A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the gardening rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
Ever since Covid-19 reached our shores in March 2020, to say that there has been a lot going on in our outer and inner worlds would be an understatement!
Understandably, being faced with the uncertainty of a global pandemic has been challenging on many levels, as we continue to navigate a course through these choppy and changing seas. Our experience of ‘lockdown’ shaped, not only by our personal circumstances, but also by the deeper currents of our emotional and physiological landscapes, and how our nervous systems respond to stress and instability.
Just as everything was intensifying towards the end of March, I noticed that I felt a vague sense of restlessness, combined with a faint underlying feeling of anxiety and sadness, and the need to spend more time online than usual. I was drawn to engage with others in online yoga classes (teaching and attending), and to reach out to friends to connect with that sense of shared experience. Although more recently, I have been socially distancing from technology and the news! Instead settling into quieter rhythms and a desire for more simplicity.
Through the ebb and flow of it all, I’ve felt a continual need to orientate towards the natural surroundings for space and perspective. I have craved the simple balm and breath of nature. Taking walks on the local flood plains, in the freshness of the early morning, have been uplifting in ways that I hadn’t truly appreciated before Covid-19. My daily walks have been so deeply rooting and nourishing, and have inspired many of my online yoga classes, many of which have focused on growing a vital connection with the ground beneath us, as well as learning to inhabit the area below the belly, known as the dan tian. Nature has been a ballast through all the ups and downs of recent months.
How grounding ourselves in nature can be beneficial during this time
One of the gifts of the Pandemic is that it is teaching us to be more comfortable with uncertainty which is, after all, an inescapable part of life. But staying grounded in our bodies is something that can be easier said than done during challenging times when there is so much anxiety pulling us up into our neck, shoulders, chest and heads. When you consider that social distancing, which has provided a sense of security and safety, has forced us to communicate even more through our screens, this will only heighten a sense of disembodiment.
So how do we root into the earth and the centre of our being when our attention, is inclined to wander up and keep us locked in worrying or anxious thoughts? How can we ease back our awareness into the background a little more, so that we can feel the stabilising support of the ground, pelvis and spine, and settle into the steadying rhythms of nature, “allowing the living background of the world around us to seep into the foreground of our attention”?
Teaching Qi Gong
These are questions that I’ve been exploring, in an embodied way, in my yoga classes recently. In the East, a foundational principle that informs martial arts, yoga, (and I would add Chinese Medicine here too) is that being able to coalesce awareness around our belly, and our living connection to the ground, helps us to cultivate presence, stability, steadiness and balance. Tension in the body and mind often reflect the belief that we are not supported in some way but when we can feel how the earth is there to sustain us, we no longer need that extra layer of muscular support held within the upper body.
When attention is given to the center, whether in a movement class, or during an acupuncture treatment, we provide an anchoring and resting place for the breath and the mind. During an acupuncture session, it may be necessary to balance the delicate interplay between yin and yang by needling a point located below the navel, to temper the rising of yang. In this way, symptoms that are characterized by this upward rising tendency (such as anxiety, tension, headaches, or hot flushes) can be effectively rooted into yin. Or you may need to strengthen a patient’s connection to the earth element through the needling of points on the leg and feet, to counterbalance a tendency to worry or overthinking.
In embodied practices such a yoga or Qi gong, you can grow the subjective capacity to be in relationship with the ground through the attention given to the feet, or the sit bones. As we practice inhabiting these places, we quickly become aware of how easy it is to lose this vital support, particularly when the energy of anxiety has a tendency to settle upwards in the body. Without it we feel unrooted, unsupported, tentative, anxious or disembodied, or we compensate by shallow breathing, tightening our abdomen, and holding tension in our upper back, shoulders and neck.
There are many ways that we can find our grounding. You can do this through the practice of a standing meditation, which emulates the steady, rooted stance of a tree, bringing awareness to the palpable feeling of the ground contacting our feet; by bringing your hands to rest on the belly and letting the breath be guided there; or simply by absorbing the earth’s energy walking bare footed, or lying on the grass. A couple of weeks ago, during the beautiful spell of sunny weather that we’ve experienced, there was a way that lying down on the earth in my garden, underneath the pine trees, feeling the warmth from the sun as it peeped out of the branches, felt so comfortingly grounding.
Just as an abdominal acupuncture point can provide an anchor for anxiety, finding a spot in nature “that binds you to the earth”, if only for the shortest time, gives you the opportunity to pause and drop into the breath.
In a therapeutic setting, being in a physical relationship with the support that’s underneath, and deep within, allows us to be fully present for ourselves, and our patients. The writer, Philip Shepherd, says that “receptivity is made possible by the grounded stability that comes with being at rest deep in the pelvic bowl”. To be present is to ‘hold space’, or be with someone, in an open, accepting, compassionate and deeply attentive manner; one that engenders trust and unconditional positive regard.
Hopefully, this ‘grand pause’ has opened up a little more space and time for you to “fly low” as the world outside spins, and find a deeper, and more nourishing connection to the ground (inner and outer). Now, more than ever, there is an ever-pressing need to feel our embedded relationship with the earth, but also the centre of our own embodied ecology, so that we can understand and resonate with the greater ecosystem and our place within it.
