Visualizing Trees

 

A case for slowing down.

A story about human potential.

These are not mutually exclusive.

 

I went to an acupuncturist once. At the end of the session, he told me: Keep warm. Visualize a tree. Make good habits. Be positive.

I wrote these four things down. First, because I’m a practical person and I like lists. Also, it was my homework and I wanted to do all I could do to get better on my own. 

 Yet, as I was walking home, I wondered how any of those things would help me with the physical pain I was experiencing. Seriously, visualize a tree?

 The doctor hadn’t told me what kind. Or for how long? Which part of it? To what end?

I needed the practical specifics that would tell me in exact detail how, and what metrics to use to get the result I wanted. I didn’t get it.  

Though I made some progress against my pain, it was hard to be warm and positive when I was upset at trees. Though, of course, it wasn’t the trees I was upset with.  

Still the acupuncturist’s list stuck with me over the years and as I did my best to make good habits, I remembered a scene in the movie Phenomenon starring John Travolta.

To give the context, at the end of a birthday party, Travolta’s kind but run-of-the-mill character George Malley is struck by a bright light from outer space and given powers that enable him to speed read, learn languages in a day, to break government codes, to invent things, and to realize potential he didn’t know he had. But, as the days roll by, these same powers begin to prevent him from sleeping and after some time under the influence of this new intense productive energy, he’s beginning to crack. Sleepless, exhausted, with more to do than he has time for, he’s frantically digging in his garden, but amid that frantic expression of agitation and the flinging dirt, he happens to look up and see the trees swaying with the wind. Drawn by something there, George stands up and begins to sway with them. In that moment of connection, he calms himself down. He is able, on his own—or with the help of the trees—to slow down.

Tuning in and keeping that rhythm with him, George gives himself permission to use his gifts in a measured way. Slowing down changes him. He’s no longer fighting time but seeing it for how precious it is. Sure, he still has a lot he wants to accomplish before his life is over, but … don’t we all?   

Some scenes later, George is talking with the love of his life Lace and she asks him if he’s scared—about dying really— and he says no. She then says she wishes she knew how he felt and he says she does, that she always has. He asks her, “When your children were babies how did you hold them?”

In answer, Lace puts her hands above her heart, closes her eyes and sways. As if she has a baby’s head resting on her shoulder, she pats one hand in a soft, soothing beat one two, one two.

In that moment, as she understands him, how he feels, in the motion, in the soft smile that comes on its own to her face, she taps into the same peace he’d found when connecting with the trees near his garden.

That’s what it is to slow down. That looking up to the trees. It’s finding both focus and peace amid the busyness of the mind. It’s about noticing. It’s a moment of connection with another living being—whether self, tree, child, or something else. It’s the gentle swaying that links heart, breath, wind, calm. It’s about centering. It’s about being rooted and grounded while simultaneously reaching for the sky.  

Slowing down gets a bad rap because it often gets equated with doing nothing. The two things are not the same. Slowing down is being mindful – though even that word comes with its own cultural associations.

Maybe what it is, rather, is a tuning in to what it means to be alive. What it is to be alive. 

The thing is, slowing down didn’t stop Travolta’s character from achieving many of his goals, connecting with those he loved, or living his life to its fullest. But it allowed him to focus his attention when, where, and as it needed to go. It allowed him to prioritize and be deliberate.   

I think about those two scenes a lot. When I get caught up in the swell between complete stillness and absolute agitation, I think about those two scenes.

Even if I’m still not exactly sure what the acupuncturist was telling me to do – now, sometimes, when I remember his words, I visualize a tree. Sometimes I actually look up, out a window, down the street, and breathe along with the trees. And when I do that, I feel a little like Lace when she too found what George said she’d known and had inside her all along.