Some beautiful reflections from a recent 8-week course participant. The real week 8 is the rest of your life.
“This course has been everything I wanted and more. I feel that I have opened my eyes - and heart - to the world, externally and internally. Emma and Claire have been amazing – knowledgeable, supportive, kind and fun. I feel I am at the start of a life of practice and I am excited by it.”
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It's Mental Health Awareness week with a theme of connecting with nature, and a perfect motivator to share one of my favourite books: Awake in the Wild, by Mark Coleman. Not only is this a beautiful guide to meditating in the natural world, it is a very accessible way into Buddhist teachings that are the foundation of secular mindfulness training.
In many indigenous cultures there is no word for nature because the indigenous people did not experience outer wilderness as some "thing" separate and distinct from themselves; instead they lived immersed within it 'Awakening to nature necessitates mindful attunement. This understanding is often lost even on those who spend great amounts of time in nature... Even while backpacking and biking in the deepest backcountry we can still be unaware of our environment, lost in our thoughts, planning our next novel or vacation, absorbed in endless conversation or worrying about what lies ahead... Intimacy with nature can both heal us and teach us to be in harmony and at peace with ourselves and the world. ' ~Mark Coleman This book is very special. I’ve been in bed with the pain of a longstanding condition - endometriosis - and I haven’t been much up to anything this past week, including lengthy meditations. This is ok, “there’s such a thing as wise avoidance” (Christina Feldman) and it hasn’t felt like it would be helpful to bring even kindly attention to what’s here in my mind and body for too long.
While formal meditation hasn’t felt appropriate, what I have been doing is drawing on mindfulness in lots of moments of the day. There are things that have become second nature to me now through years of practising, and it makes me smile each time I find them helpful in my life, as this is what it’s fundamentally about. - I’ve been noticing my thoughts as simply thoughts, and catching the ones that aren’t helpful before getting carried off by them (“I am a burden... I should be able to do this... What if this is how I am going to feel from now on”...) - I’ve been noticing bracing against the unwanted pain in my body and practising allowing, breathing with and opening to what’s here. Because it’s already here and bracing against it just adds extra secondary pain, quite literally! - I’ve been making sure I gently turn towards the things that are quietly ok or lovely - floating in a warm bath, the green of May leaves, the kindness of family and friends - I’ve been listening to mindfulness talks by my favourite teachers in the middle of the night to help me settle and fall back to sleep. Now I know that this is not what these talks were recorded for and that mindfulness practice is about falling awake to our experience not conking out, but if sleep is what I need and this is what helps, then that’s a wise response. |
AuthorI'm Claire - and I (re)learn something every day from practising and teaching mindfulness... Archives
March 2022
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