Heartbeat: How to connect to nature

nature? Of course we are, in one sense, but I think it's pretty obvious that so many of us are pretty disconnected from nature, just taking a look at the world around us, then I'd recommend listening to the very first episode of the podcast series, around putting nature back into our lives and spiritual practice. So today, we're just gonna focus on the 'How to'. And I think before we talk about what steps to take to practice nature connection, I'm going to mention a few things that nature

connection is not. When we start practising, when I started my journey, I had a lot of misconceptions or incorrect beliefs around what nature connection was supposed to look like and feel like. And when you aren't exactly clear what you're aiming for, it's very hard to know whether the practice that you're doing is taking you on the right journey, or whether you're just getting yourself a

little confused. The first thing that bears mentioning is that the activity of connecting into nature because we are already connected into this whole web of life, it's just we've forgotten that we're connected. The act of connection is more of a removing of our conceptual mind, it's just letting be in the moment. And in that way, there's no goal, there's no magical feeling that's going to come over you and you're going to go "Okay, now I know I'm doing it". This is what nature connection means.

So what will happen is as you do your practice, you're going to rather be chipping away at the conceptual mind that a lot of your beliefs and ideas and just by allowing yourself to be in the moment, you will experience your inherent connection to a greater degree. The second thing that is worth mentioning is that when we are connecting into nature, we're not observing, so we're not standing on the

outside looking in. This is in fact, part of the problem with our disconnect from nature, we always creating a separation between ourselves in nature. So we want to stop relating to nature as an object and we viewing nature as a subject. So subject and object awareness.

And we want to stop for example, looking at a view in the distance, and going oh gosh, isn't that nature over there really beautiful, or even being in nature, taking out our phones and we putting quite literally putting something between us and nature. We're so good at separating ourselves, even when we are trying to erase them, and

be in nature. So the mental attitude of of nature connection is not around observing nature, or analysing nature or understanding nature, it's about allowing yourself to be on the inside. Because as humans, we are human animals, we are already part of the natural world. So it's just waking up to that remembering that we are right now, even if we sitting inside of a building or car, no matter where we are, we still are part of this vast ecosystem

and web of life. And one last thing I'll mention is when we are going into this nature connection zone, it's not about connecting with nature spirits or fairies or other types of etheric beings. Nature is a very real embodied concept. It's what we have in front of us, it's what we can work with, with our hands and it's an energetic physical feeling. It's not a mental feeling, it's not something that

you visualising. It is something that's very real and present and, and we relating to nature, therefore, in the ordinary sense, so that we can stop getting lost in in concepts about what nature connection is, what are spiritual practices and actually work with what we've, what we've got. So, what you want to try and find for yourself for this nature connection journey is something that is called a sit spot. A sit spot is a place that you can

return to as you practice. Over and over again, the nature connection is very mature practice because it takes time for our minds to let go of the strong structures we've built around ourselves, it takes time for the ego to relax. So the sit spot is a place you're going to return to, to do work, and just to enjoy being in nature, so it needs to be a place that is fairly peaceful, preferably, you know, away from perhaps other people, especially if you're

feeling self conscious. And if you are able to find a place that's in the world, that that is wonderful, the more immersed you can feel it in true raw nature, the better. However, if that's not something that's available to you, for any reason, then even going into your local park or Greenbelt, or your garden is sufficient, it's not really about the environment. It's about a mental attitude and energetic connection. So it's possible to do this, even in an indoor

environment. But at first, it's definitely helpful to start your practice in an outdoor place. So when you arrive at your sit spot, the first thing I like to do is to feel very embodied and take time to connect with my body. Sometimes even take my hands and give my arms and legs a little squeeze, can wrap your hands on trees, or if you are able to go barefoot, that's also helpful to fill the earth really beneath your feet. And you can connect into your breathing.

Just do what what you need to and what feels right for that day to get your body into a embodied but relaxed state. And once you do this, once our body relaxes, it definitely allows the mind to follow. Because we're so caught up all the time and all of our thinking and we worrying about the past and the future and all sorts of things, it's very hard for us to come to

this place of stillness. But when you use the body and you allow nature to support you actually feel the earth holding you underneath your body, it's it's a wonderful feeling. And you can really allow your body to completely let go, you could even do this lying down on the ground, if that's possible. And just let yourself feel like the earth is quite literally

carrying you. But whether you're sitting or standing on the earth, it's the quality of letting go and letting the earth be and hold you that we are trying to be trying to foster. So once you've got the body to relax, the mind definitely does start to soften. And if it's very busy for you can focus on your breathing for a little longer. And thoughts are always going to arise, we're never going to get rid of thoughts completely. That's not the goal.

But what we trying to do is to just not follow after thoughts. What that means is if you're sitting and all of a sudden the thought pops up around what you're going to make dinner, instead of following the thought on with what ingredients you have in your fridge, what recipe you're going to use, if you need to go shopping, you just let that thought go. And you force - I don't like to use the word force - But in a way in the beginning, it feels like forcing your mind to come back to just

focusing on your pure breath. So it's almost like a weight training for for the thinking mind, as you want to deviate, you bring yourself back to do a repetition. And in this way, we start to strengthen our focus and attention. And the whole process of meditation does start to become easier with with practice. And this is why we call a practice that is quite literally something that we have

to work at. And you can use the breath as a meditation support, but you could also use a sound and the natural environment. Maybe you can hear birds or you can hear water, just find one support and use that to get you into this place of of silence and stillness. And once you do that, for nature connection we want to focus will be one of the things about opening all of our senses. Now, that doesn't mean going off to every sense as we

perceive it. So if something flies past your face, we don't want to now get the mind involved in interpreting every single stimulus that we see. But we still want to be aware of it. We want to allow that the our senses to fill our awareness with nature, but not allow the mind to jump in and create an array of and story about every single sense object that we hear, see, feel, touch or smell.

So what you could do is, if you find it difficult to work with all the senses at first, which is quite overwhelming, what I would recommend is going working with one sensor at a time, I would start with the sense of hearing, it's a fairly easy one. On that note, a whole lot of birds noisily flying past our window. But start with the sense of hearing. And then from there, when that starts to get easy, you can start to incorporate,

add on an additional sense. And as you go, you're bold and get up to a point of being able to use all your senses at once. Once you done the sense opening, and which I would say is the more formal part of the of the practice, the best part comes and that is to simply rest and

enjoy yourself. So throw everything out the window, just allow yourself to truly just be in the moment relaxing the body, relaxing the mind, and take in your entire ecosystem and environment, including your own body, how everything feels just really be open, and and enjoy. And I think that last part is sometimes missing in a lot of the nature connection instructions is the sense of enjoyment. Because ultimately,

that's what it's all about. We wanting to feel this incredible connection and love for everything that's around us. So when we're able to find ourselves in a, in a place of pure connection, there's a huge sense of enjoyment and love and complete oneness with with

everything. So if you're not feeling that, then maybe find a place that you can be where it kind of upped the ante for you in terms of a feeling of of pure connection, but it's not really about the place it is more about your state of mind, it could just be that that particular day, you are very distracted, and you're not able to drop into the moment, or there's something else that's that's going on an environment that's not very conducive to your practice

session. But keep at it because you'll find that sweet spot where everything just starts to flow. And then that's what you're going to come back to time and time again. As I say, Please don't make your nature connection, practice or journey as a new goal or something that has to be achieved. It's not like there's an exam you need to pass. It's it's not, there's no huge thing that you're working towards. And the more we have a goal for ourselves like that, the more expectation we put on

ourselves. And unfortunately, that just takes us out of the moment and not into this state of pure presence and connection. I hope that's helpful and we'll definitely cover this topic a little more in other episodes.