Dancing Beetle: Guided Imagery Mindfulness Drawing Exercise

Draw or doodle along with me on a guided imagery exercise. You don't need to be an artist to enjoy this track, just pick up a pen and draw whatever shapes, colours, or even words that come to you as you listen to this track. This exercise has been put together for mindfulness, introspection, and relaxation.

Reference material: Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Basil el Jundi, Eric J. Warrant, Marcus Byrne. 2021. How Dung Beetles Steer Straight. Annual Review of Entomology 2021 66:1, 243-256

Track image: Generated by the Headliner

Music: Gaia (extended) by Chris Collins, Indie Music Box

Transcript

Hello beautiful soul,

Welcome into the space.

It's time to pause,

Calm your mind,

And come with me on a guided art exercise.

You don't have to be an artist to take this journey,

All you need is something to draw a line on,

And something to draw a line with.

This is not about creating breathtaking artwork,

But using the process of drawing to distract your mind from its usual flurry of thoughts.

We'll start with a few deep breaths,

Grounding ourselves in this space and in this moment,

Then I'll tell you a little story,

Something you can use as inspiration as you draw.

Draw shapes,

Smudges of colour,

Swirling lines,

Add some words,

Whatever comes naturally to you in the moment.

Let's begin.

If it is safe to do so,

And if you are comfortable to do so,

Close your eyes now.

If you prefer,

Softly focus your eyes on a neutral point,

The wall across from you,

Or a spot on the floor.

Now let's start with three deep breaths.

In through your nose,

Filling up your lungs,

Expanding your chest and belly,

Then slowly out,

Relaxing into this moment.

Again,

In through your nose,

Feeling that expansion,

Out,

Relaxing deeper,

Feeling how gently you are held within your body.

One more deep breath in,

Filling your body,

Feeling that expansion,

And out.

Secure,

Relaxed,

And aware of yourself in this time and in this place.

Our journey today starts in the African savannah,

On a warm summer evening.

The sun has started to set,

And the horizon,

Rising over the tall golden grasses and bowed heads of the acacia thorn trees,

Is wrapped in ribbons of soft pink,

Orange,

And gold against a pale blue.

A slight breeze ruffles the amber stalks of tall grasses that surround us.

It has been a hot day,

And in the relative cool of the evening,

The whole landscape seems to be drawing a relieved sigh.

We look down at our feet,

Settled firmly on the red earth,

The warmth of the day still radiating from its cracked surface.

A little movement captures our eye.

It's a beetle.

Shiny black body,

About the size of a walnut.

Its head is slightly flattened,

Like a small shovel.

Its legs are strong,

And it has small spikes adorning its widened feet.

The beetle is moving in our direction,

Carefully pushing along a large brown ball,

About three times the size of its own body.

It looks like a difficult job.

The beetle is using its strong back legs to push the ball,

Walking backwards with its front feet on the ground.

The ball seems heavy.

It gets stuck on bits of grass and in small ruts in the ground.

But the beetle keeps jostling and adjusting.

Now behind the ball,

Pushing it forward,

The front feet straining against the hard earth.

Then beside the ball,

For a quick adjustment,

Pushing it on a different angle to avoid a ridge or a tussock of grass.

This is a female dung beetle.

Yes,

As the name suggests,

What she is so earnestly pushing across the hard ground is a ball of elephant dung.

This is not something that most of us would think of collecting,

But here,

In the hot savannah,

This ball,

Hidden away below the ground and away from the glaring sun,

Is going to be the perfect nursery for her young.

Let's watch her a little longer as she passes by our feet,

Because something rather remarkable is about to happen.

The beetle rolls the ball along,

Going in more or less a straight line.

But then she has to stop for a while and move the ball around a particularly stubborn tuft of grass.

When the ball is back on clear ground,

She pauses.

Slowly,

She climbs onto the top of her ball.

The air is cooler now,

The sky darker as the evening draws in.

The first few stars are twinkling impossibly far above the small beetle.

And then she begins to dance.

On top of her ball,

She takes small steps,

Swivelling her shiny body a little to the left.

She pauses,

And then swivels a little more.

She swivels back to face the front again,

Then a couple of steps to the right.

She pauses,

Back to face the front.

After another short pause,

She seems to have reached a decision,

And quickly climbs back down the ball.

With bustling efficiency,

She positions herself with her back feet on the ball again and begins to push.

Since it's a nice evening,

Let's follow her a while longer.

A breath of wind sighs through the tall grasses as she passes by.

Somewhere high in a sweetly scented acacia tree,

The crickets have started their tremulous call.

Every time the dung beetle faces an obstacle,

Or has to deviate from her determined course,

She repeats her little dance.

Up on the ball,

She climbs,

Swivelling left or right,

A short antenna waving.

She swivels down again,

And roasts against the ball to continue her journey.

It's a simple task,

Repeated many times as she moves along in the growing dusk.

Why is she doing it?

Well,

As unappealing as we might find her treasured ball,

To her,

This ball is a difference between having her offspring survive,

Or not.

There's no way of knowing when or where she might find some suitable dung as she rambles across the savannah,

But today she's been lucky and crossed paths with some elephants who have blessed her with a gift.

But even when she has found some dung,

Making a ball with only an insect's thin arms and slightly spiked feet at her disposal is no easy task.

If you have ever rolled a ball of mud or clay or dough,

You can appreciate how our broad palms and nimble opposing fingers make the process relatively simple.

But if you try to do the same with,

Say,

A pair of butter knives as your only tools,

It may take you a little longer to achieve.

So some dung beetles,

For our beetle would not have been the only one at the dung pile,

Resort to stealing balls from others.

Shocking,

I know,

But true.

The surest way for our beetle to get safely away from the frenzy with her prize is to travel quickly in a straight line away from the crowd.

She can't risk circling around or wasting time on a wandering route,

For pirates are always present.

But how do you navigate in a straight line when you are a beetle,

Who can't lift their head more than an inch off the ground?

You can barely see over the grass that surrounds you,

Never mind see the horizon or even the top of a tree in the distance.

But what you can see is the vast sky above you.

Before she sets off on her journey,

The dung beetle dances for the first time on the top of her newly made ball,

Because she is using a celestial compass.

This little beetle looks at the sun and the moon.

She looks at the stars.

Sometimes she looks at the broad,

Faint patterns of polarised light that emanate from the sun and moon,

And which are invisible to us humans.

If the night is dark enough,

She may even look up to the glittering expanse of the Milky Way itself,

Its dancing starlight reflected in her shining eyes.

She will even consider the direction of the wind,

If it is blowing strongly.

She will remember where these signals are in relation to her own body,

Decide on a direction and with this snapshot in mind,

Off she goes.

Whenever she encounters an obstacle,

Or loses control of her ball,

This can happen when you are travelling backwards and suddenly come across a hill,

She repeats her dance to make sure she is aligned with her celestial snapshot.

And so here she is.

Further on from where we first found her in the gathering darkness.

We can't follow on too much further tonight,

But I can tell you how the journey will end.

In a little while,

She will find a patch of soil that she can dig into,

And she'll spend a few hours digging a short tunnel and hovering out of chamber in the warm earth for the ball to sit in.

She will push the ball into the chamber and lay a single egg inside it.

Here,

Safely nestled in the warm,

Damp ball,

Away from the hot sun,

Pounding feet and prying eyes,

A new dung beetle will be born.

It will live here until it is big enough,

And strong enough,

To use its spiked feet,

Shovel-shaped head and sturdy body,

To dig up through the tunnel that its mother has so lovingly sealed all those months ago,

And emerge under the African sky.

What would it see first,

Reflected in its multifaceted eyes?

The burning mass of the sun as it trawls its way across the savannah?

The white light of the moon sailing across a night sky?

Perhaps the curving curtain of the Milky Way,

Our own galaxy in all those millions of stars?

All that splendor,

All that immensity,

And below,

A small,

Determined creature,

Navigating a gigantic world.

I love dung beetles.

They are both absolutely necessary to the health of the world around them,

And a remarkable example in their own right of the complexities of navigating a world so vast,

So multidimensional,

That in a way we're a little bit like that small beetle looking up into an unimaginable sky.

How do we navigate?

How do we find our way?

What is your celestial snapshot?

What do you align yourself to?

Where are you heading for?

And what are you looking to create on that journey?

There's a reason so many cultures have revered the dung beetle.

Have seen in it a metaphor for the journey of life itself.

So when you are feeling lost in the immensity of it all,

The incomprehensible span of time and space and dimensions and,

Oh,

Everything,

I hope this brings you some small comfort,

Thinking of that small creature that looks up at the same stars and finds its direction.

Thank you for joining me today for this guided art exercise.

I hope it leaves you relaxed with a deeper sense of connection.

Until next time,

Beautiful soul,

Walk in peace.

Reviews

I am so touched by this story dear Jessica. I loved every morsel of this journey with you. Thank you.