Comments on: Mindfulness in Nature https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/team-blogs/mindfulness-in-nature/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mindfulness-in-nature Being Present | Responding with Compassion | Seeing Deeply Tue, 23 Jul 2024 11:01:34 +0000 hourly 1 By: Jacky Seery https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/team-blogs/mindfulness-in-nature/#comment-246 Tue, 07 May 2019 10:12:40 +0000 https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/?p=6018#comment-246 In reply to Alice.

Hi Alice. Thank you so much for sharing your lovely experience in nature. We are pleased that you are enjoying our blogs. Warmest Wishes, Jacky

]]> By: Alice https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/team-blogs/mindfulness-in-nature/#comment-245 Mon, 06 May 2019 20:47:28 +0000 https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/?p=6018#comment-245 I love that this week your weekly challenge, and all the blogs, have a nature theme. This resonated with me after an experience last weekend. My husband (Chris) and I have just arrived in his native Canada, to spend a couple of months. We were excited to take our bicycles to our favourite forest / riverside trail on the edge of the city, on a beautiful sunny day. We got there to find the banks flooded with spring meltwater and the lower trails under water. The higher trails were still very wet, so we hid our bikes in the trees and walked instead, through a landscape only just released from the grip of 5 months of snow. No-one else was there, and it was serene and beautiful.
At our furthest point, we decided to sit on a log near the river to do a timed meditation. Within a couple of minutes, the sound of something coming towards us (perhaps a human?) made us open our eyes. It was a squirrel, inquisitive and coming to check us out. We stayed utterly still and I was able to watch it in so much more detail than ever before, the quick dashes, the little bounces it did before making a jump to another tree, the shape of its mouth and the pattern of the hair. It got so close I could see it deciding whether to jump onto Chris’ back (it didn’t). I closed my eyes again and went back to meditating, only to have my awareness brought back by the tiniest nudge from my Chris. A muskrat was right on the water’s edge, feeding and foraging, within 10m of where we sat, it poddled along the edge for a while munching, then swam away silently out into the river, totally oblivious of our presence. Afterwards Chris said he had no idea what made him open his eyes at that exact moment and look towards the water. Muskrat are one of my favourite Canadian animals and I hadn’t seen one this close for 10 years.
At that point, I decided that the moment was too magical to “force” my awareness inwards to meditation, but to do more of a practice of resting in the midst of it all, soaking in the warm sun rays, the muted browns and yellows of the trees, the gentle expanse of water, and the sounds of birds and human activity in the distance. Within moments more I heard rustling very nearby – this time it was the tiniest of creatures, a shrew, which proceeded to repeatedly dash in and out between a hiding place and a leaf, while we watched in awe and curiosity – what on earth was it doing? I have worked with birds for a decade and a half and spent countless hours sitting still in nature observing, and have never before seen a shrew in the wild.
Ordinarily on a walk, we would have been chatting, musing, moving our heads to look around. I was so grateful for the practice of meditation, and even though that morning our intention to meditate was not fulfilled, it felt like instead we were gifted the most beautiful moment of nature experience which will remain as a special memory.

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