Restoring Calm in a Chaotic Time

We are living at a moment of profound transition and radical transformation. Ultimately, when the dust settles, humanity will have awakened to a way of interbeing, a lived understanding of our deep interconnectedness and relationship with one another, the Earth, and the wider web of Life. This is what sustainability truly means: a way of being and living that is aligned and in relationship with Life continuously generating Herself.

The structures and institutions that have held and supported us are rapidly coming unraveled, frequently in shocking and violent ways.  It is impossible to be unaffected by what is happening.  In recent weeks, I have been watching in the clinic as the stress and anxiety of it all are compounding and magnifying the physical and emotional challenges that, in more normal times, are fairly manageable. People are struggling.

Finding ways to downregulate our nervous systems out of fight-or-flight mode, and be able to show up in our lives as the most noble version of ourselves has never been more pressing.  Over time this kind of stress goes nowhere good in the human body, mind, and spirit.  And this transition we are in will take a while.

 The work I do is to help people reconnect and align with the greater movement of Nature and Her constant invitation to us via the seasons.  Acupuncture uses needles to energetically realign people with Nature to bring about healing. All the various forms of my work are helping people awaken to a way of interbeing and lived experience with the Earth as a living spiritual being that needs our participation.

I have noticed that the term “co-regulation” is becoming a more broadly understood concept of late.  Basically, it is the understanding that our nervous systems are interacting with each other, for better or worse.  When a small child is upset, taking them onto your lap and rocking them with gentle words and a hug is co-regulation in action.  It is not the words you whisper, it is your nervous system sharing its calm with theirs that helps them rebalance.  This is especially clear with preverbal babies.  That co-regulating nervous system is part of our wiring.  We co-regulate with the people we care about and who care about us.  We get disregulated around anger and agression. It is just part of being human.  This is why we are collectively anxious and worried about all the violence and chaos happening right now.  It triggers a very real fear of survival and it is picked up and transmitted from nervous system to nervous system and amplified by social media.

As the Earth travels around the sun, there is a steady, predictable, loving pattern of Life-giving energy that’s observable in the changing seasons.  It has been unchanged since the beginning of time.  When we relate to the Earth as a living spiritual being, we can co-regulate with Her steady, nervous system.  She is the creator and giver of all of Life, including yours.  Understanding that we are no different from all the other plants and animals in Her care is crucial to finding our way back into right relationship with Life. Our ancestors unstood this instinctively. The celebration of solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarters with feasting and gratitude to the Earth for the gifts of the season realigned and co-regulated people in body, mind, and spirit eight times a year.

We have been under the illusion of separation and superiority for 500 years or so… really just a blip, an anomaly, in the whole of human existence.  This world view has been constructed, reinforced, and institutionalized by humanity which means it can be undone. We all come from ancestors who lived in deep, intimate relationships with Creation. That knowledge is not lost; it lives on as ancestral memory, carried in the same DNA that determines the color of our eyes. Because we are Earth in human form, our acts of care and kindness are how the Earth tends to Herself (care for Her beings) through us.  When we align our highest, most noble selves with Her and choose to co-regulate with Her as a living spiritual being, she is able to work through our eyes, our hands, and our hearts to midwife a Living Future into being.  We know this intuitively because we take ourselves out to Nature as a way to reset our nervous systems all the time.  This is why walking on a treadmill is not the same as walking in the woods.

Each seasonal threshold is another invitation for us to enter the dance of Life and experience this relationship.  This week we will be leaving the Winter/Water phase behind and entering into the Earth Phase.

The Earth Phase does not have an associated season.  It is the transition between the seasons. It holds the center and is the axis on which all the other Phases turn.  When we are in transitions in our life, we can feel out of sorts until a new routine is established.  The Earth Phase transitions that come between the seasons feel that way.  Betwixt and between.  It is like slack tide in the harbor.  The boats point in all directions until the tide gains the momentum that defines the direction of the current.  We will be in this transition Phase until the 12th of February.  Anything that is in flux in your life, will feel even more so.

We are in a transitional Phase on every level culturally, and seasonally we will be entering an Earth Phase transition.  Just as we can expect the betwixt and between vibe to magnify our personal transitions, we can also expect that the seasonal transition will magnify the general chaos of the moment culturally as well.

After the middle of February when you start to see the sap buckets on maple trees, you will know that sap has begun to rise.  The incoming energy of the Spring/Wood phase is responsible for pushing the sap from deep underground storage up into the body of the tree where it can be collected.  This upward pushing causes sap to rise if you are a plant, but it causes antsy restlessness if you are human. This is “cabin fever.”  The feeling we want to “do something.”  When we are unbalanced and unaligned, the up-and-out Spring/Wood energy moving up-and-out through human emotion can range from restlessness to irritability to anger.

By mid-February, as the sap rises and humans are affected by the antsy, do something energy of Spring/Wood, we can expect a shift in the flavor of the chaos factor in our world.  Unfortunately, without a conscious awareness of being propelled by Spring/Wood, I worry that the antsy, edgy energy will bring about flares in anger and possibly an increase in violence in a situation that is already at that edge.

Imagine for a moment, just as Spring/Wood brings new life to the land, what is the new life it will bring to humanity?  I’ll be very interested to see how the up-and-out Spring energy of new life, antsyness, cabin fever, gotta get shit done, bursting forth from frozen ground, breaking systems that oppress and constrain, splitting seeds and sending down roots, and babies of all species being born, plays out.  How will all that energy show up to move and break through like seeds bursting, all that is not in alliance with generating Life?  How will that Spring/Wood energy move Humanity toward a Living Future?

In times like these, the work is not to know exactly what comes next, but to stay in relationship with what is Real and Now.  To stay in relationship with our highest, most noble selves and not be pulled away from our authenticity by the anxiety of the collective.  The future will not be built all at once but shaped over time through countless small choices made.  Choices made by billions of people in alignment with Life creating more Life. Choices toward love, care, kindness, and relationship are the unique gifts humanity has to offer as the Earth midwifes in a new era. When care for eachother and we allow ourselves to be held by and co-regulated with the larger rhythms of Life here on Earth, we are available and able to be part of the magic.

 Notes and resources:

To help you co-regulate with the rhythms of Nature produced by the Earth’s journey around the sun as seen in the seasons, it is essential to understand when the seasons begin and end. Weather and season are not the same thing.  Right now, the whole of the northern hemisphere is transitioning to spring because of where we are in our orbit around the sun.  It is cold and snowy here in Maine and it is sunny and warm in Florida.  Both are transitioning to spring energy. This year, the Earth transition between Winter and Spring will begin late on January 27th and end late on February 12th.  Spring energy will start to be plainly visible in Miane by that time.  Spring energy will peak at the Vernal Equinox, March 20th, and leave us late on April 25th.  The seasons stretch 36 ½ days before and after the Solstice or Equinox.  This video is an explanation of how that works. You will find a downloadable copy of the chart there as well.

How to Work With the Chart

I have been sharing monthly meditation journeys that bring an embodied experience of the seasonal energies.  Those are always available on the Resource page of the website.  Here is the one I posted last week:

Guided Meditation to the Cailleach, the Irish goddess of Winter

Here is a video I did about working with the concept that our culture is in the Winter, death and rebirth, season of the life cycle.

The Winter/Water Phase of our Culture

 Floss breathing is a technique that can be used to turn off fight or flight. It can be used any time, any where. Just putting together 3-5 of these breaths will reset your nervous system.

Floss Breathing