Nature Heals: The Earth Laughs in Flowers

The earth laughs in flowers is my favorite quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which will make sense later in this blog.

Where did yoga come from? Who was the first yogi? Who was the first guru? If you look closely at the origins of the asanas, you can see: they come from nature. Tadasana rises from the mountain. Malasana crouches with the frog. The people who came before us lived with a profound connection to nature - they knew they were part of it, not separate. Through yoga asana and study, we can slowly uncover a deep truth:

We do not see the world as it is.

We see the world as we are.

Through extending compassion - first to ourselves, then to others - we close the gap between ourselves and the world around us. We find unity where there was once separation.

When you stand in Mountain Pose, do you feel strong? Do you realize it is you who decides whether you feel strong? When you curl into Child’s Pose, do you feel safe? Where does that safety come from?

If you don’t feel strong or safe today - can you be gentle with yourself? Can you create spaciousness inside you, the same kind of spaciousness you would offer a loved one in pain? Can you be open to the idea you might feel safe or strong one day? Can you laugh at life and all its absurdities?

Do you believe in magic and all it’s possibilities; or do you feel safer in the mundane?

Do you realize it is you who creates your life — thought by thought, action by action?

What kind of life do you want to build?

If you feel like you’re not moving fast enough, not achieving enough, not “enough” enough — can you soften? Can you remember that your path will always look different than everyone else’s - because it’s yours, and no one else’s? Can you find laughter and levity in the fact that nothing is actually serious? I mean, truly, we all die at the end?

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…

~ Aldous Huxley

I have always believed in magic.

And because of that, my life has always been magical.

There have been pitfalls of depression and despair, yes - dark times that marred my path and threw me off track for a while - but I always find my way back. Suffering is a part of life. No mud, no lotus.

Nature is my guide. My intuition is my guide.

And lately, I’ve discovered that rest is my guide.

When I was younger, I tried to do everything fast, only to burn myself out and spend months recovering. Now, I follow the rhythm of nature — which is the rhythm of patience. Through breathwork, sound healing, yoga, and meditation, I find my center when I’m thrown off.

I realign faster than I used to.

I am proud that I am always becoming better than I was yesterday.

It’s easy to believe in magic when you’re young. Anything you couldn’t explain was magic then. It didn’t matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible — elves probably more so.

~ Charles de Lint

When we look to nature, we find opportunities to meet our teachers. Nature was my first and most constant teacher. As a child, I climbed trees, built forts with my brother, played in rivers, and lived inside the endless world of imagination.

Creatures lived in clouds. Forts became castles. Finding blocks of wood in the forest behind my parents’ house felt like discovering golden fishes. We caught snakes, fought dragons, saved princesses. Nature molded my imagination — and, in many ways, it saved my life.

Windows were portals.

The moon was my first prayer.

My heartbeat was the crows singing in the hot, swampy Michigan summers.

I am so grateful for my wild inner child — the one who always dreamed of more, knew more was possible, and never stopped believing that everything, the whole world, was available to her. I still bring her with me everywhere I go — uniting my past wild child with my present grounded wildish, wolfish self.

Yoga means to unite.

And in our yoga sessions, we practice this union — integrating our sun and our moon, our masculine and our feminine, our slowness and our quickness, our meditation and our action. Just as we move through poses, we weave ourselves back into nature.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I have backpacked through many states and countries, often solo. People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid, backpacking alone?”

But the answer is always no. In nature, I find a peace I have not found anywhere else. It is the peace I prefer above all else.

People are often afraid of what they don’t know. Non-backpackers think it’s wild to pack up for days and head into the mountains. But backpackers know it’s ecstasy. Non-climbers think it’s insane to cling to a cliff. But climbers know the view from the top - the one no one else will ever see.

I have nothing to fear in nature. And I have nothing to fear in backpacking, rock climbing, or yoga. I used to say, “I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.” Now, after 15 years of practice, I’m still not insanely flexible — scoliosis gives me certain natural limitations — but I love yoga more than ever and I always come back to yoga.

Recently, I completed a 100-hour teacher training in Thailand with my beloved Janine. It was a homecoming. A marriage of my breath, my body, my movement — falling in love with the way my body stretches and flows, limitations and all.

The compassion I offer my body creates ripples. It radiates outward — to friends, family, strangers. The more compassion I give, the more I receive.

Compassion is reciprocal.

Compassion is also scientifically proven to be good for us. It frees us from self-absorption and connects us to deeper meaning and purpose. When we act from a heart-centered place, we fear less. We belong more.

In this willingness to touch pain with courage and love, compassion holds the possibility of transforming it.

Animal lovers know that animals are teachers. Rock climbers and backpackers know that mountains are teachers. Present people and divers know that the breath is a teacher. The wisest among us know: everything around us is a teacher. In yoga, we learn from Guru Sakshat — the teacher that is near.

In Savasana, we practice the art of dying to bring the unknown into the known. When we familiarize ourselves with death - with stillness, with the great unknown - we dissolve our fear of it. Just like how hiking mountains makes us less afraid of forests, traveling makes us less afraid of people, climbing makes us less afraid of falling.

Remember no mud no lotus.

Just as the lotus cannot flourish without mud, compassion and wisdom cannot flourish without the fertilizing power of suffering.

In my Wildish Wolfish Way online course, my students speak of meeting parts of themselves they didn’t know, or had locked away, or judged as ‘bad.’ We also uncover why we see the world they way we do and we rediscover our belief in magic - the magic within and the magic without. We begin to dance in the absurdity of the heaviness we’ve been carrying and find it easier to release, to let go, and to let the dance dance us. Through meeting, and accepting these parts they find a union. Through acceptance and uniting, they find compassion.

And through compassion, they find joy. And through joy, they find power… and then peace.

So I leave you with a question:

Do you believe the earth laughs in flowers?