Hello Dear Kin  –

There was a time when we didn’t have to go ‘out into nature’ to feel connected to the larger world. There was a time, not so long ago, in the timeline of humanity when nature was simply our home, our place, a natural extension of our very being. A time when we knew instinctively that outer was a reflection of inner and that our individual self was not really separate or individual as we do not live and breathe and create outside of the vast network of living beings that is this planet and all our kin. We would not be who and how we are without the input of gravity, mountains and rivers…without the reflection of trees and bees and seasons.

In our current western world we have to work harder to reclaim our birth right and place among the elders of nature and learn their wisdom. But it seems to be crucial for our sanity and our survival to do this. Most everyone I know… friends, family, clients and students, feel the way being outside and connecting with the wild world reminds them of their place and reflects back to them a deeper knowing and a wider perspective. Even if we are in a bustling city, taking the time to notice and cultivate a relationship with the green in the corner park or the crows that visit the tree out the widow is a way to reclaim ourselves from the co-option of our souls and bodies into the system that wants and needs us to forget our rightful place of connection, respect and love in the large web of life.

We need to consistently re-member ourselves with the larger body of the world. To slow down to geologic time, to claim a sit spot and watch the simple daily and seasonal changes, to feel the roots of our feet into the earth and to breathe with the leaves, to cultivate the sensitivity of our more than human kin. It is when we forget these ways of being that we can more easily get pulled into the mechanisms of dissociation and distraction that is being fed to us daily. 

For my part, I step out on my front porch to greet the sun every morning. I sing to the trees and ask for them to teach me. I take slow walks and make sure that I look around to really SEE the dance of interdependence all round me and feel how I can offer my presence back with consciousness and love. I thank the kin of the wild world, both locally and globally, for their wisdom and presence. Recently, I was sick with a cold, actually twice in one month and I always felt better when I stepped outside even for a few minutes to gather the fresh air in my lungs but also to reclaim my place among the larger landscape. Just a simple slow walk around the neighborhood block was deeply reassuring. A friend recently sent me an email…the subject line was “Godsmacked by Light this morning”. She shared that “I had just swallowed my daily dose of news and was doing my best to digest the hurricane when I looked out my window and was struck silent by beauty…. I see this maple in my yard every day and I’d never seen it like this… within 10 minutes the shadows overtook it and the last melting caused most of the drops to fall.” Attached was a lovely photo that only captured a fraction of the resonance I felt from her words. This is the moment of fresh seeing and a willingness to be touched and reconnected with our larger being.

I know folks who are navigating deep changes to their landscapes, internal and external due to cataclysmic impacts of hurricanes and fires, and this can feel unsettling and disorienting, to say the least. And yet, the landscape as we know it today is not how it has always been and there is a way we can learn, over and over again, how to stay in relationship to the whole even as it shifts and changes and as we do the same. This is not about dismissing the impact of climate crisis or the devastating loss of homes and livelihoods and our part in it. But to keep rebuilding and reclaiming our place and our love for this ever changing world and finding ways to honor her/us. One person I know walks a little way through the forest that is no longer as accessible as it once was and offers her love, her prayers and little altars of nature and beauty to stay connected and invite re-membering to a changed landscape, even as she has yet to have internet restored! Simple yet potent and true.

With this in mind, I invite you to join me on the fire impacted yet resilient lands of Breitenbush Hot Springs for a sensory immersion retreat, May 16-18. Whether you can join us or not, let me know how you are re-membering yourself into the larger animate world around you.

May we take the time to reconnect and honor the natural world all around and within us

May we slow down to allow the teachings of our kith and kin to enter our body-mind-souls

May we find ways to honor and re-member ourselves with the larger world around us

May we bring wild blessings and fierce love to all we encounter

Practice Prompts:

• What are some simple ways you can find to re-member your place in the larger being of the world and life? Is there a tree or location that you can visit on a regular basis to mark the shifts of time and seasons for that being and for yourself? Can you spent 30 seconds to 5 minutes standing outside daily and drinking in the fire, water, earth and air in the current expression?
• Consider asking a rock to come home with you as a reminder of the long view of geologic time. Let it sit with you on the desk or the altar or the window sill and teach you about steady presence and beauty made from pressure.
• Take some time to read or listen to the poets and the writers that speak to this wisdom…Mary Oliver, Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Abram, John O’Donohue, adrienne marie brown, Martin Prechtel, Stephen Harrod Buhner, Rosemary Wahtola Trommer…and so many more.
• I offer one to one sessions, in-person in Bend, Oregon, and virtually all over the world. These sessions are centered on supporting you find nervous system capacity and resiliency through various practices including but not limited to Somatic Experiencing®, Continuum Inquiry, Safe and Sound Protocol and various emboding practices.  Please email me or schedule a free 20 minute Exploratory Session.

Practice Opportunities:

• Yoga for Resilience, Mondays, 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Body of Insight (no class March 17)
• All Levels Yoga, Sundays… Mar 2, Apr 6, May 11 9:30-11am PT, livestream through Two Dog Yoga
• On Demand Yoga Practices…All Levels… through Two Dog Yoga
• Embodying Presence; Continuum Inquiry and Deep Perceiving Retreat…May 16-18, 2025, in person at Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon

Inspirational Wisdom:

What Love Can Do

I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.
~ Suleika Jaouad

When stories of the selfishness of humans
stain my thoughts like spilt gray ink, when  
proofs of our cruelty grab me by the chest
it is also human to love.
Like today, when crushed by a thoughtless act,
I found myself atop a snow-covered pass
where I almost missed the sleek, white body
leaping across the vast white field,
and that chance spotting, that wonder,
that luck was all it took to fall in love again
with this world that somehow created a creature
that changes colors twice a year,
a creature that runs easily atop deep, new snow.
And as love raced through me
like a winter-white ermine, I, too,
was able to not sink in, to not get stuck
in what feels cold, dense and bottomless.
This was not a moment that will change the world,
but in this moment, loving the world changed me—
made me more than my fear and sadness,
turned me again toward the miracle.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer