You have the ability to experience growth, ease, pleasure, and vibrancy in your daily life.  Together, we will reinforce your biology and nervous system's naturally arising support and resources available moment-to-moment.  Over time with these exercises, your body and mind will be able to process and release stress effortlessly and you will enjoy healthy human pleasure more and more often. 

Exercise 4: Finding Your Place

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” -Heraclitus

This exercise is inspired by Andrea Olsen experiential guide, Body and Earth

Find a place in nature that you can visit at least 3x/week. In order to promote consistency with this visit, choose an area you can enjoy that is within walking distance from your home or workplace, and has some privacy elements that would allow you to connect with the environment undisturbed.

Bring your journal to this spot but before you write and reflect, practice allowing your senses to connect to the environment for at least five minutes before documenting your experience. What do you see, smell, hear, and feel? What textures and colors do you notice? What kind of movement do you notice? What kind of connections animate the scene?

Spend time simply noticing, and when you experience thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images unrelated to your present experience, simply acknowledge the internal experience with kindness and nonjudgement and then ease your awareness back out to your environment. We are building on your capacity to be with neutrality, what simply is.  

During your visit to place, you will likely get a little boost of pleasure and interest when you become more aware of your surroundings, and when that happens I encourage you to take a a few moments to savor that pleasure and interest then allow your senses to continue to explore your place. That may look like having a thought like "wow look at those clouds forming such interesting shapes!" followed by closing your eyes for a few moments to enjoy this image recreated in your mindseye (your imagination), and then opening the eyes again to continue to be with what is around you. 

After 10 minutes of this direct engagement with the land,  open your journal to write down your reflections. You might like to use some of these prompts: 
What were some of the things you noticed?
What is it like to practice a neutral awareness of your surroundings?
What is it like to savor moments of pleasure and interest related to your surroundings?
Do you have any curiosities about this place? About your experience in this place? 

“As we recoginze our interconnectedness with the rest of the earth, we begin to see the world from a relational perspective, supported by our context rather then in isolation or at odds with it. We experience the air, the water, the soil, the animals, the people around us, and our own bodies as familiar. In this view, both body and the earth are home.”
​- Andrea Olson, Body and Earth