Nature As Teacher, Learning From A Tree

Do you live your story or do you live your life like a story erased? Sometimes, we can lose our fire. For me, life is about letting go and beginning again. In this practice, I share about a near-death experience and how this taught me to not play small, use my voice and the importance of learning from all things including our oneness with nature. Following, I offer a guided meditation about learning from trees as a teacher and what they have to share.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

I'm Nora Speakman.

Today I wanted to share with you a guided meditation that has made a huge difference in my life,

But before I do that,

I just wanted to share a little bit of an inspirational moment,

I guess,

For lack of a better way of saying it.

So one of the big things that is really important for me is that we live our story and that we write the story of our lives rather than living it like a story that's been erased.

I don't know if that resonates with you,

But for me it does.

And sometimes I think that we lose our fire,

We lose our voice sometimes,

And it's about letting go and learning to begin again.

That's what for me everything is.

Even when we do breath work,

When we do breath work in meditation,

It's about releasing and then receiving.

It's a very beautiful process when we give time to considering it.

But one of the things that happened to me now,

It's been probably 20 years ago,

Is I experienced a near-death experience.

So I went kayaking with a friend and I had never been kayaking before.

We were in a two-man kayak and decided to go not on a very wise day.

We went on a day that the river crested after amazing rains and so there was a lot of flooding.

And if you don't know,

When you go kayaking on a river after it is crested and after a lot of rain,

You're going to have a lot of debris in the water.

And a lot of debris will cause what are called tide pools.

Literally almost like,

If you can imagine,

A vacuum cleaner under the water that's just sucking everything down.

So we were on the river and suddenly hit a tide pool.

I did have a life jacket on,

But there wasn't time to really respond or react in the moment.

So the kayak flips,

Somehow,

For whatever reason,

I had my eyes open,

Which is so bizarre,

You know.

I'm bizarre.

So anyway,

I remember hitting my head on a huge log.

I remember just getting scratched up by all of the branches under the water and the debris and eventually ending up vertically under the water.

I am standing up vertically under the water because of all the debris that just sucked me right through that big mess.

And I'm looking up and I see light at the top of the water and I don't know how far down I went.

It was craziness.

And my life jacket was just stuck.

And because it was a long strand,

You know how the life jackets are,

It's like old school kind,

It was tangled around all of the debris and the branches and everything.

And I was literally trying to take it off,

Just fighting with this thing,

Trying to get it off so I could at least swim and get to the top of the water.

And for whatever reason,

It was just on me and it wasn't going to come off because it was really tangled within everything that I had come through.

So I remember just standing there in the moment in my spirit.

I remember sensing sort of this voice,

If you will,

In my heart saying,

Are you done fighting with me?

It was the most bizarre thing.

And I remember thinking,

I'm not fighting with anybody,

You know,

This is it.

And then feeling sort of this peace and this warmth and this just,

If you've ever read about people who have near death experiences,

It's interesting because they're all very similar.

Everything that we experience one to another is typically along the same lines.

There is this light,

Yes.

There is this warmth,

There is this love that you can't explain that certainly you don't ever feel here.

It's just,

Anyway,

It was bizarre.

So the next thing I know about whatever time later,

Eventually I find out how long it was,

I find myself floating on the top of the river.

And oddly enough,

No life jacket.

So what happened that day?

What did I experience?

You know,

That's going to be subject to how everybody thinks and believes about certain things.

But for me,

The main thing is I was given another opportunity at life.

I was given the chance to quit fighting.

And it wasn't so much that I was fighting against anything.

What I was fighting against though,

As I've come to understand it for me in my meditation,

Is my authentic self,

For lack of a better way of saying it.

I was fighting against having a voice that matters.

I was fighting against my comfort in playing small so that others could be larger around me.

And there was a lot that I took from that time.

But one of the biggest lessons as I've now begun teaching guided meditation is that we have so much to learn from nature and from the beauty of creation.

And the interesting thing is,

For example,

That river that day was simply doing what the river was supposed to do.

It was being a river,

Whether it was in a glassy,

Beautiful,

Calm place or whether it was in the tunnel of these big rocks and just beautiful rapids and things like that.

It was functioning as it's supposed to function.

And I think sometimes we can lose our way.

So the guided meditation that I want to do with you today is experiencing learning from nature.

I had the beautiful upbringing of having some Native American and shamanic wisdom imparted to me.

And one of the things was learning from what nature is around us and sort of letting it be teachers.

So that's the guided meditation that I want to do with you today.

So if you will get comfy,

Get whether you're lying down or whether you're in a chair,

Whatever is best for you,

Whatever helps you to just be and sort of settle into the space of you,

To feel the weight of your body,

Whether it is on the floor or whether it is seated in a chair.

Oftentimes life gets so busy that we forget to even experience our own body and we are mind,

Body,

Spirit.

So if you'll do that with me and if you're already comfy,

Then if you'll take some deep breaths and just be aware of your breath as you inhale and exhale and you remember that it's all about starting again and letting go.

And so if you'll do that and just get in that space of quiet and if there are thoughts that come,

If there are emotions that come,

If there is any distraction,

Just notice it and be aware of it without any judgment and without getting,

Beating yourself up about having it because again,

Everything is about letting go and starting again.

So if you can give yourself that understanding and that grace to just be.

And then I want you to visualize a tree.

I want you to visualize a beautiful majestic tree,

Whether it's a redwood maybe or an oak and just notice the magnificence of it.

Notice how big it is.

Notice the roots even on the ground.

And as we visualize that tree,

We're going to allow the tree to become our teacher today.

And we're going to take note of what it has to share with us.

And as you see the beauty of this tree,

I want you to think about all the generations that this tree has stood,

All that it's watched wherever it stands.

It has watched humanity for generations.

Now I want you to visualize yourself even just touching the tree and feeling the hardiness of that tree,

Feeling its strength.

And I want you to learn from the tree that this strength comes even in the midst of the storms,

Even in the midst of lightning and high winds and hail,

Snowfall,

Whatever it is.

And the reason this tree has been able to withstand all those storms is because of its roots that are so deeply immersed in the ground,

Because of its roots that allow it to be grounded,

Allowing it to feel one with the earth and trusting.

It trusts and knows that it's going to be okay.

I want you to notice the exchange with the tree.

As the tree lives and breathes,

As the tree releases oxygen,

Takes in carbon dioxide,

The tree is offering us breath.

It's offering us the oxygen that it's releasing.

And we get to offer it the carbon dioxide that we breathe out.

And there is this beautiful exchange of life from one form of life to another.

The tree reminds us of community.

It reminds us of the generations that have come after it in the younger trees around it.

It reminds us of our families.

It reminds us of the roots that go far beyond just us into generations that have passed as well.

The tree reminds us that there have been droughts and there have been floods.

And there have been many things that it has experienced,

But it remains and it still stands.

And it's from a place again of trust,

Of knowing its place in creation.

And we notice that the tree has these beautiful big branches and boughs.

And those boughs merge and they go upward and outward.

It's roots deeply inward.

And the tree reminds us that we go toward our source and then we go out toward community.

And our beautiful boughs provide shade for others to sit under.

Our boughs may meet with other trees,

Allowing that beautiful canopy.

And that is much like us within our life.

Our roots are deep and they go inward.

And then we go up and outward.

And we change and we evolve with the seasons just like the tree.

And we realize the oneness that we get to share with this beautiful teacher in nature.

So I want you to imagine giving gratitude to the tree for its time,

For this small lesson of being one with creation and all that we can learn one from another as we share life.

And when you're ready,

As you do your breath work,

As you open your eyes again if they were closed,

Whenever you're ready you can come back to the present moment.

And I want you to remember as we began that it is about letting go and beginning again.

And the important moments are the present and then the next moment that becomes the present and what we do with that.

So I hope this resonated with you today.

I hope it was relaxing.

I hope that next time that you're out and about during this time of sheltering in place and quarantine that you allow creation to be your teacher as we exchange life one to another.

Grateful for each of you.

Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing your powerful story and voice. Beautiful practice. 🙏🏻

🌿✨💜✨🌿 Thank you. Xxx