The Sacred Hum

Beloved,
listen beneath the chatter
and the harshly layered sounds
of modern life.

Listen to the gentle
yet steadfast beating
of your heart.

Listen to the ocean waves of your breath
rising and receding
in each new moment.

Beneath it all – within it all –
a sacred spaciousness hums.

All of life arises from here.
All of life returns here.

Each breath – an invitation
to be fully here
in this sacred vessel of a body
humming with aliveness.

Lisa McCrohan, © 2021

The other afternoon, I walked out of my office and went outside. I laid down in the green grass under the two huge maple trees in our backyard. Their leafy limbs protected me from the blazing sun as I stretched my body onto the the shady patch of earth…and let go.

I closed my eyes and placed my hand on my heart. Inhaling and exhaling, I dropped into presence. The red-winged black birds chirped in the trees. A slight breeze gently rustled the leaves. the air was thick and humid, but in the shade, I wasn’t hot. I breathed in the warmth. I let my muscles and bones receive the invitation of gravity – letting go, letting go, letting go.

As I laid there – listening, feeling, sensing – I moved out of my head and into the experience. It took a bit – there were layers of stories to move through…to breathe through, to let go through. As my body softened and gave more into Mother Earth, I started to feel it: that sacred hum of aliveness – the aliveness of my body and breath; the aliveness of the grass and birds and sunshine and breeze. A spaciousness started to return to me.

A few minutes ago, my attention was narrowing, my nervous system was getting overwhelmed. I needed a break. These days, I try not to override the message from my nervous system when it says, “Enough.” But it’s still hard to do – hard to say “hang on a second” when our “to do” lists keep growing, there are text messages left unread, and there are projects still to be completed. It’s hard to say “no” to the push of our culture to keep going, keep producing, keep overriding your need to breathe.

But now, after about 10 minutes, I feel restored. My nervous system is much more settled. I am proud of myself – I didn’t go into any self-sabotaging habits! I have a much greater capacity for other people. My breath is softer. My attention is wider. And my thoughts – dear god, my thoughts are much less dramatic and emotional! And most of all, I feel a sense of restored connection to my body and to nature.

I need these sacred pauses more and more. And I know I’m not alone.

I hear everyday from clients in coaching and psychotherapy who tell me how overwhelmed they feel, how scattered they feel, how easily activated they feel. It’s not their fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault.

But healing is our responsibility.

I get it – it’s especially hard for those of us who are old enough to remember what life was like before “digital life” to realize that we need to actually be mindful of protecting our senses from being overwhelmed.

There is so much stimulation these days – even if you don’t have most of your notifications turned to “on” on your devices. Just standing there at the gas station pumping gas, our senses are bombarded with a screen showing a commercial or a song blares over the speaker. We are hardly ever in pure quiet anymore. It all distracts us from listening to the organic, familiar-to-our-DNA sounds of nature. It all distracts us from listening within to the beating of our hearts.

Have you felt that sacred hum of aliveness lately? How about the pulse of the earth, where you tune your ear to the birds chirping, when your eyes have a break from squinting at your screen and relax and open to see the greens of grass and plants, the blues and pinks of the sky?

If it’s been awhile, you aren’t alone. Yet, I imagine as you are reading this, you long to experience it again.

Oh how our nervous systems need these reprieves. Our brains need these breaks. Our hearts need this expansion. And our souls need this quiet to whisper to us again..

What gets lost when we don’t tune in…when we don’t contact that sacred hum of aliveness on a regular basis?

Our nervous systems get fried – which is a layman’s way of saying that our nervous systems live in a constant state of sympathetic activation, and when our systems can’t handle that anymore, we shut down, we collapse, and we go into dorsal vagal dominance. Then we get up and do it all over again.

This pattern of pinging from high sympathetic tone to high dorsal tone is wearing on us. It sucks the life out of us. We get sick. We lose our ability to ‘bounce back.” We lose our passion for life. Creativity goes out the window. We can feel numb, dull, lifeless, and apathetic.

When we don’t tune into that sacred hum of aliveness on a regular basis, we lose touch with what matters to us and we lose the belief that we can do anything about it.

And, as my dear friend, Sarah, said the other day as we sat at her kitchen table and drank iced tea with honey from her bees in her backyard, when we don’t take these pauses and connect, we forget that we ARE nature, too.

We are a living, breathing part of nature.

I do believe that remembering this will save us — and our planet.

When we restore that forgotten sense of connection and the sacred interconnectedness between us and Mother Earth, not only will our  nervous systems be nourished, but we will remember our connection to each other AND our home – earth. We will treat ourselves, each other, and our Mother Earth with much more tenderness and regard.

It seems so simple. And it is.

So where do we start in order to feel that sacred hum of aliveness again and remind ourselves of our interconnection?

Here is a simple practice for feeling the sacred hum of aliveness again.

Just go outside. This could be for three minutes or 30 minutes.

Look up at the sky. Look at the landscape.

Take it in – through every sense…the touch of the breeze against your skin, the sound of crickets chirping, the smell after it rains – and abide there for a moment. Bite into a peach! Watch the way a willow tree’s branch sway in the wind. Notice the changing shapes of white clouds against a vast blue sky. Listen to bees buzzing.

Breathe with it all.

Feel the exchange of your breath with the life around you.

Remember that you are nature, too.

Allow the organic sounds, sights, touch, smell, and tastes of nature soothe you.

Then notice the pulse of aliveness within you and around you.

And then finally, note what is different – what has changed/shifted within you? What has shifted in how you look at the Earth? How do you see others now?

_____________

You can find my meditations on Insight Timer.

Both of my books, Gems of Delight and Your Light is Rising, are experiences of contacting that sacred hum of aliveness within you and around you.

I have been taking a break from podcasting, Delightful, but the episodes I have recorded are beautiful ways filled with practices and experiences to be nourished.

If you’d like 1:1 support, I have a very limited number of spaces opening up for Integrative Coaching this fall. Sign up for a free 15 minute consult.