Mid Winter…Solstice, also known as hiberna solstice, I love that,…the darkest day, the longest night and natures gift to slow down. Hibernate. Get quiet. Rest. Restore.
This year, my body nature has deeply invited me into this quiet resting place. Recovering from a recent stem cell procedure to rejuvenate my highly used body has placed me in the middle of ‘slow down’.
Early in recovery, I had no choice but to walk slow, move slow, be…s-l-o-w. I have had to practice really listening to the pull in my own body to get quiet, reflect, rest and restore. This year, I am feeling this pull deep in my bones, more that ever before. I am learning to trust this cellular desire to renew…gather strength, rest into and trust stillness.
And…as much as this is truly feeling good to me at this time, I notice, as I let myself really sink into deep rest…right along the edge of the goodness and relief, there is a crackling of something else.
The spark of a little thought fragment or even panicky feeling in my chest… ‘what if I just stay this way’, ‘loose momentum’, ‘get distracted’, loose focus? Perhaps I wont ever really ‘get going’ again and wander fuzzy and adrift through the remainder of my days. Maybe I will just get sucked into the couch or the bed and never fully reengage with my life. Ha…ug.
This leads to the newer twist…as I approach the mid point of my years on the planet, the inkling suggests….’this is how it begins’…the decline, the slide into entropy…the devolution into that ‘small life of old age’.
In the past, this fear felt more like I might be ‘slipping into a depression’ – a family comment and worry…and so revealing of the lack of intimate relationship with stillness and reorientation. The tightening in the body that comes with this fear, and the seeming loss of all perspective that energy and vitality will most likely return. It all starts to feel like a mini death, and invites a practice dance with that inevitable transition.
Hummm….poignant and a bit funny to put it all out on paper…to reveal the beliefs and auto trip edges that get engaged…and to sit on that crackling edge for a moment. To let it work me.
I have to say, as I have written here, in this pitch-dark morning, something unexpected has happened. Something is notching more deeply into me. In this moment I feel a clicking into the inkling and seduction of deeper quiet. I find myself wondering if it would be so bad if I got sucked into the bed or the couch. I can feel and imagine into the sweetness of a softer focus and the permission to rest in the exhale…both my own bodyspirit’s and this earth bodyspirit we live on.
Hummm…I will rest here with the planet and invite you to join us, curious… in your own exhale and resting place.
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