By Kelsey Wyman
Edited By Miku Lenentine
Deepening into the middle of spring for the season of Ostara, we are at a most fertile pinnacle of creation potential. We have moved through the beginnings of our stirring awakenings and are ready to put the nutrients gained from our deep winter to use in our lives, in our communities, and in our world. In the darkness we were rootbound, at Imbolc we began to stretch, and today we burst forth with passion to let our light shine.
Like many very common house plants, we can use the tension of being rootbound to springboard our creation of the next generation of ourselves and our communities. Spider plants and aloe vera both release a chemical when rootbound that stimulates offspring production. Without this experience of confined pressure, the plants would grow larger but produce nothing new. While many of us might be feeling rootbound in these times, it is essential to pay attention to what is wanting to come forth from this experience. What can only be created in this unique situation?
A few weekends ago, I danced at the Naraya, a Native American Medicine Dance for All People. For days, I meditated with the tree of life, which sat not in earthen soil, but instead rooted in a rather small pot for the tree’s size. The tree collected the prayers and intentions and desires and hopes and deep expressions of the community, holding this potential until it was finally planted in a grove with many other trees that had been initiated into the earth in this same reflective way.
As I danced, I listened to the parts of myself that were feeling knotted, confined, and bound to both the conditions of my surroundings and the constitution of my container. I experienced the age old adage, and ancient trauma, of being an infinite being in a finite body. In the days since the dance, my morning meditations have focused on the tender practice of unwinding the clasped tendrils of my roots, delightfully and curiously stretching into the void of the newfound space, and slurping up the abundance of nutrients available to me.
Crack me open, unbind my roots, and in this space,
fill me with love and harmony.
May I ask in a way that I am open to receiving.
The natural practice for ourselves at this time of year is to pay attention to our internal roots, all of the bound up possibilities that have been marinating, and reach out through our tendrils of connection to birth something new.
What have you been gathering this winter that is ready to be shared? What is still percolating in your internal world that is coming to fruition? Where can you more fully unbind yourself and more fully expand into yourself? What is the wisdom in the interweavings of your rootbound soul?
