I woke up to a sloth the other day. It was my first time really being with one in nature. I had seen them before in the Amazon, but only in split second moments, while I cruised by in a motorized canoe. This time was different.
This time the sloth appeared in the cecropia tree in front of the tent I was sleeping in. And greeted me from high above, while I was drinking my morning coffee. I actually had seen one of the workers in the area staring at the tree and asked him what he was looking at. He said it was a sloth and said we had good luck to catch a glimpse.
At first the sloth was all rolled up in a big ball, just hanging there, doing nothing, leaning up against a branch, up real high in the tree. I appreciated that. His doing nothing. For so long. While the rest of us were moving about with our morning rituals.
Up top of this tree by himself, he looked calm, peaceful, supported. I wondered how he was able to stay in place in the branch, all rolled up in the ball. The position looked precarious while secured in at the same time. It felt really beautiful, that combination of precariousness pillowed in with innate security, like my own life.
I decided to sit there in front of the tree for the whole morning and just be in this sloths’ presence. Other campers were going on programmed hikes and my girlfriend and I took a hard pass, to be in the space of the joy of doing nothing and tune in to be with one of nature’s greatest teachers. It felt important.
As I sat there, I felt deep calm. I savored the moment, took it into me as at the snap shot for my soul it was — one that I would go back to later to remember the feeling. And the gift of the sloth.
About an hour in, the sloth started to move and his little head came out of the ball. About fifteen minutes later I saw a head move ever so gently. Then about 30 minutes later a hand. Every part of his body moved ever so slightly and slowly. An hour later, he began to move his whole body in what was like a full body stretch, moving one arm behind him from one branch to the other, swapping positions in what could have taken any other animal 2 seconds, yet he took about 60.
Watching him do this Jedi yogi ninja slow motion move was great artistry. It reminded me of the importance of slowing down, way down, and making it a priority for my life. The voice of one of my decades ago teachers came through and I remembered her saying, on a snowy Vermont morning — “sometimes the most revolutionary thing we can do, Jen, is slow down.”
So…what’s this all have to do with lesbian love, you ask?
Well, coaching can be an amazing opportunity to slow down the pace of your life, where you can sit contemplatively on a perch, like a sloth, and take a hard look out at your landscape from up top of the lesbian love branch, and do some reassessing of how you want to move in the forest. There’s nothing like the renewal that can come from a pause, where you can receive some nervous system rest, the kind this sloth was taking up top the tree, and achieve a higher perspective to see the path or paths that we want to follow or create to get back on track or more in alignment with our inner lesbian & queer heart.
Leave Your Comment