It’s June | Summertime When Living is Easy
June is the beginning of lake season. The joy of swimming. Immersing myself into nature.
My go-to lake in Austria is the Mattsee with its water so clear and still it almost feels like a held breath. I swim there as often as possible, in long, slow stretches that turn into 45 minutes before I notice.
Last summer I reluctantly started using a swim buoy. It was really only because my niece Celina asked me to. She worried about her auntie out there in the lake all alone. I love Celina too much to argue. So now I do my swims with a bright pink friend trailing behind me, and honestly, it is one of my favorite things in the world - the swimming.
Sometimes I think about the lake when ease is harder to find. The start of this summer, somehow, has not been that light for me. Weird things have been going on. My anxieties had a field trip and once unleashed they are hard to tame. I guess, it’s often parts of my psyche knocking on the door, asking to be heard. The truth about summer is that somehow the light reaches into corners that stay in the shade most of the year. It can be challenging to look at what’s being brought to the light.
This is the work, though. Allowing those parts to speak, to have a voice. Letting them surface like fish rising to warmer water - visible, present, asking only to be seen and heard and maybe also to be loved. Only what is seen can be transformed.
"There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility.“- John O'Donohue
Here is the thing about water. It teaches you something land can’t.
When in water, your body lets go of the gripping it didn’t even know it was doing. The shoulders soften. The breath deepens. Now that we are finally without a phone in our hands, the mind has a chance to be still, a little more quiet at least. Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. Breathe. The lake holds you up if you let it. Here we have one of the few things that demands nothing and gives everything.
This, I think, is what June is asking of us. Ease as a body-mind-soul practice rather than another performance. The body softens when it finally stops bracing. The mind rests when it stops running in circles. The soul comes back into the room when the other two finally make space. They are not separate, these three. They are one big current.
The body is the easiest entry point. Move. Stretch. Float. Walk barefoot. Lie in grass. The body somehow remembers how to be alive much faster than the mind remembers how to be still, to stop its constant chatter. Me thinking: Minds can be so annoying.
Three Invitations for June
Find your water. Whatever form it takes - a lake, the ocean, a pool, a long bath in the evening. Get yourself into water this month, as often as possible, and notice what your body does even without detailed instructions. June is the month to let yourself be held by something larger and worthwhile than your to-do list.
Let what wants to surface surface. Allow. When a thought surfaces that you would rather not look at, try this: let it float. Greet it like an old friend you had forgotten about. Ask it what it needs. Listen. Most of our hardest moments soften when they are seen with kindness.
Slow your pace deliberately. Summer wants you to take everything a notch down - more patient, slower, unhurried. If you find yourself rushing through June the way you normally rush through life, that is your signal. Walk slower. Eat slower. Stay at the table longer. Let yourself feel slightly bored. Boredom is often the doorway to peace.
"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." - Mary Oliver
Three Reflection Prompts for June
Take a moment for yourself and contemplate.
What part of you has been asking for more air lately, and what would it feel like to let it speak?
Where in your life can you trust the water to hold you, rather than gripping?
If ease was already available to you this month, what would it feel like?
The HWELL Takeaway
Ease is the willingness to keep floating even when the water gets choppy. To let the light reach the places that have been in the dark for too long. To trust that your body, your mind, and your soul are one beautiful, intelligent, deeply alive system that has been longing for your attention for a long long time.
This June, please find your lake. Bring your bright pink friend if someone you love asks you to. More floating, less pushing. More breathing, less bracing - because ease! And remember: the most radical act of self-care is sometimes to do less, much less, to see more, and to trust that summer has lots of magic in store for you.
The water is warmer. The light is brighter. You are allowed to be at ease. Give yourself permission.
💚 Gaby
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