The Daily Forest Report October 1, 2014 Heart-Breathing With the Mother
by nielskunze on October 1, 2014
The vapourous breaths of mountains…
(Cinderella Man by Rush from their 1977 album A Farewell to Kings)
Reality complexifies according to our insistence. It works in the other direction too… simplified.
Sitka is a very uncomplicated creature. Give her a slow-moving river and a few yellow leaves and she’s the happiest critter on Earth!
She could bob for leaves all day long…
What’s her secret? She’s smart, but she’s no over-thinker. Most of her activities tend to bypass her thinking apparatus… and hearts only beat in the moment…
I don’t go in much for group meditations, especially when they’re head-based… too much cerebralizing. But when a three-breath heart meditation that elicits true emotion crosses my path… I stalk it… catch it… and squish it against a tree.
People have asked me “What do you think about when you hug a tree?” I’m pretty sure that there’s no wrong answer here; trees are pretty understanding, and their ability to process nonsense is inexhaustible. But lately, I’ve been doing this simple three-breath heart meditation which I’ve named ‘Heart-Breathing With the Mother.’ It manages to elicit that heart-melty feeling every time.
My first breath at the Hugging Tree is drawn from the inward direction, deep in the centre of my heart. I then exhale outwardly, filling my aura and bringing my full attention to the moment. The next inhalation is drawn again from the inward direction, but this time the exhalation is directed downward along a gentle arc toward the heart-centre of the Earth. At this point the heart-melty feeling usually makes me want to sob in an aw-look-at-the-cute-kitten kinda way. The third breath is then drawn from the heart of the Earth Mother and directed back upward along another gentle arc connecting again to my own heart. The exhalation– which is now the combined breath of me and the Mother– is then directed out from my heart into the world– which immediately includes the tree I’m hugging.
This three-breath meditation can be done anytime, anywhere. It is perhaps the most powerful form of grounding a spiritual aspirant can engage in. I do it often, mainly because I really like that heart-melty feeling I get every time.
Some say that this is a face that only the Mother could love. Well, she does… and I think he’s cute! “Aw…”
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