Winter Solstice + Full Moon + Lunar Eclipse = ???

In case you're not following the seasonal shift that's about to happen, we are heading into winter tomorrow - Tuesday, December 21st - at 11:38pm Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Here in Southern Ontario, we are minus 5 hours relative to UTC, so our solstice occurs at 6:38 pm.

I always like to think about solstice in terms of the earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. Here is an excellent illustration from Ivan3Man, who posted it on this Discover online Bad Astronomy article. (Ivan, if you want me to take this down, let me know. If I can give you proper thanks / credit somehow, I'd be happy to!)

See where December 21st is? We are turning a corner here, moving into the long, flattish part of the earth's orbit where the Northern hemisphere starts to tilt toward the sun again (Australia, I hope you're enjoying your late spring / early summer).

This year, I don't know about you, but it's beginning to feel to me like we're screeching around that corner, stomping on the brakes while applying the gas in an oversized vehicle with under-inflated tires.

On top of the solstice, we've got a full moon on the night of the 21st. And, sometime in the wee hours, starting at about 1:30 in the morning, a full lunar eclipse.

Apparently, the last time a lunar eclipse coincided with winter solstice was 456 years ago, in 1554, according to Red Orbit. You might have noticed that a lot has changed since then.

I attended a wonderful seasonal meditation at Carol Glenn's last night, one theme of which was "buckle your seatbelts."

In the world of trees, there's a great preparation going on. Tomorrow, the trees will finish sending their energies and consciousness - along with our good wishes - into Mother Earth. Physically, the trees are at rest throughout the winter, which means that this is among the most peaceful and calming times of year to be out in the woods. If you're like me and you sometimes find the Christmas rush to be overwhelming, it's a great idea to throw on your boots and get outside for a little tree therapy this time of year.

If you choose to tap into a tree's energy and get some communication going, be forewarned. This is the trippiest time of year to try and talk to a tree, as I found out when I began an intensive program of communicating with trees this time last year.

Imagine my surprise when I found that although the trees withdraw from their physical locations throughout the winter, they don't just sit in the tree equivalent of an inner cave all winter. They join and meld with a collective consciousness that goes back millions of years. They join with the consciousness of trees in other dimensions of reality, or other planets (honestly, I'm not totally clear on which it is, or if those two things are the same thing).

They're still attached to their physicality to some degree, so you can still talk to them. For a fun adventure, ask a tree, "Where are you?" any time in the next three months. Wait for imagery to come to you. Through trees, I've seen dimensions where trees can walk and interact with the world just like we do; I've seen tropical forests here on earth; I've seen the ancient world, where humans clustered in vast numbers under the branches of the giant World Tree to ask for help and guidance.

It gets really interesting in the world of trees in the winter season. What are you waiting for? Get out there.  

How to Feel Energy With Your Hands

In my last post, "How to Talk to a Tree," I mentioned that one of the things you should try to do when you approach a tree is to feel the tree's energy field with your hands. A large, wise or older tree typically projects its field several feet out from its trunk, although you'll feel more if you hover your hands a few inches over the bark.

A while ago, when I was helping a couple of friends get into tree communication, I put together a set of instructions for learning to feel energy with your hands. If you've never worked with energy, or you don't know what your own energy field feels like, this is a good starting place. The exercises I mention are based on  the Chinese discipline of qigong, which I write about more extensively on Tai Chi With Melissa.

I hope you have fun using these exercises. Enjoy!

In western culture many people are not used to the idea of the auric field or “chi bubble” or energy body, although the presence of this energy field is considered to be as plain as the nose on your face in many eastern cultures, and is common knowledge in alternative healing circles. One straightforward way to think of this energy is as the electromagnetic field generated by your cells. All living systems generate this field. The goal of this exercise is to begin to feel it with your hands.

WARM UP
If you are able to stand, that’s preferable, but you could do this exercise while sitting in a chair. If you do wish to sit, use a hard chair (kitchen / dining room chair) and sit toward the front of the chair with your feet flat on the floor. If you’re standing, stand with your feet shoulder width apart.

Bring your hands together, palms almost touching and fingers pointing away from your chest, in front of you. Your arms should be straight out from the centre of your chest. If your shoulders bother you, you can do this with your hands at belly level.

Slowly open your arms until they are stretched out to either side of your body, like you’re opening them to hug someone. As you open your arms out, try to make the movement come right up from the ground, pushing your feet into the floor to make yourself bigger. Do this whether you’re in a chair or standing. Try to feel that the movement of your whole body, as you make yourself taller by pushing into the floor, pushes your arms out to the side.

Bring your hands back together in front of you. Repeat the opening and closing movement, pushing into the floor to get taller and spread your arms wide, and relaxing down into the floor to bring the arms back together in front of you.

As you move, try to keep your shoulders relaxed and down. Don’t stop at the extremes of the movement – just keep moving gently. Try to relax as much as possible. You want to move softly and smoothly, not stiffly. A good image to use is that you’re pushing through water, moving the hands out to the side and then gathering the water in front of you.

When you’ve done that a few times (eight to ten repetitions), change your hands so that you’re pushing the water out in front of you, palms away from you. If you’re using the water imagery, you’re trying to splash someone – but slowly and gently. Then pull the water in toward you, palms facing you. As you push away, you want to push your feet into the floor to get as tall as you possibly can. As you pull in, relax back into the floor. Do this eight to ten times.

SENSING YOUR OWN FIELD
After you’ve warmed up, you’re ready to play with your energy. Bring your hands in front of you at or just under chest height, elbows bent so your hands are a few inches away from your body, fingers pointing away from your chest, so that your wrists sit at a comfortable angle. Imagine you’ve got a small ball of dough (about the size of a tennis ball) between your palms. Roll the imaginary ball of dough between your hands, first moving the hands in a circular motion toward you. Again, you want to make the movements slow and gentle - don't attack the imaginary dough like you are trying to punish it!  After a few moments, switch the direction of the rolling, moving the hands away from you, still keeping the imaginary dough between your palms. Keep your hands relaxed as you do this, fingers straight and gently spread.

After you’ve played with the rolling movement for a little while, try pulling your palms apart six to ten inches and then pressing them back together, keeping a couple of inches between them. As with the rolling motions, keep your hands relaxed, relax your whole body, and focus your attention on the palms of your hands. Play with these movements, alternating between the rolling and the stretching motions.

What you are looking for is any sensation you feel in the palms of your hands as you practice the rolling and stretching movements. If you feel something, just take note of it and continue the movement.

Common sensations are heat or tingling. Some people feel that there is a magnet repelling their hands from each other as they press them together. A feeling of fluffiness or something jello-like between the hands is also common. You might feel like there is something warm swirling around the hands, on the palms, on the backs, or both.

If you feel any of these sensations (and there are no doubt others you can feel), congratulations! You’re feeling your chi!

The reason why the sensations happen is that when you do this exercise, you are making the electromagnetic fields around the hands interact with each other. The hands are polarized differently, so the fields “buzz” a little as they encounter each other. Feeling your own chi is a preliminary step to getting a sense of what it feels like when your field interacts with someone else’s field, or a tree’s.

If you don’t feel anything the first time, please don’t be discouraged! Try again when you’re feeling relaxed and calm. Just sink into the movement, try to focus your mind on what you’re doing, and note any little sensation.

You can do this exercise “cold”, but it’s even better if you’ve recently been physically active in some way. Stretch a little, go for a walk, hit the gym, or even do some deep belly breathing. While you’re still feeling the buzz, go through the warmup and then try rolling and stretching the palms.

So – play with it, have fun, and if you do try the exercise, please let me know how it goes! I am very happy to answer any questions you might have.

How to Talk to a Tree

Many people yearn to commune with trees and their spiritual essence, but most believe this is not possible. However...communing with tree spirits is part of our human heritage: we just need to recapture an ability that we have lost over many generations of living in cities and gradually growing apart from the natural world. 

 ~Nathaniel Altman, Sacred Trees: Spirituality, Wisdom & Well-Being (Sterling Publishing, 2000)

So, just how do you go about talking to a tree?

Different people have different ideas. Over at Beliefnet, Valerie Reiss, expanding a list created by Mara Freeman, advises that you begin by noting how you feel as you walk among trees. Find a tree that resonates with you, and approach it, feeling its energy with your hands. Ask the tree's permission to spend some time with it. Sit beneath the tree and see what thoughts come to you. Allow the tree to take you into a state of meditation. Ask it questions, waiting for a response. When you're done, thank the tree.

Reiss writes about the kind of experience she's had using this method:

I had a mind-blowing semi-mystical experience hugging a crab-apple tree - I was able to connect to it and sense its power as a growing, living being.

I didn't hear it speak in words, but I did feel its wisdom resonate in me as a cleansing, rooted power - the tree seemed to be reminding me that I was just as whole and holy as it - no less pure, no more essentially complicated. What I also humbly realized was that trees, like every other being on the planet, like to be loved, noticed, given energy.

Over at Bookmice, Darkchilde recommends offering tobacco, using sage to smudge yourself, and deciding ahead of time what you want to ask the tree. "As with other forms of communication with beings other than humans, the information you receive may be in the form of visions, images, smells, tastes, colors, or almost anything else. Keep your ears open, too, for any sounds of particular birds or other animals that might be nearby."

Finally, Nathaniel Altman advises entering the realm of trees in a calm, aligned state. Enter the tree's energy field with a sense of respect. And above all, keep an open mind about what is about to happen. Altman writes:

Some of us may have preconceived mental images of what we would like to happen, or what we think will happen, or what we have time for when we are about to work with nature beings; in other words, we want to have mental control over our experience. 

One of the first things you'll learn about trees, however, is that they are full of surprises. It's important to stay open to what the tree wants to tell you or share with you. Altman also recommends an offering of tobacco. If you like, you can invoke the tree's spirit by saying or thinking that you come in the spirit of oneness. Altman suggests that you work to ground yourself, getting in touch with the earth, either through your feet or by sitting down on it. In my experience, once you enter the tree's zone, it will ground you in a much more hardcore way than you can probably ground yourself. Trees view us as very unrooted, and think this is a fault that requires immediate correction.

I wanted to start with these suggestions by other people because the method I've developed might not work for you, and it's important to devise a ritual and method that feels right.

In any case, here's how I recommend that people do it:

1. Choose a tree that you feel comfortable approaching. If you actively like the tree, things will go better.

2. Feel your way into the tree's energy field, using the palms of your hands and your whole body to sense the tree's power. You might feel a tingling, a sense that the air is thicker around the tree, or a vibration - a quality commonly expressed by larger, older trees.

3. While we're on the topic, older trees are more likely to be able to help you out that younger trees. Older trees in my experience have more connection with collective memories of the time when humans weren't so disconnected from the world of plants, and will try to help you reconnect with that world in quite profound ways.

4. I started out going into each interaction with a tree by offering energy healing. I am more and more convinced that the energy connection you make with a practice like reiki serves as a conduit for communication with the tree rather than an offering per se. Most trees have a much more powerful healing capacity than what humans can draw through our relatively small bodies. The most important offering you can make is your willingness to show up, commune with a tree, and learn. I do still offer reiki each time I connect with a tree, though, so this is speculation.

5. I prefer to hold my hands a couple of inches above the surface of the trunk, and face the tree (as in tree-hugging mode). Sometimes I lean against the tree, and occasionally I've been led to rest my forehead against the tree. I think a face-to-trunk connection is more powerful than when you turn your back to the tree. You wouldn't turn your back on a person you were talking to - so why turn your back on a tree?

6. Say hello. It would be weird to enter into conversation with anyone without saying "hi" first - I know, we're talking to trees, which is fundamentally weird by many measures, but there's no call for serious breaches in etiquette.

7. Feel any physical sensations as you connect with the tree. The first thing that a tree will do for you is correct your energy. As noted above, trees think we are terribly unrooted, and that we often fail to connect with the energies of the sun, as well. On an energetic level, we are supposed to work the same way as trees do: drawing energy from the earth, up through our feet, and drawing light from the sun through our eyes, and solar energy down through the crown of our heads. If you feel like your feet are sinking into the earth as you commune with a tree, or you find yourself standing up a little straighter, this is the tree correcting your energy flow for you. That's the primary form of tree communication. If that's all you get out of a session of tree talking, that's pretty good.

8. Open your mind's eye, as well as your mind's ear (not to mention your mind's touch, taste and smell). Chances are you won't experience any communication as actual sounds or visual effects that you see with your eyes. But you know how when you imagine something, you get a distinct visual image in your mind's eye? Or when you're processing something verbal, like a conversation you plan to have, you experience the words playing out in your mind? That's what you're looking for in communing with a tree: thoughts and images that don't come from you, but from the tree.

9. How do you know you're not making it up? Well, this requires practice. I've been told things by trees that I would never have thought of - and I've got a huge imagination. Start by asking questions with distinct, yes / no answers, and wait and see what happens. My friend Rita asked her tomato plants last year if they wanted to be pinched back, since popular wisdom states that this is what tomato plants need. When she asked, she added that she needed the answer to be very clear, because otherwise she wouldn't get it. Resonating in the air all around her, and in her head, she got back a very distinct "NOOOO!!!" Needless to say, there is no tomato plant pinching in her yard! If you make it clear that you want the answer, it will get through to you.

10. Have a conversation. Trees are intelligent beings. I don't mean that in an abstract way at all. They are capable of sophisticated exchanges about energy, our place in the world, the way plants communicate, human / tree bonding, earth changes, human potential, astral travel and our relationship with Mother Earth. Many of them want to teach us. After all, they have a huge investment in building a better relationship with us. All of our lives depend on it.

11. Enjoy your physical, emotional and spiritual experiences among trees. I've found that my time in the woods has only become more joyous, more profound and more filled with love the more I've talked to trees, from the wise oak to the stalwart white pine, and all points in between.

Approaching Winter

It's going to be an interesting solstice this December 21st. At the same time as the days reach maximum shortness, and we begin the turn back toward the light, we've got a full moon and an accompanying lunar eclipse. Wow! The days are just packed.

In the world of trees, the turn into winter is the time when they complete sending their energies down into Mother Earth. Everything they've gathered and stored throughout the spring, summer and fall, including their experiences and interactions with humans and other animals, goes down an energetic taproot system where it begins the process of germinating the energies of the earth so they can rise again with the advent of spring. 

Over my past year of apprenticeship with the trees, I've come to understand that this energetic exchange between the trees and the earth is really about consciousness. The trees share what they know with the earth, as much as they share heavier, more substantial, nourishing energies. Each tree uses this taproot connection to join the shared web of consciousness among all plants here on the planet, all plant consciousness that has ever been here on the planet, and in other dimensions. Talking with trees in the winter time can be quite trippy for this reason. You never know where a tree is going to tell you he's been. 

In these last few days leading up to solstice, we have a wonderful opportunity to send our wishes, hopes, intentions and healing energies to the earth and the web of plant life via the energetic taproot. Communicating to one tree at this point in time allows you access.

If you're unsure of how to begin, leaving your energies or intentions in a physical form is a great idea. In addition to sending reiki healing energy to various trees, this time last year, I baked simple cookies with oats, flour, and cashew butter and left a few in some of my favourite trees for squirrels and birds to enjoy. It's amazing what a little gift, given freely and with love can do to add to good will and harmony.   

Tree Communication: A Word on the Science

Fascinating article, "Do Trees Talk? Some Scientists Think They Do" on Scienceray. According to the article, David Rhoades and Colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle exposed some willow trees to potential danger by placing caterpillars on some of the trees. At first, the caterpillars did well, but after a few weeks, all of the trees - including the controls, that were not yet invaded by caterpillars - were producing more proanthocyanidin, a chemical that serves as a natural pesticide.

How did the control trees know to produce more of this chemical? The study authors concluded that the trees might be communicating with each other via pheromones. Other nay-sayers suggested that the trees didn't communicate at all, but that all were infected by a virus carried by the caterpillars, and were simply reacting to that infection.

I have a mixed view of work like this. On one hand, it's a step forward in viewing the world around us as a complex web of intermingling factors, many of which we don't fully understand.

On the other, the conclusions reported in the article are to me a screaming sign of how let down we've been by science. The article author writes:

as Professor Rhoades points out, if trees really do "talk" to each other, we may have to reassess our view that trees are totally inanimate. 

Okay. Now, even if you don't believe that it's possible to have complex energy exchanges with trees, or that they have a kind of intelligence, the idea that trees are "totally inanimate" should probably ring some alarm bells. Trees are anything but inanimate. They grow, for one thing. But they also move - you could even say they dance, as any of the multiple time lapse videos of trees on YouTube and other sites will attest.



I tend to think we're seeing trees more at face value when we approach them intuitively - like we do when we walk among them - or artistically - like we do when we make art like this time lapse. At the same time, our "objective" scientific training has led us to shut out what we feel and intuit from trees.