Tag: nature meditation

Understanding and Appreciating the Interconnectedness of Nature

Mark Coleman in one of his nature meditation podcasts highlights the role of rain and its interconnectedness with other elements of nature and human life.  He was recording the meditation while standing on a mountainside with mist, coldness and dampness resulting from recent rains.  His meditation focused on rain and its beneficial effects for nature and humans.

He spoke of rains reducing the risk of fire, energising the earth and filling rivers inviting the annual migration of salmon from the sea to the rivers in California.  He described the rain as “drops of interconnectedness” and explained how clouds evaporate and produce rain, hail and snow which feeds the creeks, rivers and ponds and brings new life to many living creatures.  Mark spoke of the “gift of water” that we take so much for granted and he described the earthy smell after the rain has fallen and left its moisture on an otherwise parched earth.

Mark drew on Mary Oliver’s Poem, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me, to highlight the interconnectedness of rain and the sky, trees, plant life and ourselves as humans living in nature under the stars.  We see the life-giving nature of rain after it falls on dry and browning grass.  It always amazes me how a seemingly dead stretch of grass can come to life and appear beautifully green after overnight rain.  We can see indoor plants that are wilting with leaves that are browning or yellowing on the edges suddenly come to life and thrive when placed in the rain.

Rain, in Marks’ words, are part of the “fabric of connection” that is foundational to the natural world and our human existence. He reminds us that plants breathe out what we breathe in and breathe in what we breathe out – they are like our external, earthy lungs, enabling a vital relationship between humans and trees.

The Earth Law Center discusses other areas of interconnectedness that impact our human existence, e.g., the role of Krill in the marine ecosystem and fungi in the forest ecosystem.  They highlight that a growing awareness of the interconnectedness of ecosystems and human life has helped people modify their behaviour and contribute to protecting the environment – they describe the new environmentally aware behaviours as “nature connectedness behavior” and list consumption of organic products and a vegan diet as elements of this enlightened behaviour.

Reflection

We pursue our busy lives so often without an awareness of our interconnection with nature and each other.  As we stop, listen, and learn, we can become more conscious of this interconnectedness and its many dimensions.  As we grow in mindfulness through nature meditation and experiencing silence in nature, we can begin to understand, appreciate, and value this interconnectedness.  Otherwise, we can continue blindly damaging our life-giving ecosystems that we rely on for our very breath and continued existence.

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Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Enriching Your Life Through Nature

Over the past few days, I participated in a number of sessions of the online Nature Summit (11-17 May 2021) and found it very inspiring, enlightening and encouraging.  I subsequently upgraded from the free version and gained lifetime access to the 30+ presentations (both audio and video versions) as well as extensive bonuses.  The bonuses included access to the 35 sessions from the 2020 Global Summit on Mindfulness and Compassion together with other resources such as meditations and mindfulness practices.

The themes of the Nature Summit included developing mindfulness and deep listening through nature; finding wellness, healing, and creativity in nature; nature-based leadership; and protecting the environment.  The Summit provided a holistic approach to the beauty, wonder and power of nature.

Becoming grounded in nature

One of the key speakers was Kaira Jewel Lingo, mindfulness teacher, educator and editor for Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Planting Seeds: Practising Mindfulness with Children.  Kaira focuses heavily on mindfulness in education and shares the wisdom of her 20+ years of mindfulness practice including years spent in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery as a Buddhist nun where she developed her commitment to his tradition of Engaged Mindfulness. 

During the Summit Kaira discussed how the earth engenders a sense of belonging and connectedness.  She shared Thich Nhat Khan’s daily practice of a one-hour community walk in nature, interspersed with a 20-minute sitting meditation.  She explained that the communal walk done slowly with full attention and with “loving steps on the earth” brings awareness of a perspective that is larger than ourselves.  Kaira maintains that this close engagement with the earth takes us outside ourselves – outside self-absorption, the busyness of daily life and the afflictions of modern living.  

Kaira also discussed the mindfulness practice of lying prostrate on the earth.  Through “touching the earth” we can release our suffering and frustrations and imbibe its energy and resilience.  She suggested that this practice can also connect us to the healing power of nature.  One of the interesting exercises she does with school children is to have them touch a tree while blindfolded, then run and locate the tree without the blindfold, but relying solely on their sense of touch.  Kaira laments how under-utilised our senses are, especially our vision which accounts for “80% of attention”.

Caring for the environment

Jane Hirshfield – poet, editor, translator, and author – in her session during the Nature Summit, discussed how nature engenders “a creative awakening”.  Jane, as an internationally acclaimed poet, has become widely known for “working at the intersection of poetry, the sciences, and the crisis of the biosphere”. 

As a trained Zen practitioner, she has a deep commitment to pursue mindfulness through nature.  Her daily “trundling” in nature reinforces her view that the “natural world is the first field of [mindfulness] practice”.  She argues that our environmental crisis has arisen through a lack of adequate mindfulness, of awareness of nature and our co-dependence.  She maintains that “awareness is the ground for change”.  Appreciating nature, its energy and beauty, develops the desire to protect it.

Jane indicated that after the election of Donald Trump, she took political action every day to protect the environment through her poetry, essays and writing letters to people in power.  Donald Trump’s actions on the fifth day of his presidential office inspired a ground-breaking poem, “On the Fifth Day” that went viral and was read out by Jane at a protest march for scientists and the environment.  On his fifth day as President, Donald Trump had ordered the removal of any reference to climate change from the Government’s website and forbade environmental scientists employed by the Government to speak in any public domain about climate change.   Jane spoke about the resultant rise in “eco-poetics” and “poets for science”.

Jane explained that she writes her poetry not as a political action but more as a person finding her way in life and trying to meet daily challenges.  However, given her focus and standing, she has been cast as a climate change activist who is grateful to the natural world for enabling her to pay attention, to achieve balance in her life and to see reality as it really is.  While she is an extreme introvert, she engages in extroverted activities such as public speaking to communicate the urgency of the message about avoiding extinction that will occur if we keep destroying our planet.  Jane suggests that we each need to go outside our comfort zone and contribute “one small decibel in the chorus of sanity” – to add our voice and skills to achieving balance on a personal and an environmental level.

Reflection

There are many ways to discover the benefits of nature.  The Nature Summit provided a wide range of meditation and mindfulness practices that centred on nature.  Many of the presenters noted that if we really appreciate the beauty of nature, we will be moved and motivated to protect it.  As we grow in mindfulness through nature meditations, mindful walking, and other mindfulness practices, we can experience the healing power of nature, our connectedness to every living thing and gain the courage and resilience to adopt a form of Engaged Mindfulness that utilises our core competencies and the learning from our life experiences.  Jane’s latest book of poems, Ledger, is a call for “personal, ecological and political reckoning”.

Growth in awareness of nature and its beauty will motivate us to protect the natural treasures that we are able to enjoy.  Meditating on the elements of nature can bring equanimity to our lives despite the turbulent waves of our human existence.   

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Image by Valiphotos from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Finding Joy, Beauty and Healing through Nature in Challenging Times

Jon Kabat-Zinn when discussing mindfulness and resilience in difficult times stressed the need to be “still aware of beauty” in the midst of the challenges confronting us during the onset of the Coronavirus.  He suggested that despite the incredible heartbreak of these times, inspiration abounds, particularly in the beauty and resilience of nature.  Jon referred to the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist, who experienced his fellow monks dying from bombing raids by the Americans.  Amidst the grief during the burial of his friends, Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Don’t forget to see the flowers blooming by the side of the road”.  Jon reminds us to lift our eyes beyond the present pain and fear and to be aware of nature and all its beauty and healing power.

Wise@Work recently provided a webinar with Mark Coleman presenting on the topic of Beauty, Joy and Resilience in the Midst of Adversity: the Healing Power of Nature.  Mark is a globally recognised meditation teacher, author of From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness and the creator of the Mindfulness Institute.  Mark has a particular focus on being healed through nature by finding beauty and joy in experiencing nature mindfully.  He shares his unique insights drawn from mindfulness practices, research and experience in this area through his course, Awake in the Wild Nature Meditation.

Attending to nature and experiencing connectedness

What we pay attention to shapes our lives – our thoughts, feelings, mood and perspective.  In challenging times, we tend to become absorbed in what we have lost, obsess about the news and feel a loss of agency in many aspects of our life.  Our natural negative bias is strengthened, resulting in a continuous scanning of the environment (local and global) for threats, both real and imagined.

Mark maintains that we can restore our sense of equilibrium by paying attention to nature – attention being something that we can have agency over.  Through mindful attending to nature we can experience joy, peace, beauty and healing – experiences that are uplifting and energising.  He argues that as we become connected and aligned with nature, we can find our life purpose and delight in living or, as Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it, “waking up to what is” as the “laboratory of life unfolds”. Mark quoted the words of Mary Oliver’s poem, Mindful, to reinforce his view of the joy in nature.

Nature as a source of sensory awareness and joy

We can refocus our attention by beginning to notice nature as it unfolds daily before us and enlivens our senses – seeing the exquisite beauty of the sun rising in the morning over the water, listening to the echoing sounds of birds as they awake to another day, smelling the ground and grass after a night’s rain, touching a furry leaf or tasting freshly picked fruit, herbs or vegetables.  There are many ways to tap into the beauty and healing power of nature – we just have to be alive to them and willing to create space in our lives to experience this unending source of joy.

Mark reminds us that we don’t have to go out into the wild or visit a rainforest to enjoy nature (the very words we use such as “enjoy” expresses nature’s potential).  We can venture into our yard and observe the blossoms on the trees, notice the first seedlings emerging from recently planted grass seeds, feel grounded on the solidity of the earth, smell the earthiness of the soil and hear the wind gently rustling the leaves of trees and plants.  We can even stay inside and connect with nature through pictures and images – the sunflowers in a field of grass, the small child leaning over to smell a flower in a rockery or the tall poplars lining an expanse of crops.  If we study the painting of the girl, we can observe the colour of the flowers, the shape of the leaves, the fallen branches and the stone paving – things that we may not have noticed before.

Reflection

I have always found trees a source of meditation and an inspiration for poems because they reflect the paradox of human existence – suffering and joy, life and death, disconnection and closeness, weak and strong, flexible and inflexible.

Nature surrounds us and is there before our eyes, ears and other senses – if we would only pay attention.  The time required is minimal and the rewards in terms of mental and physical health and overall wellbeing are great.  Nature is a free, ever-changing resource. 

As we grow in mindfulness through paying attention to nature and meditating on nature, we can experience a calmness, peace and joy amidst these turbulent times.  Like our breathing, nature is a refuge readily available to us to enjoy, a source of connection to other living things and means of healing through alignment.

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Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Overcome Your Habituated Way of Reacting and Restore Your Energy and Power

In her podcast interview with Tami Simon, Dr. Lise Van Susteren identified four patterns of reaction to life challenges that she describes as “survival strategies”.  If we can understand these patterns of behaviour, we can regulate our normal way of responding to stimuli we encounter in life and develop more tolerance towards others.  In her book on Emotional Inflammation, co-authored with Stacey Colino, Lise offers a process to discover our triggers and recapture our balance, energy and power.  The book spells out the 7-step process, called RESTORE, and looks at ways we can personalise this process in line with our preferred survival strategy.

Four survival strategies that become habitual behaviour patterns

Lise maintains that the four survival strategies she has identified are based on solid empirical evidence and her own life experience.  She suggests that your preferred survival strategy is shaped not only by your personality and temperament but also by your life experiences and the people who influenced you throughout your life.  The four survival strategies are:

  • Nervous – fearful and anxious because they are able to clearly see dangers, both present and pending, and are capable of providing a warning and catalyst for action through their vigilance and thorough research (they “run the numbers”).
  • Molten – angry and outraged response to situations that are perceived as immoral, unjust or irresponsible and that constitute grounds for justifiable anger.
  • Revved – frantic response to the needs of others leading to ignoring own needs and resultant personal exhaustion.
  • Retreating:  a reflective and considered response that exhibits humility and compassion for others while exercising patience in the pursuit of resolution of issues and challenges.

Lise identified herself as a person who adopts the “revved” survival strategy.  She cannot say “no” to requests and finds herself in a whirlwind of activity giving talks and presentations and writing articles and other publications.  She identified Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You” speech to world leaders, participating in the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, as an example of a “molten” survival strategy – her words and actions precipitating a global, youth climate change movement.  In reflecting on my own response to the Coronavirus and its resultant impacts, I can identify my survival strategy as “retreating” – which is clearly shaped by my life experiences and the people who were most influential in impacting my thoughts and actions in response to anxious and challenging times. 

Lise suggests that if you can understand your habituated survival strategy, you will not only be more tolerant of others but also be better able to respond differently and more effectively when the occasion demands it – because you will have been able to reduce your “emotional inflammation”. She proposes the RESTORE process as a way to achieve these ends.

The RESTORE process

Lise maintains that the RESTORE process is a pathway to overcoming habituated responses to the things that trigger us while providing us with a means to regain our equilibrium and power to contribute to a better world.  Each of the seven steps of the process draws its name from one of the letters of the word, “restore”:

  • Recognise your feelings – identify and name your feelings, not denying or avoiding them.  The more you deny your feelings, the stronger they become and the greater is their influence over your words and behaviour leading to an increasing number of negative, unintended consequences.  This also involves getting in touch with your body and what it is telling you about your level of stress and agitation and the difficult emotions you are experiencing, particularly in situations where you perceive you have no control over what is happening.
  • Examine your triggers – gain an understanding of your triggers and their impact on your words and actions.  This involves a willingness to reflect on situations that led to a high level of reactivity on your part.  It also entails identifying the people and experiences that have shaped your habituated, unhelpful responses.  The process previously described for dealing with resentment is an example of this self-exploration.   Both this step and the former require self-observation and self-intimacy that can be developed through meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection. 
  • Steady the natural rhythm of your body – breathing with the earth, somatic meditation and mindfulness practices help to restore your equilibrium that arises when you are attuned to the natural rhythm of your body. 
  • Think yourself into a safe space – often we are overcome by negative self-talk which makes us inflexible and destroys our equilibrium.  Working with your mind is necessary to achieve emotional agility and the capacity to adapt to ever-increasing stress situations. Jon Kabat-Zinn provides a cautionary reminder that “you are not your thoughts” – they are like passing clouds, while you are the peaceful and resilient reality behind those clouds. 
  • Obey your body – this entails self-care including physical exercise, practices like Tai Chi and yoga, avoiding foods that your body experiences as harmful, reducing stress by achieving a better work-life balance and using self-care services especially if you are a carer.
  • Reconnect with nature – Lise suggests thatyou can “reclaim the gifts of nature” by accessing its healing benefits and its capacity to stimulate appreciation and gratitude and inspire awe.  Mark Coleman offers online courses on nature meditation to assist you to reconnect with nature.
  • Exercise your power – Lise argues that to consolidate your newfound equilibrium and power, you can become an “upstander” instead of a “bystander” – taking effective action in the world (e.g. on climate change) out of a sense of thoughtfulness, compassion, self-belief and hope.  This is the pathway to joy – pursuing a purpose beyond yourself that reduces self-absorption.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through nature meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection, we can deepen our self-awareness and tolerance, build our understanding of what triggers our unhelpful responses, develop equilibrium and reconnect with our personal energy and power to create positive change in the world. 

Throughout our restorative approaches we need to practise self-compassion, not beating up on ourselves for any shortcomings or shortfalls.  Louise Hay recommends that we practise the affirmation, you’re always doing the best you can with the understanding and awareness and knowledge you have.

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Image by NickyPe from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.