i love the earth.
like a lot. and i’ve been loving the earth for quite a bit, really, my whole life, though i couldn’t always have articulated it, or allowed myself to fully feel it. i have ‘gaia’ tattooed across my belly, for pete’s sake. as a kid, i spent summers visiting a family cabin in wisconsin, on a chain of lakes surrounded by pine forest. as deep and disconcerting as much of what came up through my childhood and adolescence could be, in that, the darkest, wildest, most natural place i was familiar with, i still knew enough to recognize it as a place of profound love and safety and peace.
i was living in berkeley for a spell when i got that belly tat (by a wonderfully gifted pagan priestess and artist). she has a very fine, delicate hand, and it really didn’t hurt near as much as a lot of my other torso ink, but it felt significant, like i was branding myself with one of the only ideas i could really pledge to with my whole heart, that of loving, serving, tending the earth with my life. as i was walking to the subway after, one of the mountains that loom over the bay opened and swallowed me up — for a flash it was in me, and i was it, it and me and everything else that lived and existed incarnate in that region were thrumming to the same heart beat, even if the human expression of that was paced wildly different than the millennially wise rock.
it was a beautiful moment that will stay with me for my life, but here’s the thing — at the time, i had no fucking idea what to do with it. i took some strange comfort from it, like i had done something significant, i was really serving gaia in some way and she was taking notice and the tattoo was a true expression of that, but it also spun me up into my head and my ego as much as it impacted my embodiment.
thing is, what was really missing from my toolkit at that time wasn’t something more complex, or intense, or traditional, etc, it was just the basic choice to ground my energy in my body, my embodiment, and connect that to the earth. and do that with enough regularity that it became an energetic habit, rather than something i only reached for in moments of fatigue or duress. and opened me to an inner experience beyond just my sense of self in the moment, an energetic landscape that i can inhabit where my heart center isn’t just an idea or a metaphor or a bundle of associations about the heart chakra or whatever that i read in a book, but a place i can be, and resource and let evolve in its own right. my heart center now looks a whole lot like that lake where i spent summers growing up. it is just as deep, wild, often disconcerting, but also a profound source of solace and peace. your heart won’t necessarily look like mine after years (or days) of practice, it will be yours, with its own innate ecosystem, brilliance and wildness.
that’s all i wanted to share tonight. thrive — grounding, grieving and dreaming with the earth is next sunday 11/19, 12-3p cst. more info here in this post. we’re gonna do some pretty basic but mightily important shit together and if you can’t join us live but still feel the need go ahead and sign up and you’ll get the recording to practice from for life, or as long as you actually need it, because usually a few rounds with a teacher’s voice and then you can start to guide yourself through it, and start to make it your own, pour it into and let it mold to your life as much as it begins to also shape it in turn by scaffolding your day-to-day with holding, support and that steady, measured quality of change that is most visibly embodied on this planet by the actual earth and all that she / they / it dreams up.
so, yeah, i hope you’ll join us! true practice can be kind of boring (cuz isn’t life fucking bananas enough at this or any moment?!) but it gives us all the more juice for the actual fun (or terrifying) stuff.
any questions, feel free to reach out.
much love to you and your earth,
alexis