How Surely Gravity’s Law

I have been thinking about ‘gravity’ lately. It has been a theme for me on my menopause journey.

During this time of change, much seems to have gone into flux: my hormones are all over the place, the things I used to do to orientate and ground myself don’t seem to work so well any more, my body is changing, and so does my relationship with it.

A few years ago I was given a diagnosis of pelvic organ prolapse. This is where the pelvic organs shift out of place, which can be the result of too much holding or too much laxity in the support structures surrounding the organs. It can lead to a feeling of congestion and heaviness in the pelvis, and for me, combining with menopause symptoms, a certain feeling of heaviness energetically: the old familiar feeling of buoyancy is a lot more elusive these days.

This poem reminds me to be friendly with gravity, and with my body. They are both doing what they do best. And my job is to keep coming back to the yoga mat in friendliness with change, and with curiosity as to the various new paths and possibilities available to me now. To ‘trust our heaviness’ in order to ‘fly’.

How Surely Gravity’s Law

How Surely Gravity’s Law
How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing —
each stone, blossom, child —
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke