Connecting with Tree Energy

We only need to look around us to see how trees are an integral part of our everyday lives. As material for furniture or other uses in the home, wood brings warmth and beauty and is tactilely sensuous. Outside the home, as living entities, we plant trees in memory of loved ones and we use them to give shape to the landscape. They provide a sense of place and bring communities together by making streets pleasant to walk, and parks comfortable places in which to gather. Trees can define a neighborhood as fresh and new, or mature and established.

On a personal level, trees can serve as wonderful reminders of the places you have lived and events that occurred in each place. Sometimes, it’s not particular events that are remembered, but certain moods and sensations. Take a few minutes to think of the places where you have lived. What tree or trees come to mind? Go through the deck and pull out those cards. In turn, hold each (perhaps in chronological order) and think of how these trees influence your recollections of each house and various points in your life. Which ones remind you of childhood? Do any trees evoke emotion, or serve as a reminder of people who have been important to you? What trees bore witness to your development?

Remembering trees has a two-fold purpose: One is to see where trees fit at the edge of your consciousness, and the memories that can be evoked when recalling them. The second purpose is to begin to slow down in preparation for working with tree energy.

The depths of the soul can be reached only through quiet, soft moments. By exploring this depth, we learn about ourselves and where we fit within the web of existence. Trees can be our companions and guides in this exploration. Extending in two directions—one towards the dark and the other towards the light—they are great living symbols of the yin/yang principle of harmony and balance. Just as our spiritual energy needs to move inward for development and renewal, it also needs to extend outward to the light for growth. As we learn to detect the subtle levels of awareness in this flow of energy within ourselves, we begin to discover the macrocosm of sacred source and to define our unique path to its wisdom and grace.

Excerpted from
Whispers from the Woods
© Llewellyn