Here in Denver, spring has most certainly begun. In the beautiful greenbelt near the school, the grass is tall and lush after several recent snowstorms. New geese and duck families can be seen near the walking trails and ponds. Life is unfolding everywhere — the trees are budding and blooming and beginning to leaf. In the human-inhabited neighborhoods, the scent of lilac fills the air and the tulips have been incredible – standing tall, proud and colorful in yard after yard. In our own yard we are blessed by an abundance of blooming plants and flowers including a tall bleeding heart plant full of delicate flower hearts who hang off its stems like earrings and bring tears to my eyes.
How is it that nature makes so much beauty year after year? What is the amazing magic that allows life force to lay dormant through the long winter and to re-emerge when the conditions are right? I don’t know how the magic keeps on going even when the modern human world too often appears not to notice, but I’m so grateful it does!
I need to pay attention to beauty in these times, to not let the currently amplified ugliness in the world get too big. It is hard, and sometimes I go numb, too shocked to cry or smile. One thing that helps me is to do the same thing we do in class: orient to the moment and ascertain the level of safety in it. Life will always contain threat and sometimes real and present danger. There are looming large dangers in the future, but most days they are not visible in my daily world. I try to face what is in front of me fully, doing that as best I can on any given day, which sometimes means I don’t succeed. If I lean too heavily into what might happen – good or bad –then I lose touch with the moment, sometimes for hours at a time. I cannot ignore or wish away the negative outcomes that are swirling around us, from the local level to the planetary level, but neither can I drown in them. It is important for me to walk and move and love and laugh as fully as I can – and to make regular time for myself to do the work I love and take breaks from work to be outside, and to write and create and connect with the people I love, for my love is not dependent on the future – it’s here right now.
What I focus on in my classes is how life unfolds, the principles and scientific understandings that create and keep on creating life within us. Life goes on regardless of politics or priorities, because life’s priority is to make more life. From a biodynamic perspective, the forces that created us are endlessly creating us. They didn’t start with our first breath, and they won’t end after our last. From a biodynamic perspective, these forces are moving everything in the universe from the subatomic level to the galactic level. While I am amazed in these Spring days by life creating more of itself, this is what life does – effortlessly and naturally. It always has and always will.
Biodynamics understands that total change is necessary. The immorality of life is not found in form but in essence – the essential core of an animal, plant or mineral soul that journeys through time. Biodynamics arises out of witnessing developing life and how thoroughly form changes multiple times during the growth process. Think about planting seeds in your garden. When you bury that seed, you will not see its uniqueness again. The sprout that emerges from that seed in the right conditions looks nothing like the seed. Neither does the growing plant or the flower. Only when that flower has “gone to seed” does it bear seeds, many more than the original one out of which this plant grew. The new plant carries the essence of the original seed, but it is a new generation, a descendant of the previous plant. This new generation of seeds will encounter new soil, different weather patterns, perhaps a different location all together, and will grow in accordance with the conditions presented to it.
From a biodynamic perspective, life flourishes when the conditions are right; so does healing. Students of Biodynamics can learn to create and maintain the conditions that enable healing to occur. This is different than healing someone, and much more empowering for both the client and practitioner. Biodynamics reminds me daily that the life force in every one of us is powerful enough to effect change – when it is approached with honor and compassion – and without agenda.
I teach students the skills they need to perceive and respond to the aliveness in the body and how to amplify the living presence that exists in everyone. I encourage students to engage the world around them as alive and to consider their every action as part of a two-way conversation with that aliveness. I remind them that they must learn to do this because it is not commonly taught, and practice because it is not easy to remember. It may not be easy in our modern fast-paced world to stay attuned to this aliveness every day, but whether we do or not, life is here, always ready and willing to engage us, to challenge us and to powerfully transform us. No one can take our potential away – but only we can embrace it and live fully by our own measure, on our own terms. We can be our own blossoms and bear seeds. We each have within us the ability to plant seeds for the future. We can play a role in ensuring that there be a place where others can dream and plant their seeds, and that there be enough clean water and fresh air and live soil for them to take root and blossom.
