Environmental Arts therapy and Circle of Trees

Winter

It’s an invitation we make every year to each Circle of Trees group: taking an embodied journey through all the seasons together, leads each person to a richer connection to self and into relationship with the other-than-human life. The Celtic year starts in November when a Circle of Trees group initiate their Winter’s descent. Invited to let go into life’s tapestry, participants ritually collect leaves to build themselves woody, hibernation nooks, crannies and heaps to lie in. Guided by the slowing down of life on the outside, creative facilitators and environmental arts therapists Caz Hoar and Gin Farrow-Jones invite the participants to slow too, resource themselves inwardly: warmed by the fire, finding rest, reflecting, and dreaming of creative endeavours past and what may yet come to be.

In the woods, soul medicines and messages for sustaining life in frugal times show on the bare branches; silver Birch in November; in bright red Rowan berries in December and the enigmatic Alder trees in January, share their subtle powers. During the dark stillness, in the depths of December’s heart cave, all of autumns seeds lie sleeping underground. We instinctively resource ourselves by gathering, seeking warmth in company of others and to mark the Winter Solstice (Dec 21st). Acknowledgement of the nourishment we glean from silence in company, alongside the claws, teeth, and tears of survival at the threshold of life and death, are reflected in the group songs, rituals, and totemic artmaking in every one of the Winter months’ workshops.

Spring

Slowly, unfolding, our own ascent begins with an earnest thawing. Remembering February as the turning pointing reflected in Imbolc (Feb 1st), and St Valentine, whose love and grief lodges in the boughs of the weeping willow, a tree also known as the funeral herb. A diffuse warmth relaxes ice, water flows, releasing spears of Spring and life wrestles free of soil, eggshells, and we climb out of our jumpers, hat, and gloves. Hurray, free at last!

Summer

Drawn outdoors, the increasingly solar-powered early summer days produce an abundance of sustaining blossoms hawthorn in April and by Beltane (May 1st), our own ‘path with heart’ is traced intentionally on the land. Haws reminds us of a choice we have, and we ask ourselves which is my pollen path to follow? By May, all wildlife bursts out. Plants, bugs, and birds living in every Oak, whose commitment to life calls us to make our own vows beneath its boughs, stand as totems of life force. Life is saturated with daylight, energy and playful connection is explored. Every Summer Solstice (June 21st) is dedicated to Holly the warrior’s tree, its soft-tined leaves when first-burst become armoured the older the greenery get. Holly embodies resilience but not indifference to our and others’ hearts, and feelings of challenge, suffering or pain. July we seek a pool of water encircled in magical Hazel. To escape the heat, we dive beneath the still surface into depths no sun light touches, seeking treasures of memories, insight and understanding from inside hazelnuts.

Until the evenings creep in, earlier and earlier and Autumn glows. Apple-sweetened orchards bestow upon us tokens of love, magic, and innocence. Berries drip blackened juice, nuts brown and plump, and leaves burnished gold and red flutter to the ground, inviting our own practices in creative, colourful (and sometimes messy) ways of letting go of the last of the sun-burst days, tinged with loss and fulfilment at Lughnasa/Lammas (Aug 1st). Facilitated activities of reflection for the purpose of savouring and digesting the year’s harvest having wisely filled our hearts, soul pockets and stores.

Autumn

Samhain festival (Nov 1st) concludes the Celtic year. The Circle of Trees group celebrates the Elder tree and Reed in honour of everyone’s learning, newfound gifts and the group journey taken together, out of the dark, into the light before returning back. In the compost of the old year, well-rotted down experiences enrich another descent back into dark, still, winter which our souls readily receive.