The Web of Fall

If you live in the Northern hemisphere, and you've been to the woods recently, you might have noticed that things feel a little bit different than they did a month ago. The leaves are on the ground. The branches are more and more bare. There is a sense of peace. And yet there is busy activity, too. The squirrels are racing around, trying to find enough to take them through the winter. Here in Southern Ontario, the starlings are gathering in huge flocks that fly in seemingly random, but coherent patterns, like giant airborne schools of fish. Wild geese are calling to each other in the evening skies.

Calm and a sense of preparation mingle at this time of year. This is a season of culmination, and a season of planting new seeds. After all, this is when the trees and grasses do their planting. Why shouldn't we?

This is the energetic new year. This is the end of one energy cycle in the natural world, and the time of preparation for the next. If you're thinking about resolutions, now is the time.

Throughout the summer, the trees have been working on building themselves up physically. This has meant drawing abundant energies from the earth, and drawing equally abundantly from the sun. As the autumn equinox approached, the trees prepared to release their energies in great gouts upward into the sky. What we see as the release of leaves is only the aftereffect of this energetic release, a ritual that they call "releasing the sun," as the solar energy retreats from the earth, and we enter the dark half of the year.

Now, throughout the autumn, the trees concentrate their energies in their trunks. They glow and pulse with light, and create an interconnecting web as they commune with each other. These energies will reach a climax at the winter solstice, when the trees will re-seed Mother Earth through energetic taproots that they've also been creating at this time.

Until then, they'll celebrate the end of another successful year with each other, communicating via webs that spread across continents. When we walk in the woods at this time of year, and appreciate the leaves and the beauty of the bare branches, we become part of the web. This, I think, is why any hiker will tell you that fall is one of the most glorious times to be outside and among trees.

So get out there!  Spend time with the trees right now, and enjoy some of the richest, most uplifting energies that are available throughout the year.

Tree Talk: An Introduction

If you enjoy the outdoors, at some point you've probably admired the beauty and grandeur of trees. It's hard not to. The giants that stand along your city streets, shade your backyard, and bend - more often than they break - under the storms of winter are all around us, a (mostly) silent presence.

In the last year and a half, I've come to know trees like I never thought possible. It's high time that I shared some of this information with others. 

If you come here as an environmentalist, prepare to find new fuel for your philosophy. If you're already working with energy, if you're a healer, spiritual seeker, or you're walking the shaman's path, I hope you find information here that's useful to you. If you tend to be a skeptic, welcome! I hope you'll enjoy your time with me. Whoever you are, take off your shoes, relax, and feel the cool earth under the soles of your feet for a while. 

In some ways, my journey into the secret world of trees is a culmination of studies I've been pursuing for the last fifteen years. When I was in my twenties, I began taking tai chi classes. The instructor talked a lot about energy, which I thought at the time was pretty weird, but the workouts were the best I'd ever had. I walked out of class on Friday evenings with my legs wobbling like noodles and feeling totally high. Over the years, I came to understand the subtle and not-so-subtle internal movements that accompanied tai chi practice as more than just physical. I began to feel chi, or vital life force, for myself. 

Last year, I decided to get attuned to Reiki, an energy healing modality that originated in Japan. I'd recently begun to assemble my own tai chi classes in Hamilton, Ontario, and I thought that Reiki might be a handy tool for helping my students. I also wanted to be able to work on my friends and family, including my pets, a Boston Terrier and a middle-aged cat. Really, my decision to take Reiki felt at the time like an open, breezy, "why not?" sort of a thing. 

During the level one workshop, Carol Glenn, who runs RoseHeart Wellness Therapies in Oakville, Ontario, mentioned that one of the many things you could do with Reiki was use this healing energy on trees. She told us that when you Reiki a tree, you can feel the tree's energy moving through the trunk. 

"Cool!" I thought. I already spent a lot of time hiking with my dog on a local stretch of the Bruce Trail. I planned to try offering Reiki to a tree the next chance I got.

The day after the workshop, I went out for a hike in my favourite patch of woods with my best friend. I was telling her about Reiki, and remembered that I could work on trees. I decided then and there to try it. I stopped at the tree closest to me, and rubbed my hands together to engage the Reiki energy. I explained to my friend that when the energy flowed, your hands would often get hot, and you could feel a wave of energy flow down through the top of your head and out through the hands. I showed her how my hands were already very warm, even though I hadn't begun to do Reiki on the tree.

I hovered my hands over the bark of the tree. 

Nothing happened. The energy stopped flowing. 

"That's weird," I said. "I wonder why that didn't work?" I looked up.

The tips of the tree's branches were bare, cracked and dry. The tree was dead.

I went on to another tree, making sure to select a living one. As I began offering the tree Reiki, the energy flowed abundantly. At the same time, I felt the need to take in a long, slow, deep breath. I felt at peace. This seemed like the exact right thing to do.

For the next couple of months, I gave Reiki to trees once or twice a week. The side trails that I like to hike are muddy, bumpy, and usually depopulated, so my dog and I could wander for an hour or two without seeing another person. Birds, squirrels, and the occasional deer were the only witnesses to my early attempts to Reiki trees. It seemed like an enjoyable pastime. It gave my dog some much-needed time to sit and chew sticks - his favourite hobby - and it gave me a chance to work on my developing Reiki skills. It seemed that the energy always flowed freely when I began treating a tree, but it would quickly begin to move in directions I didn't expect: I'd find myself suddenly dropped into the ground, my legs heavy and my feet feeling as if they were sinking a few inches into the dark soil. Or I would feel inspired to look up to the very top of the tree. I'd imagine floating up there, perched on one of the towering upper limbs. 

One day, I came across an old, extremely tall maple. One of its neighbours had blown over in a windstorm, and was leaning heavily on this tree. I felt sorry for both of them. I wondered if the magnificent fallen tree would take its fellow down with it. I figured that here I'd found a tree in distress. Most of the trees I'd dealt with over the summer didn't really seem as if they needed healing. Maybe this tree did. Reiki to the rescue!

I began with placing my hands on either side of the tree's trunk. It dawned on me that it might be a good idea to let the tree know about my intentions toward it. Without thinking it through too clearly, I simply reached out with my mind, and began to address it.

"I'm here to help you." I thought the words clearly and distinctly. I watched as a daddy longlegs and several ants climbed up and down the rough bark. "Are you in any pain?" 

Without any hestitation, a message reverberated through my mind, as clearly as if someone had shouted in my ear. "This is what it is to be free: the little brothers depend on you, and it doesn't matter."

I felt that the tree's "little brothers" included not only the large tree that had fallen over, but the insects that crawled on its trunk, and the birds that might perch on its upper branches, as well as a number of organisms I was probably unable to see.

I checked myself. Had I made up this statement? The sentiment was so totally contrary to my concern for the tree's wellbeing. Plus I felt as though the tree was offering not a reassurance, but an object lesson. It wanted to correct my thinking. It was throwing philosophy at me, not confirming any ego impulse I might have. In fact, it was crushing my pretensions to helping it. In that single, brief exchange, that first tree showed me that it had much more to offer me than I had to offer it.

I spent a few more moments with my hands on its trunk. Although energy was still moving through me, I was no longer certain that I was moving much healing light through my hands. I suspected that I had lost control of the exchange. I carefully and gently disengaged from the tree's energy. Before I walked away, I bowed deeply, thanking the tree for offering its wisdom. 

As I walked home, with my dog bounding after me, I thought about the information the tree had shared, and I noticed that I felt much more buoyant - even elated. In one statement, the tree had handed me a key to a major conundrum: how to deal with other people. I'd always felt a little bit scornful toward the people in my life who struggled over things I'd already figured out how to handle. I never felt much patience toward them. But I saw by the tree's example that if you're really strong, it doesn't matter who depends on you. It makes no difference at all. It does not take away your freedom to take a moment and help others.

I wondered what else the trees had to offer. I continued to Reiki trees throughout the summer and fall of 2009. Always, I tried talking to them. Even when I was just walking, I would often say "Hello" out loud to trees that looked especially friendly. It's amazing where "Hi, how are you?" can get you, even in the world of trees. In greeting and honouring wild things, we're identifying ourselves as more than just another ignorant human. 

The trees responded in abundance. Many times, I didn't receive their messages as words, but as corrections to my energy. Often they showed me how to be more rooted, helping my energy sink down into the earth and settle. One late summer evening, a particularly ebullient maple said to me, "Want to feel what it's like at the top?" Despite the chill in the air, I found myself flushed with heat as the tree shared the warmth of the sun that had accumulated in its leaves.

A gnarled oak was the next to share something truly profound with me. "If anything's going to move forward, you have to come to us," she said. A hollow spot in her roots looked like a tiny doorway to another world. Her words blew me away. She meant that we - humans - have to be willing to step into the woods again. We have to remember that trees are our brothers, and we have to greet them as such. The first thing that they want from us is acknowledgement and appreciation. Not in an abstract way: in an up-close-and-personal way. 

I sat with the oak's advice throughout the fall. By the time winter was settling in, I'd made a resolution. I decided that I would go into apprenticeship with the trees. By that point, I'd started talking with a huge Black Oak that I would come to call Brother Oak. He had begun to share in words and imagery the story of the life cycles of trees: how they shifted energetically from season to season, and what they remembered from the deep past. I decided that I would take a year, from winter solstice 2009 through to winter solstice 2010, to talk with trees on a regular basis. I would write down what I learned, maybe fashioning it into a book. I wanted to understand the trees' annual rhythms. I wanted to know them, as individuals, as species, and as a collective. I wanted to understand their perspective on human chi or energy. 

My experiment is almost over. I've recorded dozens of interactions with oaks, pines, maples, birches, ashes, hawthornes, walnuts, cherries, and apples. I've come to understand the ways that trees work with the energies of the sun and the earth to help perpetuate the turning of the seasons. I've experienced the incredible benevolence and generosity of our giant brothers of the woods. And I've become utterly convinced that it's important to share the information I've begun to gather now, and not to wait.

Little did I know when I began to work with trees, that I would also be given a tree's eye view into some of the powerful energy shifts that are occurring right now. Don't get me wrong: this is not a proclamation of impending doom, nor is it a 2012 prophecy. I can only speak to the prevailing energies that are surging in powerful waves from the earth, and from the heavens right now. If you're any kind of energy worker, this is a thrilling time. If you'd like to become more open and explore your spiritual being like never before, the time is now. More and stronger energies are coming available all the time. And the trees have all kinds of insights to offer into how to use these energies. 

I want to use the space of this blog to offer some of these insights to you. Welcome.