The Knowing of Trees
Nature’s Way is a regular column by Envisage writer Taylor Bourassa, exploring eco-art therapy techniques to incorporate into therapeutic practices, and invites us to practice ways of interacting with, befriending, and enhancing our relationship with the earth.
Taylor Bourassa is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) and art therapist with a private practice, Wellness Grove Therapy. She incorporates the environment into her practice through the use of natural materials, meditative practices that centre the earth, inviting the natural environment into sessions as a co-facilitator, and sharing the primordial knowledge the earth provides.
“Are there messages in their branches? What can we learn from the tree in winter?”
The trees are particularly beautiful this time of year. There is something in their holding nature which resonates with me. The way they hold the weight of the snowfall on their branches still reaching to the sky, meeting the sun and the wind halfway. For us humans, winter is a time for hibernation, much like our mammal cousins the bear and the mouse. But for the tree, their hibernation is a time of witnessing and holding.
Are there messages in their branches? What can we learn from the tree in winter?
There is something about their holding and call to witness that echo in my mind like the heartbeat of a bodhran. The primordial bom – bom – bom, felt in the earth, up through the bones, resting in the soul.
A call to stop. Sit. Listen. The pause we so often skip past and end up getting lost ahead of, as we barrel forward to the new year and all the shining potentialities. The trees are telling us to pause. Spend this time to hold and witness. Our own growth, our own storied life. Simply be with this moment before jumping to the next, forever chasing the end of our book.
What can we learn from the trees in winter? When hibernation strikes, allow yourself to feel all its impacts; revel in this moment for there is no other like it.
Evergreen, painting, 2022