An Invitation for Earth Day
I was fortunate enough to attend a Silent Vipassana Meditation Retreat in Portugal last month, and explore a practice that made a big impact on me. So in honor of Earth Day, I’d like to share it with you. The practice is called a Sense and Savor Walk and it invites us to be mindfully aware of pleasant experiences as they are happening to us, particularly in nature. For the first time in my life, I took the time to actually feel the wet morning dew on my fingers and really experience the aroma of greenery as I put my entire face into a lush plant and breathed in. What might be right in front of you that you’ve never fully experienced before using all of your senses? Enjoy the full practice below, courtesy of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook by Kristin Neff, PhD & Christopher Germer, PhD.
Mindfully yours,
Ashley
Sense and Savor Walk
Savoring involves noticing and appreciating the positive aspects of life—taking them in, letting them linger, and then letting them go. It is more than pleasure. Savoring involves mindful awareness of the experience of pleasure. In other words, being aware that something good is happening while it’s happening.
Given our natural tendency to skip over what’s right and focus on what’s wrong, we need to put a little extra effort into paying attention to what gives us pleasure. Luckily, savoring is a simple practice and can be particularly uplifting when practiced in a natural setting, such as a garden or in the woods…
Set aside (at least) 15 minutes to amble about outdoors. The purpose of this walk is to notice and savor any attractive objects or positive internal experiences, slowly, one after another, using all your senses—sight, smell, sound, touch, and maybe even taste.
The goal is not to “try” to enjoy yourself or make anything happen. Just allow yourself to notice, be drawn into, linger with, and then let go of whatever gives you pleasure, whatever calls to you.
How many beautiful, attractive, or inspiring things do you notice while you’re walking? Do you enjoy the scent of pine, the warm sun, a beautiful leaf, the shape of a stone, a smiling face, the song of a bird, the feeling of the earth under your feet?
When you find something delightful or pleasant, let yourself be drawn into it. Really savor it. Smell the freshly cut grass or feel the texture of tree bark, if you like. Give yourself over to the experience as if it were the only thing that existed in the world.
When you lose interest, simply let it go and wait until you discover something else that is delightful to you. Be like a bumblebee going from flower to flower. When you are full from one, go to another.
Take your time, move slowly, and simply see what you notice.
Research suggests that simply taking the time to notice and linger with these sorts of positive experiences can greatly increase our happiness. This exercise can also reveal how our mental chatter about our experience interferes with enjoying it. When we refocus on our direct experience of beauty, however, our senses are enhanced such that colors become brighter, sounds become clearer, smells more aromatic, and so on. As Emily Dickinson wrote, “To live is so startling, it leaves little room for other occupations.”