Center and Flow
“Bubbles of Change” drawing in progress
by Megan J Wheless
July’s theme is manifestation.
With the pandemic still in full-swing, my career life has been at a stand still. I have been doing my best to keep myself active and have also been channeling my energy into my creative writing and facilitating an online book club (which is in alignment with my purpose here on Dear Heart Art). So, even though things on the outside seem to be stagnant with little to no change, I do feel the murmurings and sense the subtle tremors of change. Yet, I am still struggling with another aspect of manifesting my dreams: trust in the flow of life and the unfolding of events.
In our society, we have placed great emphasis on “doing” things that can eventually lead you to success. Very little do we focus on “being” and accepting the pleasures and the pain that is our shared humanity. I am no different in that I am a product of my socialization. As much as I have had time to really dive deep into knowing more of myself and learning to cultivate stillness and more mindfulness, I fixate on what I should be doing to jump start my career life (again, in the midst of a pandemic and an economic recession; but this is also an issue I’ve been facing ever since I left my high school English teaching career behind 4 and 1/2 years ago). When I go down the rabbit hole of self-doubt and worry about why things appear to not be shifting for me career wise, I really lose my ability to trust in the flow of life. My thinking goes awry. I should have a career to contribute money to our household. I want a full-time job that isn’t just about paying bills but is in alignment with my purpose. What fulfills me? I think it’s ___, but then why am I not in a field of work that let’s me do ___?
The only time I can drop those fear-based thoughts that play in my head like a broken record is when I’m hiking on my own. (Gardening is a close second.) When I’m underneath a canopy of trees and my feet meet the dirt and leaf-covered trail, I automatically drop into my body and my neuroses drop away. I smell the earth. Listen to the birds. Duck under an orb-weaver’s web. Greet an iridescent beetle who crosses my path. I bend down and pet the soft moss and touch the unfurled leaves of her sister fern and know them as my teachers. They are so patient. They are able to stay rooted and connected to the earth. The moss lives her days and trusts that she can be revived whenever it rains or dry out when there is a deluge. She allows tiny creatures to nestle into her soft body. The fern drops rain water on her sister and shades her from being bleached by the dappled sunlight. They both burst with spores that spread far across the earth. Their impact is huge even though they do not move from where they are rooted. They know their purpose and they don’t ask why or how or what they need to do next to be better moss or ferns.
I’ve had the good fortune of being able to pair my hiking with a weekly tai chi class outdoors. In tai chi, the movements are slow and deliberate but not rigid or mechanical. The moves originate from your core: your solar plexus and your navel. You have to be strong, rooted, and grounded in your legs, but relaxed in your hands, arms, shoulders, and face. You step deliberately, moving from your center so you are balanced and don’t overextend yourself. Yet, the internal feeling feels like you’re moving through water (if you’re a spectator watching a master like my teacher, it looks like it, too).
Chi, your energy or life force, moves you and you can direct it, too. In order to get to the next place, you must move with your breath and place your arms, legs, torso all in a particular position so you can flow into the next pose. It requires concentration in the moment and particular move. There is no room for strategizing your way into the future with perfect form and a perfect outcome. In fact, if you try to do that, you wind up struggling to find a balance of grace and strength you need. Yet, if you trust your body and your breath right there in the moment, your breath and body flow you into the next shape. Your job is to really savor each slow movement and feel it before it disappears and you’re flowing into the next move. Slowly. Trusting that the next pose will form from the shape you are currently in.
As a new practitioner to the art form, I have to be okay with not getting every step right or even connecting with my center and my chi. I have to practice it and trust that the more I practice it the more my center and my chi and the flow itself will reveal themselves. Because, like the moss and ferns and the radiant green canopy of trees, my energy, the flow of life, has always been there unfolding itself inside of me and right in front of me. I can’t see the carbon dioxide and oxygen exchange between me and the trees and plants, or the photosynthesis of leaves or sap moving inside tree trunks. I can’t even see the mitochondria interlinked underneath the soil sending out chemical communications to trees farther away from where I’m standing. I can, however, conceive that the same force moving me and the beetle along the same path is the same force that causes the wind to shift directions and speed up or slow down. Trusting in this unseen but ever present force takes some work for me, but as long as I have teachers showing me the way, I know I will be alright.