Tag: earthing

A Reminder of Origin #yoga #toxic-masculinity #unity-consciousness

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections, yoga30 Comments
A pond in Hooksett, NH that was a delightful destination to a nature walk with my husband. A popular path for many, yet walked with a reverence that holds the landscape with peace and joy.

If I go back to the origin of my blog’s title and consider the impetus of the name, I am reminded of the pulse behind the darkness. We are, undeniably, immersed in a time of chaos that can be over-whelming. More often than I’d like to, I find myself considering whether we are a World Gone Mad.

These days I can count insanity by just one degree of separation, sometimes less. On Sunday I conversed with a colleague who was trying to find her grounding after bearing witness to the aftermath of a senseless shooting: A father shot dead by a young man, unrelated. Two kids left behind to watch it from a car’s window.

In my hometown, the community FB page is filled with comments about a man who took it upon himself to drain an entire pond, destroying a beaver dam and countless lives, so that he and his friends could ride their snowmobiles in winter. A season used to be, but is not often, without snow.

I cannot help but wonder if the world has gone mad. Next door, the neighbor who talked to me about love and community years ago as we both displayed our Obama signs with hope has, it seems, turned to the dark side. The opposite of hope and love, staked to her ground.

What is happening? Why is it so easy for us to fall into hatred and fear? Why is it so difficult for us to pause, consider, and breathe the light back into our collective story?

We are succumbing to our own madness through a belief that our world is spinning out of our control. Thinking, ever-foolishly, that we are here to control it. The land is mine to mold my way…

Instead of, I am of the Earth, and therefore a part of all life it nourishes.

Simple facts forgotten. Ignored.

I honor the light in you that is also in me. Therefore, I will do no harm.

I find myself turning to the land with every excuse I can muster. I have taken up foraging as a reason to walk into my wild home and find peace and connection. Belonging returns when the heart opens back to its origins. More than ever I have become a fervent believer that our salvation as humans will only return when we turn to the Earth with reverence. And through this return, find our origin. We are of the Earth, but not limited by it.

One vast body boundless

Yet we allow ourselves to be limited by our own myopic vision. We allow fear to establish our parameters and this fear grows to mistrust, which too often turns to hatred.

I find myself using the term “toxic masculinity” all too often, but there is a disturbing truth to this phrase. It is what kills the hope and love inside of us. It is rapidly seeking dominance again, as it has so often done in our collective history. Why are we afraid of the softening? Why are we afraid of vulnerability? Of surrender? Of love?

We are not truly held by walls and barricades. They are blocks. Temporary, but more often than not, dangerous. They shut us out from the wider world. They block the light of life. They block the greater truth. They block the flow of energy that seeks our connection. They block our coming home to ourselves.

On Sunday, my colleague and I also spoke of this lose of connection. We are both yoga instructors, but our desire to thread this idea of union is not limited to the mat of practice. We spoke of Earth. Of nature and our connection to it. We spoke of how to bring the concepts of yoga, which share the teachings of all the ancient wisdoms, out into the community in a way that brings us home to ourselves through a reconnection with wonder and nature.

During one of my foraging walks with another friend, conversation led to physical education classes and how simple and effective it would be to switch the focus from competitive sports to exercises like nature walks. Imagine combining P.E. with science, writing, history, and, an inherent mindfulness. The possibilities turn from limiting, to limitless. It’s in some ways a radical shift in perspective, but it’s also a chance at our salvation. Each child given a sense of belonging instead of vying for one.

If we all had that sense of belonging, would we need to erect walls to separate? Would we need to point fingers and declare, “You are not good enough?”

True connection to one’s self and the greater “world,” unites. It is yoga. It is a coming home to the self and the self’s origins which, at its essence, is a limitless belonging.

One vast body, boundless

To Dream a Life into Being #wonder #nature #being

On By Alethea KehasIn Uncategorized13 Comments
The river beside the trail

Or perhaps I should say, “To walk a life into being.”

My husband and I spent the 4th in nature. It was the perfect way for us to express a reverence for what feels worthy, real, and based upon love. We brought the dogs along, which meant a perfect day for our canine companions as well.

Sitting on our front porch with a cup of tea dividing us, I scrolled through the “All Trails” app on my phone until I found one that just felt right. A new trail, to us, not too far away. And so, after breakfast was consumed, water bottles filled, and a couple of granola bars tucked in pockets, we set off in a race to the “minivan.”

We no longer have a minivan, but my husband and I love to shout out, “go straight to the minivan,” to incite the dogs and annoy the teenagers. The said teenagers, though, had their own plans for the day. Still, it brought a smile to our faces, and, naturally the dogs’ who could not have been happier. There’s nothing like a good car ride as long as the destination is not the vets.

With windows cranked to snout-level, we were off on our new adventure. The day perfect according to the weather. The high hovering around 80, the breeze just enough to keep most of the bugs away, and the sky as blue as our children’s eyes. We did miss them, but sometimes it’s nice to have that time to recall how you began.

And for us, it began 31 years ago. I’m going to take a slight pause to let that sink in…

We were at the place where our son is temporarily residing, the St. Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program. It was July 4th, 1991, and although I can’t tell you the exact details about the weather, I can recall in full-color the certain sundress I borrowed from a friend to impress a boy I had seen on the baseball field at recreation time. We met over bowls of ice cream, and the rest is our story.

So here we were, 31 years later, celebrating our story in the quiet way we knew best. Out in nature. We parked beside a wooden sign in front of a field of grasses, milkweed, and butterflies and suddenly I found myself falling in love, again. This land, not wholly ours, but from which we are all birthed, enfolding us like a mother who forgives even if she never forgets. And we, walking upon her, opened to love.

And wild wonder.

I was 48, 17, and 4. All ages wrapped up into one body, which is the way wonder finds us. Time slips past meaning and nothing else matters. The body’s bounds tangible, yet free. And the mind, that illusive organ without a physical structure, finds its tune and begins to sing of home. There it nothing better.

Life unties its binds in these moments and pure being erupts into the dream without the nightmare. As we walked that trail through the butterfly fields and into the woods beside a river, I began to dream of Life as it opened before us. The smile, spreading ever-wide upon my face. My body alive with the energy of being. And that vision that enfolded wider with each footstep, imprinted in full-color upon the canvas of my mind.

What a gift of a day.

Life Outside the Window #naturephotography #newengland #unity

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections11 Comments

It is raining here today. Thankfully. The water cools the heat that should have left by late September and covers the dirt in the empty stream beds. I have never seen such dryness where I live. The lake where we spend much of our summer has receded by feet from the shore. The sandy cove popular with swimmers, now a vast mudflat exposing the spindly legs of a dock that no boat can go near. It is surreal. It is so uncomfortable to observe, I could not take a photograph.

Each day brings a new challenge to face, asking us to learn how to live on the edge, and quite often inside the roiling elements of life. Too often, I find I am chasing after my breath and asking it to expand out of the constriction of my lungs. I go outside during these moments and lay on the good earth to sync my heartbeat back to the Mother. It is the best way I know how to live inside chaos.

The area where I live has become beloved in a way I never thought possible. A simple acre of land surrounding my home is somehow enough to show me the vast wonders of creation. Life contained, yet not contained. The birds come and go and so do the squirrels and the chipmunks. The trees stretching networks of roots too vast to comprehend the mystery of what it means to be rooted. We can move without moving, and with my belly pressed against the grounded life that deep stirring fills the ache of belonging.

Life has become a game of tension and release and I often wonder who is really controlling the bind. I wonder how far we need to go back to remember the vast connection that both binds us into division and frees us into unity? This juxtaposition of a truth that seems alien to our rights if you feed into the beliefs of the mind struggling for separation.

As I listen to the fall of rain and the birdsong of gratitude I am reminded of how false the hold is. The entangled mind that tunes into dissonance feeds a disease that spreads through all minds if the frequency is found and listened to long enough. Why boil the internal waters if what the body needs is a cooling into peace?

Serenity in Turbulent Times #serenity #writephoto #suevincent

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections24 Comments
Photo Credit: Sue Vincent

These days serenity is borrowed. To avoid the turbulent waters that try to divide the heart’s landscape of love, I find myself seeking the pause. Stillness, where thoughts cannot ripple the surface. I walk into the rain to find beauty in the gray mist. The tucked heads of flowers pigmented like the sun. Their beauty muted because the eyes can stand only so much glory.

With my belly on the mossy lawn I watch hills of ants and find a sophistication of silent cooperation that is foreign to my language. For a moment, I’d like to be an ant crawling into dug caverns, deeper and deeper into the body of Earth until what remains on the surface disappears from the mind.

The cat studies with me. Delighted. Her purr barely perceptible, she is stingy with her love, but her curled lips betray her. She believes me to be a cohort in mischief and I think perhaps I am. Inside the house dust settles into corners and dishes wait in the sink, but I am stealing more time to listen to bird song and soft sigh of grass yielding to my body.

Here, level with the eyes of the cat, I search the understory of life and find pipes made of fungi pushing through last year’s leaves and I know the fey cannot be far away.

For Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt #serenity. Click here to participate in the challenge.