Natural Mindfulness

Natural Mindfulness is 'letting Nature in' 

but what does this mean exactly?

  To me, it means look, listen and feel. It's March so we're used to looking out for the first flowers that appear in spring: lesser celandines:

and Coltsfoot

I can't switch off my thinking but I can direct it to the spontaneous events that are happening all around me while walking in nature. Like the emergence of a Comma butterfly from hibernation.

I find listening especially helpful. So I walk slowly, I pause but not in a self-conscious way; I listen for ten seconds and I'm constantly asking myself: 
    "What's special and different today?"
I can't see them but I can hear nuthatches and jackdaws, a buzzard flies overhead. These are the kind of things that make me glad to be alive.
Seasons change imperceptibly but every day reveals more preparations for the season ahead.
Today I heard fieldfares and song thrushes together. These two members of the thrush family overlap but soon the fieldfares will be migrating back to Norway and Sweden to nest.

  So today I heard woodpeckers drumming, a typical sound that belongs to British springtime:

https://vimeo.com/208677486

That greater spotted woodpecker has found a particularly resonant tree which he's using to announce his presence to females and other males.

Look, listen and feel and it's different every day.

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How do you cope when someone lets you down: a natural mindful approach

How do you cope when someone lets you down?

This happened to me today so I'm trying to think of mindful things I can do.

1. "There will be better days":

I like this long-suffering phrase, it reminds me that even when I'm beset by lots of problems it won't be the same tomorrow. Also that however great my angst it is, I'm not dead yet. I can always find a few tiny things I've been putting off so tomorrow really will be better, pay for the central heating, book the bike in to be serviced.

2. Tell people 

Email friends. They won't necessarily respond but some may notice and sympathise. Even more important, tell people you meet. Otherwise they might think you're being antisocial. Ask for what you need: a hug or a talk, text people, phone people, arrange to meet, light up the network of people you know.

3. Walk in Nature

Nothing works as well to restore a mindful state of mind for me as a walk outside. Watching chance happenings, birds soaring, colours in people's gardens, birdsong and the feeling of climbing a hill all help me to feel myself, maybe sad, maybe distracted. So I'm going out walking now... Nature always seems to surprise me with colours, sounds and smells, 

which brings me to:

4. Variety

More variety in food, avoid the cheapest supermarket, have regular drinks and meals, if you don't feel like baking go out and buy a treat. Beware of silently or noisily singing the same old songs, you could be wallowing in morose thoughts ie Leonard Cohen, think of different tunes. Read a poetry book like Staying Alive, mark the poems you'd choose to read aloud to someone. Baking usually helps me but today feels like a day to knit or draw. Any activities that are calming, creative or automatic, colourful. Music too, listening or playing helps me. This is a great opportunity to do things differently.

5. Notice when you forget why you're feeling sad.

This will happen increasingly as time passes but you might even notice it on the first day. It's encouraging to notice how feelings change constantly, sadness to anger, anger to fear. And even a surprising moment of humour or joy. If someone's let me down I can sometimes smile when I remember that I've let people down too. This time the boot's on the other foot.

Intuition and intent

How much control do I really have over what goes on in my brain?

Cognitive behavioural approaches invite us to think that it is our habitual denigrating thoughts which lead us to ruminate on past mistakes and inadequacies. 

All I need to do is to set aside negative thoughts. And that can be immensely powerful. 

I need a range of responses to my dissenting inner voices: 
Stop        I changed my mind      Tell me later   I'm doing the best I can

I find two difficulties with this approach.

1. My uncosncious is at work. My brain may be presenting past failures to me for a good reason. When I find myself humming a tune, I generally find there is something in the mood of the piece or the wording of the lyrics that is immediately relevant to my predicament at that moment, usually something I've been overlooking. Also my unconscious is immensely clever at sabotaging my intent.
2. In order to be creative and open to intuition I need to let my thoughts flow in their own way. Being present is partly stepping aside to accept the mood I'm in. I might be down among the ghosts and monsters of the lower unconscious, a scary but immensely creative place where innocent trees turn into wild unknown worlds. Instead of looking for the stop tap, I want to marvel at the symphony of brain chemicals that is constantly shifting the way I see, hear and feel. 

I'm not comfortable with analogies of the brain as a computer: [reboot, default mode, delete] or as a business [executive function, CEO] I find the natural world more explanatory: [web of life, evolutionary tree]

My model of the self is like a planet and at any moment I find myself located at a ford where my conscious intent crosses the 'flow of consciousness'. 

My intent may be in a position of power or at the opposite pole of no control. The stream may be deep into sadness, in natural mindfulness, mingling with the people around me or high up at its source, in the safe place remote from the present.

All I can do is seek a path through the woods which reminds me of the wonder of life in all its forms, of patterns and healing and recovery.

I hold onto is this conflict between intent and intuition which you could call the battle between will and love.

Mindful Walks in Winter 2: Seeing a hawk

Sparrow hawks are common in Britain but likely to be overlooked 

because they hunt by silently gliding low over hedgerows looking to flush out small birds. They're not as prominent as kestrels that hover, Kites that hunt together and buzzards that circle and call noisily. So here are some ways to maximise your chances of seeing a sparrow hawk. 

Mindful walking for me is about being observant, listening, seeing and feeling alive. It doesn't matter whether I see the bird I'm looking out for but if I do I feel elated. 
I feel alive.

Walk outside

Walking anywhere is likely to disturb hawks from their observation posts on the roof of a house, the top of a telegraph pole or tall tree. Sparrowhawks can be seen around suburban gardens, taking advantage of the birds that feed at bird tables. In winter trees provide little cover so their look out posts are much more visible.

Listen for mobbing. 

Jackdaws, crows, magpies and rooks have a range of mobbing calls including a charcteristic rattling call to chase off a predator that will alert you to their presence. 

Memorise the Sparrowhawk's call

Listen for the sparrowhawk's call which you sometimes hear in woods, rartely when it's out hunting.

Try to identify every bird flying alone. 

Most will be woodpigeons but if you keep doing it during a two hour walk you're quite likely to recognise a sparrow hawk in the few moments it takes to fly overhead. Jackdaws, rooks and crows usually fly in flocks or in pairs. Predators hunt on their own.

The secret of Wicked's success

The Musical 'Wicked' is a massive transatlantic success. 

What's the secret of Wicked's success?

1. Wicked champions the outsider, Elphaba is picked on for her colour and refusal to conform. We see many redeeming qualities in Elphaba: she sticks up for her teacher when he loses his voice and he falls into disrepute because he's not human. Opening scenes often feature arrival at school or college but Wicked pulls it off with humour, poking fun at the apparently sincere good witch, Glinda. But later on, the wicked witch Elphaba releases flying monkeys which cause havoc.

2. Wicked has style: strong female leads, an emerald and black colour scheme, brilliant lighting and stage effects  clocks to rival Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's Dark Materials and a cross between Victorian steampunk and 1930's American costumes. There are enjoyable touches of irony and parody. The Wizard sings a song in 1920's style reminiscent of King Herod's song in Jesus Christ Superstar 'Try it and See'.

3. It even begins with a disabled character, NessaRose whose relationship with her sister Elphaba promises an emotionally intelligent sub-plot

For all its style and popularity, the plot chunters off into nowhere land with arrests, escapes, re-arrests. The most glaring travesty of Elphaba's feisty nature comes in a stick fight with Glinda over Fiyero, the self-confessed shallow male lead.

Sadly Tessa Rose is portrayed as a mistake resulting from her parents' desire to avoid having a second daughter like Elphaba. "She's my fault," says Elphaba. The disabled sister and daughter is a millstone for all to carry. [as in Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson] Thus reinforcing widespread perceptions.

In one powerful scene, Tessa is cured by Elphaba's spell and stands for the first time. It must be hard for anyone in a wheelchair to witness this escapist denial of the meaning of chronic illness which harks back to sanitised fairy tales. 

Tessa Rose's fate is sealed off-stage when she is later crushed by a falling windmill and we are left to imagine that her recovery may have been temporary so she was unable to get out of the way in a sudden malevolently stirred-up storm.

The victory of style over contemporary resonance is complete.

Spring watch nightingale song

A male nightingale singing in the evening last week in a wood in southern Gloucestershire, on the Western edge of the nightingale's range. This is typical nightingale country: hazel coppice with water nearby. 

nightingale song

    The bird sang continuously for at least two minutes. Nightingales sing only between mid-May and mid-June, then they go silent.