In bloom
On California love, tree-love, blooming in season, and a tree meditation-reflection
I am going to California today, for the commencement ceremony for my doctoral studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Yes, I finished when I defended my dissertation nearly a year ago, but this is the first ceremony since then, and I am grateful as it is the first in-person ceremony since pre-pandemic times. More on that to come and full report to follow, I am sure!
As such, I have a California playlist playing in my mind today. There are so many songs I love about California, which touch the love I feel for California, which no matter where I live, will always be one of my homes, the places that weaves there way through me and grew me.
What is your favorite California song? Right now, Joni Mitchell’s California, Tupac’s California Love (always), and Wilco’s/Woody Guthrie’s California Stars would be my favorites. And obviously anything Red Hot Chili Peppers. And the Beach Boys. And on and on :) If you’d like to add yours to my collaborative YouTube California playlist (or in the comments below), I would be so grateful!
Everything blooms in its own time.
I am watching from afar as friends from northern climes delight in springtime.
Here in Costa Rica, we are at the transitional period between dry season and rainy season, which are basically equal halves of the year. People are saying this year may be drier than usual, and the rains are definitely coming late (usually by this time rainy season has fully begun with daily afternoon rains).
It takes time to feel into the seasonal rhythms of a place, at least a full rotation around the sun. When I first moved to San Diego some years ago, I didn’t think it had seasons. It felt like one long season of perfect weather. But the longer I was there, my sensitivities grew and I could feel the subtler shifts in season that are present there.
There is no “springtime” here- things bloom year-round. And yet, the plants have seasons, and there are different things blooming all the time. Earlier in dry season it was the brilliant yellow corteza amarillas. Right now, it is the vibrant orange malinches.
Everything blooms in its own time, and so do we. There is so much blooming here at the end of the academic year on campus.
Nature gives us these beautiful reminders and teachings all around us, if we are looking.
Tree Meditation and Reflection Exercise
Trees are some of my greatest teachers and greatest loves. Maybe it was growing up surrounded by woods in Pennsylvania, but the forest is my natural habitat, and when I am in the forest, I feel like I am receiving a big hug. I feel home.
Yesterday in our last department seminar of the year, we did a reflective exercise that I thought I would share with you today. Maybe it could be useful to you in your own life, or if you work with students, it could be something you offer them!
Tree imagery can be used in many different ways in teaching and in meditation. In my peace education class, we did an opening meditation on lineage and the roots that ground us and brought us here to UPEACE. Then, on the last day of class, we did a meditation about the fruits we have received from our time together. This exercise is similar. It is adapted from the Living with the Climate Crisis Facilitator’s Guide, which I highly recommend checking out.
I guided the activity in the following way. Please note that the questions are designed for students at the end of the academic year and their master’s program, but you can adapt or adjust them in a way that is suitable for you.
Part 1: Tree Meditation
Recorded in the forest at the UPEACE Peace Park in el Rodeo de Mora, Costa Rica
I invite you to stand if you are comfortable, but you are also welcome to stay sitting or lying down for this exercise. No matter where you are, feel your feet connect to the earth. Imagine standing in a forest, but you are not you, you are are tree. Imagine yourself as a tree in the forest. Feel yourself as a tree in the forest. What kind of tree do you feel like? Oak, palm, evergreen? Feel the soles of your feet, and feel roots growing deep down into the earth, providing you with support, stability, and nourishment. Sense your roots. Then bring your awareness up through your feet to your trunk, feeling your whole body as your trunk. Feel the strength and solidity of your trunk, your core. Now feel your branches, perhaps growing out of the crown of your head, or your arms reaching out. Feel free to move your arms, reach your branches, and even find some swaying movement in the breeze. Feel into yourself as a tree, your rootedness, your strength, your stability, your flexibility. Feel your leaves and flowers and fruit, your offerings to the rest of the forest community. Feel yourself among the other trees of the forest, and other life - birds, mosses, fungi, animals, butterflies. Feel yourself connected to the other trees of the forest through the network of mycelium beneath the earth. Feel yourself as a tree, strong, stable, connected in community.
With a deep breath, prepare to release the imagery and return to your human body.
Thank your tree, thank your forest. Return to your breath and your body.
Special thanks to the forest community who collaborated with me on this meditation :)
Part 2: Self-reflection
Spend some time freewriting or drawing about your responses to these questions, letting the words and images flow freely:
What has nourished you this year? What has supported you? What have you learned about what you need to sustain and support yourself in your life?
What skills have you developed that you hope to use in the future? What strengths have you gained or realized about yourself? Where have you grown and stretched?
What gifts have you received in your time here? What have you learned that has impacted you the most and that you are ready to take forward? What have you gained that you are ready to share?
Part 3: Drawing Your Tree
Using the things that came up in the self-reflection, draw a tree that represents these three areas of questions: what gives you support and nourishment (roots); your strengths and skills (trunk); and the gifts you are ready to share (branches, fruits, flowers).
A slight elaboration and expansion on the prompts:
Roots and ground – what has nourished you, where you have felt supported, what has given you strength, what you have learned about what you need to sustain and support yourself, what has helped you feel rooted here
Trunk – your strengths and skills; what you have learned about your strengths this year; where you have grown and stretched; what skills you have developed
Branches and fruits – what have you received that you are ready to share; gifts; what you have learned that you are ready to carry forward
Here is an example of my tree:
Parts 4 & 5 are for doing this exercise with a group.
Part 4: Table forest
Come together in small groups (“table forests”) and share about your trees. You can then put the trees together, such as by taping them together on a piece of flipchart paper.
Part 5: Taking a walk through the forest
If you are doing this with a large group, the next step would be to put all of the smaller forests together and take a walk through the collective forest (a gallery walk). You can tape all the trees to a wall, and go through a quiet walk through the forest together. You can also tape them to a white board, and draw connections between them.
Come through a walk through our forest with us!
The last step is noticing the connections among the trees, and knowing that we are always connected no matter where we are in the world.
If you try this exercise, whether solo or with a community, please let me know how it goes!
And on that note, I’m off…:)
PS I would be remiss if I did not link to the Nirvana song for which this post is gets its title:
(This post turned into a playlist of its own. Music is a very important part of my life and pedagogy! :)