It’s been a hot, dry summer here in Vermont—and not only here.  Things are incendiary all over.  We scent danger on the wind and feel ourselves, watchful, alert, a bit tense.  Beneath the explosive gaiety of summer, always strong here where the summers are short, we feel anxious.   There are tears not far beneath the surface, but it’s hard to slow down long enough to let them flow.  We hasten away from the pictures of dead wetlands, fish, and birds, away from the conscious awareness of the horrible sensation of the wound in the Earth’s crust relentlessly pumping, pumping, pumping.   But our animal bodies, which cannot forget our kinship with the wetlands, the fish, the birds, the wounded flesh of our Mother, suffer all the same.

What’s worse is that we strongly suspect that this is only the beginning, that more and more terrible catastrophes are coming.  We amp up our usual methods of coping in the desperate hope that what we already know how to do will somehow be enough to help us meet what we fear is coming.  We can barely imagine how to do anything different, because imagination requires space, and we can’t find any.

Is there an alternative to this dismal scenario?  Of course.  If we can recognize the intelligence within our fear, the fear that in fact what we already know, do and are is not enough to meet the present, let alone the future we see as speeding our way, we can learn how to keep it cool and moist when it’s hot and dry.  We can realize that we need to make space to do the previously unimagined, to try what we haven’t tried before—even, or especially if, our conditioned minds don’t see how this new thing could possibly help.

This can be of direct and significant value to us, keeping us buffered somewhat from the extremes of the outer environment, making us less likely to go down with injuries during this busy time and with illnesses as our tempo begins to shift in the autumn.

This can also be of direct and significant value to our families and friends, as we cease to participate in the feedback loops fanning the flames of summer activity so relentlessly high that everyone ends up feeling a bit jaded, a bit thin, unable to really experience the beauty and bounty of summer we tell each other we’re celebrating.  The bright flames of connection, laughter, and joy are very welcome, but by this point in the season, the green growing things are moving into a more downward and inward phase, beginning to ripen fruits and set seeds for the dark parts of the year.  We are more balanced and healthier when we, too, remember to allow some of summer’s fires to stay low and feed embers that will burn for a long time, into the dark times when we’ll really need them.

Now, I’m not trying to rain on your parade here (not that more rain wouldn’t be highly welcome), not trying to say you should be sitting alone meditating all day when the garden is bursting with both food and weeds and a new opportunity to be doing something fun with people seems to present itself every weekend.  I’m talking about the little dot of contrasting color on each side of the yin/yang symbol, in this case, a little dot of coolness, quiet, introspection in the height of a hot summer. 

When we move in a way that helps us hold that little dot of winter in the heart of summer, we offer our loved ones an alternative way that may nourish them more completely.  And not only our human loved ones: we offer back some of the peace the trees, rocks and hills constantly offer us.  We offer back some of the beauty the flowers give away so unconditionally.  We offer back some of the nurture, our streams, rivers and pond go on holding for us all even now, when their job is so difficult in so many ways.

So, what does that look like in practical terms?  Because these are nice ideas, nice words, but if they don’t translate into action, into different ways of working, talking, and breathing, they can’t touch our earthly relations very deeply.  Rocks, trees, and even the water is s-l-o-w.  When we prattle on, as we so often do, they simply wait to see if something we say will translate into language they understand.  Will we bring it all the way down into our bones, wonder the stones?  Will we let it strengthen our cells, wonder the trees?  Will we let it flow in our veins, wonder the waters?  Certainly our human ears, our human hearts, have learned to be hardened toward much of what comes out of our mouths, because so much of it is untrue.  If we want to help, we need to bring everything all the way down.

One practical way to do that involves paying a lot of attention to the feet.  Summer is such a good time for feet here in Vermont!  For a brief, glorious interlude they can be free of the heavy, rigid armor they’re forced to wear so much of the time.  For a brief, glorious interlude, they are relieved of the interminable boredom of flat surfaces dimly sensed through layers of dead stuff.  For a brief, glorious interlude, they remember themselves as soft, exquisitely responsive dancers with Earth, remember the feel of sand and soil, leaf litter and mud.  They consider stubbed toes a small price to pay for this original bliss.

But sometimes the rest of us isn’t listening very sensitively to the feet.  We think, “Oh, it’s nice to go barefoot,” and then forget about it for long periods as we go about what we think of us “real life.”  We actually forget that part of the pleasure of real life in summer is the experience of our feet!  What strange creatures we “modern” humans are! 

Simply attending to the experience your feet are having as you walk on grass, warm paving, or gravel, simply attending to their agility as they clamber over the rocks at your favorite swimming hole and as the propel you through the water, can help us come down when hot summer gets our fires blazing in ways that dissipate, rather than nourish, our tissues’ vitality.  When you get the hang of attending to your feet in such quieter moments, you can up the ante by trying to attend to them while you have dinner with your family.  Oh yeah?  You say you need still more challenge? Try inviting awareness of your feet when you are at a summer social gathering and there’s lots of chatter and other noise.

Sometimes we are so used to ignoring the experience of our feet that when we open to them, we feel a lot of pain or discomfort.  Worse still, we are sometimes confronted by our inability to feel at all.  That recognition is uncomfortable enough to send us right back into our heads, lickety split!  “No worries, mate!”  as the Aussies say.  We have the technology.  It’s called movement.

So let’s say you’re sitting at dinner with your family, inviting awareness of your feet and your feet say, “Sorry.  We’re closed.  We tried to talk with you for years, but you didn’t listen, so we’ve given up.”  “So sorry,” you silently tell them, as you simultaneously pass the potatoes, “Let me try to entice you into trying again.” 

You notice how each foot is resting.  If you don’t have both feet flat on the floor, this is a good time to put them there.  They will be different in the ways they meet the floor: one may rest more on the outside of the heel, one little toe doesn’t quite seem to make contact with the ground at all...

Then you gently begin to shift weight over one foot so that the big toe side gets a bit clearer or firmer in its contact with the floor.  You breathe.  You feel the movements of the many small bones and muscles of the foot, you feel the movements of the ankle.  You pass the salad and notice what’s happening in your knee, your hip.  Can you do this and still talk?  Is it mandatory to talk at your dinner table, or are you able to be quiet together as well?  Or maybe there’s never any talking at your dinner table, you live alone.  Maybe you talk to yourself internally all the time to keep yourself company.

You stop moving the foot, and sense whether there are any changes in how it feels, any new differences or similarities between it and your other foot.  Then you go the other way, shifting the foot so that your little toe side makes clearer, firmer contact with the floor.

It doesn’t matter so much what movements you do, as long as they’re relatively uncomplicated, easy to repeat, and don’t cause any discomfort. What matters is the process of moving with awareness, then pausing for integration, then moving with awareness again.  You can go up onto the ball of the foot and the toes, then back onto the heel.  You can move slowly around the edges of your foot in an oval, first one way and then the other.  You can not move at all, but instead imagine the movements.  Maybe you do one side in your imagination and one side with more gross movements (although they should always be subtle by our usual standards!) and see how they each respond.

You can do this when you are lying down or standing as well. 

Of course, there are lots of other ways to attend to the feet in summer: foot rubs, scrubs with pumice stones, soaks in flower teas (Lavendar! Ah! Calendula! Joy!  Mint!  Tingly and refreshing!) and probably lots of others.  I encourage you to see how many you can come up with and try them all.  But don’t neglect the foundation, the daily work of the foot, which is to communicate with the Earth as we walk, stand, run and jump.  Bringing attention to the subtle aspects of how the foot moves is a very powerful, readily accessible way to bring it down and keep it cool inside when it’s hot, baby.