A Tree in Amsterdam

There was a season in my life when I felt completely disconnected. From myself, from other people, from anything bigger than my own worry.

A teacher gave me a simple practice: go outside, find a tree, and just be with it. Do not study it or meditate or anything. Just be near it, the way you'd sit near a friend.

I felt ridiculous the first time. I stood near a tree in the Vondelpark. I was living in Amsterdam at that time, I didn't know what I was doing. Suddenly, something happened that I still don't have perfect words for. I felt held. Not by the tree exactly, but by something ancient and unhurried that the tree was part of.

Shamanism, at its root, is the understanding that everything is alive. The land, the seasons, the animals, the things we can't see. We aren't separate from nature. We are nature, briefly walking around in human form, and somewhere along the way most of us forgot that.

Go outside today if you can. Put your feet on the earth. Breathe slowly and ask silently, what do I need to know right now? Then listen with your whole body, not just your ears.