Exercise: Tree Breathing
- Find a quiet place outdoors where you can sit on the roots of a large tree, and lean up against it. Bring an offering of fresh water.
- Trees are the priests of the plant realms: Ask the tree to help you find balance and a peaceful mind capable of clear thinking.
- As you deepen into a meditative state using your awen chant in the previous exercise, visualize yourself merged with the tree, with roots extending from the base of your spine into the earth, and branches that extend from the top of your head into the heavens.
- As you exhale, visualize your roots pushing deeper into the earth. Follow them as they find the bed rock and water table. For three deep breaths, As you inhale, draw up the earth energies as green light through your roots into your physical body. Exhale all physical dis-ease.
- For three deep breaths, inhale water energies as blue light into your heart and emotional body. Exhale all emotional dis-ease, allow any burdens or wounds to be healed, and flush away all baneful fears.
- Now shift your focus to flow up through your trunk, finding your branches. Follow your branches as they flow with the airy wind and your leaves absorb the fiery sunshine.
- For three long breaths, as you inhale, draw down the air energies like carbon dioxide as yellow light into your mind and mental body, and exhale all baneful thoughts like oxygen. Repeat your affirmations from the previous exercise.
- For three long breaths, as you inhale, draw down the fire energies as red light, like sunshine into your leaves, and pull in into your guts, and the Body of your Free Will. Exhale all blockades to your freedom, empowerment–see your bonds burning away in those fires, and creating from that heat the energy you need to accomplish your goals. I see it blowing away like smoke.
- Now breath normally, allowing a circuit to form throughout your tree: inhale drawing down the yellow and red through your branches. Exhale, drawing up blue and green from your roots. Give to the tree the toxic thoughts and programs you need to release, and it can recycle them into the sustaining power you need to think clearly and write your own programs.
- When finished, withdraw your roots and branches just enough to return to regular waking consciousness. Thank the tree, and pour out the water offering with your blessings onto its roots. Enjoy your day.
Visit a Licensed Therapist
Talk-therapy with a skilled psychologist or other licensed counselor is an invaluable resource. I’ve spent collective decades of my life in therapy, and I can attest that in my darkest hour, was pulled back from the brink by their swift attention, skills, and appropriately prescribed pharmaceutical aids.
There is no shame in asking for help, and people really do care. I’ve been able to find pro-rated community services based on income level, and have paid as little as $5 per session when I was a broke. As a college student, I found that through my campus services. As an adult, I found similar alternatives at the local University’s Family Therapist training clinic…
I’ll update links as they are posted, stay tuned for a look at the lessons of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit.
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness Through Dark Times
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness: Balancing The Physical Body
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness: Balancing The Mental Body
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness: Balancing The Body of Will
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness: Balancing The Emotional Body.
The Pentacle Approach to Wellness: Balancing The Spiritual Body
- René Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician, credited as a foundational thinker in the development of Western notions of reason and science. His philosophy was built on the idea of radical doubt, in which nothing that is perceived or sensed is necessarily true. The only thing that remains true that there is a mind or consciousness doing the doubting and believing its perceptions, hence the famous formulation, ‘I think therefore I am’,
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