Culling the Unnecessary

“Grief is a form of generosity, which praises life and the people and situations which we have lost. Grief that praises life shows the depth of our appreciation for having been given life enough to begin with...” - Martin Pretchtel

Dear Quiet Seeds,

There, on the trembling edge of your awareness, you might perceive how vulnerable you are this time of year. Ups and downs in temperature, adjusting to darker days, I have a sense of how thin my skin feels. The cold is coming and I am a wild pony who has not yet grown in her winter coat.

Eastern medicine calls this our Wei Qi, the defensive energy that uplifts our immune system and acts as a sort of force field. And in this Metal Element/Autumn season, our Wei Qi is adjusting and working harder to keep up. 

Barrier systems and protective shields are themes right now, both energetically and emotionally. Intertwined within the physical level that involves our lungs, skin, nose, immune systems, and large intestines, encouraging us to fully exercise our respiratory and excretory systems.

Your lungs want to know: have you been breathing? Like really breathing? Do you let yourself inhale and exhale everything, taking and accepting all that life brings you?

When I look to the living world for guidance, the fall winds tell me we are in the long exhale part of the cycle. There is a contraction happening, a falling downwards towards the ground, a letting go, perhaps even a soft sense of loss. 

The wisdom of your large intestine asks:

Have you let yourself get to the dregs, to the bottom of it, whatever you are feeling or holding on to, any grief that sits below the surface?

How might an on-going relationship with grief be a reflection of your spiritual health?

Let us not just think our grief in our heads with worry and anxiety; these are sorry substitutes for the healing power of authentic sadness. Praise, joy, and grief are powerful forces that don’t sabotage, but actually sustain and awaken our sense of hope and engagement. 

Grief also has this way of paring everything down. 

The Metal Element offers you a sleek sword of clarity, cheering you to cut back until you discover what feels absolutely essential. And in the process you might close your Facebook account, you might spend a year wearing only the clothes you like, you might uncolonize your imagination, you might reach out and say it when something really moves you. 

Let us forge our metal and cull the unnecessary. 

I am doing a short workshop on all of the themes of the Metal Element. This class will be particularly supportive to:

-anyone who has chronic or recurring challenges with their lungs, skin, immune system or digestion.

-anyone wants to look deeper into issues around boundaries, barriers, and self-sovereignty, as well as learn ways to boost their Wei Qi

-anyone who wants to work with grief in relation to their overall spiritual health.

-or anyone who just wants to more consciously work with the medicine of the metal element in order to move through the larger phases of life with more resilience and equanimity.  

I would love to see you there! This is an online class being held through All Souls Interfaith Gathering, Tuesday, October 12th from 6:30-8PM ET / 3:30-5pm PT.

I just wanted to leave you with one of the essential oils I have been working a lot with during this Metal Element time: Scotch Pine. There is actually a Scotch Pine tree behind my house and I have been visiting it frequently, admiring its regal, coppery shine and uprightness. The volatile oils of these trees are great for any pulmonary complaint or clearing phlegm from the lungs. On a psycho-spiritual level, Scotch Pine helps disperse our grief and reconnects us to deeper instinctual energies, restoring our trust in the cycles and rhythms of all life. You can use the oil of this sacred tree in a diffuser or mixed with a carrier oil on your body, massaging it over your chest, neck, or scalp. 

In the Spirit of Change,

Kendra

(October 2021 Newsletter)