Instead of “Lean In”
Try “Lean On”
Greetings Reader!
Yowzers. What a week. What a world. What a life. Which can also be said: What a week! What a world! What a life!
Do you find yourself oscillating between those two poles sometimes? I know I sure do.
As part of my “slow time” or “time suspension” let’s consider:
How can we lean “on” or “with” a nature companion to shift our bodies out of clock and calendar time, into a more spacious, less rushed possibility?
Let’s experiment and see what happens!
Cheers,
Jennifer
Founder, Ordinary Nature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Weekly Reflection 🤔😟😌
- Weekly Practice 🪨
- Tidbit of Rooted Expansion 🌿
- Little Tender Things 🥀
WEEKLY REFLECTION
Tree-leaning as time-blur antidote
Jennifer Ruth Keller
After a few days of swirling, repeating loops of concern and deliberation about a decision I had to make, I took myself outside, into our back yard, because I knew I needed to interrupt the nonstop motion my mind had been in.
A stretch of unusually cold weather and two weeks without sun had sidetracked me from my usual practice of getting outside first thing in the morning, often with the sunrise. The lapse in my practice had amplified my over-dependence on my own mind to sort through things, coincidentally during a week where I’d been presented unexpectedly with a circumstance I had to navigate in one direction or another.
In the afternoon, recognizing I’d blurred through a few days, trying to see my way through, to a decision, I slid open our back door, greeted the five pines, and headed to the side garden. There’s a golden chain tree there, with a trunk and limbs just right for gripping, a bark texture that soothes when my skin makes contact.
I’ve played beneath it with my daughter, looking for roly pollies when she was a toddler, built fairy worlds in the vines, shoots, and detritus at its base. It’s where she first tried to hoist herself up into a tree off one foot, where, a couple years later, she could scoot up onto one of the branches with delight and pride.
I reach the tree, extend my hands to hold it, a holding which is also me being held in return. I turn my body so my back is towards the tree, find the footing that steadies me as I lean back, allow the tree to take my full weight.
Looking up at the dried seed pods still hanging from the top branches I let my body connect below, to earth, above–and out!–to grey-haze sky and the surrounding tree witnesses, a grane maple, our neighbors’ desert-defying stand of pines.
A few minutes of tree-leaning later, I’ve diminished the head space whir, have loosened into a less time-deluged mode of perception. It isn’t that I take problems to the tree to be solved, like it’s a tool for my use.
It’s that I go to the tree to be other than I’ve been, like it’s a being in a greater order who lets me experience time and space in an altered—more actual, more “this is how things are, at heart”—way.
WEEKLY PRACTICE (and beyond!)
Across the week, open your eyes as you move through the world and stay gentle-alert for a “lean-worthy” nature companion to call to you.
Might be at tree.🌲 Or a rock.🪨 Maybe a nice hill. ⛰ Or patch of snowy ground! ❄️ You’ll know when you know. ✨
Then, make contact, and get cozy!
Remember my note above about not using nature as a tool for solving our problems?
So, it’s all in the heart state you bear towards–and with–the nature companion you approach. No need to get fancy or weird about it. Just be the good person you likely are.
Here’s the key, even if feels odd the first few times: Let your nature companion hold you, and accept your release. And then release just a bit more.
That’s it! You might be surprised at the depth of the relief, even with just ten minutes to explore.
[For more about this week’s theme and practice, here’s a recent short video guide.]
Tidbit of Rooted Expansion
I attended the first class of this series, and teacher Rowen White blew me away. Writing the Wild is an innovative organization, with other great classes and labs. In 2026 I’ll start to offer my own workshops in a similar terrain, but in the meantime their offerings are worth checking out.
[Note: If you join Rowen’s class even late, you can still attend the next 2 classes live, and get the slides from the first class.]
Recommended Class with Writing The Wild:
Echoing the Land’s Language: Writing into Kinship with Place:
A 3-Session Writing Lab with Rowen White
January 21, 28, & Feb 4
LITTLE TENDER THINGS
from reader Jessica Rammelsberg!
“No one told
the snapdragons
they are not
supposed to survive
winter.”
Have a “little tender thing” you’d like to submit and share?
Let me know!
