Finding a nature ally

When I stumble out of bed half naked with bleary eyes and crazy hair… she is there.

When I rush around like a headless chicken, frantic to get lunches made, children dressed, breakfast, lunch and dinner sorted, emails, texts and phone calls returned, play-dates and meetings orgainsed…she is there.

When I lie exhausted on the couch staring at the trees, the stars, the sky, the rain or the hypnotic spell of a computer screen…she is there.

When I sleep…she is there.

When I lie awake trying to sleep…she is there.

When I walk up and down the hills of my neighbourhood…she is there.

When I am laughing and loving and playing with my partner and children…she is there.

When I am yelling and fighting and crying with my partner and children…she is there.

When I meditate and breathe deep into my body, heart and spirit…she is there. I can feel her inside me. Simply being.

She is a mountain and I am a speck in her landscape, yet her love still finds me and brings me peace.

Mountain Mother, Pachamama, I give thanks for your loving presence.

2016 was a tough year of endings and completion, it took many of us to the edge and it forced us to make some difficult decisions.
It was the year I decided to end my naturopathic work after 16 years of practice. A process, which will continue until the middle of this year. Now as we move into 2017 the energy feels lighter and more supportive, although many of us are faced with the uncertainty that comes with big changes there is a sense that it’s going to be ok. That somehow everything will work out as it should.

As I make this transition from practitioner to, something I don’t yet have a label for, I am reshaping my life in a way that feels more in harmony with my essential self. There have been multiple layers of this reshaping and I’m sure it will continue to unfold as the year evolves. One of the changes I have been working with involved the finding of my Gaia allies.

A Gaia ally is anything in nature that you can feel inside you that brings you a sense of peace, calm, love and guidance. It could be a tree, a rock, a river, a place, a plant or any other aspect of the natural world. The ally that I have been currently most inspired by is the mountain that sits in front of our house. I was inspired to work with this ally after reading a wonderful blog called http://themagicalroots.net by my beautiful colleague Ruth Sladek. In her blog she encourages readers to find special place in nature where we can drop in and have a regular experience of connection with the earth.

While I have several very special places in nature away from my home I was struggling to find my special place in my yard, even though it is a very big yard it is very steep and very exposed and there was no where that I felt I could ‘drop into’ this space of connection.

It was around this time that I was at a women’s circle where I saw an image of the South American Goddess Pachamama. Pachamama is also called the earth or time mother. In Inca mythology, Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting. She embodies the mountains and is often depicted as a mountain. When too much is taken from nature she can become angry and causes earthquakes. She is an ever-present and independent Goddess who has the creative power to sustain life on earth.

When I came home from the circle after seeing the picture of Pachamama I looked out at my mountain and there she was. I felt her almost as if she was waving at me. Smiling that I had finally recognized her. Since then she has been with me sharing her gentle, loving presence on a daily basis. She is my rock (literally) and anchors me into a space in my body that is powerful, feminine and timeless. It is a grounding that I am very much in need of as I try to extricate my self-awareness from a very overactive mind and a body addicted to stress hormones.

She constantly brings me home to myself, when I am inpatient, she shows me patience, when I am scattered, she shows me grounding, when I want what is not there, she shows me gratitude for what is there. I feel so blessed by her motherly love and grateful for her teaching.

I encourage you to find a nature ally around your house that you can work with in whichever way feels most relevant and most natural for you.

How to work with your nature ally

Here are some suggestions of ways you can work with a nature ally. Of course it’s ideal if you open yourself to your own guidance and intuition on what to do but sometimes, particularly when we are very stressed or unhappy, it can be hard to access those parts of our self.

If that is the case trying a few techniques can help shift our energy and awareness and give us access to the subtle energies in both our internal world and the natural world around us.

• First choose your nature ally or let it choose you. It may not be obvious straight away so be patient if you need days or weeks to find it. You will know when you find it because you will feel it inside you, hear it speak to you either with your ears or inside your head, or see it in a particular way that gives it a form you had not seen before. It may appear in a person like way or take some other form.

• Once you have an ally you may find communication occurs spontaneously but if not you can try the following process.

• Start by becoming aware that nature breaths in what we breath out, either literally through the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide or energetically. So as you breath out give your breath, as a gift, from you to nature, and as your breath in receive, your breath, as a gift, from nature to you. Spend 5-10 minutes in this loving exchange of breath.

• Once you have done this if you are not already in a loving state create the feeling of either love or gratitude in your heart. If you are not feeling good you may need to kick start this process by thinking of someone or something you love very much. Once you can feel the love or gratitude in your heart turn you attention to your ally and feel the love you have for nature in general and for your ally in particular. Once you can feel this love strongly, condense it into a ball of light (you can give it a colour if one comes to you) and send the ball of loving light to your ally. Then just wait for your ally to send it back. They always will. And when you can feel the love return to you, open yourself completely to its loving presence.

• When you can feel the loving presence of your ally you can then go into dialogue and ask it questions. The answers may be in thoughts, words, images or just a sense of knowing. The more of often you communicate, the clearer your communication will become.

 

In this way you can build a relationship with nature that is as alive and vital as the relationship you have with any of your human friends.