The Tree Meditation
Last year, I took this photograph of one of the famous oak trees in Blenheim Park, near Oxford in England, when Clare Jerdan and I visited. These trees radiate powerful personalities, as if they could talk, walk and teach little humans as in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Revisiting this photograph reminded me once again of the tree meditation I learnt many years ago from Phyllis Krystal.
Over a ten-year period in the nineteen-eighties I studied with Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal.[i] She taught me much about guided imagery and how to apply it in a therapeutic context. One of Krystal’s core questions as a therapist was, how to resource clients in a way, they no longer needed to go over the troubled relationship with their parents hundreds and hundreds of times? How could she introduce exercises that opened up a new perspective and provided them with a different parenting experience? One that allowed clients to access healing and repair, and on this basis, they could go back to the past, but better resourced.
While this training with her was 40 years ago and I have since learnt much about effective trauma-informed therapeutic approaches, I still find Krystal’s exercises useful for certain client groups. Similar to how Peter Levine has developed the concept of pendulation between the trauma vortex and a counter or healing vortex, this meditation teaches a potential healing vortex, especially to those clients, who cannot access safe love memories in their biography.[ii] Rather than engaging deeper and deeper with the destructive, hurtful past, Krystal realized, she needed to resource her clients first, to enable them to strengthen their potential for a safe loving relationship.
I have introduced many children and adults alike to this meditation. It is important to adjust the language according to each client group, to make sure the suggested imagery does not jar with the client’s personal belief systems and the suggested imagery resonates with their age-appropriate needs. The tree meditation aims at reframing attachment trauma and a dysfunctional relationship with the parents. Throughout the focus is on the inner child-Self as the core on a transpersonal level; the client’s child-Self is the central character in this healing meditation. In this context, it is important to make sure clients do not chose individuals in their meditation they know in their personal life. All living family members and friends will be somewhat compromised, because they are human, whereas the transpersonal parental figures are capable of carrying the projection of the “perfect parent” just as the inner child needs perfect parents, just as we needed as infants being loved and cherished in a perfect way.
Feel free to modify the various aspects the meditation introduces, depending on your client’s needs, taking their intuitive imaginations into account. The Mother Earth archetype can, for instance, be pictured as a non-figurative, numinous planetary entity, a deva or even as a totem animal such as a bear. The same applies for the Solar Father, which can be imagined as the sun, a divine figure or as eagle-spirit. All this is up to personal modification. The same applies to the guardians on either side, important is only to emphasise they are not personal friends, but transpersonal entities, however more accessible than the mother and father archetypes. These guardians can be angels, totem animals, fairy tale characters, mystical figures, or famous helper figures such as superman.
When I facilitate guided imagery in general, it is absolutely crucial to include visual, auditory and sensory prompts. Usually only a fraction of any group I work with will be visually dominant. Many clients need other entry points in order to be able to see images in their mind. If you do not do this, many participants will sit through your session either frustrated, because they do not see anything, or believe something is wrong with them. The more stressed they get about this, the less likely it is their inner eye opens up. This means, for instance, as sensory prompts I emphasise in all meditations to be barefoot in order to be able to feel the ground through the feet (Is there grass or are you standing on rocks?), the same can be for feeling imagined textures with the hands. This takes the emphasis away from cognitive straining and encourages a more relaxed, felt sense approach. As auditory prompts I suggest to listen for the wind, birds, insects, music playing somewhere or the heartbeat. And only then do I shift to the visual prompts. This makes the guided imagery more accessible and supports an embodied experience, which is always more fulfilling and better remembered than just something we saw in our mind.
The following instructions are the framework for the guided meditation. Give yourself and your clients plenty of time to complete every step before moving on. If need be, clients can be encouraged to repeat this meditation on a daily basis, such as before going to sleep. Drawing your tree-experience will help to integrate it.
The Tree Meditation
Close your eyes, breathe deeply and relax. Walk around barefoot in your inner landscape until you find your tree. It might be a known one or one you are shown at this moment. Once you see your tree walk up to it and give it a big hug; put your cheek against it and feel its bark on your skin.
Then turn around and lean against it and feel your tree supporting you all the way up your spine.
Travel with your awareness down into the root system of your tree.
Inhale the abundance of nourishment Mother Earth is so willing to give to you.
Allow her strength, her unconditional love and her wisdom to flow into every cell of your body. Exhale any limitation you have experienced through your personal mother and replace it with the far greater abundant nurturing of the Earth Mother.
Then travel into the canopy of your tree and through the branches and leaves inhale the light that pours into you from the Solar Father. Allow his unconditional love, his abundant wisdom, his inspiration and insights to flow into you – and exhale any limitation you have experienced through your personal father and replace it with the far greater knowledge and love that flows from the Solar Father.
Then turn to your left side where you will find your female guardian. She is not someone you know in your day-to-day life. You may know this person through your inner world or picture her as a pink cloud. It is important only to feel her presence, you do not necessarily need to see her. Turn to her and ask her to give you whatever it is you need from her at this particular moment in time. Receive her gift with gratitude.
Then turn to your right side where you will find your male guardian. Again, he is not someone you know in your day-to-day life. You may know him through your inner world or picture him as a light blue cloud. It is important only to feel his presence. Turn to him and ask him to give you whatever it is you need from him at this particular moment in time. Receive his gift with gratitude.
Then go to your heart and picture it as a flower. If it is still budding have a beam of sunlight touch it so it can open wide. As your heart opens, feel how you are surrounded by love and nurturing, below from the Earth Mother, above from the Solar Father and your guardians at either side. All of them loving you and nurturing you unconditionally.
Open your heart to them and thank them for their love and support and promise them to come back as often as you remember them. Know that they are always there for you. It is you who leaves them. They are what we have called the Higher Consciousness. Thank them for their assistance and gently come back into the room.
[i] 1990. Krystal, Phyllis; Cutting more the ties that bind. Element Books, Longmead, Shaftsbury, Dorset, UK. P. 40
[ii] 2010. Levine, Peter; In an unspoken voice. North Atlantic Books, San Francisco CA.
cornelia@sensorimotorarttherapy.com www.sensorimotorarttherapy.com
AThR, SEP, ANZACATA, IEATA
Featured Blogs
Healing Trauma
with Guided Drawing
Certificate in Initiatic Art Therapy
Online Training
Facilitated by Chris Storm and Cornelia Elbrecht
This training has been designed to offer counsellors, social workers, teachers, psychologists, medical professionals and community services practitioners a solid professional development option to integrate various art-making and therapeutic art techniques into their own scope of practice.
All participants will engage in a personal journey of art making including seminars, online group work, filmed case histories and downloadable course material. There will be ample opportunity to engage in art making, reflective discussion, small-group sharing and Q&A. The structure will vary between weekends and will include a mixture of online workshops and group exercises, prerecorded content and discussion forums.