Find your way back to your own rhythm this fall!!
It sounds like rain in my front yard this fine October afternoon but it is actually a pouring down of leaves, some red, some yellow, some still green. They flutter down with a rush of the wind. The crickets chirp their song, so it seems somehow like dusk even in the daylight. A bird calls out a repetitive tune in the distance and machinery answers, man's own insistent call.
There is a mindfulness, a tuning in, that comes more easily when one is in nature. The mild cacophony requires less effort to break out the separate sounds than when one is in a city filled with a thousand disparate noises. And yet with the more extensive effort can come a focused attention to the rhythm that exists everywhere, to the whirring vibration of the Earth, the Universe, and those of us who live within it, sometimes pressed up good and close.
We are in constant rhythm, even if we are not in tune with it. Our breath, our hearts, the movements of our hands and feet. How might they sync up with the squeeky wheels that turn on the trucks that go by, with the droning car alarms and the blaring of the fire engines as they race along the road? There is an orchestra playing all the time, anywhere, and we can resist it or choose to play along, become part of it, find our place in it.
This fall has been a wet one, with a roaring downpour that flooded Brooklyn streets and basements in a few short hours. The wind blew the rain straight inside through the cracks in walls people thought were secure. My downstairs neighbor came up to see if "there is a waterfall in your apartment in the same place there is in mine." Luckily, there was not. Hers abated after a bit, thank goodness.
With extreme weather, our rhythm can be interrupted, our nervous systems activated by the crisis into fight, flight or freeze. Our minds can get put on pause, on protective mode. We often shut down in ways we cannot quite understand. Fear has a strange way of sneaking up on us, into our brains, into our bodies, slyly and surreptitiously.
To really tune in to ourselves after a crisis or scare, even just with the challenges of regularly difficult days, we need a reset. We need to find our way back to a calm harmonious rhythm through deep listening, through tuning in to clear resonant vibrations and allowing ourselves to fully relax into them. It is a sacred practice, an ancient part of every lineage, to tune in together, to listen closely to the way the wind blows, to pay attention to it and, in doing so, pay closer attention to ourselves and to one another.
I have spent much of the summer writing a memoir with the working title, "Listen to the Way the Wind Blows." The focus of the story is on how I've worked to find my elemental nature through nature, something my sound practice has deeply enriched. As I edit, I am getting back to setting up sound baths, using the beautiful fall changes as inspiration to shift back into the practice of offering sound for emotional tune-ups and healing.
SACRED BLOOM SOUND BATH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19th!!
Join me the third Thursday of every month --this month, Thursday Oct. 19th--at 7 pm for a Sacred Bloom Sound Bath. $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Save your spot via Venmo @Stephanie-Thompson-229 or PayPal @StephanieThompson268 or email me at stephsthompson@gmail.com. Bring friends!
And please reach out for a private session or to set up a private group event. I recently worked with a group of moms on a retreat weekend upstate and it was a beautiful experience.
Be well. Be in Tune.
XX Steph
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