This is how we remember. This is where we come alive. This is where we are free. This is where we belong.
I welcome you to my homeland of Sweden.
I begin by acknowledging the Sami, said to be the first human beings who arrived here in mother north, the descendants of nomadic peoples who have inhabited northern Sweden for thousands of years.
And to the ancient trees, the Norwegian Spruce and the Pedunculate oak (‘Kvilleken’ in Swedish), who also walked their way here up to 10,000 years ago—who gave birth to reindeer, moose, the fox and the wolf. Once free, now hunted.
We too, are a part of this ecology.We walked here, settled here, fought here and have loved here. We are apprentices of this land. What is it vibrating us to become? How are we participating in telling its story?
In our time, we have gained mechanical wings, forgetting the power of the walkabout—to feel and connect with the texture of what is right underneath.The quickness and vastness of possibilities keep our feet from the mud.
The leaves no longer hem our dresses and pants. But there is a calling from the fields, mountains, rock, forest and lakes. There is something to listen to and fall into. There is wisdom in the specific ancestry of this land.
How do we belong to the land as children of the earth?
Like the network of underground fungi and roots, we too reach our hands and ideas towards one another, sharing information and emotions like concern, care and love.
When a tree is threatened it releases a substance to be caught by the wind to let its family and community know.
It has to only rely on the direction of the wind to have its message delivered.
My messages to the world also depend on how the wind blows—it’s not always a given that I get to ask for help, for love, or am allowed to be of help to someone or something else, like a plant or animal. Yet it is this network that makes me feel as if I am part of everything.
I forget this beautiful purpose of belonging that we are all born into.
I forget my freedom. And I forget that I am skillful at navigating the world if I act on my basic impulses, and nurture the relationship with myself and the world by saying yes to the flow of wisdom I call intuition.
We crave to remember the aliveness of all aspects of the world…
Practices of embodiment, of feeling the elements and the organic movements of your own being switches us from thinking dominant to feeling dominant.
For it is feeling that guides us and what is experienced as reality (even if we try to think differently from what we feel, feeling is what the body reacts to).