The same day we listened to Ferris Jabr’s remarkable, “The Social Life of Forests“, we stumbled on this video by performance artist Marina Abramovic describing the tree therapy she developed many years ago in the Amazon rainforest. It has become part of her “Abramović Method, a set of techniques that enables artists to get to higher states of consciousness.”
Trees are like human beings. They have intelligence. They have feelings. They communicate with each other. And also, they are perfectly silent listeners. You can complain to them.
Her message:
Go to the park near you. Pick the tree you like. Hold the tree tight. Really tight. And just pour your heart into it. Complain to the tree for a minimum of 15 minutes. It’s the best healing that you can do.
Of course, forms of this have been practiced for centuries. If you don’t feel like holding a tree “really tight”, no worries. Simply choosing the tree and focusing your complaints its way will do wonders. We like leaning against a tree with a big trunk with our backs flat against it, our face to the sun, in a kind of meditation…
