Take a nice couple of deep breaths in your own rhythm place.
Adjust your posture to be comfortable.
As you do so,
Ground yourself in your body.
Feet on the ground,
Backside in the chair.
Just breathe.
Again,
Deeply.
Come with me today on our journey to a leaf in the wind.
I want you to imagine that you're a leaf on a tree,
About ready to let go,
To fall into the forever,
Into the unknown.
There's lots of chatter amongst your fellow leaves about what happens when you fall off the tree,
But nobody really knows.
And you're nervous in anticipation because you can feel it coming and you feel yourself moving a little more in your connection to the tree,
But you're a little bit scared,
Too,
Like,
Where am I going?
What's going to happen?
Lots of rumors about it,
Opinions about it,
Schools of thought amongst the leaves about it,
But really nobody knows.
So just when you're feeling the most sort of excited,
Anticipated nervousness,
Clunk,
You fall off the tree,
Off your branch.
At first you're like,
Whoa,
Whoa,
Whoa,
What's happening here,
Because you're really not that familiar with the concept of gravity.
And for yourself being pulled down,
I guess it is,
To that thing called the ground down there.
You were quite high up in the tree and so you don't know much about the ground either.
And just as you're drifting down towards the ground,
A new sensation comes and lifts you up and turns you over a couple of times.
And you're like,
Hmm,
What is this?
Don't be talking to me about this,
What's going on?
And of course,
Whether you know the word or not,
You're being lifted by the wind.
And the wind is gentle but uplifting,
Disgusting,
You're up and for a while you're just kind of flitting around between the tree and the ground.
But then the wind gusts even more and kind of pushes you over to the side and now you're not actually anywhere near the tree,
Your home tree,
Or the ground near it,
Or your fellow leaves.
And now you're out in something might be called the open air.
And now the wind picks you up and lifts you even higher,
Higher than you've ever been before,
Higher than the tree you were born on and higher than all the other trees,
You're right up above a whole bunch of trees.
And you're turning over and around and it's fun,
It's joyous that you can feel it in your body,
The body of your leaf,
You can enjoy it actually.
You've gone from kind of nervous anticipation to this is kind of fun.
And the wind is lifting you and turning you and twisting you but it's all joyous.
You're spinning around and spinning around,
Going up and down in completely unpredictable ways.
Up a little bit here,
Over there,
Cross over there,
Drawing pictures in the sky.
And then you start drifting down again,
This new thing called gravity.
But then just before you hit what you think is the ground,
Another gust picks you up and takes you even further,
Further up and further away.
And now you're heading out and in the distance are some mountains,
Which you've never noticed before.
And the wind is taking you there,
Up,
Up,
Up,
Into the thermal updrafts.
And now there are birds flying around you.
They're looking at you curiously and wondering whether you're food or not.
But you're flitting through the air,
Picking up speed,
Heading into an updraft by the mountains and now the mountains are getting closer and the wind is getting stronger.
And there's a body of water nearby.
That adds to the weather and to the factors that are affecting you.
Now you're spinning quite a bit in the air and turning around and going up and down and losing orientation a bit,
But finally you see you're coming near the mountains.
And the wind carries you up higher than you ever imagined.
And you're loving it.
The wind is holding you in its embrace.
While it's moving you around,
Somehow it's also holding you gently.
And then you start drifting down again,
Down again towards the mountains.
And you see that there are trees on the lower part of the mountain,
Trees you've never known before,
Or different species.
And you're drifting and drifting and drifting.
You notice there's some other leaves that have been blown by the same strong wind and they're drifting too.
You're drifting slowly from a great height down and down and down.
And you wonder where you're going.
What's down there?
Something people call the ground,
But what is the ground?
As you get a little closer,
You're above a clearing,
And there you can see on the ground a whole bunch of other leaves from a whole bunch of other trees,
Your species and others.
And they're all just kind of like lying around.
Some of them are kind of melted away.
Some of them are hardly there,
Just outlines.
And you wonder,
Oh,
Where's the wind taking me now?
And slowly,
Gently rocking,
The wind drifts you down to set on the ground to become eventually new life in another tree with another leaf.
And as your consciousness fades away,
As you melt into the earth itself,
You thank the wind for this wonderful last journey.
And you remember you've done it before,
And you realize you'll do it again one day.
