Being Like Nature

Join Vaishali (she/her) from Courage of Care Coalition as she guides us in a practice that invites us to be like nature. Following the breath, being called to awareness in the ways in which we move as it reflects movements in nature.

Transcript

So hello friends,

Greetings.

In this bit,

I'd like to introduce some meditation practices to help us be more aware and grounded in the natural world.

And we can only do that when we are actually more grounded in ourselves.

So let's begin with the practice.

The practice that we do millions of times,

All the time,

Which is a practice of breathing.

So how about wherever you are,

Be comfortable,

Find a place that supports you.

And let's just read them in together.

Gentle in breath.

And as you breathe out,

Side out,

Side out.

Let's do that again.

Gentle in breath.

Another gentle in breath.

And as you exhale,

Feel yourself simply relaxing into the chair,

Into your bed,

Into your feet,

Wherever you are.

And then I want us to do something I want us to just touch something in front of us.

If it's a table,

Like for me,

Or it's my chair,

Which I'm just going to touch,

Just going to invite you to touch something.

Yeah,

There we go.

And then if you're sitting on a chair,

Allow yourself to lean back and just wiggle against it a little bit.

Right?

Can we all wiggle?

Yeah.

Doesn't it feel good to just wiggle in our chairs?

Okay.

So now that we've wiggled a bit,

I want to invite us to just sort of keep that wiggling motion going from side to side,

And you can keep your eyes open or closed,

Whatever works for you.

All I'm inviting you to do is simply as much as you can,

Without feeling any stress on any part of your body,

Wiggle,

Or walk back and forth or side to side,

Right?

So just feeling as you move to one side,

Feeling how your body responds.

Right?

And then very simply allowing the smallest movement,

This is not a contest,

So just the smallest movement to your left,

To your right.

To your left.

And being curious about what's happening in your body as you move to the left,

And then to the right.

And then just a little bit more back and forth.

Just continuing to breathe as you need to,

But really just thinking about this movement or being this movement going back and forth,

Side to side,

Side to side.

And for some of us,

We may find that as we do this movement,

You know,

Parts of us sort of just relax our facial muscles,

Let go,

There's nothing to do.

The body takes care of itself,

Walking back and forth,

Side to side.

And if you need to make an adjustment,

Please do just rocking side to side.

Just being aware,

Being aware of where our shoulders are,

What's happening.

Is our belly soft,

Contracted,

Whatever it is,

Just paying it some attention.

And then when you're ready,

I invite you to open your eyes and look outside.

And if you are outside as you're hearing this wonderful wherever we are,

Whichever part of the world.

There is land,

Sea,

Sky,

Grasses,

Mountains,

Multiple beings that populate earth,

That predate us that have been here.

Let's take a moment to be in that presence of those uncountable beings and those uncountable yours.

Those infinities of which we are apart.

And as we do this,

If you're in a part of the world,

Where the land has been colonized,

And the indigenous protectors of the land driven off.

This is also a moment to become aware of that reality.

To acknowledge,

To acknowledge the finite bounded view of nature and its bounty that allowed that history to play out.

So thank you for that.

And so like I said,

We're going to begin today by writing a few practices that invite us to inhabit our own selves and our experience and this beautiful natural world we live in,

In a more full embodied way.

So I'm going to invite us on this is a practice really that's best done outside when you can hear natural sounds.

Although I have nothing against manmade or dog made sounds.

There is something when you're walking and you walk outside and you hear the trill of a bird call.

As you do that,

The invitation is to just follow the sound of the call.

The purity of that sound.

Allow it to carry you to carry you into space.

And when that sound drops,

Just being with the pure awareness that it has brought you to.

And then another sound arises.

The rustling of the leaves.

You can hear it.

If you can,

You can sway with it.

Shimmer,

Shimmer,

Shimmer,

Shimmer.

The wind turns.

You allow your breath to come to your sound,

Your senses,

To simply follow whatever sound that's arising.

Follow it without trying to identify it.

Trying to label it.

Trying to hold it.

Allow the sound to come through you to dance over you.

And in this,

You don't have to be too puritanical.

Whatever sound arises,

Pop.

We allow it to bring us to full awareness.

So that is a practice of sound.

In this sound,

In this practice,

Sound and our perception of sound,

Our reception of sound is a dance.

We receive,

We engage,

We receive,

We let go.

And that's how it is.

Next,

Let's talk about touch.

So when we talked about just touching where we are,

Our chair,

The lack of our chair,

A cup we're holding anything,

Allowing ourselves to be guided by the solidity of touch.

Feeling,

Feeling myself grounded in this chair,

Feeling the chair going deep roots into the earth.

Deep,

Deep,

Deep,

Allowing myself to relax into that form.

And this is a practice that can be helped.

It can be done when we're sitting,

It can be done when we're walking this practice of form of touch.

It can be done beautifully if we are someone who likes to swim or walk in the water.

So what we're going to do now is remember we started with this rocking side to side back and forth.

Let me just do this again a little bit,

Just walk in front and then rock back.

And as you're walking to the front,

Notice how your body is moving through space,

Notice face yielding to you,

And then you come back.

And the backspace is yielding to you.

And then you do that again.

And all we're doing is just getting a sense of where we are in relation to space.

Yeah.

And so then let's add a little bit.

Now we're going to move our torso,

Just twist our torso as much as we can.

And we're going to look around us,

We're going to look around us,

Everything that is in our field of perception.

We notice,

Just notice walls,

Windows,

Trees,

Cabinets,

Chairs,

And we come back to center.

And then take a moment and then move to the other side.

Just simply two things we're doing.

We're moving our body,

We're seeing how our body moves through space.

We're seeing what else is in space with us.

And when we get as far back as we can,

Without hurting ourselves,

We are going to pause.

We're going to notice what's at the back.

And then we swing ourselves around again,

Beautiful,

Just allowing everything to simply be where it is,

And we become aware of it.

That practice,

Which I love is from Risa Minnikum's book,

My Grandmother's Hands,

And I very much recommended.

So it's a practice of calling ourselves into presence by recognizing that we may inhabit a world or the world may not have been kind to us safe for us.

And so the simple practice of just moving our heads to see who else what else is in space with us is a practice that allows us a measure of comfort.

And if you notice I have my hand on my heart,

Because that helps too.

No,

It's like,

Oh,

Be still my beating heart.

Let's see what else is here.

This is a practice of safety.

And once we feel safe,

It's a practice of curiosity,

Of inquiry.

What is happening in my body?

What is happening in space?

What is happening in my body in relation to space?

And so I invite you to do this simple practice wherever you are in your chair walking.

And then when you have a sense of it,

And the sense really is that we are living,

Breathing beings,

Interacting with a very dynamic,

You can call it a breathing environment,

But a dynamic changing environment.

And what we're trying to get used to is to become used to that notion of beings in motion on bodies in motion.

So when we walk,

This is a guided meditation for when we walk and I'm inviting you to do it with your eyes open.

When you walk,

I invite you wherever you're walking,

To become first of all,

You know,

The traditional meditation practice,

Wherever you place your feet,

Become aware of it.

Feel your feet on the ground,

Feel the ground supporting you feel your other foot on the ground,

Feel the ground supporting you beautiful.

And then I invite you to become aware of what's on the side of the road where you're walking.

Is it a shrub?

Is it grasses?

Is it a tree?

And so I invite you then,

As you're walking,

To become the shrub observing you're walking.

So you're walking,

And you're the shrub that's observing you walking.

And you are the road upon which you're walking.

And you're walking the road.

You are the grasses.

And you are the tree with the deep roots into the earth deep into the earth and you're walking.

And you are the tree that is watching you.

You are the feet that's walking on the beach,

Walking on the beach,

Feeling the sand supporting you.

You are the feet that is receiving the waves that come and kiss your feet.

You are the feet receiving the waves.

And then you are the waves receiving you walking,

Walking.

Be the waves.

I invite you to experiment with it,

To play with it.

To feel,

You know,

The intricate experience of interconnectedness of how we call what we call perception,

What we perceive is so dependent on how we perceive.

To enjoy pushing the boundaries.

Where we end,

Where do we end?

Where does the wave begin?

Play with this.

Once I was running in the mountains in southern Colorado.

And I had been warned because there were mountain lions in the area.

And my friends had said,

Don't run.

They,

They come out at dusk.

And that year,

There had been a couple reports of runners being mauled by mountain lions who thought they were prey because they were running.

And I remember I finished my run on a high ridge.

And I had a couple of friends waiting for me and I said,

Oh,

No mountain lions was sighted.

And a friend looked up,

Smiled.

He is a naturalist.

And he said,

Yet you were sighted.

And that,

My friends is how it is.

That's how it is.

Really becoming aware of our place in this fast interdependent,

Alive matrix in this way that is not an intellectual knowing,

But something that that we can experience,

Be a part of,

Breathe in,

Be open to.

And I'll I want to end with one of my favorite practices,

Which is the,

The sense of taste.

So here is a bowl of watermelon,

Which is,

Of course,

So bountiful.

And many,

Many thanks to the earth,

To all the beings that went into producing this.

And so one of the practices that I invite us to do is to take a piece of fruit,

A piece of food.

And I can look at it and just look and admire the color of it,

The richness of this richness of it,

The vividness of it.

And then the invitation is to pop it in your mouth,

As I'm going to do,

And then just savor it.

So as the juice slips down,

Just becoming aware of the sweetness of things,

The texture of things.

The reason why it's so important to also cultivate our sense of taste in relation to the natural world is that part of our rapaciousness with the world has been our insatiable hunger and our sense that we don't have enough.

And that sense is fed,

Is fueled in the modern world by our inattention to what we do consume,

What we do eat,

Because we don't take the time to be with it.

We don't experience the deliciousness,

The fullness,

The completeness what it is that nature endows us.

And so that's another place for us to retrain ourselves away from more to an attitude of plenty of abundance of gratitude.

So want to end this practice here.

And this is an invitation to all of us to really develop,

Develop our own relationship with our bodies,

Right?

With our senses,

How they tie into our awareness for ourselves in the natural world.

So in closing,

And I heard,

I heard Reverend Raphael Warnock speak,

And he said,

Finally,

And he said,

Nobody believes the preacher when he says finally.

So I feel like I've already said in closing,

And here I am.

So I want to share this story.

And the story is that in the time of the Buddha,

There was a beggar was very,

Very poor,

Very poor.

And the beggar,

No matter how much he was given,

He would be back on the street to back.

And so the Buddha did this with him.

He said,

I will give you a bag of silver.

But you have to say,

I don't need it.

I don't need it.

I don't need it.

And in this way,

The Buddha was helping the man retrain his neural network to,

To know that there was enough to know that there was enough.

And then another story,

There was a very rich man who was very miserly.

And his family came to the Buddha and said,

He is so miserly,

He makes himself miserable,

He's miserable to be around.

And so the Buddha said to him,

Here,

Take a bag of gold.

And he said,

Give yourself from your right hand,

Give,

Take a gold coin from that and give it to your left hand.

And then from your left hand,

Give it to your right hand.

And from your right hand,

Give it to your left hand.

And by this,

He was teaching again,

There is enough,

There is enough.

And so my friends,

As a way of really changing our minds to acknowledge a culture of abundance,

I want us to just hold ourselves and just rocking back and forth.

Slightly knowing,

Knowing we're here,

Knowing this beautiful natural world is still with us.

This will be enough.

This will be enough.

We will make something of this.

This will be enough.

Greetings.