Finding Zone 5
What comes alive in the open spaces?
The element of Air is aligned with our first breath, a beginning. It gifts us with the lightness of being that is reflected in children. This brief time in which life doesn’t correspond to maps or plans, a time before school or chores or expectations.
Recently I was enjoying an early Spring lunch outside on a bench at the edge of a park. Suddenly, like a gust of wind, a group of children rushed into the open space ringed by redwood trees. With them came yells and laughter and wild energy. No games were established, mostly the children just ran in looping circles, around each other, around the dandelion heads just popping up in the grass. They were reveling in the open space of movement under the mid-day sunshine.
If Air element was a landscape it would be a meadow with an open sky above it. A grassland lush with different plants, not cultivated but arriving on the wind and fur of other beings, potholed with ground squirrels and gophers and bunny warrens. Some oak trees twist up out of the earth here with lots of space to spread their branches. This wild space changes frequently, meandering through phases of life and abundance, drought and mud. It is filled with bright blue lupin one month and shivering golden grasses another and you cannot plan when either will arrive or depart.
Free from human designs, the meadow is not a garden or a field to be planted. It is its own maker and has secrets to be revealed in its own timing. This is its magic.
I recently learned that in Permaculture, an approach to managing ecosystems so that they are both generative and self-sustaining, there is a concept of ZONE 5 – the untampered with wild zone. This area is considered a part of the whole and is allowed to grow and change without intervention. This is not just considered a tithing of space to the wild, although that in itself is hugely valuable. But Zone 5, the zone left to its own cycles and seedings, is considered to be the place of most important teaching. You look to Zone 5 to see what and how to grow in the places you will be tending.
The wild places show us what will grow strong in this environment.
And what of the wild places within us? How do we make space for the parts of us that will rise up rooted even when untended? Can we turn toward the wild teacher within that shows us our magic - the gifts of our Self that were not painstakingly developed but are natural upwellings, intuitive sprouts, and rogue creative urges? Are you giving time to the parts of you that want no intervention, only open space?
There are moments (too few) when life is to be experienced not shaped. The sacred act of taking a Sabbath honors this in purposely creating time when we do not take action upon the world. We give up the do-ing and the fixing and we just appreciate what is currently nearby. We rest, so that the rest of the world can rest too, in its own growth cycle and sovereignty.
So often we think only of rest as something we need. And as such, we delay and bargain and wait until we really need it. But what if the world needs a rest from us, from our doing and creating and managing? It is more and more critical that we humans give time for the wild to just do its own thing. Our wisest teacher may be in the space we do not manage. The child learns best from free play, spontaneously finding new shoots of life, processing and getting stronger.
The irony of this lifestyle we find ourselves in is that perhaps the most vital intervention we need to consciously create is in rigorously and committedly planning for time without structure or agenda. We need to protect our Zone 5 as though that is key to our whole ecosystem thriving. Because -especially now when we need new vision for what we should cultivate for a future -we need to see what is healthy and resilient in the wild unmanaged areas.
At the edges of my yard bright orange nasturtiums twine up and around everything. Their wide plate leaves catch dew and look jeweled every morning. I didn’t plant them. They sing their own songs. When I sit nearby I can hear them. They make me dream of running through a meadow that goes on and on, as though there is nothing else I need to be doing.
Join me for a Day for Weaving Mindfulness into Our Daily Life - June 7th in Santa Cruz, CA
Through Cabrillo College Extension - I will be offering a replenishing one day workshop for those of us who want to live a more mindful life every day.
Mindfulness practice has been shown to increase people's satisfaction with their life and their overall happiness, decrease anxiety, and lead to more connected relationships, and clearer choices. But, sitting still on a mat doesn't work for everyone, and happily it is not the only way to practice mindfulness! Learn how to incorporate embodied mindful moments anywhere and explore different mindful meditation practices, including sitting, walking, moving, writing, and doing, so you can expand your ideas of how to practice.
Using an expansive frame for Mindfulness practice you will learn to invite attention to the present, and bring real life emotions and concerns into your awareness while also softening towards them. Kindness toward yourself will be a key component and you will have the opportunity to talk about your unique intention for your mindfulness practice. Melissa will discuss the benefits and downsides of committing to one specific practice, and how to not let your practice turn into an ego trip, and instead let it be part of a full and complex life. You will leave with an intention and a plan for practice to take into your day to day.