If you’re feeling like you need to let go of some stuck energy, run down to the river as fast as you can while letting your arms flop around. When you get there, find a place to lie or sit down, as close to the river as you can. Dip your finger tip into the water, then your hand, forearm, all the way to your elbow. Do this slowly, pausing at each step. How does the temperature of the water feel? Do you feel this temperature in the drifting air above the water? If this feels good, maybe you want to try dipping your toe, foot, and shin, all the way to your knee into the water? 

Cattails are lining the edges of the river, their shoots deep underwater, communicating to each other. You’re hanging along the cattail flower, and you catch the brightest glimmering ray, warming your whole body through and flickering on the water. You float off your pillowy base, onto the water’s cool surface, and let yourself be carried downstream. A tiny fish is swimming below you. 

1.The fish eats you 

2.You continue floating 

1. Carried in the belly of the fish you’re floating in slimy texture, but you feel safe and warm, with sounds of water swooshing around you. You can feel the movement of the water alongside you, sometimes resistant, but mostly in response to your choices. You feel very comforted here, as you’re not asked to do, or be anything. You get to know the fish that carries you. She is happy to describe all the layers and shades of color to you as your shut down your conscious mind, in rest. You’ll awake later in a different form, but remember a kind and enveloping spirit.

2. You float along slow, faster, slow again. You catch onto the water’s edge and feel the silt and nutrients from the river surrounding you. The grains are about the same size as you, but heavier, coarser, slower. Their smell is earthy and wet. You catch onto another cattail shoot, and rest there, feeling grounded as the water drifts you by.