Root Chakra - GROUNDED/SAFE - Have you drifted from nature or lost your connection to the Earth? How can you feel more connected and grounded?
I am an outdoors person. I always have been. I consider it a great privilege to live where I do, where I can look out the window and see wildlife any time of day, where I’m only steps from the forest, and where it is easy to spend a lot of time outdoors. I have always enjoyed swimming in the lake, stargazing, hiking, watching sunsets, going barefoot on the field grass, and sitting around campfires. I grow and raise a large portion of my own food; it is rare that a day goes by where I don’t eat something directly from my own land. I am and always have been a gardener, which leads to a sharpened attunement to nature’s cycles, the weather, and the living things of the Earth. I celebrate the solstices, the new moons, and the turning of the wheel of the year with reverence for nature and all of its living beings.
I also suffer from fairly severe seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Winter is hard for me. My feet miss the feel of the earth, my skin misses the sun, and my hands miss digging in the dirt. I crave the smell of mulch and soil. I somehow lose my connection and appreciation for nature during the winter months, I feel detached from nature, and with that detachment comes depression. My relationship with nature struggles in the cold months, when I spend less time outdoors and I fail to see the usefulness of this fallow time. My logical brain understands the need for a restful time in nature, and that the cycle of life and death appreciates both sides of the coin equally. But my heart grieves to see the bare trees and snow-covered landscape.
My husband encourages me to spend more time outdoors and take up a winter sport, but I haven’t yet found much enjoyment from skiing, snowmobiling, or ice fishing. I find succor in browsing the internet for cheap airfares and scrolling through vacation rental listings in Florida, in my longing to escape the cold darkness. I visit greenhouses just to breathe in the moist, rich plant smell. I take inventory of my seed collection, draw out garden plans, snack on my canned vegetables from last year and take a vitamin D pill every day. Sometimes, when I am particularly low, I’ll go to an artificial tanning bed, just to feel a scant eight minutes of heat on my body. It’s a waiting game for me; I’m just treading water and waiting out the weather. But focusing mainly on the “not yet” all winter has the negative effect of tearing away mindfulness, and I become un-grounded, living in the imagined future rather than enjoying contentment in the right now. I create my own suffering by ignoring the world that is true and real right now in favor of the world I would rather be in (the summer world).
I have found that somatic mindfulness is particularly helpful in these times; meditating with the body instead of the mind. After all, my body is a part of nature, so becoming more aware of my physical body and the prana or life force that I hold within myself is, in its own way, bringing me closer to nature. In seated meditation, I focus more on what physical sensations arrive, the pressure of my body against my seat, the movement of air on my skin, which parts of my body rise and fall with my breathing, and what I smell or hear, attuning to my senses. In physical practice, I favor asanas that are close to the mat, where more of my body is touching the floor, and I appreciate long, deep folds over balancing and reaching poses.
I am careful about what I consume in the depths of wintertime; I don’t watch horror films, read the news more than a couple times a week, listen to angry music, or read sad books. My diet doesn’t allow for processed foods or much that is unhealthy already, but I avoid heaviness in my food choices. The very first thing I do each morning is look out the window. I literally turn off my alarm clock, sit up, and rearrange my pillows so I can gaze out the window at the forest behind my house; the sunrise is the first thing I see each day, not my Facebook. I actively try to rewire my thinking to better appreciate the beauty of nature in the winter; how I can see far in the woods now without the leaves on the trees, how deep the silence is this time of year, how to appreciate the shape of the trees without their foliage, and how well the birds and squirrels persist and survive. I try to emulate their determined stubbornness for survival. I look for the subtle signs of life that still exist. I try to be here now. I try not to wait.
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