Awe & Wonder For Creative Rest

This guided practice uses your visual system to help you feel grounded and safe in the present moment. You'll be invited to slowly notice the light, colour, texture, and contrast in the space around you, an orienting technique that gently signals safety to the nervous system. As you settle, the practice shifts toward noticing the beauty already present in your surroundings, reconnecting you with a sense of awe, wonder, and creative inspiration. A grounding practice especially for anyone who finds stillness with eyes closed difficult, or simply wants to feel more here, right now. Part of the Home Body ritual series.

Music Credit: Gazing at Stars by Anna Landström

Transcript

Welcome dear rest seeker. My name is Kars. I'm going to be guiding you through a practice for restoring a sense of awe. Sense of wonder. This practice is put together with the intention of sparking creative rest, Whatever that means to you. Creative rest for me means establishing a sense of awe, Establishing a sense of wonder and delight and curiosity. And amazement around being alive, Around being in the world and all the possibilities that exist around us. It means welcoming many different parts of myself into conversation and allowing them to exist without judgment. In a sense, To me, I guess it means. . . Just being alive and appreciating. All the magic within and around me. And as a queer person, It certainly means the abundance of what? That queer magic, Queer resistance, Queer richness of being. The breaking down of all the boundaries that we've been placed into, Forced into. So that we can be and experience ourselves. Abundantly and creatively. So without further ado, And you can do this practice anywhere. You can do it while you're on a walk or sitting in your bedroom in a museum wherever you like. We're going to have our eyes open. Going to receive wonder through our vision. As a way of grounding, As a way of orienting ourselves, Which is going to spark safety and security in our nervous system, Which will give you a place that is my hope. To feel creative and feel that magic, That wonder of being. Okay. We'll just start with a few deep breaths, Breathing into the belly. And maybe exhaling with a sigh. And again, Inhale through the nose Exhale, Nice soft sigh, Wow. With your eyes open, Allow your neck to be nice and loose. To free up your eyes to see all the many things around you. We're just going to search. Around your environment, Around your space with your eyes until you find something that you can be curious about. We want to aim to remove meaning-making, Remove the need to fix, Remove any sense of needing to interfere with your environment. So looking at shadows. Looking at textures and colors. Then find something that you can be curious about for a few moments and we're just going to be with this one thing, This one piece of your environment. Be specific. And look at the specific textures, The curves of this object or shadow. Curves or points, The richness or dullness of its color. And just be curious about it. And we're going to let that piece of our puzzle, That piece of our environment go and move on to another. So doing the same thing, Being curious about your environment, Looking around, Taking it in. Until you find another object or area that you can be curious about. Again, Seeing colors textures of this chosen target, I suppose. And maybe noticing any sensations. Taking in its. . . It's personality, Just taking it in What do you notice in your body? We're going to move to another object. Another focus and establish. Establish where you're going to be looking. With specificity. And curiosity. And just being curious about. What it is, What is there. Maybe you notice a contrast. In color or in shadow, A depth that you hadn't noticed before And again. Just noticing any change of sensation in the body. Beautiful. But you can let that go. Maybe wiggle side to side a little bit to shake it out. Another deep breath in and out. Noticing how you feel now within now with a sense of orientation and maybe a sense of awe and appreciation that is a bit greater than before to our environment and all the richness and capacity it holds that is easily taken for granted. Maybe we can bring back a bit of meaning making here and we can see this environment we can see how it holds us. Supports us. There are elements of you within the space that surrounds you that pillow holds your head each night in that light. The lights, The shadows and the colors that make your life rich and beautiful. Tree shades you. And that its beauty grounds you. I thought I'm gonna leave you here. With an invitation to stay with this sense of wonder for as long as you would like. Maybe even to carry it forward to whatever creative practice you desire. Or to just stay with the wonder as you go through the rest of your day. My name is Kars. My pronouns are they, Them. Thank you for joining me, Rest seeker. I'll see you next time.