Roots, Resilience and Regeneration – Teachings from Trees

Each autumn I am drawn back to these lines of a poem by E E Cummings, a wind has blown the rain away:

a wind has blown the rain away and blown 
the sky away and all the leaves away,
and the trees stand.

It beautifully captures those windswept days of autumn, the season which always calls me to be with, walk near, and marvel at the treescape all around me. The gorgeous colours, the sweet scent of damp decay, the abundance of fruits, nuts, berries, fallen leaves and branches. The poem speaks to loss and endings; trees speak about rootedness, resilience and regeneration. All the seasons, each stage of the life cycle, are present in the autumnal display – seeds, acorns, and berries promise new life even as the leaves begin to die on the branches.

During the summer I visited a village church in my home county of Norfolk and came across this particular tree. It stopped me short in my meander around the graveyard, called for my attention. Before reading my own questions and reflections, I invite you to pause for a moment and see what this image evokes in you:

My first thought is a question – what happened to this tree? I see a tree trunk broken open and the inner space of the tree exposed. Was it an explosion, a disease process, an immense storm, or something else that broke the tree open like this? I don’t know what shaped it into this form, but I see a heart, broken open by some disaster perhaps, or by the slow weathering of time. A broken tree-heart. This image lands in me with a hollow thump in my chest, like the heavy falling of the tree itself.

I am so captivated by the exposure of the interior space of the tree-heart that it takes a moment before I notice the young saplings that have sprouted up and out from the living rind of the old trunk, still carrying enough juice to foster new growth. The young offspring have established roots down through the outer life-sustaining bark of the parent tree – what a miracle of regeneration! From here, they will connect with the fungal network that spreads far and wide beneath the surface of the ground – the wood wide web as it has been named.

As I contemplate the tree, my own heart is opened to the broken heart of the world, most painfully to the devastation of Gaza, and the other places, peoples and lands that have been so thoroughly ripped open. The times in my own life when I felt my heart torn open and hollowed out resonate too. Dare this image of the devastated tree sprouting new life keep a seed of hope growing in my own heart?

Lessons in Aging, Brokenness and Endurance

Trees are wonderful teachers. This one in particular became a Teacher for me during the years of the pandemic, when I was suffering a great deal of physical pain from long-covid induced joint and muscle damage. On my daily walks I would rest by the gate next to this tree and feel its rootedness, its patience and endurance seep into me.

My photo perhaps doesn’t show as clearly as I would like the vitality of this mighty oak, a Mother Tree I’m sure, contrasted with the ruffle of dead and broken branches that lace the lower trunk. Despite the broken branches, the tree grows strong and healthy, she endures. Her roots reach deep and wide, communicating with neighbouring trees and plants to maintain the best possible health for the whole community.

There is something very moving to me about the still and stable presence of an aged tree, the way she has withstood so much, shows her life-scars in her brokenness, yet still thrives. This has been an enormous teaching for me throughout these years of painful body symptoms and what has felt at times like an accelerated aging process (a common experience for many people with long-covid).

The Wisdom of the Years – a Community of Tree Beings

Another of my favourite elder tree-neighbours is this magnificent being who lives in nearby Blickling Park. What do you see here, or who?

This ancient tree seems to hold a whole community of beings. I can imagine so many stories, so much magic, arguments, love-ins – all of life jostling for its place in this community and managing, somehow, to co-exist as a whole tree-being with its many different parts. A lesson for our human collective, surely. Right now, we (collectively) behave as if we were just infants in this particular lesson, still needing to learn how to regulate our primal instincts and emotions into something more considered, accepting and compassionate. Our future existence, not only our flourishing and thriving but human life itself, depends upon this.

The Wood Element

In Traditional Acupuncture, Wood is one of the Five Elements that together create and sustain life. Wood Element, expressed most clearly through the body of Tree, also runs through each of us as a quality of Chi energy. Diane Connelly describes Tree this way:

During its life a tree grows. It is a rooted, growing creature reaching out and upward and down and inward simultaneously. It is flexible, bending, yielding to the wind, yet strong and durable, containing the flow of its own life cycle. Beginning as a tiny seed it flourishes as a sapling, its tender shoots heading towards maturity carrying its history with it as it grows, its rings of life. Its connection with the earth and movement toward heaven are witness to the Bodymindspirit - that is, a composite of the forces of Heaven and Earth within the human being. The tree grows and in growing gives birth again and again to new life. Its cycle marks out the seasons.¹

When the Wood Element is strong and clear within us, we too can be rooted, growing and flexible like the tree, connected to both Earth and Heaven. Our leaves and branches are danced by the wind, we are expressions of Earth and Spirit, just as the tree is.

Many of us instinctively feel a kinship with trees. Not only do they provide resources that sustain bodily life – food, medicine, shelter, warmth, shade – they also offer beauty and inspiration that feeds the soul. We resonate with their rootedness, uprightness, and flourishing branches, seeking solace in their presence when we feel the lack of these qualities.

All life moves in spirals, following the laws of gravity and of the nature of water to connect into a whole, a sphere, so that growth creates spiralling forms. This is true for psychological and spiritual development, as well as physical. Wooded tree trunks express this perfectly, as these magnificent trees in the Dartington Hall gardens show. The Sweet Chestnuts are at least 400 years old, centuries of history carved into their spiralling bark.

EarthBody Dreaming – exploring Personal and Planetary Symptoms

Last weekend I completed the last of three research workshops, where small groups (of all women this time) gathered in my garden studio to move with, reflect on, and research into resonances between personal symptoms and the symptoms of issues in the world, planetary and collective, that concern them most. There is so much to address that it could feel overwhelming, so we spent a lot of time resourcing – through somatic movement and body meditations, as well as time spent in the garden being with, witnessing and learning from the nature beings that called us.

A theme that echoed through the group was the need to find healing, support and resources at the personal level, in order to face into the wider issues. We explored the skin, our interface with the world; the miracle of reciprocal breathing where the trees gift us with the oxygen vital to our life, and we give back the carbon dioxide that they need to grow; the deep resonance of bone with stone, the bedrock of body and Earth (explored in my last article); experiencing and moving from the fluid body that is a part of, and sourced in, the oceans of the world; absorbing the sun’s energy that ignites the spark of life; and more. Experiencing our embodied connectivity with the natural world proved helpful in finding the support and courage needed to source healing, or new perspectives and attitudes, as we face difficult global issues.

All the time we were embraced by the trees and plants within and around the garden; visited briefly by birds, flying solo or in flocks; and weathered by extremes of wind, rain, sun and calm. That we need all of these in order to encounter the darkness within us and within the world is one thing we can be sure of.

Thank you so much for reading, and if anything here stirs some reflection on your own experiences of resonance with Earth, with Nature, and with trees in particular, do write a comment if you wish. And please click ❤️ if you have enjoyed reading – this is always so helpful.

With warm autumn wishes

Linda 🍁 🍂

1. Dianne M Connelly – Traditional Acupuncture: The Law of the Five Elements (1979)