Way of Belonging

Here are some very precious moments from our sweet solstice gathering!! We had a jolly time playing with bubbles, listening to the land, greeting all the flowers, and co-creative an earth mandala as a collective offering with gratitude in our hearts for the abundance of the season. ☀️🙏🏼🌀🌸

OUR HEARTS ARE FULL!!!

☀️ Summer Solstice is a sacred moment in the year when light suffuses the northern lands as the sun reaches the height of its strength, making it the longest day of the year.

The energy of this time of the year is expansive, playful, vibrant and encourages you to revel in the abundance available now, to rejoice in your love for the world, and to embody your radiance in bold new ways.

The Sun symbolizes love, generosity, vitality, and abundance because our sun is the SOURCE of life, sending out a constant stream of life force energy. All beings and life forms receive this nurturing warmth and love.

The sun is the physical CENTER of our solar system around which the planets revolve.

It is our relationship to the sun's radiance that dictates our earthly existence.

It is the light of a new day that causes us to awaken from night's slumber in the same way that a seed begins to stir as the soil warms after winter's freeze.

As the source & center of life, the sun also represents the spiritual center within you. The place inside from which your love pours forth into action. You are called from the darkness by the sun's loving radiance and are reminded of your own unique capacity to nurture seeds of love, live boldly in alignment with your values, and radiate your inner abundance out into the world.

〰️〰️〰️〰️
Join us TONIGHT for a special ONLINE Summer Solstice ceremony… a beautiful way to honor this seasonal threshold ✨🙏🏼🌿 link in bio

As we near summer solstice, the creative playmaking that is life reveals itself in every moment. Summer’s abundant flourishing is only ever the result of collaboration rooted in ecosystem entanglement. Every life form belongs and contributes their gifts toward the vitality of wholeness.

The spirit of our piedmont home-place is oozing with multi-layered vibrant expressions: aromatic flavors, joyful song and chatter, rich tones and hues, rhythmic pulsations and movement. Something we are learning is that we are really only able to receive the wonder and gifts of the season to the extent that we are able to participate and give of ourselves in reciprocity.

And what if participation implies improvisational play, where collaboration is rooted in relational exploration and expression then it is about achieving outcomes? The process of play itself becomes the nourishment that keeps the fire of creativity burning!

We are called to participate in the playmaking that is the summer season; to give generously the gifts of our spirit, and allow what is abundant within to flow forth like the source of life itself: the Sun. Abundance arises from the play of giving and receiving.

Last month we teamed up with Wild Fern Studios to creatively embody this seasonal theme through a visual project. This collaboration fulfilled a creative longing that prioritized play and process over producing outcomes; nurtured an intention for relational eco-intimacy; and invited us into deeper territories of embodied soul expression.

Coming together with Bethany and Laura was a life-giving, co-creative process that can only be summed up as playful art-making every step of the way! Through our collaborative process we were invited and simultaneously challenged to connect deeply to the spirit, vision and values that guide our work. This extended into how we shaped our time together; how we wanted to BE together. The resonance that resulted was like dappled sunlight dancing across flowing waters…

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

📸 incredible artistry by .collab 💙🙏🏼✨

〰️Summer ≠ fast (as in accumulation).
〰️Summer = slow & steady (as in maturity).

Just because light increases, doesn’t mean we need to “do” more in terms of feeding the machine of capitalism or perpetuating pressures that come with social or self-imposed expectations.

It’s not about productivity, but rather embodying the movement that naturally arises with increased warmth!

‘Tis the season of FIRE! 🔥It’s about allowing yourself to be MOVED and heart-warmed as you soak in the pleasure of LIFE pulsing through your entire being.

Fire naturally produces lightness, joy, pleasure, laughter, connection and LOVE. What brings warmth and pleasure to our spirit enfleshed? THE SUN!! ☀️

What if you took a moment each day or 20 min a week to practice softening into supple presence as you invite your body-mind-heart to receive the love streaming toward you?

What might stir or awaken within you?

The more situated you
get in your skin,

the more room
you will have to grow.

The more
you live in your body
the more you slow down.

🌼Bealtaine is a Gaelic fire festival marking the halfway point between Spring Equinox & Summer Solstice.

🌿It is a joyful time to celebrate life, growth, love & fertility of the landscape as we bear witness to life unfurling.

✨Nature reflects the vitality of life that inevitably arises after a time of dormancy & digestion. While Spring arouses us, early Summer lures us out from hiding, drawing us into the lo******ng that is life itself!

🌱If the message of Spring Equinox is about breaking free from what is confining...
then Bealtaine calls us to claim our freedom and follow it into the realms of embodied fulfillment.

👣As earthen creatures, our divinity is entangled with the flesh of who we are.

🌊Vitality is our birthright and we experience this through the pleasure of aliveness and the sensuality of being ensouled matter.

🍀Coming back to our bodies, awakening our senses and giving ourselves permission to prioritize safety and what feels good is how we access the flowing nectar of life.

⚡️The energy of Bealtaine is
delightful,
arousing,
and invites you to
soften into the pleasure
of your erotic sensual self!

We are in the season of
I N H A L E.

As you breathe in
notice how your body
naturally lifts & unfurls
R E A C H I N G &
E X P A N D I N G
into space

Inhaling,
notice the expansion
of your H E A R T
as it spreads
inner petals
toward the
L I G H T.

Like a flower,
your inner essence
longs to be KNOWN
through the fullest
expression of your form.

Breathing in…
drink the golden nectar of life.

With every I N H A L E
let your breath
S O F T E N
you from the inside.

Inhaling,
feed your hearts inner flame
(Let it consume you)
Until your body
becomes a vessel of
i l l u m i n a t i o n.

Take a deep breath…
allow it to lift you
into your freedom.

I N H A L E.
the light of love
welcomes you home.

We kneel and bow our heads to the feet of the forest as we honor where we come from, where we are right now, and where we are going.

We devote our hearts to nurturing that which nurtures us, to tend our home that supports us, and to remember our place of belonging - Earth.

In every moment streams of sunlight enter your pores, the breath of sky fills your lungs, and the nourishment of earth becomes your body as you swim in the waves of your inner ocean.

You are the flesh of earth. May you bow with us in communion and offer your heart in devotion to that which gives you life.

You are a
revolution of beauty,
richness,
resource,
and the world
is calling you
beyond the most
familiar horizons

You are a
revolution of beauty,
richness,
resource,
and the world
is calling you
beyond the most
familiar horizons.

We had the most beautiful Spring Equinox gathering this past Sunday, to honor the balance of light and dark and to welcome the seasonal a shift unfolding.

We were an ecosystem at play, opening ourselves to being guided by land, and sharing felt-sense conversation with our more-than-human relatives.

Here are examples of the craft we did casting love spells for liberation, weaving our collective dreams, and enacting the process of creating form out of formlessness. Something to take with us to help us remember.

〰️You don’t need to figure anything out. You don’t have to do it alone.

〰️May you let in joy and beauty

〰️Allowing the hidden jewels within me to rise and shine peace joy freedom in fierce seas and fearlessness

〰️The waters give life, streams weaving together all beings. Nourishing, cleansing, flowing. We greet and give thanks to all the waters. Grateful for the life giving energy they offer to us.

HAPPY SPRING EQUINOX ✨🌱🌀🌸

Here’s a love offering from our heart to yours. An earth mandala invoking the the healing powers of our spring plant medicine friends:

〰️dandelion flower (center sun)

〰️winged maple seeds

〰️ red bud blossoms

〰️forsythia flowers

〰️mountain blurts

〰️henbit & purple dead nettles

✨Spring Equinox is the mid-point between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice; a moment of perfect balance between light & dark.

🌱It marks a threshold crossing, when nature's energy shifts from an internal focus to an outer one. The internal quickening of Imbolc is now longing to be expressed externally.

🌀Storms stir up stagnancy, winds welcome change, rains replenish our roots, and warming sunlight softens hard edges.

💨Spring is a call to action, a call to movement, aliveness, and taking new risks. The energy beckons each of us to BREAK FREE from the confines of winter's dormancy.

✨Collectively we are being asked to stretch beyond comfort zones; to release ourselves of stagnancy, complacency and complicity; and to grow new roots in local systems of communal care.

🌱It’s the time to turn dreams into reality, spin straw into gold, and reach toward new horizons as you let life’s longing joyfully express itself through the emergence of your becoming.

🌀In joy, you are supported to show up fully resourced, to live boldly in service to creating the world you long for.

JOY IS THE FUEL TO THE FIRE OF BECOMING

~~~~~~~~~

💨Join us in the Sacred Grove, an affordable membership community where you will be supported to weave yourself back into kinship with the living world.

♓️✨🌀
The sacred power of
unconditional love
and
the protective spirit
is called to witness
the Great Turning

❤️In honor of the seasonal turning, the AWAKENING OF LIFE WHICH IS LOVE, and in celebration of V-day, this post is dedicated to earth our lover in all their q***r manifestations.

🧡It’s no coincidence that the theme of Eros arrives just as the goddess Brigid casts love spells of awakening over the land.

💛Here we witness the warming sun pe*****te the cold, wet earth, arousing daffodils and snow drops from deep slumber.

💚We come from the erotic lo******ng of ecosystem entanglement. Our hearts desire to commune with LIFE is being stirred. Can you feel it?

💙Earth is ovulating. The land is wet, moist, ready for a seed. Here in the Piedmont, rains are abundant, lubricating the body in prep for rebirth. Streams are gushing, pines are foaming, the ground is sloshing.

💜The living land calls to us, arouses our longing, reminds us of who we are and where we come from, how deeply enmeshed we are in the co-creation of life.

******ng

LET EARTH BE YOUR LOVER 🌿💙🥰

Loving earth is an ongoing courtship with a multiplicity of lovers.

MAKE LOVE TO THE TREES.

Let the first rays of morning pe*****te your entire being.

MAY THE GUSHING FLOW OF RAGING RIVERS TURN YOU ON & INTO ACTION

✨Affirmation✨ I am intimately seen, felt & known by spirits of the land.

HAPPY V-DAY EARTH LOVERS!!

***rlove

✨Within a day, I follow the rhythm of the sun and moon - undulating between activity and rest, being and doing, reaching out while rooting within.

✨Within a month, I follow the zodiacal wheel, orienting to the constellations in relation to the lunar cycle - tracking my inner tides, &listening to intuitional teachings.

✨Within a year, I follow the cycles of the seasons - from gestation to manifestation, from seed to fruit, from descent to ascent, from death to rebirth.

✨In every moment, I follow the rhythms of my spirit vessel - orienting to the somatic
cues of my oscillating nervous system, the beating of my heart, the ebb and flow of my breath.

When we attune ourselves to the arc and movement of a day, a lunar cycle, a season, we invoke our sacred belonging, calling ourselves home to the pulse of this moment.

Creating routines and rituals that honor natural rhythms brings us into a poetic conversation with the living world. We are held in circles of love.

“The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within. Our bodies know that they belong... When we are in rhythm with our own nature, things flow and balance naturally." - John O'Donohue

🎨 beautiful art by

Eco-system wisdom
says that
your body is
a reliable compass.

Become more intimate
with your
muscles, nerves, blood, bones.

Instincts
are woven
into the fiber
of your being.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS!😜

Jess was birthed from the sun, she’s the glimmer in the night, a dancer, designer of space, beauty infuser, a frolicking forest fairy, a writer, poet, visionary, heart seer, and creator of life.

Here is my heart to yours, Jess:

My darling dew, my shimmering buttercup, my sparkling sprite, and my avian dancer,

Here we are wandering through this earthly terrain with familiar feet and courageous spirits. Each moment unknown yet recognizable with you by my side.

Your birth crosses the seasonal wheel at Imbolc. And at the Imbolc-Lammas Axis, we celebrate the return of light and we celebrate the abundance of life. In both cases, we celebrate life. And that’s YOU - Celebrating life and waking up each day to celebrate the return of light.

As we’ve both learned your path is that of a dancer, or a fluttering butterfly or a wandering seed in the wind. You thrive in dispersing your light into many streams all with a common source.

This sun cycle you have followed your heart, passion and what enlivens you. You are an Earth Priestess and everything you do returns to rituals, embodiments, rhythms and stories of honoring life, honoring death and honoring the sacred cycle of the universe. The entire fractal code of the cosmos courses through your veins, creating a massive web of channels that supports humanity towards liberation.

Within your gaze is the consciousness of the heavens expanding towards the collective, within your hands is the memory of how to craft and shape earth-rooted culture, and within your step is the sacred spiral of love. And within you is the mystery of infinite light.

With every trail that we touch,
with every encounter with the planetary creatures,
with every moonrise and sunset,
with every lighting of the candle,
every bedtime cuddle,
every oily massage,
every intimate sit with earth,
and every gaze, breath, embrace and tear, I will live every day remembering over and over the sacred, magical gift of sharing this life with you and with earth; I will live everyday devoting to you; I will live every day letting go, falling and dying more and more in love with you.

Happy birthday my love

-M

Between the frozen stillness of the Winter's embrace and the coming thaw of Spring, Imbolc signals the quickening of life, buried deep within the earth.

We are like tiny seeds who have been germinating in the dark, fertile, soil.

It is the quiver within the seed where the movement toward life begins to unfurl. We tie our roots to the places that nurtured us so that together we can weather the storms that surely lie ahead.

Awakening to new life invites us to show up more fully, to offer our gifts in service to our larger community, and to nurture place as an act of reciprocity.

It takes great courage to meet life at the edge of our comfort zone, to faithfully step into new territory without assurance of outcomes. This is how we expand & grow into new horizons.

Imbolc reminds us of our ecological belonging in an interconnected world, where what we dream and the seeds that we plant in the fertile soil will be tended and toiled for the benefit of all kin and kind.


✨FOR YOU✨

〰️Imbolc Journal Prompts

〰️Blog: Imbolc Ritual with eco-somatic practice

〰️Blog: What is Imbolc?

〰️Invitations to join us for in-person and online gatherings coming up soon!

〰️Imbolc Seasonal Living Guide for only $10

LINK IN BIO 🌀

〰️ We are hardwired for intimacy and connection. It’s what gives us life. And yet, the pain of disconnection, isolation and loneliness is all too real in a culture that incentivizes rugged individualism, wants us to buy into the notion that we are separate and deny our birthright of belonging.

〰️ Separation is impossible though in an interconnected cosmos and awakening your felt sense of connection to self, place and life is a practice. It’s vulnerable to make known your need for connection. It can feel scary to reach, lean in and extend our arms toward another.

〰️ For many, a safe place to make known this need can be found with a tree, a stone or any other no -human relative. When you feel alone, withdrawn, craving affection and sensing your body’s urge for touch, listen for earth’s call, “I am here. Come home to me. I will hold you.”

〰️ Take a moment to sense if there is a tree, a stone or patch of moss that calls to you or pulls your attention. Can you follow and give yourself to that calling in the form of an embrace? A caress? A soft resting place?

〰️ The sensation of an embrace soothes us, letting us know that we are cared for and loved. This earth bonding practice supports the relaxation response, slows our heart rate, softens our muscles and deepens the breath as we wrap our arms around the body of another.

〰️ Held in your wholeness, you are home. You are deserving of this kind of love. You are not alone.

WHEEL OF THE YEAR: An Introduction to Seasonal Living

Join us for this special offering we’re excited to share with you: Early bird pricing ends on January 24th. ✨For Sacred Grove members this offering is a gift!
〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️

Orienting to nature's rhythms supports us to be in right relationship with the wider web of our relationships. It nurtures embodied wisdom and hones our ecological intelligence which supports our ability to slow down, listen deeply and live in balance.

The Wheel of the Year is a nature-based calendar rooted in Celtic cosmology that focuses on this cyclical journey through the seasons.

Under industrial growth society (aka. colonial capitalism) we have learned to follow chronological time and experience life in a linear, objective fashion.

This orientation propels us toward unchecked accumulation, productivity, urgency and external growth while ignoring the necessity to counter such movement toward greater harmony.

This mode of being dissociates us from the web of life by cutting us off from embodied wisdom rooted in natural rhythms.

The cost of our collective forgetting manifests as disconnection and unwellness in our personal, social, political and ecological contexts.

In the past, however, when our ancestors lived in close relationship to nature, time was perceived as cyclical. Life was steeped in place-based relationality, experience was informed by seasonal rhythms, knowledge was shaped by encounters with more-than-human-kin, and intuition was strengthened through conversations with the natural world.

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE BELOVEDS!

We have finally arrived at the close of the year, a time of endings and new beginnings.

In the northern hemisphere, Winter Solstice marks the darkest, longest night of the year and the moment when earth shifts toward the return of light. The seed of light is tightly folded within the bud of darkness.

Winter Solstice marks an important moment when at the tail end of an out-breath and right before the in-breath, there is a sacred moment of pause. This pause gives birth to the miracle of existence itself and expresses the nature of love, that is the dance of opposites and the ebb and flow of all things.

Here at this threshold, we look toward the seed of light and sense the importance of what it means to give birth to new life and what it takes to nurture that which longs to reveal and express itself in the world.

We must show up with renewed commitment and faith in the journey that lies ahead, trusting that our dreams will carry us into a new tomorrow, and always with the light of love guiding us on our way.

Winter Solstice invites you to shine your inner light on the dream seeds you are gestating after an intense period of integrating the learnings associated with the death process/descent.

It is time to acknowledge and celebrate the journey of transformation currently underway within your inner cocoon.

the future we are dreaming through the experience of living is birthed through the process of dying.

we die in order to give what we co-create to the future
——

we are always experiencing life for the very first and last time simultaneously.

the dying of a moment invites us to embrace the intimacy of life here and now.

death breaks our hearts open to the gift of living.
——

intimacy is allowing the fullness of life to flow through and obliterate you,

death is intimacy with all things
——

we are one self experiencing life through a galaxy of eyes

playing a game of hide and seek.
——

Coming up in a couple of hours. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like to slow down and settle into silence. 🕯🖤✨

Exhale.
Soothing photos from the last few days to warm your heart and settle your mind.

These are moments that capture the quiet beauty of this winter season. The quiet that calls me to bundle up and feel the crisp air against my skin,

to nestle somewhere in the woods with a blanket where I can linger in stillness for a lonnng time.

So long that I am steeped in the felt-expression of the living world And I too become a part of the wider conversation happening though not in words;

to be a witness of the inner and outer landscape merging into one, a creature inhabiting the moment so fully that even boundaries of self fall away.

〰Slide 1: a spunky Kingfisher illuminated by the last rays at sunset

〰 Slide 2: crowns of trees receiving the last rays of sunlight in the wetlands before dusk

〰 Slide 3: two hooded merganser ducks making home on the pond

〰 Slide 4: a beautiful hollowed on cedar among ferns

〰 Slide 5: silvery blue turkey tail mushrooms

〰 Slide 6: a favorite threshold crossing along a trail in the woods

You are the sacred space you’ve been searching for.

The sacred heart of this season lies buried deep within you.

Home is to be held in your wholeness.

Court the holy dark with us.

Join us tomorrow night, Sunday, Dec.11th from 8-9 pm EST for our third gathering of SILENT BEHOLDING.

This is a FREE non-facilitated community care space where we get to simply BE together…

〰in slowness

〰in silence

〰in darkness

〰in rest

🎨 Artist unknown (please tag if known)

IT IS DURING THIS TIME WHEN I FEEL CLOSEST TO THE WILD; TO THE ONE WHO CALLS ME BY MY REAL NAME.

It is she who whispers to me in the dark and beckons me to follow. And yet, to hear her voice I must listen closely…

intuitively.

Listening with my inner ear requires an outer quieting.

My pace slows,
breath softens.

I shift from productive doing to primal being.

My quality of seeing becomes relaxed and peripheral rather than focused and narrow.

It’s the time to say less and dream more.

It’s less about making sense of things and more about allowing life to reveal itself.

There’s nothing to figure out, rather I feel called to create space to be with what wants to come through.

Becoming the vessel, clearing the channel. All of this requires a certain kind of patience, discipline and fortitude.

So much of what we need during this time lies within our own longing to know ourselves deeply and radically,

and our capacity to follow that thread down into the root of being.

————————-

Practice slowing down and courting the holy dark by joining us this Sunday evening for a FREE community care event: SILENT beholding. You know where to find the details 😊

Today is the last FULL MOON of 2022!! On this auspicious day we are so thrilled to share with you that our 2023 MOON RITUAL GUIDE (e-book) is now available for purchase in the eco-boutique! ✨

This 195 page e-book is packed with brand new additions and deeper insights along with creative journaling and reflective prompts for every phase of the moon cycle!

Our Moon Ritual Work explores how your own personal growth and spiritual development is connected to the ebb and flow of the moon tides.

As you work through the monthly chapters of this guidebook you will align with the energy of the moon by attending to the shifting currents of your inner life and expand into greater dimensions of self knowing and expression.

Over the course of 2022, we have been spiraling through the seasons exploring and deepening our relationship to the moon tides in our Lunar Wisdom Circle. Our Moon Ritual Guide has served as our companion along this journey.

The Moon Ritual Guide is also designed for the solo practitioner, so whether you join us online or not, if you find yourself curious about exploring your relationship to the moon, this is a great place to start because it is designed with the beginner in mind.

This guidebook is a creative love offering from our heart to yours, designed to unlock and awaken the natural wisdom and wellspring already present within you.

Learning to orient to the moon tides is a powerful practice of reclaiming ancestral wisdom, strengthening intuition, and awakening ecological intelligence. For this reason, we regard this work as a simple yet powerful form of sacred activism that has the power to restore balance both within and without.

LINK IN BIO TO GET IT TODAY!