#tree bathing

My last days in Carbondale found me returning to and saying farewell to the four mother trees that nurtured me over the years living in the Shawnee Forest of Southern Illinois. My last visit with the trees brought friends; Megan, my Pacific Ocean sister in a double trunk tree pose and Holly, my Canadian tree sister in a mother tree hug. It was the trees and forest that I turned to in my times of struggle, grief and overwhelm during my nine years in the USA. Trees were my daily companions and my nourishment; like the Japanese I practice tree bathing.

The first art piece I did in my studio when I arrived in 2008 I entitled “Fallen Tree.” It was a visual metaphor of how I felt being uprooted from my home country of Canada and replanted in the foreign landscape and culture of Southern Illinois. What I did not know was that fallen trees are an essential part of the forest ecology. Fallen trees are called nursing logs as they nourish and feed new plant and tree growth in the forest. In my roles as teacher, advisor and director for students and my academic programs at Southern Illinois University, I myself became a nursing log. During my sabbatical in 2015, when I was temporarily released from my role as a nursing log, I experienced a fall where my feet slipped out from under me. Upon return to work, I began to seriously practice the yoga tree pose to address my chronic state of feeling unstable on my feet. The oak tree in front of my house, the cyprus tree on my regular walks around Campus Lake, and regular respite visits with the two cemetery trees, served as my steadfast teachers in regaining my leg strength and my spirit’s equilibrium.