What Holds the Tendril
What supports growth is established before growth becomes visible.
Practice follows a similar rhythm.
Early summer reflection
The peas have begun to climb.
A few weeks ago, the stems barely reached above the soil. Now tendrils extend in every direction, searching for something to hold.
The movement is easy to miss.
One day a tendril hangs loose. A few days later it has wrapped itself around a cane. Another follows. Then another. What first appeared uncertain begins to establish its direction.
The support was there from the beginning.
The bamboo canes were placed in the soil long before they were needed. For a time they seemed unnecessary, standing among young seedlings with nothing to hold.
Growth arrived later.
The garden often moves this way.
What supports growth is established before growth becomes visible.
Practice follows a similar rhythm.
The postures that feel steady today are supported by movements repeated long before they felt natural. The breath settles more easily because it has been returned to many times before. Balance develops through familiarity. Strength develops through repetition.
Much of this work passes unnoticed.
Attention tends to rest on what is visible. The flower opening. The harvest arriving. The shape of the posture. The outcome.
Yet much of what sustains growth remains in the background.
The support. The structure. The conditions that allow something to continue.
The tendril understands this instinctively.
It does not climb without contact. It reaches until it finds something stable enough to hold. Once it does, the movement changes. The stem gains direction. Growth becomes more assured.
Early summer offers reminders of this everywhere.
The garden thickens.
Leaves expand.
The first harvests begin to appear.
Growth seems sudden, but it has been building for months.
Beneath every visible change is a quieter process that made it possible.
The body follows the same rhythm.
Practice deepens through what is returned to repeatedly. Through ordinary actions that are easy to overlook. Through structures established before they appear necessary.
The tendril wraps itself around the cane and continues upward.
The support remains where it has always been.
Susanna Syassen writes on yoga, Ayurveda, and embodied living. She is the author of The Enlightened Earth forthcoming.
