I sit down for a tea and the clouds catch my attention. The sky looks amazing with a band of dark clouds between white fluffy clouds and some blue sky.
I love contrasts like this. And I know in my mind that I love contrasts like this. But as I sit and try to feel it, I recognize that I’m in a state of emotional numbness, feeling little or nothing at all.
I see the trees surrounding me and I feel a dense heaviness in my stomach. I feel like my shoulders are on their tip-toes, and this is also a good indication of excess energy, anxious energy that is not receptive to the present moment and experience or observations. I remind myself that this was very needed for a long time in my life, and while one part of me is disappointed, another part resistant, part of me is also extending appreciation to my shoulders for getting tense and staying tense as long as they needed to at times.
There are no longer blue spots in the sky in my view. I notice the texture of the clouds and how they have changed as they have moved. It feels like my shoulders are curious and watching with me even though they can’t relax. I feel a tightening around the dense heaviness in my stomach.
A small bit of blue sky begins to open again. I notice that I feel nothing different as I observe these changes.
My stomach seems to keep asking for my attention. I realize this is not a familiar feeling so I don’t have an immediate reaction to it, and I’m not even sure how to approach it. As I sit with it, my shoulders feel some subtle movement across the tension that they hold at this moment.
I feel a pushing against the front of my chest and a pressure that extends to the top of my arms and front of my shoulders.
I look outside and become aware of my lower back, a bit more settled than the rest of me. And as I write the word “settled” I feel how restricted my breathing is. I follow a few breaths just to be present with the restriction that remains even with my attention on it. A deeper breath comes as I write these words.
I look back to the sky and the trees. I feel a longing and sadness in my eyes, longing to feel more present with the view, to be part of this moment, but this too feels like a proportionately small part of me, just a touch of longing and sadness. It's subtle compared to all the energy and tension I’m feeling that does not release or settle.
I feel the invitation and the capacity to sit with myself in this current state with nature all around me. The clouds moving bring me a cognitive reminder that everything is moving. I would usually describe myself as “stuck” in contrast to the movement and flexibility around me, but I feel grateful that there is not a sense of stuckness in this moment.
The bark of a tree covered in lichen gets my attention. A deep breath comes and is very welcome. I see the contrast with the beautiful deeper brown trunk behind it and a butterfly flutters under its leaves. I feel a sense of protection under the leaves as I watch. I search for where I feel this and I feel a wall in my chest, tension pulling in from the surface of my arms, pulling on my neck, a weight in my stomach. Again I invite myself to feel all of this here in nature, as I would come across a new tree or different animal and simply be in awe at it rather than call it good or bad. A deep breath comes. I feel vibrations in my feet on the ground. Something in my upper back is hard to breathe past.
The leaves move in the wind. I feel like a rock. It is usually difficult for me to accept when I am in this state, not feeling the marvel or warmth that I often feel in nature. But I love rocks. I love rocks a lot! I extend myself the same energy that I feel with rocks, curiosity, how long have you been here, what have you witnessed from this space? Tears come to the back of my eyes unexpectedly. They even start to come out my eyes and make my nose itchy.
My curiosity wants to ask myself these questions again, but I sense that this can be done in another moment. A deep breath comes. I see the leaves moving in the wind again, another break in the clouds that reveals a small spot of blue. I love contrasts in nature but don’t celebrate my own contrasts. The contrasts in my different states and experiences on different days. The contrasts in my feeling stiff and rigid like a rock compared to the leaves in the breeze. I have often judged my experience as needing to be different when observing something as beautiful as the leaves moving with the breeze. I feel a warmth in my upper back, opening like the clouds to the blue sky. There are now three openings to the blue sky in my view. And I feel again the tears behind my eyes. A deep breath comes.
I feel so grateful for the presence of the warmth, and feel a subtle urgency to run to the warmth and immerse myself in it. But I feel tension pulling in my stomach. I return to the present sensations, feeling the warmth as one of many, restrictions, tensions, pulling, rigidity. I look around at the softness of the clouds, the darkness of the shadows under the trees. I feel pulling in my head and a deep breath comes.
I’m aware of the softness of my tissues that I do not feel in this moment. I feel the pain of my arms, feeling like metal. My mind empties as I feel the pain in my head. It feels like a relief to the rest of my body, a bit frozen in time, a bit of silence and space not needing to be fixed.
I feel pain in the back of my head, vibration through my torso and legs and feet. These sensations I am used to describing as uncomfortable, so many sensations like a world all its own. I feel the diversity of the plants that draw me to this location, and the diversity of experience within me that often has the opposite effect. Diversity of experience within me does not draw me in, it usually sends me out to distract myself. I still feel a thick wall of separation between my inner experience and the outer experience, one that I have not quite appreciated, longing more for the sensation of connection and oneness. I appreciate the contrast, the rocks that have been necessary in me. I see the lightness of the breeze and the leaves. I don’t feel it in me. I feel the density and heaviness in me. The warmth contained to my upper back and not spreading. My breaths feeling restricted but going deeper, not spreading out but going down. I get the image of a root.
I feel acceptance. An acceptance I have the impulse to cling to, to learn from, but again as before, this unfamiliar invitation to just let it be part of the experience, and not all of the experience. The vibrations through my body don’t feel so intimidating or menacing. The pain and pulling on my neck and head do not feel so intimidating or menacing either. I feel hope to experience this again, and again, the gentle bringing me back to the present, to being part of this experience, not the whole experience.
I feel the experience ending, and pulling me away from reaching a conclusion like I often do. An emptying of my mind. To feel the contrasts of this moment, not find the positive, but to feel it all equally as it is. A deep breath comes and feels like it moves my whole body to accommodate it.