Winter solstice.
Balance point between dark and light.
Past and future.
Let's create a space here of pause.
Let your exhale roll out of you.
Your inhale doesn't have to do anything special here.
Your body knows how to breathe you.
Here we can just practice letting go with our exhale.
Let your hands connect with your body.
Make the contact that your body wants right now and let your breath roll out.
Notice yourself here in this moment.
Feel your hands touching your body.
Feel your body receiving this touch.
Let's create a space here of rest.
What position does your body most want to be in?
Follow what your body wants.
Does your body want to make any movements before we make space for stillness?
Follow what your body wants.
Feel your hands on your body.
Feel your body where your hands are touching.
Feel your breath breathe itself in.
Feel your body open to let your breath roll out.
Let's create a space here for stillness.
Feel yourself here in this moment making this practice.
Feel how with your touch you are giving to yourself and receiving from yourself at the same time.
Notice what you feel.
Feel what you feel.
Let your inhales wash through you.
Your inhale knows how to do that all on its own.
Open a door wide inside of you for your exhale to pour out however it wants to.
In this space we can sense,
We can listen,
We can vision.
Feel yourself here.
Feel the space around you.
Reach your sensing down to feel the earth under you.
Reach your sensing up into the vastness of the sky above you.
Reach your sensing out through the land that holds you on this day.
Sense into the living web of plants and animals and people that inhabit this land where you are.
Reach your sensing out even further towards the spirit of the cultures who stewarded this land where you are in the time when today was honored as one of the most sacred days of the year.
Feel yourself as you make this sensing.
Feel what stirs in you as you sense.
Let your exhales pour out.
Let your body breathe you.
Let your hands keep making contact with your body where they're drawn.
In this space we can look backward and forward.
Here this year is drawing to a close.
A chapter is ending and a new one will open.
Feel the journey that you have made since this day last year.
What did this cycle ask of you?
How did it shape you?
What did this year teach you?
How have you grown?
Who are you becoming?
Let your exhales pour out of you.
Notice what you feel as you make this inquiry.
Let your breath wash in and through everything you feel and let your breath wash back out.
Look back across the terrain of your year.
Where did you find clarity?
Where did you feel lost?
Where did you feel proud of yourself?
Where did you feel disappointed or dissatisfied?
Let what you find be what it is.
Notice what you feel as you look.
Let yourself feel whatever you feel and let your breath keep breathing you.
Keep opening that door to let your exhales tumble out however they want to.
Here at this ending,
This turning point,
How do you feel about how you have lived this year?
Let yourself feel this question.
Let yourself feel everything you feel.
Hold your body in your hands,
In your arms,
As you feel.
Be with yourself here in this moment of looking,
Listening,
Sensing,
Feeling.
Gather up all these reflections within you.
Gather up these glowing embers of what remains of this year you have traveled.
These embers carry the life,
The light,
The spark to kindle your next unfolding.
Your soul's knowing and the forces of heaven and earth brought you here,
Into this body,
Into this time.
You are here for a reason.
There is only one of each of us.
We each carry something precious that is needed here.
Who were you born to be?
What is the medicine that asks to live through you?
What is your ancestry asking to learn and to heal and to actualize through your living?
What is the gift that you came to give this majestic planet?
What is the medicine that asks to live through you?
How does this medicine ask to be shared,
To be offered in service?
Woven together,
Our medicines make the world.
Chi-he-se-bu,
Chi-he-se-bu,
Chi-he-se-bu-he-ka-mo.
Feel yourself here in this moment.
Feel yourself holding your body.
Feel the earth holding you.
Let your breath wash and rinse you.
Here,
Bring your hands to sweep across your body and through the space around your body.
Gather up the fullness of what you have met here in this space.
Gather up everything that you have felt and seen here.
Bring these reflections and visions to land and settle into your skin and muscles.
And organs and bones.
Let what you gather here anchor through your whole body.
This great vessel of your beingness.
This instrument through which you sense and feel and learn and grow.
In this space,
We make nourishment for our evolution.
Bless this space that we make here.
Bless this body.
Bless this earth.
Bless our relations.
Bless our listening in the dark.
Bless these seeds we gather to plant in the next year.
Bless the return of light.
