I am soaking in early summer; wallowing in it, actually. Yesterday evening, we had the most amazing thunderstorm! Sheets of rain pelting sideways against the house meant that we could open a window at the back and look out, feeling like being on the prow of a great ship, plunging through wild, windy seas. I felt full of gratitude for another summer, for summer storms in general, and I could feel in my chest the expansion of being really alive. There was something, perhaps, about the energy of the storm and my relative safety within that power, that helped me to find that place of openness. And with the opening came gratitude.
Early summer it is easy for me to find gratitude. The long, long days support me. The warmer temperatures soften my resistance to what is. When I LIKE what is, I can find gratitude. It is harder for me to locate that body state when winter reigns, or, more accurately, when we are in those interminable “between” seasons that we have here….late fall and late winter, or early winter and early spring….all of those seem to flow together with endless days of darkness, gloom, cold and ice, rain, freezing rain….I can feel my body tightening and closing up even as I write that.
So as a body psychotherapist, I have to ask myself WHAT is responsible for my change of body state that seems connected to the seasons? Can I just label it some biological reaction of my organism? If I were a cognitive therapist, I would say it was what I am THINKING about the weather. If I were to actually practice the mindfulness I have learned, I would notice that it is my liking or not liking that affects how I respond to the weather.
For today, I am going to let go of analyzing and theorizing and just enjoy. Humid, stormy, sunny, cloudy, breezy or still, the weather of this season feels like a friend, and I am resting hand in hand with that friend.
A Body Psychotherapist's Journal 