Learn the art of meditation through wildlife watching
Category: Health, Science & Technology
Via: buzz-of-the-orient • 4 years ago • 5 commentsBy: JAYMI HEIMBUCH
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Learn the art of meditation through wildlife watching
A white egret at a lagoon on Marco Island. (Photo: © Nancy Ridenour / MNN Flickr Group )
Finding meditative moments while wildlife watching
Just looking at this photo — at the simplicity, the grace of lines and movement, the calmness of the scene — you may find your heart rate slowing, your muscles relaxing and your breathing becoming deeper. That's part of the magic of connecting with nature. Meditation is good for the mind and body , but if you've found it hard to sit down and meditate at home, you may want to try wildlife watching. There's a special kind of calm that one can access while sitting quietly, hardly moving, as wildlife goes about daily business around you.
As Mandy Haggith writes on her blog while describing an experience of waiting for beavers to appear in a nearby lake: "There is a special kind of animal-watching meditation. It took me years to learn it. As a child I was incapable of sitting still. My dad used to take me badger-watching, which involved sitting quietly by a sett at dusk until the badgers emerged. I would rustle and fidget, and the badgers would no doubt hear and use a different exit. The more frustrated I became by the wait, the noisier my scuffling and the less chance of seeing a badger, until eventually we would give up. Somehow as an adult I have learned to wait quietly for animals. Attention is everything. Standing by that loch, I revelled in the cool breeze across the water, blowing gently in my face, perfect for not being smelled by the beavers. There was little sound except for the rippling water and the hush of breeze through twigs. It was good to know I was there, in the beaver's habitat, experiencing their loch."
Last month, Patrick Barkham phrased it beautifully when he discussed using nature to connect with oneself in his piece on wildlife watching in The Guardian : "Our lack of knowledge about nature sometimes means that wild places are intimidating. Like taking up running, or swimming, however, it's surprising how quickly we improve with relatively little effort. Even without tuition …we can piece together fragments of lost memories or instinctive understanding of nature, and begin to find meaning in what is unfolding before us. There are so many joys to be gathered watching wildlife and one of the greatest is when we feel we have blended into the landscape and become part of the day, night, or ecosystem. Our pursuit of the little details of nature – a species of moth or a type of birdsong – are intrinsically pleasurable but they are also sense sharpers, that bring us alive to the possibilities in a landscape… They give us an excuse to loiter in a landscape, to stand still and simply be."
If you need to find a way to calm your nerves, reconnect with your self, find a little more joy in daily life, you may just find that the perfect solution is getting out into a quiet stretch of nature, sitting down, and quietly waiting for animals to appear around you. Watching them in their daily activities can bring a little more clarification and satisfaction to your own.
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In the area that I live in, we are blessed with an abundance of birdlife as well as animal and some aquatic critters.
A few days ago we were on the patio and this fellow, a swallowtail kite, was doing air acrobatics above us. I could not get to my camera in time so this photo is off the internet.
I do that almost every morning.....early, early (just before light break). Make my coffee, go out on the front porch, and just sit and stare at what shows up at the feeders for a couple hours. Animals really are funny sorts. Makes for a better day.
I live on 3 acres surrounded by trees. I like to sit on the front porch in the morning and listen to the world waking up. The cardinals are the first ones to wake up and the hummingbirds are always last.
The raccoons are active all night long....
Creatures of the night.