Mandala, the Landscape we rise from

I am at it again. Weeding that is.

Spring has exploded and the growth of everything is exponential. So are the weeds. Weeding is a seemingly mindless task, and it gives me time to reflect.

I have been living in this country for almost five years. Four on this property, in this particular landscape.

I felt so uprooted when I got here, not knowing anymore where I belonged. Yes, the passports say I am Swiss and American. But what does that even mean?

My surroundings have always been part of who I am and influenced how I felt. I know how to make a house warm and inviting and create an anchor for myself and those around me. This time though it didn’t feel like that was enough. My inside was restless, I couldn’t feel myself, I wasn’t myself, I felt lost.

I would stomp around the land not knowing where to turn.

And then I knew.

I needed to get busy physically to quiet the thought loops in my mind that had me wondering where on this earth I belonged.

I looked at what was around me. Looked at what was overgrown, strangled by bindweed or the ever-present brambles. Some shrubs I could barely see.

What was I to do with all that overgrown wildness around me?

As I started clearing, cutting back, removing the bindweed, I started to see how the land wanted to emerge and breath. It was not unlike when I enter a space and get a sense of what it wants to look like.

And while I tended to the outer landscape, my inner landscape went through a transformation as well.

Not only did I clear the shrubs outside from all the strangling weeds, on the inside I got rid of old, outdated ways of thinking, beliefs that didn’t serve me any longer and slowly I came into embodied alignment with my environment.

I tend to my inner landscape with my embodiment practice.

While I always have a need to dissect and talk through things that occupy my mind, I learned over the years that I also have a need to move what I cannot give voice to through my body. There are layers that I hold deep within, that are unseen, and for which words are hard to come by. Like the gazelle that shakes after she escapes a predator, I move and shake and let myself be guided by my body’s ancient and primal wisdom.

Because movement is our first language and the heartbeat our first rhythm.

Movement touches us at the core of our being, bringing awareness to and connecting body and mind. We become more receptive and sensitized to our surroundings and our inner and outer landscapes get connected.

Engaging in this way with my inner landscape soothes my nervous system.

As does the taking care of the land and all the spaces around me.

 In Hindu and Buddhist tradition a deity rises from her own Mandala, a layered geometric configuration, his or her landscape.

The landscape we live in shapes us the same way. The more I get into conversation with the land, walking on it, clearing it where necessary, gratefully accepting the abundance of fruit it offers me, rolling down the slope with my grandson, laughing like loons, the more I belong.

My house, my land and my environment are the Mandala I arise from, it is how I perceive myself in space and how I belong.

Happy weeding!

With love and pleasure,

Theres