I am sitting on my balcony. It is spring and there is a little bit of heat in the sun. The balcony looks out over a road. The road is usually busy… an endless stream of trucks and cars but right now there is no traffic. Everyone is self-isolating. The machine has stopped. It feels…
Connecting to Care
The absence of a deep emotional connection between humans and the natural world is at the root of the environmental crisis. Can you think of a place in nature that you know really well? Close your eyes for a moment and see what comes up. Can you visualise the place in exquisite detail? The sounds,…
Nature is a teacher – What happens when you allow everything to be “as it is”?
A number of years ago I went on holiday to a beautiful part of Portugal. We stayed in a converted farmhouse in the middle of a national park. The farmhouse was in a valley. We arrived in the evening when the birds were just starting to roost. It was still warm and the air smelled…
Society – The soil in which we grow
In order for any plant to grow and flourish to its full potential, it needs the right conditions. The soil is all important. Everything grows in the soil. If the soil is good and you have the right amount of sunshine and water everything takes care of itself. Nature follows its own course. We don’t…
Nature Connection Exercise – Perceive and Receive
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…
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