainty
You don’t have to fix everything
And you can still find peace
And grow
In the wild
Of changing things”
~Morgan Harper Nicholas
