Creating Intentions & Sacred alter space.
This month’s invitation is to set intentions for your journey as well as create sacred altar space where you can safely, curiously, interact with the dark and darker seasons. There are audio messages below to guide how to find your altar space and a meditation to sink into your space. I encourage you to explore the meditations and exercises from Dance with Darkness at your altar spaces/sit spots (more on this in the audio below), and to begin spending more time than you typically do outdoors. If you already spend a lot of time outdoors - make room to slow down and witness your time outdoors more than you’re used to.
Reflection
Take some time each day to step outside for a moment of stillness with the earth, even if it’s just 2-5 minutes. If it feels OK, go barefoot to feel a stronger connection with the earth. If the earth could speak, what would it say about its rhythm for the day? How does the pace of your body shift as you connect with the pace of the earth for the day?
AUDIO
Intention Setting: Questions as prayers
INTENTION SETTING AND CRISIS CARE
Turning questions into prayers
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
Paper/Journal, pen, and a timer
WRITE
Write a Stream of Conciousness to the following prompt: My fears around Winter and the Darkness are….
Do this for at least 10-15 mins, if you love writing, write for 30-60 mins. Set your timer for the time needed.
PAUSE AND REVIEW
Check in with your body. You just did a lot. Give yourself a few breaths, feel your feet and re-ground. When you’re ready, read what you wrote. Highlight anything that stands out, especially fears. Take the highlighted fears and list them on a separate piece of paper. Take a look at the list and see if there is anything else you would like to add.
TURN YOUR FEARS INTO QUESTIONS
For example “I’m afraid if I confront my sadness it will never go away, I’ll be consumed by it." could become ” How do I let myself feel my sadness and know that I’ll still be OK”.
REVIEW YOUR QUESTIONS
Are there any themes that are emerging when you look at the questions? Is there a larger question or two that are emerging out of the tapestry of questions? Record your question.
TURN YOUR ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS INTO PRAYERS
For example, the question around sadness as a prayer could look like “may I learn to experience the beauty and gift of sadness.”
OFFER YOUR PRAYERS TO YOUR ALTARS
I would suggest sharing your prayers or questions with your sit spot. Indoors, outdoors, both – trust what you are drawn to. I love to do it at night with candles or under the stars. Sit and see if you receive any insight, or just leave them there to marinate.
AUDIO
Finding your Sit spot &
Altar Space
Finding a sit spot & altar space
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What's a sit spot?
A sit spot is essentially a place, outdoors, in nature, that you can visit frequently over time, as you would a dear friend and confidant. Take time to notice it, ask it questions and observe as it changes over the days, weeks, and hopefully over the seasons. I have applied the idea of a sit spot to an indoor altar, so you will find an indoor sit spot and an outdoor sit spot.
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Finding an outdoor sit spot
Go on a walk, best done close to home. Before heading out, plant an intention “I’m open to my sit spot.” As you walk, notice when your body stops, is drawn to a place, or a spot seems to be waving saying “sit down with me!” That’s your sit spot.
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What to look for in your sit spot
I don’t like having parameters on a sit spot, however, consider walking in an area that will be easy to visit and that you are excited to go to, as you want to visit your spot at least once a week. This could also be a place far away, just assess if it feels easy for you to visit on a regular basis.
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What if it's a challenge to get an outdoor sit spot? Here are some alternatives:
If you live in an urban area a tree or shrub outside your home, in your neighbourhood or neighbourhood park works great. What seems like the smallest touch point to nature can in fact be deeply profound.
A window that allows you to look out onto a tree or park from where you live
If it’s not possible to have an outdoor sit spot, let your indoor sit spot be enough, if you have a plant you can place it at your sit spot.
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Finding an indoor sit spot
Find a place in your home that feels like a sanctuary and a retreat, a place where you can honour the beauty of the seasons, the darkness, and be still. Take some time adding pieces to your altar that pay reverence to Fall, Winter and the dark. Use this space to reflect on your intentions and learnings over time.
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Make offerings to your sit spot(s)
With offerings, we feed the sanctuary of our spots. Spending time with your spot is offering enough, and you can also add items to your spots like candles, symbols, statues, pictures, flowers, cloths - be creative. Outdoors make sure to offer environmentally friendly natural materials like dried flowers, a song, a poem, cornmeal or other compostable organic material.
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How often do you visit your sit spots?
I’m going to invite you to go to both of your sit spots at least once a week for some extended time. I like to refer to this time as Deep Winter Time; slow, quality time deeply observing, listening, asking questions.
If you just have an indoor spot, once a week also works great. It’s suggested to do the exercises and meditations at your sit spots – whichever one feels good to you. After listening record any reflections that come up, or have a conversation with your spot about what emerged.
Over the weeks my friendly challenge to you is to do the exercises at your sit spots in the dark, as long as it feels safe. We will all be at different levels of openness to this exercise. Trust where you are, and if you’re up for it, try something different when you’re ready to do so.
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Deepening with your sit spot
Keep a sit spot and Dance with Darkness journal. It will be a place to record your observations, feelings and track your journey with the Fall & Winter as we move through the offerings over the months.
Begin (keyword - BEGIN) exploring the Indigenous communities and non-humxn communities (trees, plants, rocks, soils) that were and are stewarding the lands where you and your sit spot live. This is not a list item you check off, it takes time to know and FEEL the real history of a place beyond the accessible human-centred, Eurocentric story that’s fed and reflected to us. Give this process time, yet commit to it over time. Explore how to honour the original communities of your home. The site native-land.ca has a map of the original stewards of lands around our globe. Use it as a possible starting point, consider making a donation to sustain their work.
MEDITATION
Being with your sit spot
Sit Spot Noticings
Over the coming months each module will end with a section called “Sit Spot Noticings” where I will share images and annotated noticings of the lands where my sit spot/outdoor altar lives. If you don’t have access to an outdoor space, you are welcome to virtually join me at mine.
My sit spot is part of the lands of the Mississauga’s of the Credit First Nation, the Anishnabee, and of the Haudenosaunee people. I am still learning how to walk with grateful steps on these lands in a way that honors the legacy of these communities, a process which also allows my Punjabi Indian roots, so far from my ancestral home, to root into these lands with reciprocity.
Oh the warmth of the falling leaves! Although the trees are losing their leaves, and the warmth in the air is being traded in for chillier currents, getting outdoors and seeing the brilliance of the bright yellow, red, and orange hues can sometimes make me feel like I am in the glow of a warm summer day. I gave myself time to pause on a walk at my sit spot the other day where the trees had completely turned, many of the leaves had fallen painting the ground in warmth. My body relaxed, it felt so held, I felt such deep gratitude for all the bounty that the earth had offered over the spring and summer seasons, and that it chooses to put that growth to sleep in the most beautiful comforting way. What a gift to watch the earth go through this generous process. It made me think of the lower chakras and that they are represented by the colours yellow, orange and red. I wonder if the lower chakras and Fall are buddies? I always find Fall to be the season where ancestoral energy and grief come to the surface, perhaps our lower chakras govern our past - our ancestors, even inherited trauma and they become more activated in Fall and Winter? As I let myself soak up the brilliant hues I could feel my lower body settle more deeply into the earth, my ancestors felt close by.
As I kept walking, I also noticed sections of land where the trees were completely bare, flowers from the season gone to seed, petals replaced by whimsical puffs. I felt like I was walking through an earthly graveyard. Procession after beautiful procession in honor of our land ancestors. It made me feel the parts of myself that were coming to rest and closure inside of my own internal landscape. The separation that human ideology has created between my body and the earths body is melting more with time. I am the earth, grieving, dying, getting ready to rest as the earth does.