Oh great ocean, dissolve me. You large enough, tumultuous enough, to curl up around my thoughts.
So many thanks for all the beautiful birthday notes. It was a bright day of gratitude, kindness and songs.
Today I want to share more about my experience of depression, and another element of my constellation of wellness: spending time in vast spaces in nature. Here's my full list again, together making up a north star constellation leading my back to my true self.
- A Spiritual, Physical Practice with movement (like yoga, dance, aikido, tai chi)
- Time in Vast Spaces in Nature
- Somatic, Body-based Meditation and Drawing
- Loving Touch
- Prioritizing Outbreath: Rest and Sleep
- Creating Music/Singing for all is larger than language
- Group Truth Telling and Deep Listening
- Eating Real Food
In the last year I've realized that the ocean is a sort of tuning fork for my spirit, vast and tumultuous enough to believe and wrap around my confusion. It can absorb me, dissolve me, bring me to rest a bit more as a small speck of something much larger. I like walking along the shore and talking to it with my questions, my thank you's and my stuckness. That said, one of my friends shared he feels the opposite at the ocean, and much prefers trees and mountains to anchor his spirit when it is wobbly.
I like the idea of leaving stone and metal city scape to re-tune myself in my evolutionary home, even the ancient watery home of all my cells. And rather than falling back on the futile "trying to figure it out," I go asking all those ions somehow sort ME out.
And alot of the time, I leave lighter.