Learning how to decompose
Dear Ones,
Whew, i’m scooty. Indecisive. Scattered. Moving from one thing to another. Both hungry to be totally still and itchy to get moving. I start something, it feels dissatisfying, I start something else, I go back.
Do you feel this? This is the transition. The place where the ground is softening, but the seeds are waiting waiting waiting for the right duration of light to emerge. To emerge. Waiting.
Here in Maryland beside the river where I live, all the trees are still brown. Today the sky is grey. And yet, right now, if you took the time you would see the mosses are their brightest green. They take in this soft light, this misty day, the kindness of 40-50 degrees. When the days brighten, the new leaves of the undergrowth will cover them and the mosses will protect and provide for the soil. Such perfect design.
I think of this because I know I am a part of these cycles. I know my body knows these seasons. I know my agitation is a first stirring of what will come in just a week or two. A perfect clear, breezy spring day will arrive and my mind will clear and the projects will align and the work will be a channel running fast again. For now, I am part of the spring mists.
I am learning to lean into what is going on around me in the woods and in the water. It is indicative of what's going on inside of me. Our current 40 day sequence is aptly named Nearly Ready - that moment when you are awake, but not yet out of bed, the stretch and yawn and then the pause - nearly ready. The woods still grey but almost humming with what’s to come.
This morning sequence has built my stamina to stay in what I feel, to open the aperture of my capacity so I can feel more with less agitation. So I can feel more agitation with less reactivity. This is training ground for the action of the summer ahead. Let it start softly, personally. Let it slowly build my capacity for calm in the discomfort, in the direct seeing of my shortcomings or abilities, just learning to stay in a gesture, moving my arms and breath steadily for 3 minutes is enough to learn to expand rather than contract - this is the message of Nearly Ready. Take my time. And trust any agitation in the days ahead. Know I are a being of Nature. And how good that is. Everything everything everything changes. And so too will this season.
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For this time of change, of decomposition, I highly suggest this podcast. For the Wild talks with Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life, which is an incredibly poetic and revelatory exploration of the world of mycelium and rhizomes, the networks of fungi that circulate intelligence and nutrients into nearly every living thing. These are the forces of this moment in our year, the space between the death and void of winter and the fertile return of light and life.
Fungi are the place that stitches death into life and makes life out of death.
Don’t roll your eyes at a podcast about fungi, my loves! This is the piece i’ve been missing. This is the ongoing force and wonder that stitches our whole world together. Everything you ate today was made possible through the processes of fungi. All the plantlife we see around us, love around us, relies on the mycelia. They are the rumination after a long talk when you finally understand a friend in a new way. They are the integration after a loss or a separation or a hurt begins to feel bearable. They are the digestion after a big meal. They are the network between us that took these words from my laptop to a server to other servers to others and out to you. This mycelial process is everywhere and deserves such wonder and respect.
“Decomposition is a rearrangement of possibility; it is a restructuring or transformation vs a destruction. Decomposition can include ideologies, laws, societal structures, physical structures. It can rearrange our thinking to consider what are the conditions we can create to hasten decomposition on its way? What are the nutrients and healthy by-products, how could we be nourished by the transformation of unhelpful constructs?
We aren’t in control of the organisms as they ferment and change one thing into another, they will respond in the ways they choose, especially when working with wild cultures and microbes. There is a dance where some things are in our control and some aren’t. Our opportunity is to be in community with the fungi. What if I give them control? What lures can I offer to attract an outcome? How can I tempt an outcome vs. forcing or pushing or dominating something which stems from our own assumption or expectation?”
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CLASSES
1/ Come connect to the seasons. Join the next 40 days starting March 20 - April 29, live MWF 8-9am. Details here.
If you are curious, but unsure, email me and I will send you a recent recording to try for yourself.
2/ I will teach live Sunday March 17 - a free class at the R House Garage 10:00-11:30, all levels. Mostly standing warm-up, asana, a standing kriya, and Yoga Nidra. A journey of the heart. Register here. If you plan to come, BRING A BLANKET xx
3/ My full in-person schedule starts April 8 at TRIBE. Details and schedule are on my homepage.
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READING
This winter has been unexpectedly rich in great reading for me. Such a perfect time to curl up and go in, into ideas, into recipes, into stories. Such winter travels are my favorite.
Check out my bookshelf Best of 2024 (so far) on Bookshop. It is a mix of fiction and non. Resources and revelations. The fiction in particular has been very moving, and almost more informative than the non-fiction, especially in the retelling of women’s stories. As I read new stories, my sense of my self as Woman changes, my sense of place in myself is enriched and explored. Tell me how they strike you.