How Landscapes Affect Us
Insights in healing and integration and a poem and meditation for your weekend.
Energetic Landscapes
A few weeks ago a passing thought took me by the hand and led me down a path I have meandered down ever since. At the time, I was walking along the river Dart and noticed how inwardly churned up I felt as I plodded along side it. I was out of sync with it’s tumbling majestic beauty, not only that, but it’s rising energy felt to be pushing up, unbidden, the sticky sediment of emotional turmoil that I would rather have let lie (for the time being at least).
More often than not, living down here in the woods, my landscape of choice is up on the moors, I feel a strong yet gentle pull towards them. They’re different from the river, their great expansiveness feels calming and spacious to my heart and head, even with their barren rugged beauty which prickles with the thorns of yellow gorse if you get too close.
Noticing, and feeling curious about this contrast, I wondered out loud on the phone to my sister what she thought about the theory that different landscapes have different energies, and, depending on where we find ourselves in our own inner landscape, we might play with these different energies for healing and integration. When we’re feeling brave, head to the places that ruffle us, and then sit, and get curious, and be with, what comes up. In more tender moments, when we’re in need of a soothing balm, we can venture to the places that envelops us in an invisible embrace.
I’m curious about which landscapes you are drawn to at the moment? And which, even though you ‘know’ are beautiful in their own way, are you finding you want to avoid? And why might that be?
As a so called adventurer of inner and outer landscapes I had to pay this churney river another visit and find out what was there. So off I went, journal in hand and trepidation in my heart. Have you ever heard the saying that you often teach what you need most. This is the case for me when it comes to yoga and emotional wellbeing. I don’t practice and share because I find my emotions or yoga practice a breeze, on the contrary, I share because I’ve spent too many years of my life flung one way and then another by my reactions to my emotions. Although it can be a thrilling ride at times, it’s ultimately exhausting and unsustainable. I can’t think of a more wonderful way to live than to adventure, discover and support each other.
So there I was, perched on a mossy rock, waiting. As the waters rushed passed me I began to feel my emotional sludgy sediment stir again. I had to tell the part of me that wanted to pack it in and head home because “I’m quite fine as I am - thank you”, that living on top of layers of thick brown sludge, trying to stop our feet getting dirty all the time, made life much more difficult than it needed to be. That we were supported and safe here to visit those places we seldom went, for fear we might drown in our emotional river as it bubbled up around us.
… what is happening is that the clay of your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape. Water in a landscape is a fascinating thing as well. I often think that water is the tears of the earth’s joy and sadness. Every kind of water in a landscape has a different kind of tonality and a different kind of presence to it…”
- John O’Donohue
For a moment, that part of me relented. We stopped fighting, and realised that if we sat there, wide open, allowing the river of our feelings to wash over us, we might not need to fight to stay afloat. As the water tumbled underneath my feet, little rivulets of salty tears streamed down my cheeks, dropping one by one into the larger body of water below.
Keep an eye on your inbox weekend as I’m due to release my next four week online course all about the landscapes of our bodies, our emotions and our outer world.
In the meantime, you’ll find below a meditation on the theme of rivers which the current members of the Sunday Unwinding Club have found particularly useful.
A meditation taken from ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’ by Thich Nhat Hanh
Sit down in whatever position suits you best.
Breathe slowly and deeply, following each breath, becoming one with the breath. Then let go of everything. Imagine yourself as a pebble which has been thrown into a river.
The pebble sinks through the water effortlessly. Detached from everything, it falls by the shortest distance possible, finally reaching the bottom, the point of perfect rest.
You are like a pebble which has let itself fall into the river, letting go of everything. At the centre of your being is your breath.
Continue meditating on the pebble until your mind and body are at complete rest : a pebble resting on the sand.
Maintain this peace and joy for as long as you like whilst watching your breath. No thought about the past of future can pull you away from the present moment - simply watch it pass over you like a cloud.
