Harmony in Motion
From sensing to surrender, nature shows us how to gather our scattered selves and truly soar
"Murmuration — even the name is poetic." — Christie Aschwanden
Cowbirds or starlings, I’m not sure what it was we witnessed in the high desert country of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, at sunset some years back—a ritual that happens every night in the winter months.
One word for this flock is a murmuration. But I call it happy hour for birds—masses of them, swooping in and out in exquisite harmonizing and mesmerizing patterns for about ten minutes before they settle down for the night. The divine intelligence that is at work keeping these creatures from crashing into each other is simply breathtaking.
I’d like to think that, at our very essence, all beings are connected and tuned in harmonically in the same way. If we stumble and bump into each other, it’s because we’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve lost our way.
And that’s what the “five S’s” are there for: to help us remember; to help us gather all of our scattered parts and harmonize them so we can truly soar.
While our focus these past ten weeks has been on stirring things up—activating our senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and inner knowing—as a way to tune in to and experience more of our innate spaciousness, there is an equally important “non-stirring” side to our clearing as well.
This is where surrendering comes in—the fourth “S” in our journey—which is the ability to let go of attachment to desires and outcomes. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes in his book Being Peace,
“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
As we get ready to transition into surrendering, the next stage on this pathway to spaciousness, take a few moments this week to reflect on how sensing and surrendering might go hand in hand: how feeling your feelings fully and completely and letting go of attachment to them—at the same time—can take your clearing to a whole new game-changing level.
Can you stir that into your awareness without stirring you into confusion and overwhelm?
To celebrate the completion of the third “S” and stir you into new heights, I invite you to watch one of the most extraordinary videos I’ve seen of a murmuration. If it has the same impact on you as it has on me, this two-minute experience will make you want to soar.1
I weep tears of joy every time I watch it.
You will find it below, along with another video clip explaining the sacred geometry of it all: what 10,000 birds can teach us about coming back into balance.
Ahhh 🤩
The Spacious Way to a Lighter You*
What you just read is from “Stir and Soar,” Chapter 30 of my book A Year for You.
It is just a small taste of our ongoing series on
cultivating the 5 steps to spaciousness: slowing down, simplifying, sensing, surrendering, and self-care.
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