LIVIN G & LE ARNING
The crocodile snaps, the water bird struts, the eagle screams and dives. The wonder of nature breaks through a turtle shell with baby crying life, the wallaby blends softly into paintings carved by wind. Many shamans or medicine people
of ancient cultures understood that we have to ‘get out of our own way’ to heal, experience or understand something which our limited minds can’t grasp or allow to occur ‘out of our own control’, but often we are so conditioned to be in control that letting go and getting out of our own way long enough to allow real connection and healing to occur may require a big incentive or even crisis.
The high escarpment is the giant vertebrae of the land, an ancient mighty backbone sending signals to the rest. The mosaic of existence plays in and out with no apologies, the intensity of life shimmers into brilliant colours. I feel my part in the awe-inspiring grandeur of nature, and know with crystal-clear clarity as I breathe along with everything else, that if we rip up the land we rip up ourselves and all other life.
‘Susan’ struggled with a chronic debilitating medical condition for years until she was told that parts of her internal anatomy and several organs would need to be removed to save her. With little to lose she threw herself to
18 OCTOBER 2015
the mercy of the earth. “I went to live in the forest and re-found the rhythms that I had never known, yet somewhere were already in me. I opened myself to the earth, trees, plants, animals, seasons, moon and my emotions and let nature know everything. Everything! I am not holding back on anything as I heal.” She pauses, “and I am now healing.” Now we all have similar incentives
even if we don’t directly feel it, and more of us are feeling something is terribly wrong as our lives fall further into confusion and isolation and the earth teeters on a crisis of being unable to support life. Radical and urgent internal and external healing needs to take place, and if we take the view that our bodies are part of the earth then, if we heal, we heal the earth.
Active healing of the earth can take many forms including direct action, protest, prayer, energy work and regeneration.
The basic principle that I have found is that we need to let go of the cultural conditioning of seeing nature as separate. It is part of us and we are part of it. Mary’s psychiatrist at the hospital was
surprised that she recovered without intervention including shock treatment or drugs. Perhaps it is time to follow a more expanded view of healing and
wholeness that can involve the earth – and we become involved with her.
The altered state recedes – how long was I in it – I twitch and blink as if waking from a dream. Big Bill is watching me and resumes speaking. Each cliff and each sacred site holds it own story. He knows the dreamtime tales of the animals that scuttle and scamper within the forests and floodplains. The stories teach his people how to survive in the cornerstone of their spiritual and physical existence, a land they have occupied for thousands of years. A long time to tune into country.
Next time you go outside, I invite you to take the opportunity to breathe with the land, to imagine that everything is connected. To imagine that you can heal the earth in some way and that it can heal you. The change that the world needs… begins with us. n
Phoenix Arrien has a deep interest in indigenous healing and culture and feels fortunate to have sat, and still sits, at the feet of
several elders who have been generous with their sharing and teachings. She is a shamanic healer, an experienced facilitator of healing and transformation workshops and deep ecology and healing ecology retreats.
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