Take a moment to let yourself arrive,
A nice big inhale,
Sending that breath up your spine to your shoulders.
As you exhale,
Can you bring your shoulders up and back and down?
Another breath in,
Belly button reaching away from the spine.
Exhales and your breath down your spine,
Through your sitting bones into whatever you may be seated on.
Breathing in,
Body expanding,
Exhale,
Breath down the legs,
Through the bottoms of your feet,
Feeling contact with the earth.
Take another three deep rounds of breath.
I invite you to imagine that you're taking a stroll through a forest.
Imagine the tall trees reaching up towards the sky.
In between the trees are smaller trees and bushes and low-lying plants.
You walk on the soft forest floor,
The cushion built by decades,
Maybe even hundreds of years.
As you take a deep breath in,
The smell of wet soil and wood fills your senses.
Perhaps you hear the sounds of birds,
A rustle of an animal nearby,
Maybe even the distant drone of cars on a highway miles away.
As you continue your journey in this lush forest,
You suddenly notice with your next inhale a slight hint of salt in the air.
You continue to look around,
Not seeing any changes in your environment.
As you walk,
You start to notice the texture of the ground changing beneath your feet.
Suddenly a little more gritty,
You look down,
And you start to see sand,
Grains of sand infiltrating the forest floor.
A distant call of a seagull draws your eyes upwards.
As you continue to journey forward,
These signs of a beach start to come further and further into your senses.
Eventually you come to a clearing.
As you look through the space and the forest trees,
You see sand,
Sand that reaches further and drops into the ocean.
You take a seat on a nearby log,
Taking in this full view in front of you,
A very clear landscape of a beach in front of you,
Behind you a forest.
And here you sit in between,
In this place that doesn't quite make sense,
Not fitting into the binary world,
The view of either or,
Instead,
You are in both and.
Even though it doesn't quite make sense,
Here it is,
Full of life and complexity as you sit and observe in this ecotone,
Where the hawk and the seagull fly in the same sky,
Cedar and grasses and yellow flowers.
I invite you to consider two aspects of your identity that may seem to conflict,
But here you are existing in their ecotone.
I invite you to consider two aspects of your identity that may seem to conflict,
But here you are existing in their ecotone.
What unique skill,
Perspective or gift has been supported by this overlap?
What unique skill perspective or gift has been supported by this overlap?
As Zapatistas say,
The world we want is one where many worlds fit.
The world we want is one where many worlds fit.
What would it feel like to honor this ecotone,
This place of overlap between two habitats or two identities to honor this world,
To honor many worlds and overlapping identities and experiences?
What would it feel like to honor this ecotone,
This overlap?
As you breathe into this space of honoring,
You might notice where that feeling lands in your body.
If you can identify a place,
I invite you to bring a hand there.
And if you're not sure,
Just bring a hand to your heart.
Just breathe in to this feeling and to this place and take a full breath out.
Breathing in to this feeling,
This place,
Full breath out.
I invite you to take one last sensory exploration of this ecotone between forest and beach.
The moss and the sand,
Beetles and butterflies,
Dampness and dryness,
Salt and soil,
Open sky,
Protected sky.
To bring yourself back to this present moment,
I invite you to walk your fingers around your space,
Maybe feeling cloth or textures,
Noticing any taste in your mouth,
Breathing in any sense,
Opening your hearing to sounds beyond my voice and gently opening your eyes if they were closed and naming one or two colors that you can see in your space.
Thank you.
