Tendrils tumbling like morning glory, escaping the cramped confines of the hairclip atop my head.  Bare toes wiggling like earthworms in neon orange crocs, itching to feel the crumbly soft soil.  Branches of happiness growing up and out of my chest, blossoming in a smile that lights my eyes.

A deep exhale.  Flowering chickweed runs rampant, always a bit ahead of me as I chase and pull it.  I smell the herbal earthiness and settle into my skin.  I know tomorrow my squatting quads will be squawking, but right now there is this pressing concern: the earth needs my touch, and I need hers.

I am in the garden again.  The hunger for growth that I live with and nourish daily, the stretching toward the light that I nurture in the people with whom I work, is mirrored everywhere I look.

Life calling forth more life.  The smell and sight and sound and sensation of it.  The feeling of it in my body.

Seeds and tubers, flowers and leaves, treetrunks and vines, branches and brambles all growing like magic out of the ground.  Anchored in the earth and clambering toward the light.  Just like us... 

Our body is our connection to the earth.  Our connection to the foundation of ourselves.  It is where we are rooted.  The ground of our experience is the body.  All that grows in us arises out of the sensations of this brilliant organism that is the home for our consciousness. 

Our thoughts and our feelings and our insights and our understanding and our Selves all rise up from the rich loam of our bodily aliveness.  And we need conscious access to this inner biodiversity in order to grow into our authentic power.

So often in the office working with people I will notice in them a subtle psychophysiological shift.  A sigh, a twitch, a held breath, a clenched jaw, tapping feet or fidgety fingers.  

I invite my clients to investigate.  Together we are curious, and attend to the sensations with warmth, interest and nonjudgement.  We breathe awareness into the specific location and slow the mind down so that it can truly experience what is there. 

And the body responds.  Sometimes initially with increased tension, but then typically the body opens and softens, allowing access to more of what is there.  Information and energy are released.  Growth happens. 

Tuning into the body over and over again we cultivate new neural pathways.  We wire our brains to notice the ground of ourselves.  We develop pathways for approaching what is uncomfortable.  Over and over we utilize those new channels of noticing and approaching, deepening them so they become the avenue of choice, rather the the old way: avoiding and escaping. 

It is a practice my clients develop and then take away with them.  In their daily lives they track the moment to moment felt sense in the body, accelerating and ensuring their ongoing growth.  

And they become curious.  They come to see that their feelings and reactions and thoughts do not arise out of thin air.  They aren't just "out of the blue".  Like all life they arise out of the ground.  Out of the body.  And so they return and explore - and they know how to return and explore. 

This blog is an invitation for you to become a co-creator of your growth, to participate consciously in your journey to your biggest life.

Let me encourage you to feel your rootedness in your body.  Let me support you in noticing the quivers of your aliveness.  Let me coach you to stay with yourself in the vulnerable truth of being human, in the uncomfortable bodily experience of dissonance that is your very own call to growth.

You are as beautiful as any other thing in nature, growing out of the ground of you, reaching toward the light. 

Breathe and feel and grow and Be.

 Photo Credits: D. Beder Photography (first photo)

                            ELB Photos (second & third photo)