The energies of spring are all around here in Ireland at the moment, perhaps intensified for me by a Dawn Walk on Good Friday morning! The Swallows are back in our yard, the blossom is in the trees and along with the April showers and blustery winds, everything feels very much alive.
In this week’s blog, I want to invite you into an exploration of Spring and the energies of the new season, inspired by a mindfulness practice recently shared by Sean Fargo.
You can do this in the safety of your own home, using your mental faculties of imagination or memory and seeing in your mind’s eye a beautiful tree and sky in Spring. Or, and I recommend this for all who can, you can get out in nature and go someplace where you can immerse yourself in the experience, sitting under a tree or observing a sapling pulsating with growth and look up at the sky.
Either way, I’m going to guide you through some prompts to be fully present to the experience and also some journalling prompts to land home the insights and messages that Spring has for you currently. If you like the journalling idea you could bring a notebook with you on your walk or simply add some time when you return home and do your journalling then.
So lets begin. Dressed appropriately for the weather set off on your walk, setting your intention to be fully present to all you can experience through your five senses.
- What are the sounds you can hear, busy birds building their nests? Traffic or tractors ploughing in the fields? The wind in the trees?
- What new sights can you see in hedgerows, in the plants and birds around?
- What scents can you detect?
- What’s new to touch, some catkins, wild garlic, new buds?
Soak it all in, just savouring Spring in the air.
And as you walk, see if you can spot a tree that you could sit under for a while. We’re going to explore what Spring looks like for just one tree and any parallels in your own Spring experience.
As you engage with your tree of choice, sitting or standing, take a deep breath and feel the solidity of the ground beneath. Then let your mind wander and travel beneath the ground, considering the roots of this tree, spreading deep and wide to support its growth. Without actually seeing what’s below ground, and no matter how big or small the tree is, can you sense the support that the roots are providing to this tree? Consider the structural support and the energetic support.
And consider your own support systems, practical, structural and energetic. Give gratitude for all that supports you – your own practices of meditation or healthy regimes, your family and friends, the energetic supports from being in nature, in places and around people that lift you up, the healthy choices you make about what you nourish your body with.
And pause to consider whether you have sufficient support in place to support the growth you intend for yourself this spring and throughout the rest of 2023 and beyond. Everything we wish to create in our lives has a gestation period. In nature, that gestation period is known but in manifestation it is not always known what the timeframe looks like from beginning to end. Sometimes, before we can see the growth in the outside or above ground, the work has to be done internally, or below the surface to sustain the growth. Where do you need to be building your root structure and support base to enable and empower the growth you wish to see?
Now slowly bring your attention upwards to the trunk of the tree. Pause to consider all that this tree has experienced to achieve this level of growth. Whether it is a young sapling or well established, it’s been through some stuff! From seed to shoot, shoot to sapling, sapling to tree – it’s been through many growth stages, times of hibernation and times of stretch. It has weathered many storms.
And consider all you have weathered in your own life. Times of ease and times of challenge. And through it all you have grown. Take a moment to give gratitude again for all you have grown through, savour the learning and who you are becoming.
And now allow your gaze to continue until it reaches the green edges of growth in the branches of your tree. The buds bursting to unfurl and be the best they can be for a season. If they are needles, observe the different shades of green between the new growth and the established.
Where in your life are you bursting to grow into your next best version of yourself? Whether in health or love or how you share your talents or in your time and money freedom, what is calling you to grow? Feel the urge to become your next best version of you. This tree is living evidence of the call to growth and you and I feel that call in us too. Sometimes, we feel it most keenly in the springtime, when all around us is growing. So tune into that urge to grow in you, even if it is subtle, open up to the call of spring within and around you. What would you love?
And finally, let your gaze and attention shift upwards again, all the way up to the sky above you. Feel the expansiveness of allowing your gaze to take it all in. Even if there are clouds and rain, above it all is sky. What energies or qualities do you sense are present in the sky?
When you consider your longings and all you would love to create, are they as expansive as the sky? If you allow yourself to open up to it, Is there some room to dream a little bigger? If you really believed you could have what you dream of, are you expanding into all of it? If you really believed that the same Infinite Intelligence that created the sky, created you and that you have that same creative brilliance within you, what would you expand into?
Now take some time to come back present into your body. Use your five senses again to become fully present – observe again the sights, sounds and smells all around. Take some time to capture your insights and ideas from meditating on the tree and the sky. Whether you write them down now or plan to make notes later, you might like to just sit beneath the tree to reflect for a while longer.
When you are ready to move on, root yourself firmly through your feet to be fully grounded and present in yourself.
And as your make your return home, consider what steps do you want to take based on this exploration of Spring – where do you need to build better support structures in your life? What lessons can you harness from all you have weathered in life up until now? Where are you ready to grow and step into your next best version of yourself? What are you being called to expand into? And what’s an action you can take to move forward based on your spring exploration.
If you’d love some support to expand and grow, to develop your vision and the mindset and strategy to achieve it, simple reach out and book a complimentary strategy session here.
Here’s to your growth in 2023 and beyond.
