Nature's Pause
Here we are again, Winter’s Solstice, where the energy of Nature feels like a long deep pause. Earth has drawn her energy into herself, plants have gone to sleep, my garden is all tucked in and today is the first day of my annual retreat with Silence and Solitude. It can be difficult to feel this expression of inner stillness in our own Nature and yet this season offers us an invitation to reset our nervous system just as the rhythm of the seasons offers this to the rest of Nature.
Night Raven garden asleep for winter…2008
In our cultural trance of separation we not only experience an isolation from ourselves as Nature but we also are cut off from the natural rhythms of the seasons and the cycles of the days. Lights and technologies have thrown off our circadian rhythm and our sleep patterns in a world where productivity and busyness are valued more than health. And with our jobs one season flows into the other with nothing to adjust to other than the contrived changing of the clocks each spring and fall. We may not realize the toll this non stop activity and stimulation has on our health and our nervous system until we crash.
I experienced my own crash this past spring when I was knocked flat with shingles, a viral infection that plays out through different nerve pathways in the body. For me the infection expressed itself along the trigeminal nerve on the left side of my face and came on while backpacking in the Escalante Canyon.
At first I attributed the sensation of fiberglass in my face and mouth to getting slammed with high gusts of sand laden wind while teaching during my first weekend of Medicine At Our Feet apprenticeship in April. By the second day the left side of my face was becoming deformed with inflammation and the pain was becoming more intense. I didn’t know what was happening to me until a friend I was with suggested that it could be shingles. Because of sustained, high winds and intense sun it was another day before I could hike out of the canyon, leaving at dawn.
Once I was safe at home I had the intuitive sense that this illness was going to rewire my nervous system. I was in the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced (surpassing dental surgery without novocaine) and yet I had faith in this illness as initiation and surrendered to the process. As well, I let go into an awareness of a great loving presence surrounding me.
While I turned to my herbal apothecary for eye drops, poultices for my face, and root decoctions to shift my internal ecology, I turned to spiritual practice, specifically mindfulness practices, to “learn how to suffer and suffer less,” as Thich Naht Hahn teaches. Shingles was my teacher and guide and with mindfulness practices I became very aware of the interconnection between my emotions, thoughts and choices and the responses of my nervous system. I had to develop and maintain a deep sense of inner calm and peace or else my symptoms would exacerbate.
Now as winter arrives I evermore fully recognize this seasonal cycle as a way Nature regulates the nervous system of Earth. This deep stillness and rest is necessary for Life to continue to thrive. This isn’t a period of death, as the energy for next year's leafing out and flourishing is evident in the buds on trees, and animals are still very much alive in hibernation. This is Nature’s pause and now I intrinsically feel this deeply abiding stillness within my own body, beyond what I have known before, and for this I am deeply grateful for all that my experience with shingles gifted me with.
In this season of winter I urge you to take a pause, to stop what you are doing and let yourself Be. This can be as simple as waking up early to witness the light coming in on a snowy morning, and receiving the peaceful presence of stillness into your being.
As well, this can occur while you are out on a walk and in a moment you pause, and perhaps sit with your back supported by the trunk of a tree….sit here and become aware of your breath, lengthening the inhale and slowing the exhale, letting your gaze connect with all the life around you, relaxing the muscles of your ears to allow in the songs of birds, the water flowing by, the breeze through the trees, feeling the touch of the air on your skin, receiving the scents around you…Become Present to the moment in open awareness, experiencing the stillness and silence of the season until there’s no separation…and you feel yourself as Nature.
May you be well. May you be happy. May you know deep and abiding inner peace.
May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be forever wild and free.
