Recalibrating

Oh what a time this has been and Oh what a time this continues to be.  Our air here on Gabriola Island has just cleared from the gray smoke of catastrophic blazes wreaking havoc in California, Oregon and Washington and as I write this there is a warning to brace for a powerful storm.   It seems to me that our weather is another manifestation of the elements stirring within us and amongst us during this turbulent time.

Zachary, my amazing Familiar

Since leaving home when I was 15, I have never spent this much time in my own home -- not working, not traveling, not yet knowing what I will be doing with my remaining years.  Not tending to anything on my long To Do list that I always told myself I would knock off "if only I had the time."  I’ve spent hours lying on the floor in wonder. Listening.  Grieving.  Reading.  Dreaming.  Learning.  Moaning.  Marvelling. Watching movies on tv.  Listening to music.  Growing delicious, juicy, aromatic tomatoes on my balcony.  I’ve been wandering the woods observing and conversing with bugs, birds and trees.  Communing with the humming birds and deer that live around my house, blessed be.  I’ve been working at my computer a fraction of the time I used to when "normal" for me was to be so busy I barely had time to sleep.  Now I am content to devote my time to playing and cuddling with my adorable new kitten, the Familiar that came into my life at just the perfect time.

Zach, modelling serenity

I'm experiencing a delightfully mystical recalibration of my rhythms, my relationship with time, with my body, with the fullness of my being and all that is. I imagine I am not alone, that many of you are undergoing something similar.  Riding the pendulum as it swings between jolts of dark heaviness and helplessness into light fields of expansion, liberation and possibility.   Necessary preparation for those of us coexisting in this epoch to blossom into the fullness of our strength and grab hold of the mighty tasks we are here to tackle -- a paradigm shift from fear and greed to love and inclusion, from egocentric existence to ecocentric relationship with mother earth and all life that she nurtures.

This unprecedented window of opened time has offered me the privilege of devoting delicious hours to my passion for learning.  To name a few of my pursuits:  Vijnana Yoga, line dancing, Jungian studies with a focus on Jungian women, soul work, dream work and the psychology of fairy tales.  I am continuing to explore my interest in the use of entheogens for therapeutic purposes.  I’ve just entered my second year of shamanism studies through Ontogony, which integrates fascinating and enriching study in the areas of spiritual traditions, religion, martial arts, chi kung, meditation, shamanism, paranormal phenomena, psycho-therapeutic technique, and alternative healing.

I am emerging from several months of living with severe back and hip pain.  Cancer has been ruled out leaving me grateful to once again be out from under the ever-looming pall of potential metastasis.  Through various practitioners I discovered that I have compressed nerves, compressed vertebrae in my neck and lower back, and a torn hip ligament.  Certainly enough to explain pain!  What a divine gift to be supported by masterful local healers, including an amazing Vijnana yoga teacher who brilliantly integrates Melt, dance and tensegrity, a virtuoso physiotherapist who incorporates Feldenkrais and craniosacral therapy, a Bowen Therapy practitioner, a massage therapist, and a reflexologist each working their unique magic.  I’ve received some prolotherapy and have started a series of PRP injections, painful yet effective.  I'm going to a fantastic back clinic in Victoria.  Now I am mostly pain free, becoming stronger and more aligned by the day -- hooray!

There has been so much to learn about my psyche, my body, my entire cosmology.  I view my pain as a call to attention and my alignment issues as the beneficially extensive restructuring of my entire being.  In the personal dimension, I recognize that I have torqued and tied myself up in knots pushing and driving myself for so long that now I am unwinding and realigning.  Existentially I am, as I imagine many of you are, resonating with the crumbling, the raging, the grieving, the loving and the chaos of the crucial restructuring that is occurring on our planet.

I have been cocooning, gestating, ripening -- recalibrating my being.  Although my metamorphosis is still underway (maybe it always will be!) I am also enthused about coming out of my cocoon long enough to share with others.

My passion for the under-valued riches of conscious breathing has been freshly ignited by what I’ve been discovering…

The oracle of breath unfolds its secrets to those who know the keys.

A tidbit about breath that I find fascinating:

Years ago I attended a talk by David Suzuki.  He spoke of a thought experiment by Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapely related to the inert gas, argon, that makes up about 1 per cent of the air we breathe.  Because it is inert, it is breathed in and out without becoming part of our bodies or metabolically transforming.  Therefore, today, as we breathe in and out, we are breathing in thousands of the same argon atoms that were breathed by Ghandi, Joan of Arc, ancient lovers and poets and all other aerobic forms of life – birds, snakes, worms, trees and even aquatic life.  Apparently every breath you take will contain more than 400,000 argon atoms.  Each of us takes approximately 20, 000 to 23,000 breaths a day.  Multiply that by the number of days in a year by your age and . . .!

Suzuki referred beautifully to air as the matrix that joins all life together.  When we inhale we are breathing in our ancestors.  When those to whom we are the ancestors breathe, they will be taking in our atoms.

Quoting Suzuki,

“We are bound up inseparably with the past and the future by the spirit we share.  Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come.  Our breath is part of life’s breath, the ocean of air that envelopes Earth.  Unique in the solar system, air is both the creator and the creation of life itself.”