So far, we’ve grounded and gotten our hands dirty. Now, let’s turn towards gratitude and aligning ourselves to the rhythms of nature with a nature-oriented meditation.
Nature Evokes Mindfulness and Fills Our Senses
Heading outdoors for your mindfulness exercise or mediation practice adds a new dynamic to your practice. Many find escaping to the outdoors makes meditation easier and more enjoyable. Connecting to nature can also make us feel closer to Universal Energy or source energy and all the creatures of Earth. Which, in turn, can add a level of gratitude, peace, and comfort to the meditation experience. Further, nature is a full, luscious sensory experience. For those who like sensory-oriented meditations, walking meditations, or mindfulness exercises, nature has endless source material!
Nature Meditation
Here’s an outdoor meditation practice I love to use:
- Sit or lay down in a comfortable position
- (Optional) Grab one quartz point for each hand, the first pointing up your arm on your receiving/non-dominant hand and the second pointing away from you in your sending/dominant hand (you could also use a double terminated crystal held with both hands)
- Focus on your breath as you settle into the moment
Now, gently shift focus to the sensations of nature around you:
- The chirps and singing of the birds
- The feel of the sun on your face; the sound of the wind
- The smell of the plants, flowers, and soil.
- Stay with each sensation and each thing you notice with that sense for as long as you like.
- Focus on the beauty of each. Connect with your sense of gratitude for the gift of the experience.
- Visualize each sensation coming into your body with each breath, filling you with Universal energy. Exhale all unsupportive energy, returning it to nature to be transmuted for its best purpose. (If you’re using the crystals, you can visualize the energy moving in the receiving hand crystal and out your sending hand.)
- At your own pace, slowly bring yourself back to the present moment and return from your meditative state.
If you have a lot of “noise pollution” in your outdoor meditation space, like the sounds of traffic, supplement with a substitute, like a soundscape from the Calm app. If you need to create the scent of fresh air, try using a natural scented essential oil on a lava bead diffuser or potion bottle necklace, and so on.
You can perform this meditation beside the crystal grid I’ll introduce next week. Stay tuned!
