For this exercise find a place, any place, with some nature present (which, let’s face it, is anywhere and everywhere; the air you are breathing right now, even the body with which you perceive the world is part of ‘nature’). In this practice, we begin by honing our powers of perception. Imagine you have just…
Seeing with “fresh eyes” – A deeper nature experience
Around the time I first learned how to meditate, something amazing happened to me. It happened one day, quite spontaneously. I was working as a lawyer at the time and I used to walk down a little lane way to the train station on my commute to work. It’s not an especially beautiful lane way –…
Nature is a teacher – Just sit quietly under a tree
As I sit outside under an old plane tree that I know very well, I get the sense that summer is slowly coming to a close. A feeling accompanies this realisation. A sinking, uncomfortable feeling that I know all too well. It is the same feeling that comes on Sunday evenings as another week in…
Connecting with nature: The practice of ‘wind-watching’
The world is animated by the wind. This invisible, mysterious force can bring a landscape alive. Its absence can cast a calm stillness over the earth. On barren mountain tops its power is barely perceptible; in forests and seas its presence becomes manifest. Winds are wild, and sometimes destructive. When we look deeply into the…
Earth’s intelligence: Being pulled toward the heart of the world
How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing- each stone, blossom, child – is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered…
The hug of homecoming: Hedonism in the natural world
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” – Gary Snyder In a very real sense, mountains and valleys, the seas and the skies, the sun and the earth, the trees and the flowers constitute our home, our natural habitat. Growing up in the modern developed world we can easily come to believe…
The Robin
From a broken stumped tree, I gazed down at three silences, sitting on a log. They closed their eyes and drank in the air. From the shrub and the trees opposite, through the twigs, a robin redbreast flew out dancing over the air and bouncing off the ground until he came to rest, in stillness,…
The blossoming of belonging: How nature can provide solace in the face adversity
In his book ‘The doctor and the soul’ the great psychiatrist Victor Frankl tells a story which illustrates the redemptive power of a ‘deep nature’ experience, and the solace that nature can provide in the face of the grimmest of realities. The story shows that cultivating a connection with the natural world can help transcend…
Mindfulness Practice – Connecting with a Tree
Is there a tree you walk by regularly? Maybe somewhere on your daily commute? You might have passed this tree by and ignored it hundreds of times in your life already. The next time you are passing, intentionally slow down as you approach the tree, then stop for a few moments. Stop. First, feel the…
Why you should spend more time in nature
If the natural world could be packaged as a pill and sold in pharmacies it would be flying off the shelves – such are its proven physical, mental, and emotional benefits. But luckily it can’t be packaged, or sold, which is good news because it means that it’s free. All it costs you is time….