Things Will Never Be The Same Again... The Solutio Phase of Alchemical Growth and a Breath Practice for Grief

Are you a listener? Click HERE to my SoundCloud Channel.

The Handless Maiden

This is the third installment in a series following the saga of the Handless Maiden, a fairy tale so old and so widely recognized that it has been found in nearly every corner of the world.

I like to imagine it being told by ancestors gathering at the well where they have saved you a place in the shade. Rest a while. Drink. Cool off while you hear about how one vulnerable woman makes her way through the darkest of forests with no tools, no map, and no idea if or when she will ever make her way out.

The Story (1:43)

There once was a poor Miller who makes a bargain with the Devil - a trickster character. The Devil offers the Miller vast wealth for what is behind his mill. The

Miller, thinking it was just an old apple tree, ignorantly bargained away his own daughter, who had been sweeping up back there. But the maiden would not be taken so easily. She wept into her hands which made them so pure the Devil could not take her. He threatens to kill the Miller if he does not cut off his daughter's hands. The Miller - and the Maiden herself, oblige. Now handless, the maiden chooses to leave the Mill and risk the wilderness rather than be cared for by her wounding father and the devil's wealth.

This is where we begin part 3 of the tale: Wandering through the wilderness.

Days and days she travels, unable to care for herself. She grows dirty, hungry, thirsty. Her clothes hang ragged. Her hair knots itself into something wild. She cannot reach for food. She cannot wipe her own face. She is utterly, completely vulnerable

The old stories suggest that this is precisely the point where a magical helper appears.

In some versions of the tale, the magical helper is an angel. In others, a quiet old man. But in every version, something merciful, appearing deep in the dark forest, unexpectedly, guides the Handless Maiden to an apple orchard where something even more extraordinary happens. The Handless Maiden cannot reach up to take an apple. So the apple tree bends itself down to her so that she might eat. Night after night, this is how she is fed - by the grace of that orchard - by the numinous world that cares for those who are truly lost.

A king owned that orchard and he spied on her night after night.

Where another man might

have seen only rags and dirt and wild hair, he saw inner beauty and grace shine through. He fell in love with her. And, as you might expect, they got married.

Does this sound like a "happily ever after" moment? Thankfully it isn't. Because these old fairy tales go deeper than Disney culture.

Let's see what happens next...

The king had his most skilled artisans and engineers fashion the Queen a pair of silver hands so that she might move through the world with a little more ease, a little more agency. In time they had a son. They were very happy.

But the devil had been watching. He had not forgotten the failed bargain. Through a series of deceptions, the Silver-Handed Queen and her infant son were driven from the castle and back into the forest. Back into the dark wilderness. Back to the place where nothing is certain. Back to the place where the path forward is known only by walking it ... one step at a time.

She and her son will live there for seven years. What grows in those seven years is a story for another gathering.

For now we are going to leave the fairy tale and turn toward the alchemical stage that represents this wilderness. The alchemists called it solutio. The dissolution. A great undoing - an ending - that is somehow also, impossibly, a beginning.

When The Life You Know Dissolves (5:33)

Carl Jung spent years studying the old alchemical manuscripts because he recognized that the alchemists were mapping something far more valuable than how to transform lead into gold.

They were mapping what happens inside a human being through the cycles of growth,

breaking down, and becoming more whole as we mature. He understood that fairy tales speak that same language.

In the last blog we examined the stage of Calcinatio. The fire that burns away our false identities, worn-out roles, unexamined baggage.

In our fairy tale, the Maiden was mutilated. This is the fire that annihilated the life she knew and forced her to now wander through an unknown wilderness. A dark night of the soul. She hasn't been prepared for this stage.

She didn't bring her planner.

She has no map.

No wifi.

No snacks.

No toolbox.

She doesn't have hands!

She has no self agency whatsoever.

This is the stage called: Solutio.

Solution.... Dissolution.... In life, this is the passage between the person you were before the fire and the person you have not yet become. Your roles fall away. Your certainties loosen. The identities you built, or borrowed - gone.

Its a different kind of pain to be endured. Very different than the fire, Calcinatio.

Solutio in Nature (7:31)

Nature offers us the most honest example of this stage, and she does not soften it.

The caterpillar does not choose to go into cocoon. It is programmed. It is simply the time to do it, and in the caterpillar goes.

What happens next is not a gentle rearranging. The caterpillar utterly and completely dissolves into undifferentiated matter: That's goo to you and me..

I imagine that stage must be either dreamlike, or maddening, or both.

But, I don't need to imagine.

I know what that feels like.

So do you.

Solutio in Life

Consider what happens in body and psyche after a marriage ends. Or after someone you loved is suddenly, irreversibly gone. The total dismantling of identity after a violent act. After a doctor speaks those words across a desk. These are ruptures. They arrive without permission and they do not negotiate. The life you knew the moment before is gone and it will never return.

Some dissolutions arrive the way a tide

roles in - like menopause. It does not announce itself. It jackhammers your identity. You were a maiden. You were a mother. All the things you were valued for have gone and you will go through a long period of not knowing who you will become. Or if you will become anything.

Sobriety does something similar. When you finally put down the substance, you discover that what you were actually putting down was a whole world build on the foundation of escaping through that substance. There is that saying in AA, "You only have to change one thing. That is everything."

This is solutio. It is not an affliction to cure.

It isn't a detour on the road of life.

It is the road.

Magical Helpers in the Goo (10:05)

The fairy tale reassures us: this dissolution stage does not have to be only suffering and uncertainty: The Handless Maiden does chance upon a magical guide. The apple tree bends itself to her mouth so that she could eat.

There are magical helpers in our lives as well. You may have heard them called Glimmers or God Shots. It is when an unexpected moment of grace that

arrives precisely when you least expect it. A moment of beauty or kindness that signals possibility. A phone call that arrives at the right moment. A door that opens when you weren't even looking for it.

The magical helpers aren't just outside you. They are inside you as well. Fairy tales are symbolic. As such, if the wilderness is symbolic of the inner landscape, then that means the grace, the God Shots, the glimmers are all inside you as well. They are treasures you come across. Inner resources you didn't know you had.

A life's purpose unveiled.

Access to a mysteriously deep wisdom.

Even gaining perspective on your life as you look back on it is a treasure worth the journey.

The Shapes We Take (11.54)

Lets go back to our gooey friend, the former caterpillar. Inside that undifferentiated, formless soup, something extraordinary is already at work. The seeds of new identity are

slowly activating. Biologists call them imaginal cells. They are the blueprint of what is coming. They slowly begin to coagulate and replicate into the form of something that could not have existed without the dissolution that preceded it.

The butterfly was always latent in the caterpillar as your "truer" self is latent within you. The slow alchemical phase of coming together in that stronger, truer form is called Coagulatio.

You already know it well.

Think about the shapes you have already taken. After the first heartbreak, and period of grief, you coagulated into someone who knew something about loss and could sit with others.

After the job ended, you eventually gathered yourself into an amazing direction you could not have imagined before.

After the diagnosis, the descent, and the long fight back, you emerged a survivor.

These coagulations come in all sizes. Maybe it was a first marriage - real life, love, and

identity that was true for that season of your life. Maybe it was a career. A city. A period of sobriety.

Or what about some trendy identity of the times? Were you a hippie in the 60s, a yuppie in the 80s, and recently someone referred to you as a "Boomer?

Your soul has worn, and shed many many costumes.

In the fairy tale, the Handless Maiden wanders through the dark forest (lingers formlessly in the goo). And then she coagulates into a new form. She is a wife. A queen. A mother. She is given silver hands. Not as good as having her own hands, but they'll do for now.

For a time, the Handless Maiden aka Silver Handed Queen is living in a coagulatio.

But the trickster is always there at the edge of the clearing, watching. And just when we feel like we've finally landed and can exhale, he is there to sabotage her, throw her back into the fires of purification. Once again she burns and finds herself in the wilderness - this time with her son - where she will remain for 7 years .. but that is a story for the next and final blog on this tale.. Coniunctio. The Sacred Marriage.

Breath Practice For Solutio (15:31)

The practice below is not a fix. It is a balm. It offers nourishment when we can't do for ourselves. It offers courage to face the dark path ahead. It offers softness so we can yield to our circumstances when fighting is impossible. It offers little glimpses into the vast unknown interior space where we might come upon the treasures inside. Glimmers of wisdom, strength, and perhaps even something sacred.

This breathing practice doesn't ask you to count, or perform in any way. In fact, performing it in any way will work against you.

It only asks for your curiosity, compassion, and faith that its wisdom will rise from within you, like a dawn.

Inhale:

Begin simply by noticing your current breath. Then, without force or drama, invite the next inhale to be just a little more nourishing than the last. I'm not asking you to breathe more deeply. You don't have to perform this inhale in any particular way. You don't have to muscle it. Just seek for it to feel richer... fuller. Let each inhale be a gentle upgrade on the one before.

Retain:

Hold that nourishing breath for no more than two or three seconds. Valve the breath lightly at the throat and hol dit in the belly or the chest - wherever your body holds it. For those few moments, let your awareness drop down into your body and into any sensations there. You may feel a warmth, or density. You may feel aliveness. You may feel nothing. All information is good information. The point is just to observe.

Exhale:

At the top of the retention, loosen that light valve and let the exhale seep slowly, and sweetly back out. If you seek the qualities of slow, sweet, soft.... you will find them. Your exhale will organically become longer and longer over time.

Suspension:

Eventually you may feel the fourth part of breath develop. Do not force this part. It happens at the bottom of the exhale. It isn't a controlled pause. It is a liminal space that arises organically. It is the space before thought. Neither here nor there. Do not manufacture it. Simply recognize it when it arrives, and let yourself rest there for one holy moment before the next nourishing inhale rises to meet you.

---

(23:05) Samantha Leonard is a somatic therapist and yoga therapist with over 30 years of

experience serving the Charlotte and Lake Norman areas. She integrates multiple approaches, including Internal Family Systems, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, Jungian Depth Psychology, and personalized Yoga Therapy to help people heal what talk therapy alone cannot reach. Virtual sessions are available.

Schedule your free consultation today!