This morning I write to you as I watch the sunrise over a dewey valley in Portugal.
We’re with a group at a breathwork retreat and it’s not the fist time we have found ourselves in a valley.
In July we were at River Mountain in Pennsylvania, also in a valley surrounded by rising land on every side.
Where I grew up the land was flat, except for the levees holding the Mississippi River within her borders. The horizon was clouds and sun.
In valleys, the outline of the sky is fringed with the shapes of trees, like paper cutouts lit from behind. The shadows are different and you feel the moisture, gravity somehow more obvious. The rising walls of green feel protective and in their own way hold space.
This place, Orada, meaning prayed for, is on land visited for over 400 years as a place with healing waters. We’re feeling that grounded sense of place and peace as we lie down to rest and breathe.
Sending you all the healing prayers and peace of Orada.