A Tree Meditation For Grounding, Ease, And Flow

Are you feeling uprooted? Can't find your center? This track is all about remembering that you are enough. You are whole. And practicing being grounded while you grow even more into yourself. Take a deep breath and spend the next 12 minutes remembering who you are and how not to take everything quite so personally.

Transcript

Dear Wild One,

I am so glad to be with you again.

So make yourself comfortable.

I have my essential oil diffuser diffusing.

My twinkle lights are twinkling.

And the house is quiet.

If you need to pause this to make yourself more comfortable or close a door or kick off your shoes,

You can do that now.

And as you get yourself settled,

Allow yourself to take a deep breath,

The deepest breath you've taken all day.

And let it out with a sigh.

Like,

Make some noise as you exhale.

So today's practice is all about finding some ease and flow within a grounded place.

So you can do this sitting or laying down.

If you're laying down,

It would be helpful if you're able to place both of your feet so they're flat against the surface you're on,

The floor,

The couch,

The bed,

The rug.

And since we are grounding,

You may want to place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly.

Or you can place your palms face down on the surface beside you,

The armrest of your chair,

Or just gently on your thighs.

But I want you to treat yourself with gentleness as you get into a position that works for you.

Want to notice your breathing without trying to change it or wrangle it or force it.

Today's practice,

I'm going to ring the bell.

And I'm going to talk you through a story that allows for some deeper self-reflection about holding on and letting go.

So as I ring the bell,

Go ahead and soften your gaze or close your eyes if that feels right.

Right.

Mary Oliver,

She's one of my favorite poets.

She wrote,

Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

So let's breathe deeply today.

I love that feeling when I'm able to notice my breath rocking me ever so gently.

Are you able to notice that right now?

I get this picture of a tree in my mind.

It's being rocked and swayed by the wind.

Actually,

While we're here,

I want to tell you a story about a tree.

In my family,

We name our trees kind of like pets.

So for my birthday a few years ago when I moved into this house,

My parents bought me a tree,

A flaming red maple,

And I named her Penny.

And today,

As I'm recording this,

Penny is full of bright green leaves but has one solitary red leaf.

She's telling me the season is about to really change,

And Penny is far more prepared than I am for winter.

She turns bright red in autumn.

Penny is reminding me that seasons change,

And they come back around again.

If only we would stay grounded and learn to live with some ease,

Let it flow.

Can you release the tension in your temples,

Your jaw,

Your neck,

Your shoulders?

Can you allow the muscles in your arms,

Your belly,

Your rear end to melt into the surface that's holding you up?

Can you let your chair,

Or bed,

Or the floor,

Wherever you are,

Hold you instead of you holding it?

Do you notice the difference?

How does it feel to be held?

Do you notice what feelings come up for you in this held place?

So Penny,

My parents brought her over.

She was about 13 feet tall at the time.

She's taller now.

But she looked kind of scrawny from the back of my dad's truck until he opened the gate,

And they began to pull her out,

And her root ball,

The root ball itself,

Was so heavy.

It took us,

All three of us,

Grown-ups,

Dragging her on a tarp across the lawn with all the strength that we had.

We were down on our hands and knees,

Pushing her with our feet.

We still laugh at how hard it was to get Penny safely planted into the ground.

My dad dug a four-foot-wide,

Four-foot-deep hole in the middle of my yard,

And with everything we had,

The three of us finally had Penny standing tall and straight.

Now you'll have some shade here eventually,

They said.

And we joked about how the best day to plant a tree is 50 years ago,

Or today.

They gave me instructions on the care and watering of Penny.

And even still,

Every time the wind picks up,

I check to make sure Penny is still there.

Even when I know that Penny's root ball was far heavier than anything I have ever attempted to move in my life.

Are you breathing?

And can you imagine your legs like a tree truck growing roots through your feet deep into the earth?

There's a lot of wound blowing through my backyard pretty much all the time.

And a while ago,

During a particularly bad storm,

A couple of neighbors did lose trees.

And I can see Penny through my home office window.

And I found myself worrying that she would be able to,

Or not be able to,

Sorry,

Withstand the wind and the weather.

And later,

As I was chatting with my parents about the storm and wondering out loud if I should put some stakes in the ground to help Penny up,

They said,

Don't you remember that root ball we planted?

That tree is not going anywhere,

My dad said.

And my mom turned to me and said,

A tree's roots grow three times the rate of the tree's height.

So you've got a 20-foot tall tree,

Which means there are 60 feet of roots growing down into the earth.

And I let out a sigh of relief.

Can you do that right now?

Breathe with me for a moment.

Plug your feet into the floor.

And allow yourself to be held.

And stay with me.

Can you picture yourself as a tree?

Roots,

Trunk,

Branches,

Leaves.

Maybe birds build their nest,

Teach their hatchlings to fly from the height of their branches.

Maybe squirrels dance through the maze of your leaves in the fall as they prepare for the long winter head.

The weather changes.

The rains come.

You are still a growing tree.

Your leaves fall in season,

And they grow back again.

And you are still the same growing tree.

Maybe people hang hammocks from your limbs and enjoy your shade.

Or children climb and play as the sun sets.

You are still a growing tree.

When the wind blows and your leaves sing,

And you bend with it.

This is your only job.

Your roots dig deeper.

And you stand more and more solid,

More and more agile,

Able to flow with ease.

Even when it seems the winter has stolen your coat and left you barren,

You are not lost.

You are doing your best.

Your body is doing its best.

And this season will end.

And the spring will come again,

Bringing all sorts of new growth.

So allow yourself to flow.

Allow yourself to create some ease in your joints,

In your heart.

Create some lift,

Starting at the very base of your spine,

All the way up and out the crown of your head.

So here's the thing I'm learning from Penny.

And here's the thing I notice in myself and in the clients I see in my counseling practice.

We humans keep mistaking our center for the part of the tree that we can see.

More often than not,

The reason someone makes an appointment with a therapist is this feeling that their center is no longer holding.

It is so easy to confuse our center with the thing we've been using to keep it together for a while.

Whether that's food or alcohol or sex or relationship or a family system,

These things work for a while until they don't.

The trouble is those external things were never our center.

Our center,

Like Penny's,

Is deeply embedded in our root system.

And when we are willing to do some digging and repair our root system,

We find that our center has always been there.

As you take a few more deep breaths,

Can you imagine the root systems you've been cultivating deep below the surface?

And that maybe all of your big,

Beautiful leaves and branches,

The weather,

The seasons you've been hanging onto,

Were things you were confusing for your center?

Can you let a cool breeze blow through you,

Rustle your leaves,

Allow what needs to fall away?

To do it,

Fall away.

And to do this well,

We really must be rooted and grounded and present.

Let's take a few more deep breaths together and sigh it out.

Let it go.

Allow your breath to flow the length of your body down into your roots and up out of your crown.

And as I ring the bell,

Allow yourself to stay with the sound of the bell until it fades out fully.

And begin to enter back into your room.

Take your time.

I want to thank you for practicing with me today.

I hope we do this again very soon.

And I love hearing from you,

Drop a like,

Drop a message if this was helpful.

And be gentle with yourself today.

Reviews

great story and reminder of our roots and center. I have plants that are finally starting to bloom again after a few hurricanes. Some I thought might not come back are showing new life.