Settle into a comfortable seated position and allow your eyes to gently close.
Feel your body grow subtly heavy as it sinks with the supportive earth beneath you.
The gentle rise and fall of your belly signals your arrival into this grounded present state
of awareness.
With each exhale,
Visualize releasing any internal chatter or external distractions.
Slowly making space for your mind's eye to perceive the vibrant wise oak tree now manifesting before you.
Study the tree's thick grooved trunk.
This dense pillar representing the core essence of who you are
that has remained steadfast through all phases of your life's journey so far.
Observe the twisting branches reaching outward and upward.
Adorned with layers upon layers of leaves,
Some shine in rich verdant green.
These aspects of your experience that remain alive with purpose and vitality
but also notice the dry crinkled brown leaves clinging to certain branches.
What do these leaves symbolize for you?
Perhaps mindsets or behaviors you've outgrown.
Ancestral stories or expectations that feel confining.
Lingering fears or doubts.
Obstructing brave growth in this moment.
Can you practice observing these decayed
aspects of your former self with compassion rather than judgment?
They served a role in thriving through certain seasons.
Honor their impermanent place in your
story as you now choose to consciously release any which no longer sustain you.
Visualize and feel the arrival of a brisk autumn wind.
Beginning to swirl around the branches of your standing oak,
One by one,
Those withered leaves.
Losing their grip until finally breaking free.
Observe them swirling away in the currents of
change you are mindfully inviting in.
As you bear witness to the natural shedding process,
Release any resistance.
Trust that this temporary unbecoming precedes all.
For in the open spaces from which those expired layers have now been removed,
You can sense vibrant
potential and rebirth taking root.
Breathe deeply into your imagined oak's freshly bared branches.
Now free to receive in their outpouring of life-giving energy,
Now free to receive in their outstretched honesty.
Look closer and you may spy bright green buds peeking through.
The courageous sprouts of your truer self emerging in all its beauty.
These buds were always there,
Simply awaiting the proper season to reawaken into magnificence.
Take a few more centering breaths.
Feeling expansive clarity,
Lightness and faith in the organic wisdom within you that persists
through all cycles of becoming and unfolding.
When you are ready,
Open your eyes while carrying this vision of renewal
and possibility into the constantly revitalizing present moment.
