When the Spine Curves Toward Earth.

I’ll be offering a live gathering on Sunday, May 25 at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern / 6pm UK / 7pm CET). We’ll spend 90 minutes in reflection, meditation, and quiet conversation around the theme of true surrender. If you’d like to join, you can register here: Live Contemplative Session with Sarah It helps to remember that we are all dipping in and out of seasons that are changing us, challenging us, and helping us live more closely to the body and life. Most of us have little sense of what we’re actually passing through, and an even harder time allowing the unfolding and the undoing. The mind clings to some golden ideal, a brighter way of being, and refuses to begin a conversation with what feels hard to live inside. We use both hands to push against the wave and forget the necessary work of maturation and meeting the heart. The body is not against us. It is wise, and often knows more than we do about what we need. This piece is about listening to the body, even if it is calling for something you’d rather not feel. It is really about harmonizing with the seasons of your being, and learning not to deny the experience you’re having, not to brace against the shape your life is taking. The tree outside my window is coming into leaf. The leaves are bright and tender, unfolding from a dull-coloured branch. Something in me is trying to do the same. I hope that you too are learning to trust the season you’re in. I let myself into the small cabin my massage therapist works in. Faint wood smoke fills the room. I greet her with a bow before I sit in the corner, looking out the window at the gently swaying evergreens. I don’t fill the room with my usual discourse, but stay quiet as I watch her replace the white cotton sheets on her massage table. I almost cancelled my appointment because of how dulled and distant I felt. There was no clear reason for the strange drag in my body. Nothing I could point to. Most days I can override it, lift myself into a more functional shape. But not this time. I didn’t have it in me to brighten, to contort myself into a shape that might be easier to receive. I thought it would be best to reschedule for another time, for when my presence was more sunlit and talkative, not clouded and wordless. A part of me believes I am only loveable when I am vibrant. Or maybe the issue is more, I don’t easily love or accept myself when I am not so I disappear a little.