Root to Rise
Camelia petal on moss in my backyard
It has been a long time since I played outdoors with the rocks and I find just beyond the back door. But I’m doing it this morning with my son. I’d forgotten calming it can be to simply wander around and admire the beauty of the Earth. And to get my hands dirty gathering twigs and burning them up.
After two hours of gathering flowers into a “mini-garden” and lighting twigs on fire I feel my energy centering itself and settling down.
And that feels amazing because I haven’t been here in a while.
This winter was pretty rough. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had at least one meltdown big or small in the last two months. Myself included. Being human is enough, but adding in national politics and global pandemics makes life feel like too much sometimes.
If you’re like me you want to be able to meet the circumstances and the hard things that come your way, but oftentimes you feel like you don’t have the energy to do it.
One thing I’ve learned in both coaching and yoga is that if you want to go up, you’ve got to go down first. If you want to RISE you have to ROOT.
Imagine a wintering seed. Spring arrives, it’s time to start to grow. The seed doesn’t start by going up. It starts by going down. The first thing it does is put down roots. Without roots, the new plant is fragile and susceptible to being blown down in a storm, or pulled up by an animal. Without roots the plant has nowhere to store food and loses it’s footing easily. And it has no way to drink up water or nutrients from the soil that surrounds it.
But, with roots, that same plant can weather storms without being torn apart. It has the grip to stay planted when some creature tries to pull it up and weed it out. Roots store food, roots bring in nourishing water and nutrients from soil. Roots are necessary.
In Ashaya Yoga® practice we press down from the Spanda Center (center of gravity) into the Earth to root your body in the pose. This action is not a passive collapse towards the floor but an active pressure and extension downwards that anchors the pose and helps to create space in the joints. In the yoga pose, when you press down strongly, you find that your body feels lighter above the Spanda Center. You feel a kind of rebound effect from the ground back up and out through your body. It feels a LOT easier to stretch up and away from the Earth when you push down into it first.
The same lesson transfers from the garden and the yoga mat into householder life. The more you want to Rise in your life, the more you need to Root yourself. Trying to rise up without rooting down gives you a feeling of floating just outside of your body. You may feel momentum but it feels like being on an endless hamster wheel that is out of control. And, frankly it’s exhausting because you’re ungrounded and don’t have the nutrients and nourishment you need.
In contrast, rising from a rooted place feels exhilarating, and sustainable at the same time. It feels balanced because you’re coming from a place of nourishment not depletion.
Rooting looks different for everyone, but it starts in your body. I recommend that you take time each day to connect with your body in a positive way. That can mean making sure to eat foods that nourish you, moving your body in ways that feel good (and slow down the hamster wheel), and resting.
Moving out beyond your body, rooting can come from relationships that feel supportive, or from reading about topics that inspire you. Taking time for art or craft that quiet your mind are ways to root yourself. Meditation, Chanting, asana practice, dancing, cooking - any of these are ways to feel grounded. And even just standing on two feet and feeling the steadiness of the ground under you can help you come back from the outer atmosphere and plant yourself in the here and now.
The point is, before you go outside of yourself - take on something new or rise up beyond a comfort zone - root yourself. If you want to rise up, root down. If you’re feeling scattered and out of control, root yourself. When you grow from a rooted, grounded, energy you can go beyond what you imagined.