self care

GCW’s Tips for Life

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Here are several humble and easy tips from GCW based on her tree wisdom and observations of humans during her long life.

Tip #1: Spend time in nature every day to renew your relationship with with the web of life. In nature, you can release human caused worries, tensions, anxieties and find the peace and calm at your center.

Here you can walk and move your body freely. You can swing your arms, you can run, you can sing to your heart’s content. You can catch a snowflake on your tongue. You can climb or lean against a friendly tree. You can sit on a rock and soak in the sun, observing the life surrounding you and the beating heart within you.

Everything you experience in nature can be seen as a mirror of your inner self and you can learn from this; the dark forests, rolling prairies, deeply rooted grasses, feathered creatures of the air and treetops, grazing animals, fur bearers, scampering tree dwellers, the moods of weather and sky, the quality of light, industrious insects, magnificent spreading trees, tangled undergrowth, flowing streams, silver ponds, changing seasons…

Nature places no demands on you, makes no judgments about you, has no agenda for you to follow. Here you can be yourself. Here you can reconnect with the carefree and happy child within you.

Grandmother Cottonwood, winter

Tip #2: Hug a tree now and then. If you are tuned into your body in a sensitive way, you will notice a change in your energy as you hug a tree. You might also notice the energy of the tree. It may feel loving, welcoming, vital, peaceful, calm, patient. As you hug one of our representatives, you connect to the grounded earthy energy of the tree, and that will energize you!

Tip #3: Root to the Earth. You’re in a body and thus you belong here. You are meant to live fully in your body, not spending the majority of your time in your mind. If you do, eventually you will crash like a weak rooted tree in a high wind. To root yourself, visualize sending your energetic roots deep into the earth so you are anchored to the soil and bedrock. Now you can pull Earth energy into your body through your roots and know that you belong here.

Tip #4: Reach to the Light. Take up your allotted space in the canopy, so to speak. Soak in life giving energy that is your birthright and grow toward the sunlight. A tree will never turn away from the light, but grow always toward it, reaching and reaching and soaking in as much as possible every day of the growing season.

Grandmother Cottonwood

If you are alive and reading this, you are in your growing season. Make the most of it! Claim the light that is yours without apology.

If others are overshadowing you, find safe ways to find the light that is yours. You might start small and build on your successes over time.

When you are rooted and reaching to the light, when you spend time in nature, when you hug a tree now and then, you fully alive in body, mind and spirit. You are free! You are participating in full spectrum of human possibilities from the earthy to the sublime.

In this way, you connect and know your oneness with the web of life.

Come home

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When you feel distraught, take a moment, bring your awareness to your heart and breathe. Let your breath soothe you.

When you feel unsettled, ground yourself by walking barefoot on the Earth, or hugging a tree and come home to nature. Let the sights and sounds, the smells of nature calm you.

When you feel ungrounded, come home to your roots. Plug yourself into Earth energy by hugging a tree or imagining your energetic roots sinking deeply into the Earth.

When you feel exhausted, rest awhile and come home to your inner spirit, the part of you that never tires, that lasts forever, that will never lead you wrong.

When you are worried or anxious, come home to this present moment of your life. Release regrets for the past and worries for the future for several beats of your heart and feel the peace as you breathe in and out.

Come home to your heart and body, to the present moment. In this way, you will live a true and authentic life.

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.

More advice from a tree

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Dear ones, send your roots deep and spread your branches wide. As a living being on this planet it is your birthright to take up your share of sunlight water and nutrients. No more, no less.

Hackberry tree

When you sacrifice the water, nutrients, resources, space, and sunlight that you require to thrive in order to help a weaker being, you only weaken and diminish yourself.

When you sacrifice your own well-being to try and help other healthy adults you are keeping yourself small and stunted. Your health and well being suffer, you have trouble accessing your inner power and your future suffers.

You will never see a tree leaning away from the light!

Sometimes they must lean away from the shade of larger trees, to find their own light. When the larger tree falls, the smaller can shoot up and take its place in the canopy. This is the way of trees.

Of course when you have small children or you are caring for someone who is ill, you will do what you can for them and help them. Yet, even then, you must maintain and take care of your own energy, take some time for yourself, breathe deeply, eat healthfully, get enough sleep and exercise. No one will do it for you!

Do not give up your own precious path, your well made plans, your true heartfelt work, your beloved dreams to try and help those who live in the shadows. You will both be weakened. Once abandoned, your creative and spirit guided life may fade from your consciousness and be forgotten.

To help others in healthy ways that honor your needs, you can show and reflect to them their own inner power, their own strength their own capabilities, their own capacity to plug into the light.

Grandmother Cottonwood

That is what balanced healthy loving is. Letting others find their way according to their purpose here on planet Earth.

My purpose as a tree: Root deeply and reach to the light.

Holiday Traditions

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Have you bitten off more than you can chew? Over committed to others, under committed to yourself? Are you running on empty?

Must you uphold tired old traditions that suck you dry, exhaust and deplete you?

Have you fallen into the “we’ve always done it this way” trap, or the “so and so expects it” trap? The guilt trap?

Do your expectations for your holiday celebrations match the reality of your needs, energy, desires and wishes?

Male cardinal in winter

Be honest with yourself and kind to yourself as you create fresh new holiday plans and loving new traditions that honor your deepest needs as an autonomous human being and a unique individual.

Do it your way!

This life you are living is yours to shape. You are the potter, life is your clay.

You can free yourself from stale and unhealthy patterns that have been built up over years of others living on autopilot.

Keep what you love, discard the rest.

Within whatever confines you find yourself this holiday season, be creative, be true to yourself.

You can celebrate the holidays in ways that honor and respect your deepest self.

Can you locate your spirit?

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Your spirit may seem invisible to you, like the quiet operating system behind the more colorful and dramatic scenes of your physical life.

Seek and find your spirit is under all the clutter of your mind, waiting patiently for your full attention. Know that your spirit is who you really are at your core, who you have always been.

Can you tap into the timeless wisdom at your center that lies beneath all the worry, doubt and fear?

Can you swim in the ocean of light that is your true home? It lies beneath the clouds of heavy energy and stuck feelings that have built up in your energy fields over the years.

You can do this. Even in the eye of the storm in your life you can take time for yourself, breathe deeply and visit that peaceful place at your center that knows no fear, that is wise and loving, that place that is timeless, your true home.

Here you will renew and energize yourself and reweave your scattered energy to bring you back home to yourself once again.

Are you a caretaker?

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Do you deplete yourself in an effort to help others? Do you give your energy and power away to those who appear helpless and powerless? Are you a born caretaker?

Dear ones, your power energy and life force are the most precious treasures you’ve been given in this life! Without them you will wither away and lose vitality and joy. They are yours and yours alone and are not transferable!

Male cardinal in early spring

Have you noticed that those you’ve sacrificed for, given your power to don’t even realize or notice or acknowledge the great gifts you are offering them? They can’t figure out what to do with your gifts? It is as if your gifts are dust.

The only solution is to keep and maintain your own light and power and energy. If the person in your life is open you might help them find and access their own light, tap into their own power.

If they are not aware of this dimension of life and can’t or won’t heal, offer them a blessing and withdraw your shoring up of their weak foundations. For as you give more to them than you can afford, you weaken and deplete yourself.

Maybe they will blame you for their failures. Please do not accept the blame, for they alone must do the difficult work of healing. They alone must reach out for help in tapping into their own power, light and life force.

They must look reality square in the face and make changes in their lives. They may choose not to do this. If so, you must withdraw to a safe distance.

Safeguard your precious life force. Learn to put yourself first!

Take Care of Yourself!

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Dear ones, please take time during the busy season to rest and take care of yourself.

 In this season, there is so much human busyness – rushing, doing, trying to beat the clock, meet the deadline, make the holiday celebration perfect, trying to please one and all, beat the crowds, put on a magnificent feast.

Red door and evergreen wreath

You run yourself ragged and you wear yourself down! You override your body’s natural rhythms and needs, pushing yourself over the limit of endurance. Another word for this is “stress”.

Can you pull back, breathe, regroup, rethink, and slow down? 

 Find your center.  Bring your awareness to your heart and breath. Tune into your innate wisdom. What is most important to you this year as you celebrate your holiday?  What can you let go of?

For your health and sanity, let go of the elaborate expectations and preparations that you do not enjoy! Let go of extra events and “must-dos” you have to squeeze into your busy schedule. If others expect things you do not want to deliver, let them do the work, take the time, make the effort!

What activities will satisfy your soul and connect you with love to family and friends without overwhelm?

 Do those things! They can be so simple and easy!  Play a board game, sing songs, read a book together. Go for a walk, have a heart to heart conversation.

 Remember the real heart of the season, gathering with those you love and enjoying each other, greeting the sun, creating light, love and warmth together.

Let yourself be the peace you wish for!

Take care of yourself!

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I mean, really! Give yourself exactly what you need, what makes your soul sing and your heart soar! Don’t wait for others to do this for you, for that will never happen!

I say that giving to yourself is vital to your health and the health of this planet and the web of all that is.

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Tiny bird nest

Listen to yourself, listen to your body, become aware of what your body is communicating to you. Give it love and attention, loving touch, kind regard, acceptance.

Give yourself compassion, understanding, kindness, time and space to breathe, time to be.

Give yourself soothing when you need it, true friends; surround yourself with beauty, the colors your heart desires, time in nature, the music that moves you, a comfortable and peaceful home, good nourishing food.

Give yourself a healthy fit body, lifelong learning and growth, new exciting ideas, stimulating challenges to solve.

Give yourself deep rich soil, earth energy, sunlight, moonlight, starlight, strong deep roots, a magnificent crown of sweet green leaves, glimmering in the breeze.

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Grandmother Cottonwood in summer

Allow yourself to know your strong unbreakable connection to source.

Please know that you do not need to spend a penny  or go into debt to take care of yourself.  Begin at your center to give yourself the love and kind regard of which you are worthy. 

Allow and grant yourself what you need to be happy, healthy, to be a shimmering light in the web of all creation.  No matter what your history, you can move toward the light by caring for yourself, knowing you belong, knowing you deserve to thrive!