Harvest
Be Yoga @ Modales Winery | October 2022
Our Musings on the Harvest
Bring your thoughts to your mind’s eye. there’s a light that starts to grow from that spot, deep in the middle of your forehead and it widens, and deepens, then starts to flow… over your cheekbones, jawline, down your neck, and through your shoulders, the warm light travels past your elbows and wrists, and into your fingertips and maybe it makes them twitch or wiggle a little, to start to bring your body back to this space.
Now the energy turns and moves back up your arms to your shoulders and rushes over your clavicle and down your chest and over your rib bones, it fills your heartspace. Take a breath in and let it go.
It continues to flood your hips and moves down your thighs and over your knees.
Through your calves and into your ankles and seeps into the tips of your toes. Start to flex and wiggle your toes and sense your body in this space.
When you’re ready, turn on to your favorite side and take a cleansing breath in…and let it out. Place the palm of your top arm on the ground in front of you, let it support you as you come to an easy seated position.
Sukhasana. Palms laid gently on your knees, facing up or down, whatever feels best to you. Notice your gentle breath, but make it full for a couple of rounds. Kim talked to us about the dormant seed that lies in the deepest, truest parts of ourselves. Right now, we have the space, and the time, to find that part of us and give it a voice.
Maybe you have a journal and a pen next to you. There is no right or wrong for this meditation. If you find there’s something you want to write, or that’s a tool that helps you process and think, then write. If it’s meaningful for you to stay in your thoughts, then do that. Do any combination of the two at any time. There’s no wrong way here.
I invite you to stay in your easy seated shape, named Sukhasana in Sanskrit. If it’s safe for you to close your eyes, keep them closed, if you’d rather, gaze at one spot, maybe on your mat, or a blade of grass to try to limit the distractions around you you can do that. We’re turning inward.
Before our lives can produce a nourishing HARVEST, we have to sow the seeds.
What we plant in our lives, and in the world, determines what we will harvest, right? We’ve known that since we were tiny.
Fun fact about seeds, they can be planted in any direction and will find their way to the surface as they emerge. Find a picture in your mind of what that process could look like.
Seeds can sense gravity. So it doesn’t matter how much they tumbled or how they fell into the Earth before they grew. If they’re alive, they can become what they were intended to be what they want to be. Seeds are incredible, dormant, miniature maps of a complete masterpiece. Given the right conditions, they grow and thrive into their beautiful design.
What seeds lie dormant within you? What’s been tumbling around in the deepest parts of you?
Maybe it’s a seed quick to germinate like the radish, one that will produce a harvest in two months time. This time of year…We often have the best intentions to enter into the busyness of the holiday season grounded and set up to navigate the way we envision our best and brightest selves to do, with all the right boundaries and self-control in tact…but how easy is it to get swept up, end up knocked over and tumbling in the wave sort of gasping for a breath and ground beneath our feet.
What conditions would we need to provide for the short-germinating seed of our best and brightest self to produce a harvest this holiday season? Breathe. Find length in your spine, softness in your cheekbones…Envision yourself there.
In contrast…
The largest flower in the world, the Amorphophallus Titanuim, blooms only after 40 years of the right conditions. Maybe there is a seed like that within you. What would that seed, that dream be? What does it look like? What shape do you take to nurture it… into growing?
The corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum)
Are there things to let go of? Are there things to forgive within yourself?
Something came across my earballs recently about thanking the parts of us that we don’t like. Habits that make us cringe.
For instance, if you are someone who has always kept the peace for the people around you and you smooth things over to avoid tension or drama… you might recognize that that developed in you because a younger you, deeply desired stability, and it was a measure of protection taken to create just that when it wasn’t always there for you. Maybe you came to your own rescue by developing ways of being that protected. As you come to understand that about yourself, you can acknowledge that part of you, thank her for her protection all those years, and invite her to rest. What if we looked back with gratitude and understanding for the earlier versions of us instead of shame.
And then look at the space that creates!
What seed has been waiting for the time to get big, grow, explore what it looks like outside of its seed coat or shell, and take root within you?
