Preparation - What it looks like right now
Here’s how I'm using my hand, head, and heart this month to prepare for all that is to come in this harvest season and beyond.
“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.” -Georgia O’Keefe
I can feel it. I’m getting restless. There’s a pull to put on sweaters. To snuggle blankets. To start fires. To light lots of candles. To make chai. The other day I moved the firewood from its summer location to its cold weather location even though its 98 degrees outside. Because…… the pull is real for me.
Once August hits I feel the energy of the first seasonal harvest and I want to run away with it. The early harvest of August, the mid harvest of September, and the late harvest of October all prepare me for the growing darkness after the solstice and the time change. I don’t have a favorite season; I love the liminal time between the seasons. And, this time that leads up to the season of darkness and turning inwards, rest, dormancy, reflection is so juicy and yummy to me.
I’m preparing for the harvest season that commences this month. All of the work of the summer comes to head in the harvest season. Preparation right now is all about harvesting what has been growing within me and around me this summer.
All this summer sunlight, warmth, and slow pace helps me focus on what feels right and good within me. This summer I have been reflecting and meditating a lot on what I can leave behind, what I no longer need. I watch, notice, and learn whatever summer wants to teach me. Throughout the day, I turn to a simple timed breathing exercise. I inhale, hold for a count of one at the top, and exhale for a longer count then the inhale. I maintain this rhythm for several cycles. The effect is that I drop into a place of ease, calm, comfort, and peace. That is when I can see my way forward.
This season is a time of harvesting the abundance within me. Tying up loose ends, projects that were begun but not finished. Letting go of negative habits and replacing them with more nourishing ones. Letting go of stuff, too, via donations. And, boosts to my creativity and creative energy.
At the beginning of the year, I wrote about how I was beginning a new project - writing a fairy tale based upon my life. I decided to write it as a fairy tale to take the first person out of it. By taking the first person out of my writing and making it a fairy tale, it became an exercise in reflection. I am able to take a step back, gain new perspective, see events and people in a new light. The benefit has been incredible! I have been able to see origins and pathways that have led to where I am now.
For example, one of the challenges for me has always been a quick rise in defense of self. I have held an assumption that a person’s statement towards me is a personal critique of who I am as a human being. I rise to defend, challenge, protect, assert worthiness. It has caused difficulties in all of my relationships and frustrated me immensely.
It’s something I have been working on for years. To acknowledge the quick rise, look at it, see it, and let it go. To encourage quicker recovery. All the work has made a difference but that quick rise is still there. It’s been important to me to unearth the origins of that quick rise in the hopes of letting it go. This summer as I have been writing my fairy tale, I followed the thread of that response back in time. I discovered its origin. With that discovery, came freedom. I have been sowing new seeds this summer, and am ready to harvest them into new, healthier, open hearted practices that will thread into the tapestry of my daily life and connections with others.
I’m also harvesting what has been growing in the garden this summer. The harvest season is not an ending; it’s a new beginning. This year’s harvest is simply another time of preparation for the next growing season. Don’t get me wrong, this is a time to celebrate our collaboration with the Earth and all that our partnership with the Earth has produced this year but it is also a time to prepare for the next phase. Here’s how it looks for us right now:
I harvested our garlic a couple of weeks ago and have been letting the soil sit for a bit and pulling out weeds. Good soil preparation is so important to produce the best garlic. Garlic needs well-draining, rich soil so I’m mixing in about 2-3 inches of compost. All of this is to prepare our garlic raised bed for planting in late October/early November depending on our first fall frost date, so that the garlic is in the bed before the ground freezes.
I continue to pinch the flowers off of herbs like basil, mint, oregano, and thyme to promote growth a bit longer. I just don’t believe in having too many dried herbs in storage for winter for cooking and herbal remedies. I’ve begun stocking up on homemade pesto and other goodies that will be a welcome bit of summer during this winter.
I’ll begin saving seeds from the tomatoes, peas, and peppers we grew this year. Why? So we can grow them again next year. Yes, I know there are wonderful companies that will gladly sell me seeds every year. But for thousands of years there weren’t and there was no choice but to save seeds if one wanted to grow something. I like tapping into that heritage.
I’ll be direct sowing kohlrabi, kale, peas, spinach, and collards for a fall harvest.
As the early harvest passes by this month, I’ll be looking forward to the next liminal shift between the seasons, when summer shifts into autumn, when reflection becomes transformation, because as Georgia O’Keeffe also said, “To create one’s own world takes courage.”
Here’s how I am using my hand, head, and heart this month.
Here’s how I'm using my hand, head, and heart this month to prepare for all that is to come in this harvest season and beyond.
Hand: Building strength and endurance
I often get asked what am I training for? What am I preparing for? Zombie apocalypse? 5K swim? Truth is, I’m preparing to be 85 years old. I want to be able to get down and get up on my own, without a fear of broken bones, without the need of assistance. I want to be able to still go for long hikes in the mountains. I want to trek for hours through urban areas. I want to be able to play with any grandchildren that may come into my life. I want to paddle, swim, and do yoga. I want to do the things that make me happy. I don’t want to stop.
My mom was like that. She started doing yoga in her 70’s and was still doing yoga when she was 80 years old. She could always be found going on journeys with or playing on the floor with her grandchildren. She was able to do all that she wanted right up until the end.
Right now, I am also training so that I am able to give of my time and talents to the benefit of others. I am fortunate to be able to swim and that I have a safe, open water area to swim in. It is important to me to use my talents and to support others. This swim is all about having an open heart, bountiful love, and devotion to support cancer researchers in finding cancer treatments that are economically accessible to all and ultimately, a cure. If you are new here, see last month’s post for information about my annual swim with Swim Across America.
I’m about 6 weeks out from my open water swim. I have moved from recovery and reset of practice to preparation. What does preparation look like now? I’m still focusing on my technique, speed, distance, and overall fitness. Each day in the pool still involves a warm up, focus, and cool down.
In the pool: I am lengthening the distances and speeding up the time I swim in each set. For technique I’m concentrating on my rotation, head position, and propulsion — things that impact my speed.
Walking: 3-miles a day no matter the weather. This takes about 50-minutes.
Strength Training: 3-times a week I train with kettlebells. Right now this looks like AXE. AXE is a Strong First kettlebell program that trains for power and cardiovascular endurance at the same time. I do 5 repetitions of single arm swings on the minute for 20 sets at 32 kg/70 lbs. My active recovery between sets is walking, dancing, yoga, anything that keeps my body moving.
My preparation is immediate, I’m preparing for the open water swim next month. It’s so much more than that though. I’m preparing for aging; I’m preparing for winter when I find it more challenging to get moving; I’m preparing to do and be the best and highest version of myself each and every day.
Head: Lughnasa and the Harvest Season
Lughnasa (or Lúnasa, in modern Irish) is the name for the month of August, and a festival marking the beginning of the harvest season. The festival takes its name from Lugh, a Celtic god. The Book of Invasions, Part IV, Section VII - Tuatha de Danann explains the relationship between Lugh and his foster-mother, and the festival that he created to honor her. “The wood was cleared by her, so it was a flowering clover-plain before the end of the year (115).” It’s a time of celebration and honoring of the relationship between the land and the people. I also like to think of it as a time to honor the hard work of all of those that mother, in all of the ways that shows up.
Lughnasa is halfway between the Summer solstice and the Autumnal equinox. From this month until Samhaim, it is a time to harvest what has been growing all summer. Its a time to prepare for the dark months that are coming. In our family this is a time for canning, the final push for drying herbs, and starting new knitting projects. And, on the days when the cool blows through, a return to bread baking.
As the nights are slowly darkening its a good time for our family to return to our practice of story telling. We will read a story about Lugh and then a story from Orkney: Peerie Fool - a story about authenticity, consequences, reaping what you sow. It’s a story known by many names throughout Europe including Rumplestiltskin, Trit-a-Trot, Ricdin-Ricdon. The story can be found at:
https://www.surlalunefairytales.com/h-r/rumplestiltskin/stories/peerie.html
https://rousayremembered.com/peerie-fool/
After reading and discussing the story we will make a harvest offering back to the Earth for what we have been blessed with this summer.
Heart: Playing from the Heart
I play the flute. I have since I was 10 years old. Classically trained straight through college. I still have memories of practicing for long hours.
Playing the flute was probably my first meditation practice. It is where I learned to quiet. Where I learned to go in. The problem with my early days of playing the flute is that it was very heady. I was always in my head. It was literal translation of what the notes, the symbols, and the words on the page meant.
What I was missing and what didn’t come for a long, long time was learning to play from the heart. From a place of: What does the music say to me? How does it touch me? What does it make me want to communicate?
Playing, and especially playing from the heart, hasn’t always been easy for me to sustain. It’s one of the things that fell away recently. I blamed it on time, or lack there of. I blamed it on not wanting my family to hear me. It’s always been something I have done for my self. Performance has always been challenging, although I did it regularly. All that vulnerability and exposure.
Mostly, though, its been about time. I have always assumed that I needed the same amount of time to play as I did when I was 18 years old. Why did I think that? I don’t spend two hours meditating? I spend 15-30 minutes. Why did I think I had to spend hours to get the same benefit?
I was so wrong. Six years ago, a wonderful vocal music teacher said to me, “It is important that they touch their instrument daily. 15 minutes. That’s so much more important than practicing for 2-hours a day.” William James said it too: Daily strokes of effort.
I had lost that memory over these years, and have found myself awed by it as though I just heard it. It is a happy rediscovery. My flute and music have a place of honor by a window and are always ready and waiting for me. They, too, are prepared.
I feel drawn to my flute and music, and am delighted in the reconnection I am making to the creation of music. Now when I play, I still focus in the beginning on the technical aspects. Then I focus on opening the heart. I find that if I am am able to do this, to tap into the heart of my playing, I am better able to honor, see, and speak about what is happening inside my heart. What it is I’m feeling. What it is that is rumbling. I am now prepared to harvest the benefits of playing from the heart, my own musical meditation.
This month my hand, head, and heart practices provide an opportunity for me to prepare for all that is to come in this harvest season and beyond. My preparation is immediate and seasonal: preparing for my open water swim, playing the flute with an open heart, celebrating the harvest season within and around. Yet, it is also so much more. I’m preparing to do and be the best and highest version of myself each and every day.
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