October is home to my favourite sabbat, Samhain, I love the magic of it. It doesn’t matter to me what you call it, this time of year has an energy like no other. A magic that’s tangible, beautiful; that speaks of ancestors, ritual and history. As I write this, we’ve just tipped over the autumn equinox, I’m a spring-summer woman, and this means it’s a long time until we’re back in that lighter energy, but it’s ok because Samhain is on its way…
As the evenings draw in, we start to think of fires in the hearth, storing garlic, squash and pumpkins, and saving seeds for planting next year. We’re gathering and storing the summer energy, as nature begins to let go. These activities have been part of autumn rituals in homes, large and small, for a very long time, it’s in these simple rituals that I feel a closeness to my ancestors. It’s a connection of mind, body and spirit interwoven and impossible to untangle.
As my hands scrunch up the dried out plants, freeing the tiny seeds, I think of the hours that it would take to do this on a scale to feed a family or village. I feel grateful for the farmers who grow the bulk of our food. I feel grateful for the gloves that protect my hands from the black staining husks, as I prise and slide the walnuts from their coats. There’s a memory in my body as I do these things, but that memory doesn’t feel like it’s mine…
Our ancestors are in our DNA, our fascia, our genes. They’re long gone but they’ve never left. They’re in the way you move, the way you bend to gather the fallen apples, the way you walk in the fields and woods searching for mushrooms. As you chop wood and build the fire, there’s a memory in you and that memory is theirs.
Over the years of helping clients with embodiment, I’ve seen how the familial lineage travels through them in their muscular habits, their patterns of use. The muscular tension you carry in your back may not be your story, but a response passed down through time.
“Know thyself, know thy ancestors”
Some of the gifts from our ancestors are delightful. I particularly enjoy using my great aunts silver teapot. However, not all gifts were consciously bequeathed. My great-grandmother gave me the gift of high anxiety and a fear of adventure, my grandfather the gift of worry! These have all shown up in my body as tension at different times – illustrating how I was responding to life in their way, rather than mine.
The steady and gentle work of coming home to myself, of embodiment, has developed a change in my response to life.
Awareness of my body’s response is a gift from me to me.
This awareness is like the lamp of a lighthouse warning of imminent danger, a warning that I’ve slipped into someone else’s pattern of life, not mine. As my jaw clenches and my shoulders rise, I pause and ask, “is this me?”. And then a gap emerges, long enough for me to choose to change, to let go of the fear, the anxiety or the worry. To release my body out of this old pattern of tension, as I do, my mind relaxes too. The worry isn’t quite so big, the anxiety not so strong. I can make a choice and respond from somewhere more authentic, more me.
Our body isn’t just the story of our life; it can be the story of lives long gone. Your ancestors have given you so much to feel grateful for, their robustness, their determination to survive is a gift within you. We know this because you’re here, now.
During this time of liminal energy, as we shift over to the darkness of winter, tradition states that the veil is thinning between our world and the ancestral worlds gone before. Feel the stillness as the dark nights draw in, and in that stillness, hear, feel and know the ancestors gather near. As you send them a word of thanks or place a candle by their photo you can draw upon their strengths, the qualities that shone through them, that are now part of you.
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