The Grounding Earth: what inspires me to create….
Common mallow - Malva sylvestris
the grounding earth.
It is spring here in Southern California after a particularly wet winter so that means the wildflowers in the local canyon are putting on a show. Like a symphony where different instruments flow back and forth, the various types of wildflowers mound and wind their way up and down the hills and along the path I hike, singing a joyful song.
What I find interesting about these flowers is not only their showy colors and shapes but the fact that they were always here rooted or seeded into the earth whether I see them or not. When I hike this canyon in the winter, it is hard to find inspiration in the sleepy natural spaces. The trees are holding on to the bare minimum of leaves and the shrubs are a dusty, stiff, and crackly brown. I have a practice of placing my hands on the Eucalyptus tree trunks that I pass, feeling their smooth, cool and moist, patchwork surface that in the dryness of most California winter days, is reassuring. They stand throughout the seasons, with their tap roots sinking deep, connecting sky and earth.
Chakras come up in my yoga class occasionally. Chakras are spinning points of energy in your body that have their own characteristics, and the one I am most familiar with is the root chakra. This chakra is found at the base of your spine and when activated roots you to and into the ground. It is so comforting to close your eyes and imagine roots flowing down your legs and into the ground. Take your shoes off, feel the sweet grass and let the roots flow. Like my memory of the tree trunk, I feel myself as I root deeply into the earth.
You can send out your roots anywhere, and in fact, I have been known to do this meditation on planes. Turbulence is not my friend when I am in the air and when I feel my own equilibrium pivot, I close my eyes and send my roots out through the steel body of the plane, piercing down through the sky and rooting me into mother earth. Nothing can pass through this image, this place I put myself, including the rocking plane because the earth continues to pass below me, and I know that I am always rooted. The earth is my home, are where I will always find comfort.
If you have lived on this planet for any amount of time, you have found that turbulence doesn’t only happen on planes. It’s a daily occurrence that can tip us off the edge of the path we are walking, landing in the weeds. But when I remind myself about the wildflowers, the roots and seeds that sleep beneath the surface, I realize that what looks like weeds on my path, always have roots that connect me, and them, to the earth. I remember my own roots, close my eyes, or take a breath or both, and send my roots down into whatever experience life has put me in.
I can’t stop the turbulence from happening, but I can find my roots anywhere, anytime. Just like the wildflowers that survive drought, displacement, cold and despair, their little powerhouse roots and seeds are always surviving and waiting for the right conditions to thrive.
Journal Prompt:
Life is full of turbulence and none of us can control this. Melissa Gilbert once said:
“When life is messy, it’s just doing its thing. That’s its job, that’s just what life does.”
This was a good reminder to me that rather than focusing on my expectations for life and everything in it to go the way I want it to, I would benefit more from shifting my focus to the success stories in life. For me, that’s the wildflowers particularly because of their roots.
What are the wildflowers in your life, the success stories that give you hope? What practice do you have that reminds you of these successes and how do you find your roots when the going gets tough? Think of your job, your way of relaxing, your way to do something healthy… Are these practices rooting you deeper into a place of comfort and ease or do they create turbulence? Can you make changes or can you dig deeper to better ground yourself?
Can you draw or cut out on image from a magazine or print something that represents your root system? I painted the image at the end of this entry after a great yoga class!!
Hugs to you all-
Marilee
