Singing Deer Healing

Each morning I pass time at what I call my “Sit Spot” — a special place in nature (in my case, in my backyard) where I absorb the more-than-human world around me, open myself to these other companions, and attempt to simply be (easier said than done!). For months I’ve watched the changing of the plants, the dropping of fruit and leaves, the bareness, then growth of the new, the continual ebb and flow of life that does not depend on humans but continues alongside, despite us.

Back in February or so I first became aware of the liquid song of a bird in the neighborhood. The song went straight to my heart, and I yearned to discover just who this bird was. It sang each morning from the top of a very tall birch a few yards away, and the song changed, sometimes several times within a few minutes.

I tried to spot this bird, and what I glimpsed revealed a bird that was small. A sparrow? And yet, when I pulled out field guides I couldn’t definitively to myself identify the bird.

Which bird loved to be in the treetops, or on phone wires — high up? Which bird appeared to be shy — for whenever I heard this bird, or other birds like it in the neighborhood and turned my attention on them, trying to “figure them out” — the bird would invariably fly away. Truly. My very attention and focus on the bird seemed to disturb it so much that it fled.

I realized quickly that this golden-song bird, this Mystery bird embodied some important teachings and lessons for me, was in some way a mirror to my spirit, to something I would in time come to understand. Maybe. In the meantime I perused a bird book for this area, trying to narrow down just who this bird might be, listened to bird songs on the internet — and dashed outside whenever I heard the bird, wandered the neighborhood with my neck craned, struggling to spot the small bird high in the trees despite the leafing of the branches. And I despaired of ever figuring out who this little bird is.

In time I gave up listening for the bird. I didn’t really hear it anymore — certainly not at my Sit Spot time. Maybe it had moved on, migrated with the spring. Sometimes I thought I heard this bird — but the song seemed different. I know longer recognized the patterns, though the changing, liquid quality seemed similar to what had originally captured my attention.

I spotted the bird at times that I thought might be it — yes, sparrow or wren size, with a narrow tail, a pale throat, a thin beak. But the birds I listened to in the audios were not what this bird sounded like. This bird was not a vireo, for example.

In my own heart I’ve been journeying for quite sometime, moving to a renewed understand and embodying of who I am in this world, this life. I’ve come to an end of a couple of ’story arc’s, the most recent being that of our time in the West, which I understand in an energetic and metaphoric sense as well as geographically. I mark that as the New Moon my family had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from NE Oregon. As of Sunday, we’d been here a year and a day — a length of time that is of significance in Celtic traditions. For example, many agreements were trialed for a year-and-a-day before making a final commitment to it. Hand-fasting, where a couple might live together for a year-and-a-day before committing to marriage is one such example.

And so, when I stepped outside on Monday, I felt I was stepping into someplace new in myself, some new understanding, some new cycle of Mystery and being. And as I stepped outside I suddenly became aware of a bird singing close by. My golden-song Mystery! I spotted a bird in the lowest branches of our incense-cedar — clearly to me, a wren of some sort — a winter wren? Though the tail didn’t tip up quite as much. Still, clearly the tipping up tail of a wren.

As soon this detail registered the bird darted across the yard, and I heard the golden-song from a different place, from the direction that bird had flown, though it seemed to my ears that the song came further out. Still, I crossed the yard, spotted the bird, listened to the song and knew that this was the bird that had been singing all this time.

This morning I took the time to peruse my guidebook. Yes, a Bewick’s Wren. The book even said plainly that a particular bird sings several songs, and that the songs vary from bird to bird. I got on the internet, listened to some audio clips of Bewick’s Wren, read some more about how the songs are different but there’s a certain quality that you can recognize. Bewick’s Wren.

Why hadn’t I considered wrens in my obsession with discovering the name of this bird? Why hadn’t I considered Bewick’s Wren for more than half a second? For one reason, when I’d glimpsed the bird on the phone wire or high in the trees, I’d been at such an angle beneath it that I hadn’t noticed the tipping up of the tail — or at least not for more than a moment. The tail appeared to be tipping down. For another, when I read the description of where the bird liked to hang it, it mentioned that it favored shrubs. It said how common these birds were (when in my experience they seemed so few and so shy!).

I had suspected that following — and releasing — the Mystery of this little beautifully-singing bird would reveal something I would do well to pay attention to in my own heart. And again I resonate to these truths that knowledge is available but in the end we must let go of what we think we know, let go of “trying to figure it all out”, let go and be. Then the little bird will fly right in your yard at just the right time that you can see exactly its nature — oh, a wren of some sort — but even that is not so very important to the fact that here is a being — a little bird — who is a companion in my journey, whose flight and song have interwoven with mine.

My life is more beautiful and song-filled and harmonious because I have chased the Mystery embodied in this little bird, a path that involved hammering the question with my mind, and surrender, and — when I reached a reordered/ released sense of self — finally unexpected discovery.

As I start this new day I’m so very aware of the directives my strategic mind injects into each day, each moment, and — I have an expansive sense of what might be possible if I flip-flopped this with just being present, in love with what is right before me, open to discovery. Strategic thinking (the ego) is necessary for us to live out the visions woven in our heart, the story/dream/song that our soul yearns to live in the world, but in this moment I suspect that the directive threads can really be as light and open and subtle — and effective — as a spider’s web spun between branches.

At least, that is the experiment, the wondering in which I set forth into this day. The magic that is opening between my hands.

Tell me, dear reader. What mystery do you chase? And where in the natural world is it mirrored back to you? What is the golden-song that is “out there” that you actually have resounding in every cell of your being. We may feel that we are small birds of no consequence in this huge, many-forces life, but in the language of the soul birds have always been messengers of the heart, always the ones who communicate from beyond the visible world.

What message, song, expression do you bring forth right now? Sing it here if you wish!

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Trillium In Bloom

When we are in extended suffering, due to our own crisis or a loved one’s, it can seem that blessing and inner peace are words with no meaning. Such a state of clarity and nourishment seems entirely out of reach, an impossibility in the face of our internal storm.

In other places and times cultures crafted entire practices and ceremonies to help restore an individual to a sense of harmony within his or herself, to a sense of grace with all of creation. And in that restoration to harmony with self, community, nature, the cosmos, and God/Spirit — with all that is — the sufferer gained a sense of wholeness and peace — an understanding and felt knowing that she is part of a great weaving that truly cares for and loves her.

The reasons for the despair and suffering may still continue, but the ability of the individual to weather the winds of Mystery shifts as a result. She finds that she has a place of rest and connection that fuels her spirit, and gives her the strength to continue. She finds herself able to discover gifts hidden in this painful yet exquisite experience of the preciousness of life.

In my healing arts practice I strive to offer my clients an experience of the blessing and beauty woven around each of us in every moment. I use my harp, love of the natural world, song, and offering of healing energy (Reiki) to ‘make visible’ the music and coherent harmony I experience of you. All of us are amazing expressions of life. Our bodies perform innumerable miraculous functions in any moment without our even having to think about it. Our minds pull ideas together, or follow paths of dream. Our emotions speak a language that responds and reacts, creates entire Universes and release them. We are far more grounded in the earth of ourselves than we think.

When I offer music and healing, or point out the magic of birdsong in the moment, a flower opening, or recognize a kindness offered to you or by you to others, I am really offering a reminder of something your body, heart, and soul already knows: the poetry of you. You are an astounding gift to Creation, to each person around you, to the nature that exists outside your door.

Being on this good earth is an astonishing blessing indeed, and though times may be messy and chaotic and wrenchingly painful and sad, pathways exist to uncovering the wholeness that lies within these tumultuous layers. We can find our way, or even just ‘a way’. And in that discovery, shifts happen throughout our minds and cells. Stress, tension, and confusion may ease, griefs lighten or at least become bearable. Our minds may clear and we may come to breathe more easily, our organs begin to function in a restored rhythm. Any experience of blessing reminds our bodies, minds, hearts, emotions — our whole self — of the harmony that exists in every level of we are.

Where does beauty and blessing exist in your life today, right now, where you are? Take a moment to breathe in the fragrance of the Universe, to hear the sweet song of life that is you. Can you hear a bird singing outside your window? And what of the wonder of our minds that has created the house around us, the furniture, the technology that serves us? Where have you experienced a kindness, a warm hand, a thoughtful word?

And if it is too much to attempt to identify blessings, just surrender to the possibility that blessing exists and is here, right now, surrounding you, enfolding you.

Anything that we can truly experience with wonder can weave beauty around us that makes all the difference in how we — how any of us — face each day.

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Jane Valencia helps spirit-centered men and women who feel disheartened and depleted to receive replenishment of soul, a renewed perspective of their situation, pain relief, and an experience of grace. For more information contact Jane here.

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This post by Loba, from the Animá Lifeways And Herbal School, is one that I feel expresses what Singing Deer Healing is all about!  I wish I’d written it (my version of it!).   Enjoy the beauty and blessing in these wise words, and may the single note of your true voice resound.   May you feel the harmony and pure resonance of yourself woven into this incredible enchanted world that is the trees, the clouds, the dandelion, the chickens and crows, the raccoons and the hounds, the myriad animals and small beasties, the mountains, and rivers, and hidden streams, and all the people we experience as soul tribe and beyond!

~ Jane

Finding Our Voices:
Harmony & Expression

By Loba
Animá School: www.animacenter.org

A woman named Rachel came to retreat and learn with us in the spring of her twentieth year. In her capacity to feel deeply the pain and wonder of the earth she was way ahead of her peers, and yet her lack of confidence made it hard for her to share her beautiful heart with others. She wrote to us before her arrival, expressing a desire for us to help her “find my voice”. “How can I ever begin to find my purpose and place in this world, if I can’t share what’s inside me? I feel so much every day that I don’t know how to release, I feel like I’m being smothered.”

Soon after her arrival, we spoke about how hard it is to express our truest selves when we’ve been hurt or rejected in the past for showing vulnerability or depth. How essential it still is to continue to seek out ways to express ourselves wholly. And ideally, to find the means to share our undiluted expressions with others. We spoke about keeping journals and writing poetry, using paint and clay, dancing… and when we spoke about singing, tears flooded her golden brown eyes. She’d always wanted to learn how to sing “well”, but was told that she was “tone deaf” by a teacher in school. “There’s just some people that can sing, and some who’ll never be able to”. More tears.

We sat at the base of the medicine cliffs, on a large flat rock at the edge of the Healing Pool. We were at least a half a mile away from any other humans. I asked her if she wanted to try something that might help, and when she agreed, I told her to come sit cross-legged across from me, with her knees touching mine. First I encouraged her to take some slow deep breaths. “Now open yourself to all the feeling in your heart, and see if you can sing it out, in one note. It can be as loud as you want”.

She sat for a while, quietly breathing, hugging herself, and rocking back and forth with her eyes closed, making small sounds. Finally she found a note that expressed herself, her pain and bliss and hunger. It was like a baby’s cry, and a victim’s cry of rage, but also as pure and ecstatic as an eagle’s screech or the calls of the elk on the river where I live. I matched the note and volume for a moment, and then I shifted down in the scale, leaning forward so that our foreheads were nearly touching. All of a sudden our tones were different but in synch and harmony. It was like a vibration that just suddenly got ten times more powerful than what either one of us had been able to create alone, and we could feel it clear down to our toes, and in our bones. We were each expressing our truest selves without fudging or hiding anything, but the way we fit together is what made us something more.

Harmony is the opposite of the army where the drill sergeant chants one line, and then the troops all follow. And it’s more like African polyrhythms than it is like African call and response. All the world is singing at once, the mountains and rivers, the birds and bees, wind and waves, and the spirit of every person. Each of these songs, and every note and detail in them, are overlapping with others. No sound or expression or spirit ever really stands alone, and so it’s a matter of how they go together. If we don’t care about or pay attention to the expressions of the other singers, the forests or our friends, we’ll very likely end up with a disharmonious song, and a discordant world. But if we really care, and we pay close enough attention, we can find ways to express our personal songs that resonate with the songs and needs of the rest of the singing world.

A large part of my life is now consciously dedicated to bringing all the parts together in a way that contributes to the harmony and wholeness of all. Sometimes that means one part has to shift and be just a tad bit higher, another may need to drop down lower than usual. I help stretch the women I work with emotionally and in their lives, assisting them past what they are used to or comfortable with, just like I help someone stretch a note until it resonates with all the notes around them.
I have to really work at bringing my many diverse parts together harmoniously. Like most everyone, I suppose I’m a complex stew of energies, kind of a little girl/wise woman, introverted extrovert, wounded healer, wild woman-fairy princess! No small wonder that I spend too much time sorting things out, trying to figure out priorities and what my realest deepest feelings really are. Feeling things out with my heart and body, and not so much with my easily confused head. Bringing myself out of fairy princess land and back to Earth is a constant effort as well. It really helps to let go of the harsh judgments my wounded self has about many of the different parts, and to allow for their expression in healthy ways. Chopping wood, harvesting and cooking wild foods, playing in the river, letting myself cry when I need to, leading sweat lodge ceremonies, allowing myself to imagine that I really can make miracles happen, are all ways that I give these parts of me expression… and live the song of all I am meant to be!

I feel so incredibly blessed to have so much support in living this life that is such a strange and wondrous expression of harmony– something of a hermitage that still reaches out to the world every day with its song of wildness. That I wake each morning miles away from any power lines, television and phones, and rest my eyes on sun-streaked cliffs, listening to the undiluted harmonics of wildest nature, the bugling elks and cawing ravens, whistling hawks and singing frogs. And yet there is the little satellite dish on our cabin roof that connects us to the internet. It seems a bit incongruous, but it helps so much in our efforts to share the blessings and teachings of this place with the many students and guests that make their pilgrimages here, as well as the wonderful women that read this amazing publication. As much as I cherish the times of quiet between the busy spells, it wouldn’t feel very harmonious or right if we neglected to share the power of the energy here in whatever ways possible.

It seems to me that all of nature, even the smallest dandelion thrusting itself sunward from between the cracks of the sidewalks, is trying to teach us how to achieve truest harmony, how to be all we are, with no apologies, insistently and joyfully. How to sing out with every cell of our beings the miracle of life, and the wonder of getting to live each day. Instead of trying to teach everyone who comes here how to live in the wilderness, our goal is more about empowering each person to discover for themselves what harmony with nature, including their own nature, feels like. To give them the opportunity to know themselves as one with Earth and Spirit, to open to her song, and to let the song of Gaia sing them back into wholeness. To know and feel themselves as a part of the song of the natural universe, so that when they leave here, they may commit to being truer to their selves than they may have ever been before, no matter how difficult or disharmonious things may have to be for a while until the necessary changes are made. And giving them whatever guidance they can make use of, to achieve that feeling of resonance in their daily lives.

I feel in harmony bringing tea to those I love when they’re busy writing, picking up pieces of kindling from the ground, knowing that I’m reducing fire danger near our structures. I feel in harmony harvesting the tops of the nettle plants, knowing that they’ll grow back, and wandering the river to harvest watercress, so I don’t take too much from any one of the small patches that are still growing back from the last flood. I feel in harmony every time I coerce a bee that’s trapped in the kitchen to sit on my finger, and watching it fly away once I take it outside. I feel in harmony giving prayers, time and energy to honoring the wild animals whose lives we take and eat occasionally. I feel in harmony baking extra muffins to give to the man who sells us eggs from his chickens, to the postmistress who spends extra energy dealing with our mountains of mail, and to the town grocer who gives us credit at the store when our finances are low. I feel in harmony whenever I remember to sing while I’m hauling water, or notice the light dribbling through the grape leaves by the mulberry tree. Whenever I remember to see all the beauty of the earth as a reflection of myself in the mirror of creation. When I look to the cliffs above me to recall who I am, and why I am here. To be a part of this place, to feel the changing sun and seasons and moons upon my face, and from the joy of that, to sing.

Rachel and I continue singing together for a what seems like a very long time, our voices weaving and cascading, dancing through the canyon. Every time the song pauses, we hear our voices ringing back to us, many times over, bouncing off the canyon walls like a pair of far away flutes. Finally there is a long note that feels like the end, and we stop and look at each other. Her face is streaked with tears, and she beams at me with the most joyous smile. “Wow,” she says, “that was really something. I’ll never forget this moment. I sure needed that.”

Looking up at the cliffs, feeling Gaia herself vibrating with the pleasure of the gift of her daughter’s long suppressed song, I add, “And the Earth needs you, and your song too.”

(Photo of singing at our Wild Women’s Gathering (c)2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

~~~

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