observation – Grow Mindfulness

Natural Awareness through Nature

Natural awareness is often contrasted with meditation focused on numbers, the breath, sounds or particular sensations or feelings. Natural awareness is not goal-focused – it is more about being aware of awareness itself, noticing that you are noticing. So much of what we do in life is goal-focused – natural awareness provides a desirable shift that can lead to less stress, more openness and a greater sense of calm. Rachelle Calvert encourages us to take our mindfulness practice outside so that we can feel more connected to the world around us and not be totally absorbed in having to “try” or “do”. She draws on research results that demonstrate that “practicing mindfulness in nature”, leads to many benefits including improved heart health, concentration, relaxation and stress reduction. Mark Coleman reminds us that a natural outcome of being mindful in nature is a sense of gratitude as well as wonder and awe inspired by nature’s beauty and resilience.

By developing natural awareness in nature through observation and listening, we can become more grounded, experience tranquility and begin to notice minute aspects of our natural environment that we have previously overlooked. Diana Winston in her book, The Little Book of Being, identifies practices we can use to develop natural awareness and offers what she calls “markers” to test whether or not we have experienced “natural awareness”. These include feelings of timelessness and ease; noticing that you are noticing; completely aware with all your senses open to your environment; and a restful mind that is open to what is passing by.

An experience of natural awareness

I was recently strolling along the Mooloolaba Beach Boardwalk noticing the people passing by – couples of all ages out for a walk, men and women pushing prams, individuals leading dogs on a leash and the perennial runners, both individuals and groups. Occasionally, a bush turkey would cross my path on its way to greener pastures. While being aware of these movements, I was totally unaware of the vegetation beside the Boardwalk. Once I realised this lack of awareness, I began to scan the vegetation either side of the path. I became aware of tiny wildflowers partially hidden amongst the trees and grasses, trees twisted sideways turning towards the sun and all different kinds of leaves (broad and large, thin and small). This cultivated, natural awareness enabled me to broaden the horizon of my awareness and instilled a greater sense of calm as I walked mindfully along the Boardwalk.

Diana Winston offers an exercise to experience what she calls, “the spectrum of awareness” – moving from a very narrow focus to a more panoramic, natural awareness view. She uses fish in an aquarium for this exercise, moving from focus on a single plant, to movement of an individual fish and, finally, to a panoramic view taking in the fish, the aquarium and the surrounding environment. As she observes as part of this exercise, natural awareness includes noticing our own bodily sensations and feelings in the present moment as we are experiencing the world around us with openness and curiosity.

Reflection

We can develop natural awareness through our everyday activities if we adopt a mindset that involves consciously noticing what we are doing and seeing, as well as what we are experiencing internally. Diana Winston suggests that we can develop natural awareness even when doing the dishes; when we expertly handle a distraction while meditating; when consciously avoid foods that lead to inflammation or when we monitor how we spend our time.

Focused meditation helps to develop natural awareness as we become increasing able to concentrate and pay attention with openness and curiosity. As we grow in mindfulness through developing our capacity for natural awareness and engaging in formal meditation, we can experience a greater sense of tranquility, freedom from anxiety and a more complete alignment of our words and actions with our values and life purpose.

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Image by Waldemar Zielinski 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.

Developing Natural Awareness through Observation and Listening

On New Year’s day, I was sitting on my deck at home and immediately thought about Diana Winston’s discussion of natural awareness. All I wanted to do was sit there, observe and listen. It was as if I was being transported into a different world where nature was supreme and everything else faded in the distance.

As I looked out from the deck I could see the waters of Moreton Bay in the distance through a gap in the trees that afforded a glimpse of the bay and the island not far from the shore. It was one of those days when the sun was warm, the sky was blue and there was an eerie stillness in the air. The trees glistened with drops of water after many days of rain. There was a clarity about the view and a coolness in the air despite the summer weather beginning to warm up.

I could hear the birds in the foreground and background – Doves cooing persistently, Butcherbirds stretching their necks to break into song and raucous Rainbow Lorikeets breaking the silence with their fast flapping wings as they sped by screeching. The air was suddenly filled with loud sounds as a Kookaburra landed nearby to let out its laughing call.

I began to observe more closely my pot plants on the table, cupboard and floor of the deck. I was able to notice new growth with emerging leaves and buds, the thickening of stems and the increasing individuality of the plants as they matured in their pots and took in the air and sunlight. Some succulents had very shiny leaves, others were tall and imposing, while a small group hung over their pots and extended their reach to the floor. Another variegated plant that was previously close to death now displayed its bright colours and scalloped edges in a new location on the deck that afforded lots of air, light and access to light rain.

The sky was a bright blue with light, passing clouds moving slowly and forming unusual shapes. The many birds that surrounded me seemed to rejoice in the clear skies, the gentle breeze and the brightening sunlight.

Reflection

I am reminded of Costa Georgiadis exhortation in his book, Costa’s World: Gardening for the SOIL, the SOUL and the SUBURBS, that we should become more mindful of our immediate environment as we move through it and around it, often totally unaware of its beauty, variety and earthiness and its ability to make us grounded. Deepak Chopra reminds us of the healing power of “earthing” – consciously grounding ourselves by walking barefoot on the earth or grass.

Diana, in her book The Little Book of Being, also offers ways to develop natural awareness and encourages us to monitor our sensations throughout the day, engage in deep listening and avoid unnecessary aggravation either of our emotions or our microbiome (through the ingestion of inflammatory foods).

As we develop natural awareness and grow in mindfulness through meditation and conscious observation and listening, we can achieve a sense of tranquility, gratitude and peace amid what is increasingly a turbulent world. Our own backyard can be where we earth and become grounded.

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Image by Perez Vöcking 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.

How to Overcome being Imprisoned by Self-Neglect

Edith Eger in her book The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life, discusses the “the prison of self-neglect”. Habituated behaviours that underlie self-neglect can arise through adverse childhood experiences, an abusive relationship or a deficient developmental environment. Edith suggests that self-neglect often arises because of unmet childhood needs – specifically the need for “attention, affection and approval”. Our own needs are neglected in order to fill the gap left by unfulfilled childhood needs. So we pursue the “A’s” (mentioned above) at the expense of our present needs. An aspect of self-neglect is the avoidance of expressing strong emotions for fear of causing discomfort to others.

Factors leading to self-neglect

We might have had parents who offered conditional love – on condition that we met their high standards in sport, academic or other achievements. Their expectations about our performance can create a dependency whereby we are forever seeking approval or acceptance. We might have suffered neglect as a child through the conscious choice of parents or their own adverse circumstances. This can lead to our continuously seeking attention. In one of my workshops, one participant proved to be continually disruptive through constant challenge to anything other participants said. It turned out she was seeking attention and approval because she was denied this as a very young child – being expected to contribute meaningfully to adult conversation when still very young.

Sometimes self-neglect can arise as a result of the role we played as a child or young adult. Family circumstances may have led to our being the “responsible one”, “the carer” or “the earner”. These roles may have been necessary at the time but the unspoken expectation that comes with the role can continue into adulthood. Edith recounts the story of a client who was imprisoned by the self-expectations that arose as a result of a childhood role as the “reliable one”. This led to continual self-neglect in pursuit of other people’s needs – often unexpressed but assumed. The result was personal burnout as well as depriving others of the opportunity to develop independence. Sometimes creating dependence on ourselves fulfills our desire to be needed. This was something that Gabor Maté discussed as contributing to his need to be a workaholic medical practitioner.

Gabor maintains that underlying many addictions is an unmet need arising from early childhood. The addiction, whatever form it takes, is an ineffectual way to address the pain arising from parental neglect, abuse or inattention. His “compassionate inquiry” approach is designed to unearth the early triggering event(s), the resultant negative self-message and the reward sought through the addictive behaviour.

Overcoming the imprisonment of self-neglect

The fundamental rule to freeing ourselves from the prison of self-neglect, is to begin to put ourselves back into the picture, to have self and our needs as part of the equation when trying to decide how to spend our energy and time. Edith suggests that there are a number of ways to do this:

Savour the things and people in our life that bring us joy. We can start small with a few minutes each morning spent appreciating the little things in our life – noticing a new leaf or flower on an indoor plant, reflecting on a picture or painting that generates positive feelings, or valuing a person who has shown us kindness, thoughtfulness or generosity. Savouring what is good in our life can extend to appreciating the development of our children, accomplishments and rewards, the wonders of our subconscious mind, the capacity to think and create and our relationships (even our relatives). We can actively seek to let joy into our lives.
Appreciating nature – nature has a healing power and enables us to cultivate all our senses and develop our sense of wonder and awe. In nature, we can be lost in the beauty, the sounds, the textures and the smells that surround us. We can actually find ourselves in this process of being lost in something immense and awe-inspiring that is beyond ourselves.
Edith herself adopted an affirmation that expresses something of her uniqueness and what she has been able to contribute to the world. We can all find the words to reflect the positive things we have contributed to others and what makes us a truly unique person. In the process, we can value the people who helped make us who we are – our parents and their positive traits, our mentors and their wisdom, and our teachers who willingly shared their knowledge and insights.
Reflect on an occasion where you were asked for something or to do something. Ask yourself what were your thoughts and feelings at the time. What was driving your choices? How much of looking after yourself was reflected in your response. How could you have responded in a way that did not involve self-neglect, e.g. expressing your true feelings. Are there habituated behaviours that you engage in that continually overlook your own needs?
Explore the balance in your life. Edith suggests that we keep a record (for a short period) of how we spend our day in terms of how we allocate time to work, play and love. Does work absorb all our time and energy at the expense of our needs for nurturing, relaxation and time to ourselves. How often do we allow ourselves to become absorbed in a hobby, creation or charitable activities or just enjoy social activities with friends or family.

Reflection

With the busyness of life, it is so easy to lose ourselves through self-neglect. There are often hidden forces underpinning this neglect, so self-exploration is important to unearth what drives our behaviour. As we grow in mindfulness through observation and reflection, we can gain the necessary self-awareness and insight to understand ourselves and develop the courage to make changes to the way we live our life.

Edith maintains that we do not change until we are ready to make the change and often this is driven by a need to change habits that no longer serve us in a positive way. Any changes we make to our behaviour, no matter how small, need to be reinforced by savouring our achievement. From Edith’s perspective, change involves the process of “finding the real you”.

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Image by Perez Vöcking 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.

Being Mindful of Our Immediate Environment

Costa Georgiadis maintains that a return to the simple things of life, such as a home garden, is essential in these challenging times. Costa is an environmental educator, TV presenter, landscape architect and host of ABC’s Gardening Australia. His passion for sustainability has its origins in the care and concern for the environment instilled into him at an early age by his grandparents. His recent book, Costa’s World: Gardening for the SOIL, the SOUL and the SUBURBS, is more than a wonderfully illustrated and informative gardening book – its is really a book about living and restoring, replenishing and re-invigorating our immediate home environment. He argues for achieving biodiversity, reducing waste and living mindfully in our immediate environment.

Costa contends that at the heart of sustainability is the ability to separate needs from wants – something we do when we go camping. He uses the analogy that we are “campers” on this earth and we need to be conscious of our imprint day to day, while being able to create an environment that nurtures, protects and sustains us . His book is imbued with his enthusiasm, humour, energy, conviction and down-to earth practicality.

Getting to know our microenvironment

Costa is a great believer in diaries and logs for getting to know our microenvironment – he argues that grounded data is pure gold. He also maintains that we really need to get to know microclimates – to understand the climate of our neighbourhood in terms of the variability of the temperature, the timing and volume of rain, and the extremes of heat and cold. Costa argues that we have to inform ourselves of our local, grounded seasons not just the four traditional European seasons – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – that we are familiar with. He suggests that we can draw on indigenous knowledge and descriptions of seasons to better inform ourselves. He reminds us that seasons shape our lives – they influence what we eat, what we wear, how we spend our time, and the amount of time we spend indoors or outdoors.

Costa has a series of questions that we can ask ourselves to better understand our immediate environment. They cover issues such as the source of prevailing winds, the physical landscape, tree placements and impacts of fences and structures. He argues that developing awareness about these environmental elements and the location of our living space can helps us to prevent waste, save energy and invest time and energy in productive, sustainable practices.

Sustaining and regenerating our microenvironment

Throughout his book, Costa provides multiple ways we can restore, replenish and enrich the biodiversity of our immediate environment – the source of life and sustainability. Here are some of the areas that he explores with practical hints on how to progress them:

Composting – Costa contends that in composting we are “bringing dead things back to life”. He argues that anyone can compost as all the required materials are readily available – kitchen food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, used newspapers, paper & cardboard, twigs and sticks. He provides detailed instructions with clear illustrations to get us started and practical ways to make the ongoing process easy. He contends that in composting we are reducing waste and landfill, developing great soil and “making new friends in the community” by inviting worms and multiple insects to break down the composting ingredients. Birds too will happily visit to feed on the worms and contribute their droppings. He also recommends the ShareWaste app as a way to engage a wider community of people in your local area in the composting process.
Enriching our soil – Costa maintains that “healthy soil is teeming with life”. He encourages us to really observe our soil – its colour, texture, feel, and smell. He offers multiple ways to test our soil and to enrich it, all the while raising awareness about the soil needs of different plants such as native and indigenous plants. Costa encourages us to develop a partnership with our soil which is critical to our survival individually and as a species. Composting has a key role here as it not only increases organic matter in our soil but enables us to get closer to the soil by investing time and energy in regenerating it.
Reducing water usage – being conscious of our consumption and waste of water. Costa suggests that a salutary lesson is to observe the number of times in a day that we access a water outlet and to ask ourselves how we can reduce our water use.
Plastic-free initiatives – here Costa encourages us to start “breaking up with plastic” by reducing our dependence on it. He offers ways to achieve this “breakup” which include avoiding the use of plastic straws, drink bottles, and cutlery. He also encourages us to influence others to overcome the habit of single-use plastic which has become so much a part of our lives in modern times..
Conscious consumption – Costa suggests that we become conscious of the origins and ingredients of our consumable items such as coffee, tea, clothes, soaps, detergents and toilet paper. He provides a series of questions we can ask ourselves to increase our awareness of the impact of these consumables on our microenvironment.

Reflection

I feel that I have not done justice to Costa’s book in this brief review. He achieves a wonderful balance between depth of information and practicality of application. His book is replete with examples, activities, projects and guides as well as reinforcing illustrations and quotes. His enthusiasm for replenishing our immediate environments is motivating and energising. Costa shares a lifetime of study, research and education in his book and maintains that activism for us is “performing day-to-day actions” in our microenvironments.

As we grow in mindfulness through time spent in nature, gardening and observing our immediate environment, we can better appreciate our world, contribute to sustainability and develop an improved environment for succeeding generations. Gardening can enhance our awareness, give us greater access to the healing power of nature and enrich our lives through increased texture, colour, feel and interest. It also gives us the opportunity to learn as we try out new plants, locations and soil enrichments – we can learn through doing and reflecting on the outcomes both intended and unintended.

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Image by phamphuonglinh 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.

Ways to Engage with Nature

In a previous post I explored the benefits of solitude and silence in nature. Cultivating the practice of being alone in nature can help us to develop self-awareness, patience and self-regulation. It can be useful for gaining insight into the limitations of our perspective on issues such as personal conflict and can provide clarity and insight by enabling us to access our “inner voice”. With increased engagement with nature, we can better understand our life purpose and find creative ways to employ our skills and experience for the benefit of others. But how do you engage effectively with nature to access these benefits?

Ways to engage with nature mindfully

Ruth Allen, in her book How Connection with Nature Can Improve our Mental and Physical Wellbeing, offers multiple suggestions on what we can do to increase the frequency and intensity of our engagement such as:

Mindful photography – this had immediate appeal for me because I love taking photos of sunrises and sunsets, rainforests, beaches, and birds that inhabit waterways, such as ducks, pelicans and water wrens. Adopting a purposeful approach to photographing nature enables us to be fully in the present moment, to notice the detail and attractiveness of what we are trying to capture and to clear the noise and clutter in our head. Ruth suggests too that we can employ the photographic images as a way to represent our emotions and, in the process, increase our self-awareness. Ruth’s book is full of illustrations of mindful photography as well as her wisdom about nature and its connectedness that she has developed through personal practice, experience as an adventurer and her professional endeavours as a geologist and eco-psychotherapist.
Gardening – whether you are pottering around in a garden or cultivating plants in pots, you can gain the experience of the smell of the earth, the sight of the different plant species and the touch and texture of both soil and plants. Developing a herb garden gives an even wider range of aromas, textures and taste. Gardening gives us access to intense sensual experience covering not only sight, taste, touch, and smell but also the potentiality of listening to birds as they traverse our space or reside in our bird-attracting trees and plants. Consciously cultivating plants, shrubs and trees that attract birds, bees and butterflies increases our sensory experience of nature in our own yard. Often nature is literally at our doorstep and we fail to engage effectively with it, just taking it for granted as a backdrop to our busy, noisy lives.
Notice the small things in nature – often the large aspects of nature such as clouds, mountains, sky and oceans capture our focus at the expense of observing the small things in nature. While the macro aspects of nature are indeed awe-inspiring and give us a sense of expansiveness, the micro level provides its own fascination through its diversity, intricacy and connectedness. We can observe at the micro level by close observation or by what Ruth calls, “soft fascination”. Close observation entails focused attention on something micro like a leaf, insect or stone and closely observing its features and marvelling at its distinctiveness whether that be its colours, patterns,, textures, shape or some other feature. Soft fascination, on the other hand, involves letting our eyes “float” across a section of landscape while allowing our mind “to drift into a state of reflection and introspection”.

Reflection

Engagement with nature brings countless benefits and Ruth draws on the scientific evidence of these in her book, including the work of Stephen and Rachel Kaplan. There are many ways we can practice this engagement extending from close physical observation to mindful photography. We just need to form the intention to maximise our engagement with nature to harness these benefits. We can meditate on nature and as we grow in mindfulness, we can enhance the benefits that accrue. Through mindfulness cultivated by mindful observation of nature and nature meditation, we can develop stillness and silence, attention and concentration, awareness and insight and a deep sense of connectedness and interconnection.

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Image by Hai Nguyen 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.

Overcoming Hasty Judgments

Daniel Kahneman highlighted the tendency to develop hasty judgements in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel, Nobel prize winner in economics, explains that most often we make hasty, automatic and intuitive judgments that are helpful in crisis times but can rupture relationships. He describes this “fast thinking” as System 1 thinking. In contrast, “slow thinking” (System 2 thinking) is more considered, reflective, deliberative and analytical. Fast thinking is resource efficient for the brain, taking less time and brain power. However, as neuroscientist Gina Rippon points out, these “pervasive shortcuts” are riddled with stereotypical thinking, half-truths, myths and untruths.

Overcoming hasty judgments

Mindfulness coach, Brian Shiers, highlights the fact that one of the problems with System 1 thinking is that we tend to have blind faith in our perception, however ill-informed or inadequate it is. We do not subject it to scrutiny or challenge because such activity would be time consuming in our time-poor world. The increasing pace of life and our heightened reactivity make it more likely that we will resort to the time efficient System 1 thinking. We end up seeing the world and individuals through the veil of our biases and prejudices.

Brian Shiers suggests that we can overcome this tendency to make hasty judgments, by developing “meta-attention” – an outcome of mindfulness which heightens the depth and “granularity” of our inner awareness. He suggests that to truly understand other people we first need to get in touch with our System 1 thinking which hastily boxes them into one of more of our easy-to-use stereotypes. He offers a meditation to look inside our self to observe our thinking and how it shapes our judgments about individuals.

Developing “meta attention”

In a MARC guided meditation podcast, Brian leads us in a meditation designed to increase our attention and power of concentration. The meditation is grounded in our body through a focus on the breath. He suggests that it is important during this meditation to avoid a tendency to perfectionism and to ensure that we engage in observation of our “thought stream”, rather than analysis.

The guided meditation involves extended focus on our breathing, without trying to control our breath. As thoughts about another person appear during the meditation, we notice them and observe what they are saying about the individual – staying in observation mode, not reverting to analysis. As we capture these thoughts, we return to the focus on the breath.

Brain’s guided meditation builds inner awareness – helping us to get to know our self better and understand what thoughts are passing through our mind in relation to another person. At the mid-point, he suggests that we get in touch, too, with what is happening in our body – noticing any points of tension such as tightness in our fingers, arms, shoulders or legs.

As we increase our awareness of our thought processes, we begin to notice the accompanying feelings which Brian suggests we treat with “acceptance, curiosity and friendliness”. As the meditation comes to an end, we are invited to take some deep breaths and, on exhaling, let the thoughts and feelings pass through us into the open.

In one sense, this guided meditation is another form of building our “awareness muscle” but the approach here is to focus purely on being-with-our-breathing, not controlling it – unlike the fifty conscious breaths described in my previous post as a way to use the “Awareness-Focus Loop” to overcome procrastination.

As we grow in mindfulness by engaging in meditations designed to develop meta-attention, we can become more conscious of our thought stream and the automatic thoughts that shape our hasty judgments about people. Through this process, we can gain better control over our thoughts about others and adopt a more considered, understanding position while maintaining self-compassion.

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Image by Gerd Altmann 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.