Sinking Into Earth

Feel the ground beneath you. The mattress. The floor of the earth below it.

Everything that is supporting you right now, the surface you are on, the structure of the building, the soil, the bedrock below, running all the way down to the deep earth, all of that is holding you. Has been holding you. You have not been aware of it, but it has not required your awareness.

Give your weight to it now. Consciously, deliberately, let the weight of your body go down. Not as a tension. As a release. Let gravity, which has been doing its work all day, take everything you have been holding up.

The back of the head. Heavy. Let it go down. The shoulders. Heavy. Let them go down. The arms. The hands. Heavy. Going down.

The back. All of it. Especially the lower back, where so much of the day lives. Heavy. Going down. The earth takes it. The earth has always taken it. This is what earth does for the bodies of living things. It holds them when they need to be held.

The hips. Heavy. Down. The legs. Heavy. Down. The feet. The soles of the feet, which have been carrying you through the whole day, coming finally to rest. Heavy. Down.

You are heavier now than when you began. That is the paradox of releasing weight: you feel it more as you let it go. The body becoming aware of its density. Its solidity. How much it has been holding up and is now, gratefully, not holding.

Now imagine the earth is receiving you. Not swallowing. receiving. The ground softening slightly beneath you, accepting the weight with warmth, the way a bed accepts a tired body, the impression made and held. You are being received.

Begin to sink. Slowly. An inch. The surface giving slightly. The warmth of the earth coming up to meet you. The deep constant temperature of the ground, which stays the same in winter and summer, neither too cold nor too hot. The same temperature it has been since before you were born.

Deeper. Not into rock. Into the ancient warmth. The warmth of the earth's interior rising slowly upward through millennia of stone and pressing itself into you from below. You are warm. Front and back. Above and below. Held.

The body is giving up its edges. The distinction between you and the warmth is becoming soft. You are here and the warmth is here and they are less separate than they were a moment ago.

Let the thoughts go with the edges. They are surface things. The surface things are releasing upward, drifting, not needing to be held.

Go down. Into the warmth. The earth is ancient and it is slow and it is patient and it has never once hurried anything that needed to rest on it.

You are resting on the earth.

The earth has you.

Let go.

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