It is my first spring in Arlington, VA and the winds kick-up a lot around here. We live in an apartment on the 14th floor, this affords us an elevated view so I can see the trees tops dancing around in the wind. With the blooming of spring, the sun is out longer, the days are warmer, and I’ve noticed an uptick in the wind.

Something about the design of our building creates circulation through the whole structure, so that when I open our windows an air current from the front door through our home creates a howling sound when the winds are high. I can easily quiet the sound by closing the windows and/or placing a rolled towel at the base of the front door… but I don’t. I have come to love the howling sound. Of course, I can see the trees dancing, and feel the air move on my skin, but the howling comes through me like a call to listen, as if the winds carry a message that I can choose to attune to. 

The season of spring is wild and wondrous, everything feels to be in motion. Buried seeds summon all their strength to sprout. Trees draw from deep roots to bud tiny green leaves. Birds are busy gathering this-n-that to fabricate nests. Evidence of growth and change.

Perhaps that is what the howling is calling me to tune into; can I look into myself and my fellow humanity to find evidence of growth and change? 

In a year plus of pandemic quarantine, and in a century when we are working toward the same social justice we have been fighting for, for too many centuries, what can growth and change look like? I turn to human elders and ancestors for help to see more clearly.

Mother Teresa, an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary moved to India as a young adult where she lived most of her life in service to her fellow humanity. Caring for people who were suffering from HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis, serving the poorest of the poor through mobile clinics, in orphanages and schools until she was 87 years old. Her words resonate now more than ever for me.

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

I heed her words, and trust that the small contribution I make as one human every day, is joined by the millions of humans around the planet and the ripples do become waves. 

The words of Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic, remind me that the growth and change inside us is as important as the change we can affect around us.    

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” 

Rumi is describing what embodiment practitioners call pandicular movement; any alternation of stretch and contract that feels natural. All humans have an inner knowing of pandicular movement. For example, as my husband slowly surfaces from sleep, he expands out to all corners of the bed in what I call “giant-starfish”, then yawns and swirls into a fetal shape, then (eyes still closed in sleep) squirms until he is belly down like a lizard one leg long the other still bent, then expands again to “belly-down-giant-starfish” on the way to fetal shape on the other side. I watch him repeat this coil and uncoil actions witnessing this sleep-to-wake pandicular movement long before he is conscious enough to speak or even open his eyes. 

Pandicular motion can reduce buildup of muscular tension, and can sooth, awaken, and blend the action of our neural systems creating an internal environment for deep healing. Certainly, any and all healing comes as good news in a pandemic. I know in my own being my daily movement practices heal the deep physical, mental, emotional, social wounds inside me yielding a renewed healing energy, healing space, healing love and light to share with my fellow humanity. 

I can hear the wind has kicked up again as I type this, the howling sound of spring is a call to action. Let us breathe deep, find our pandicular movement, and let us heal. I invite you, look out and all around; seek humans sending out ripples, cheer on the small yet strong sprouts and the tiny buds born from deep roots, evidence of growth and change.

Join us in the movement.