imagination

Ground with your favorite tree

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Dear reader, this post is from the archives of AskGCW.

Yes, I repeat myself once again with rooting and grounding theme. I do this because so many humans walk this earth with their awareness and their spirits partially outside of their bodies.

The energy of ungrounded humans feels as though it floats in space without an anchor or home. This causes many to feel anxious and unmoored. Ungrounded people are disconnected from a vital source of life-giving energy.

Making sure you are grounded in times of trial and uncertainty, when you feel spacey anxious or disconnected.

Here is one simple way to anchor yourself with my friends and cousins the trees. Which tree are you drawn to? Oak, sycamore, sweet gum, hackberry, cedar palmetto, beech, elm, walnut, fir, hickory, maple, ash, cherry, apple, spruce, poplar, aspen, magnolia, pine, cottonwood, mesquite, …?

Grandmother Cottonwood

Choose your favorite tree. If needed, find a picture of a magnificent tree to help your imagination see the details.

Now envision for a few moments that you too are a magnificent tree. Bear with me, you don’t have to tell anyone else about this…

Now imagine that you have roots reaching deeply into the soil, gripping the earth. Your roots range in size from mighty ones the size of main branches, tapering down to the tiny tenacious hair like roots that draw in nourishment directly from the soil.

Strong roots

With your imagination see and feel your roots reaching deeper into the soil and subsoil, through the bedrock and mantle of the Earth to the molten core. (Anything is possible in your imagination)

Now as you breathe in, pull in the anchoring Earth energy up into your feet, legs and lower torso to fill the cells of your physical being and help bring your awareness into your body – where you are meant to live.

Now you are plugged into the frequency of the planet.

Breathe the Earth energy in through your roots and let it travel upward through your trunk and branches through the tips into your leaves. Do this breathing several times as you imagine the energy filling your from the center of the Earth up.

Interwoven branches and nest

Feel yourself relax and become one with our planet. Allow the Earth energy to soak into every cell of your body.

Let the trees show you anchoring. This simple practice can help calm you. No equipment or expensive accessories are needed, no experience or skill required.

All you need to tap into Earth energy are your heart, imagination and intention.

Take a Memory Tour

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Dear ones, are you confined, quarantined right now? Only your body is required to be at home.

Use your senses to take a tour of your favorite places in your imagination. In this way, you can take a virtual visit to your family members, remember the loved places you knew as a child, to go back in time, or visit the future.

In your mind’s eye find yourself at the place of your choosing. See the details as you approach your Grandparents’ home once more, or that small lake cottage, the town you grew up in… your childhood friends in their homes… the life you want to live when the pandemic has died down…

Here we’ve chosen a tour of Betty’s Grandpa and Grandma’s farm to get you started.

Now I approach my Grandparents’ house from so long ago, letting the details emerge… The flower boxes, colorful and spicy scented petunias, the deeply colored coleus, asphalt siding meant to look like bricks, large trees shading lush uncut grass, wildflowers along the dusty gravel road, old red barn and outbuildings with white trim… the metal pump with the cold smooth handle…

Now I call up and feel once again the texture of the gravel lane under my feet, the worn paint and sharp snap of the screen door as it closes, the heat and glow and wood-burning smell of the pot belly stove, the beloved old dog with her doggy scent and thick fur greeting you with smiles, her wet doggy kisses… Grandma’s bottle green tightly woven upholstery in the living room,

The heavenly scent and taste of thick milk gravy on beef, the sweet-tart and delicious raspberry pie, steaming from the oven, the canned peaches floating in their cream colored bowls with lavender and blue pine cone decoration…Fire crackling in the stove, the voices of those loved ones now gone, Grandpa’s aftershave…

Coyotes yipping after dark beyond the hills, hens clucking, streams of milk hitting the bucket at milking time, the sweet smells of cow manure and fresh hay, the milk separator whirring, the cream can filling…

Cars crunching on gravel, dust flying up behind them, shared songs at dusk on the front porch, simple harmonica tunes, voices joining together in familiar tunes, wooden floors creaking at bedtime….

Taking a memory tour is another way for you to spend an hour or two during this stay at home time – You can call up those sensory details of seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, and smelling that help you remember the beautiful places the people and times of your life.

Find your own memories, take a turn around the places you loved, going slowly, letting the details emerge. Revisit your children, friends, or grandchildren if you can’t see them right now.

You can also tour your future and re-imagine what your life can be, what you want it to be when you are able to move freely once again.

A memory tour will help you remember the preciousness and beauty of life here on our beloved planet.

Become water – a shamanic journey

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Can you imagine with your heart and mind and all your senses, your body dissolving and becoming one with a stream of water? First, imagine yourself there in the stream, floating. Feel the silky water supporting your body as you float.

Now breathe and relax any tension in your head and face, your neck, shoulders, trunk, arms and hands, back, buttocks, legs, feet and toes.

Feel your physical reality gently dissolve and merge with the stream of water, allowing more and more space between your cells, letting any pain or anxiety drain away, releasing all worry, all fear, just letting yourself be. Don’t worry about breathing as water, it will come naturally.

Sunlight on shallow water

Can you imagine your cells gently becoming water droplets and moving easily with the flow of the current? Can you imagine yourself growing transparent? How does it feel, smell, look and sound like?

Nothing is more relaxed! You are suspended in the water, one with the water. You are the water!

There is nothing you have to do, nowhere to be, nothing to grasp, clutch, hold on to or resist. There is no need to hold yourself up, to think or worry or fight against. You float free, allowing the current to carry you.

Can you feel yourself flow easily around boulders, rushing where the stream bed is steep, falling over stone ledges, standing still in deep pools? Can you feel the warm sunlight striking the water and see it bending into the vibrant colors of the rainbow?

Now your stream merges with a larger river. Enjoy the beautiful landscape as you drift past; the trees, the wide river valley, as you flow smoothly, one with the life-giving water.

Now after many hundreds of miles, you enter a huge estuary, full of birds and wildlife of all descriptions, drawn to the life-giving waters. The river widens out and becomes salty as you enter the ocean surf and move out beyond the crashing waves into open water. Finally, you are home, where all water joins to become one. Here you can expand even more, suspended. One with all that is.

Enjoy the sensation of oneness with the water as long as you want to. Allow the water to clear and heal you. Allow it to sustain and support you. Let yourself be.

When you’re ready to call back your physical being and find your way back to solid earth, let your feet touch the floor, tap your cheekbones and chest, breathe.

Revisit this water journey whenever you want to relax and know your oneness with all that is.

What is real?

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Stop awhile under my cool umbrella of shimmering leaves. Let the buzzing cicada lull you to rest. Feel my strong loving energy envelop you with welcome. To feel this you must release your grip on the shiny thing in your hand. The thing you hunch over and stare at hour after hour.

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Walnut tree bark and leaves

What is real? The world contained in your mesmerizing little object, or the root and bark, leaf soil and seeds that make up my existence? Is it the shade shifting on the summer grass?

What is real?  Is it the breeze puffing its cooling breath across your body, the solid earth beneath your feel, supporting you and all you’ve done since before your birth; the moon and stars in the night sky? Is it the breath that rises and falls through your body like waves at the seashore?

What is real? The world inside your head or the world of your senses? What is real? The feelings and emotions that roll through you or the stuff of your imagination?

My dear ones, release your hold on the glowing screen from time to time and tune your senses to other frequencies of what you call reality. They will strike a deep chord within you, for you will remember once again the wonder of being a child. You will feel real again!