6 minute read
A Final Thought
community A Final Thought…
Intuitive breathwork
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by SUSIE SMITH
Nature gives us winter as a teaching season and we need to embrace and embody these natural cyclical rhythms, because nothing can live in a perpetual summer.
Flowers cannot bloom all year round, animals cannot go without their hibernation and our rivers cannot always be fast flowing and full. What an exhausting feat it would be to push on and on without rest. Nature would burn out and all of nature knows this except us silly humans - nature's very own Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because we want it ALL, all of the time, every damn day. Happily normalising it - but we sure as hell can’t sustain it.
We’ve been cleverly hoodwinked into thinking we do not need these cyclical rhythms?! PAH we are far too wise and important for such inconveniences, yet we can find ourselves so very often feeling stuck, disjointed, exhausted - and why? Because we work hard to avoid loss or release, holding on to things/people/situations in fear and panic of what would fill its place, overthinking, stressing about what happens if we do let go, but let go of what? In truth, control of course.
Freefalling isn’t something we are taught or are overly comfortable with in this human existence, but Nature knows, there’s spectacular beauty in the shedding and releasing of autumn, leaves proudly explode in vibrant colour as they die off in a beautiful celebration of what’s to come; it does not fight loss, it freely lets go.
You don’t see a 200-year-old oak tree tremble and complain it might need those leaves next year clinging onto as many as it can just in case. No, the wise old tree trusts the process! No doubt, it just knows, the oak tree doesn’t overthink it. It is nature and so are we.
To follow these cycles on an internal and external level is how we were born to live, trusting the cycles of life the same way we trust the breath, our own internal cyclical rhythm never doubting the inhale or questioning if the exhale follows. We let this natural rhythm happen breathing in and out, no thinking, no doubting, just an automatic knowing one breath follows another.
We allow our breath to breathe us, bringing us health and aliveness. Matching exactly the cyclical rhythms of nature’s wisdom because we ARE nature. Yet when was the last time you thought about the way you breathe? Do you ever give yourself permission to stop, unwind, close your eyes and just breathe?
Let the busyness go, shed the leaves just like the oak tree allowing your next season to begin, breathing in stillness just like nature in winter. It's OK to let it all go, it's OK to stop, there's no growth without release, you cannot inhale without an exhale. There is no spring without winter. Learn from nature as it waits to bloom again, silent, exposed, vulnerable and resilient. During winter nature weakens and yet strengthens itself simultaneously, ready for its next triumphant transformation.
To evolve and grow fully and deeply into our best selves, to get unstuck and rejuvenated we cannot fear the dark dear ones, embrace the winter, let go of what holds you back, trust the cycles and breathe deep.
This is not a season to avoid, internally or externally. It is a necessary rhythm just like the breath, within these natural cycles if you are wise enough you will be still, and it’s there you find a place to heal.
ISSUE 49 | MARCH 2023 FREE
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