Kiss the Earth

“Keep your tailbone down!” These words run through my head as I am walking through the wet grass towards the garden. I am on a mission to get kale, parsley and celery for my morning drink. I notice I feel taller, straighter when I walk this way. “Walk like a queen!” I laugh with delight still wondering how to do that. One of my socks is getting wet. There must be a hole in my shoe. “Kiss the earth with each step you take!”

I slow down. There are so many mushrooms in the grass. They must have sprung up overnight. I place my foot more carefully onto the ground this time. Instructions from Banafsheh, our beautiful Dance of Oneness workshop leader, are coming back into my consciousness. I slow down even more. My wet foot feels the wet earth beneath and I smile.

A sense of Well-Being is starting to fill my body as I walk lightly yet fully grounded to Mother Earth. I pick the kale dripping with raindrops, add the parsley and celery and stop for a moment to look around. The Sunflowers and Hollyhocks are bowing down from the night’s rain. There is no doubt anymore that autumn is here. I welcome it. I wonder in the welcoming if I am now entering the autumn of my life with hot flashes and many other menopausal symptoms creating the need to turn more inward and wonder also if I can open to the different kind of beauty that this season brings.

I walk slowly out of the garden. The click of the garden gate breaks through my reverie. As I take one step at a time with my hands full of wet greens, I feel the energy of the earth. “Imagine an invisible thread that goes from your crown to the sky pulling you up” I hear Banafsheh’s deep feminine voice inside my head. Feeling myself being pulled upwards I am walking even taller, gently placing each foot on the earth with awareness where we touch and connect. My body, my temple, is becoming a bridge between Heaven and Earth. I notice an aliveness tingle inside of me. The fresh morning air awakens my senses even further.

It is a week now since the workshop ended, since all fifteen women danced in Oneness at the Hollyhock Retreat Centre. Everyone of them is held so dearly in my heart, something I had not expected. I am not sure what I hoped for. All I know is something had called me to go and I am so glad I did not let the resistance and fear stop me from going. It was challenging and beautiful at the same time with the sweetest surprise: the coming home to the sacred Feminine. Again I had not expected that. The surprise and wonder is still very much alive in me. I put my hand on my womb and I remember…

Cracked Open

Something has shifted inside of me in this dance. My head is desperately trying to figure out what it is, wants to put a finger on something. I sense that this something cannot be defined or even named. It can only be opened up to, experienced in my whole being and leave me forever changed. I have taken home many precious gifts from this workshop, like the opening to sisterhood to a degree which I have not experienced before; my reconnection to the Divine Feminine and seeing and experiencing the embodiment of her in all her beauty; the gift of self-forgiveness, kindness and self-love and of course the beautiful gift of whirling and Rumi’s powerful words. I learned many things I didn’t know, all leading me home to the sacred feminine. The most precious gift however I cannot put into words. It is that something that dances in every cell of my body calling me home.

Photo by Dancing Wolf

 

Today, like every other day,

we wake up empty and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

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