Dear friends💜
This story by Colleen Saidman Yee, is about rooting and grounding:
“I remember one day asking [my mom] why she was sad, and she said, “I miss my trees.”“Trees?” I thought. “After everything we’d lost, you miss trees?”My mom loved trees, especially old maples. And, though my first thought was sassy, I knew she missed much more than her trees: she had been yanked from everything that she had ever known, and moved to a strange, treeless place where she had no roots, no history. My mother’s trees were a symbol for all that she’d lost. Many years later, that my mother would grieve the loss of trees seems even more bittersweet: the whole idea of roots and growth and balance and connection—and symbolism—is yoga, which is my love. Yoga gives us deep roots, so that we can blow in the wind and stay grounded, no matter what storm might come along. Yoga gives us a healthy, strong, stable trunk, and leaves that dance in the wind before they fall off, only to grow back more vibrant as winter turns to spring. If only my mom could have put her body in the shape of a tree, and balanced on one foot while steadying her gaze and following her breath: maybe she wouldn’t have felt so disconnected.”
And in my own personal life, I always felt a need to live closer to the earth, to constantly work on my relationship with the earth.
It could be related to the fact that my first two years were in a children’s home in a Kibbutz where I was born.
Maybe related to the fact that both my parents were immigrants and could not quite fit into Israeli culture.
Or maybe due to the fact that for both my parents this was a second marriage and each of them had a child that remained to live with the divorcee.
Or due to my anatomy of small feet, thin ankles and weak legs. Whatever the cause of my insecurities, the disconnection from the body, the fears and anxiety, deep down I knew that body work is what I needed..
So how to balance the Muladhara?
– First or all, not to prematurely develop the higher energy centers….Like building a house, first establishing the foundation and then building up.
– Meditation is a great opportunity to land in the body and to witness it. To pay attention to the felt sense of our feelings and thoughts as both do have a representation in our physical body.
– Walking in nature, or just spending time in nature is a good way to balance the Muladhara.
– Working in the garden is a great way too.
– And of course the Asana practice. Mountain, tree, forward fold, child, and legs up the wall, are wonderful asanas for that.
– Dance!!!
