I have long admired the trees. This love affair started early in life. The minute I could climb, I began to inhabit their branches. The crab apples provided a magical floral fantasy. The oaks were challenging because their first branches were so high that I couldn’t reach them. Not one to be easily distracted from a desire, I rigged my nylon jump rope into a pulley system and hoisted myself up. Friends followed. Thankfully, our parents didn’t witness this feat of engineering. We would have prematurely aged them!
My favorite tree, however, was a three-story pine. She had a thick trunk, huge low-lying branches, and a spiral of branches that grew up her trunk. You could sit on the lower perch and enjoy a nice picnic lunch. More often, I’d scamper to the top and gaze over the apartment rooftops amidst baseball-sized green pine cones and birds. The winds blew, and the upper branches swayed. I swayed with them. I felt completely secure in the arms of nature’s love.
A few years later, after a move, a maple became my friend. I did much of my homework throughout late grade school and early high school, seated securely in a fork in her branches. It was pure peace. The winds swayed the tree and me, sometimes forcefully. Again I felt only peace, security, and a form of love for which they were no words.
These days when I have the need, I stand with my back to a tall tree and lean, looking up. I tune into the strength, endurance, and flexibility. I feel the warm energy field surrounding the trunk and the slow movement of sap as it makes its up-and-down rounds. No human arms could ever replace the feeling of being at One with these majestic beings and merging with their field. They are with me even when not physically present – Ms. Ponderosa, Grandmother Pine, Scary Tree (whose photos often appear here around Halloween), and the mountaintop pine community whose generosity feeds an entire ecosystem. I love them all. They have been here much longer than I, firmly rooted through winds, floods, rains, and even some of them through fire. They have taught me so much in their silent presence.
It is a challenge for us to be as rooted and flexible with such a wild emotional climate on the planet today! So many people are springing emotional leaks, bringing their truth to the surface, often ungracefully. Many feel anger or intolerance bubbling up when challenged to endure things they previously forced themselves to put up with. For others, the emotions are coming out as vehement opinions with a demand for agreement. For still others, these honest feelings come up with a heaping dose of old guilt for desiring something more for themselves. Others who have practiced feeling good find a more enjoyable truth arising as they admit their desires for more joy and self-expression. You might say that many are emitting gale-force winds of emotion!
Most of us, at one point or another, have had gale-force winds of emotion aimed at us. I have. From upset friends to clients who just need to vocalize their upset to the “angel complaint department” (me!) to those who want an outlet for pent-up feelings, there have been a lot of forceful opinions, views, and at times upsets aimed my way. My response was pretty human when I was younger – fight or flight. I used to defend or justify my view or withdraw and cower.
Now, when people aim strong emotions my way, I remain rooted in love. I see the love flowing through me, to them, as a steady stream of light. In this flow, I receive love too. I no longer feel I must agree with anyone if I don’t. I no longer feel the need to educate anyone who hasn’t asked for my opinion. I no longer feel the need to save or fix anyone. After years of working with angels, I know all I can do is share wisdom, energy, love, and inspiration. In the words of Lisa Nichols, now a famous motivational speaker who, after hitting rock bottom and bouncing back, did a viral video, it is time to be our own rescue.
There’s truth to this. No one can manage our vibration for us. No one can crawl into our heads and choose better thoughts. No one can make us feel anything, but they can trigger well-practiced feelings within us. Just as strong branches bend and sway while the weak ones break in the wind, the positive patterns we’ve practiced will stand firm in the storms of life, while the ones we’ve not yet mastered will become active the moment someone or something pushes our buttons.
The emotional word for this is “resilience,” meaning your ability to withstand and bounce back quickly from challenges. The spirit is infinitely resilient. The body too. Science has even coined the term bioplasticity, which is a fancy way of saying that the body can adapt to the forces it encounters in life. Like the trees, we are created to be flexible beings.
In the areas where you’ve practiced being well-rooted in your own feelings and beliefs, you’ll find it easy to bend and sway with life’s triggers rather than break from love. In these areas, your old hot buttons will no longer be “pushable.” In areas where you’ve not yet practiced minding your own mind or thinking your own thoughts, you’ll feel uprooted or broken away from love the moment someone trips your triggers. The more you practice being rooted in your truth and flexible in life’s challenges, the more easily you’ll remain centered in love.
Practically speaking, here are a few real-life examples of remaining rooted yet flexible:
Suppose you’re having a great day, and you come across a story about a person or situation that irritates or upsets you. If you haven’t practiced being rooted in your own opinions and feelings, or you’re not flexible enough to hear differing perspectives without swaying from your own, you may easily get upset and begin to have imaginary negative discussions. You could say you’ve been a bit uprooted from your loving truth.
If, instead, you’ve practiced staying rooted in yourself and love, and you’re flexible enough to hear other perspectives, then you may get temporarily upset but quickly shift back to your center and say, “What would I rather see? What would I rather people do?” You might dream of a more sane or kind world. Alternatively, you can shrug it off and go enjoy your lunch! Either one attunes you to a better vibe. Either one keeps you rooted in the vibration of love. In the energetic reality the topic you choose matters less than whether or not it tunes you to love.
Another example would be remaining rooted and flexible when others try to change you. Suppose you have an idea for a future business that feels wonderful. You are passionate about this new direction. You share your thoughts with a loved one, expecting support and enthusiasm. Instead, they rain on your parade! They can’t understand why you want to change. They don’t believe your ideas will work. They fear the risks are too significant. They grill you on how you’ll overcome various challenges. If you are not well-rooted in yourself and the Divine, they could easily knock the proverbial wind out of your sails. You might lose enthusiasm and momentum, doubt yourself, or even give up on your brilliant idea.
If, however, you are rooted in your own beliefs and flexible enough to hear other perspectives, you might view their concerns simply as challenges that you can overcome. You won’t require their agreement to feel good about your plans and won’t waste your time getting upset at them for displaying their fears. You might listen politely, smile happily, knowing you’re on track, and simply say, “I’ll figure it out,” then go forward with your plans. When both rooted and flexible, you remain guided, empowere
You know what feels good and right and resonates with you. Others are entitled to their opinions – even about us. We can be flexible enough to hear them. They might even sway us a little. However, if we’ve practiced being rooted in our own desire to feel good, we can quickly bounce back to the center and get on with our own happy life and priorities.
Here are a few tips to help you remain firmly rooted in yourself and, at the same time, flexible enough to hear other perspectives without letting them break you:
1. Practice, Practice, Practice feeling good
Most of us have a lot of practice thinking about things that don’t feel good. It takes some practice to change the pattern. Don’t settle for feeling bad. You deserve to feel better. Catch yourself. Pick a better feeling thought about anything at all when you catch yourself feeling down.
The subject doesn’t matter. You don’t have to try to find good thoughts about unpleasant things. You just have to find a thought about anything that makes you feel better. We’re talking about 5D tuning here, not 3D logic. I focus on the first thing I see and go on and on about how I love it. I look around and appreciate all I see. I tell myself good things about myself, life, and others. It works. You’ll feel silly, but you’ll feel better.
The more you practice feeling good, the more rooted you will be in your own loving, happy truth, and the more quickly you’ll bounce back when something wobbles you off center.
2. When something in life “hits” you breathe and root deeply
When something unexpected comes my way, I used to react. Now I stop. I pause, and I root deeply. You can imagine a gorgeous column of light around you. Imagine being firmly rooted between heaven and earth. Breathe slowly and deeply to calm your biology, which has already been triggered into a fight/flight response. Breathing triggers the rest/digest response in the body.
Once you’ve tamed your chemistry and your nervous system, keep breathing. Imagine light flowing down your spine to the earth and up from the ground through the top of your head like a two-way stream. The tree takes in the CO2 from the air and processes it sharing nutrients with the soil. It brings up water and nutrients from the soul. It, too, has a two-way stream of love flowing at all times.
If you are physically comfortable doing so, you can take a moment to stand. Imagine your feet being deeply rooted into the earth. Feel the stability that comes from rooting. Now sway back and forth very gently to feel the powerful security of being rooted and flexible.
From this place of peace, consider the issue at hand. What is the outcome you want? How can you feel into that future?
Give yourself the gift of getting centered and rooted back in your own desires and good feelings.
3. Bend, Sway, Don’t break…
You can be around people who are negative or in unpleasant vibrations without allowing them to uproot you. You can bend or sway in that you allow them their feelings without rigidly insisting they change to make you feel better. You can permit yourself to remain rooted in your own good-feeling space while being compassionate. You can observe others in unpleasant moods in much the same way a parent (on a good day!) can watch a two-year-old throwing a tantrum without feeling upset or taking the “I hate you, mommy” outburst so seriously.
It does no one any good to be sad for the sad people or angry with those who are upset. It doesn’t elevate you, the world, or anyone else to wish ill for those who engage in unhealthy behaviors. It just drags us down and robs us of our power. Far better to bend, sway and allow the winds to blow around us but also to remain so rooted in our desire to love and feel good.
We do an exercise in my self-love class. We go around the room. You have to play “the bad guy” and tell others, “I don’t like you!” The person receiving such an unpleasant message smiles compassionately and says, “That’s OK!” It drives home the point that others’ bad moods are about them.
It is OK if others don’t like you, don’t agree, or don’t want to be in a better space. You can still like yourself. You can agree with your own spirit. You can choose better feelings. The more you remain rooted in self – allowing yourself your own feelings – the more you can be compassionate to others even when they aren’t acting as you wish. You can bend and sway without breaking from love.
The majority of us learned to be reactive. We learned that there’s an ultimate right and wrong. We learned to fight back or shrink when others disagreed or aimed negative energy our way. We learned to give others the benefit of the doubt over our own God-given knowing. Thankfully, we are learning to be more like the trees – rooted in self and able to be flexible when life comes our way with its challenges and surprises.
Instead of letting interruptions distract us from our priorities, we’re learning to stay on our own course. Instead of allowing dissenting opinions to disrupt our good moods, we’re learning to reclaim our joy simply by choosing more pleasing thoughts. The more we practice remaining rooted in love and flexible enough to dance with the world without letting it knock us too far out of our center, the more of a joy life becomes.
It takes a little work to practice rooting vs. reacting, but the power you gain from the effort – to feel as you choose and thus create the life you choose – is well worth the effort.
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