EYES OF THE EAGLE
The Journey Inward Leads Us Outward
Rewilding practices increase your awareness of the outdoors and the world around you, and they also increase your sense of being at home within your own body. The awareness and connection mindful rewilding has given me has shifted how I see everything.
Sometimes when I break from the desk work at my job, I like to take walks on the beautiful grounds of the retreat center. A family of red-tailed hawks nest on the property every year. During my walks, my mind is often absorbed by work dramas and problems, but the shrill call of the hawks circling high above pierces through that mental activity and brings me quickly back into the present moment. The hawks’ message is to wake up, to come into the moment, to look sharp and see inner and outer life from a higher level. Looking up at the hawks soaring, I adopt their higher perspective, and it helps me gain insight into whatever’s going on for me at the earth level. Sometimes this inner outlook has also given me glimpses of lofty new perspectives on our interconnectedness and the greater universe. Of course, I’m not alone in this point of view.
In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell became the sixth man to walk on the moon. During his trip back to Earth, he gazed out the window of the spacecraft and saw our planet, its moon, and its sun turning in the vast cosmic sky, as the space module slowly spun round and round. As he gazed out, he had a profound spiritual experience, a life-changing experience:
I realized that matter in our universe was created in star systems, and that the molecules in my body and the molecules in the spacecraft and the molecules in my partner’s body, were prototypes, or manufactured, in some ancient generation of star, and the recognition then that we’re all a part of the same stuff. We’re all one.1
Along with this sense of oneness, Mitchell felt a powerful ecstasy in his mind and body.
After he returned to Earth, Edgar described his experience to religious scholars and anthropologists, wondering if they knew of other such experiences from religious or mystical texts. They described a similar state, called savikalpa samadhi in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the seminal texts in the yoga tradition.
Savikalpa samadhi is a state of deep meditation that is supported by concentration on an object, which in Mitchell’s case was the blue-green orb of our living planet, floating against the backdrop of the infinite universe. Other astronauts, including many who have spent time on the International Space Station (ISS), have had similarly powerful experiences of oneness followed by a corresponding sense of responsibility for our fragile planet. One of the favorite pastimes of orbiting astronauts is what they call “Earth gazing.” From their home in the ISS, they look at Earth’s thin blue line of atmosphere against the horizon, observing thunderstorms and the aurora borealis dance across the planet’s surface. These experiences have led to a “cognitive shift in awareness” that is linked to “the experience of seeing firsthand the reality that the Earth is in space,” which author Frank White calls “the overview effect.” He writes:
My hypothesis was that being in space, you would see and know something experientially that we have been trying to understand intellectually for thousands of years. That is, that the Earth is a whole system, everything on it is connected, and we’re a part of it.2
Isn’t it unexpected and fascinating that the biggest discovery from the Apollo missions was less about the moon and more about how we think about Earth? It was the process of looking back at our home from that lofty perspective for the first time, of seeing it as a single, self-contained miracle, that allowed our species to realize that the oneness mystical and spiritual traditions have spoken about for thousands of years is objectively and scientifically true. The “blue marble” image taken during Apollo 17, the final manned mission to the moon, forever changed the way we see our planet. It inspired astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan to write:
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. 3
After his profound experience in outer space, Edgar Mitchell spent the rest of his life exploring inner space, the realm of consciousness itself. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organization “dedicated to supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, transformative learning, and engaging a global community in the realization of our human potential.” This brilliant US Navy test pilot, with a degree from MIT, who had studied astrophysics at Harvard and helped problem-solve the rescue of Apollo 13, was among the world’s most elite group of human explorers. He was in many ways the epitome of an objective scientist. Yet Edgar Mitchell and other space explorers tell us of the profound experiences they’ve had viewing Earth from orbit.
This remarkable phenomenon of the overview effect caught the attention of other scientists and has spawned new research on the mind and behavior. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, scientists are studying the overview effect to better understand the emotions that astronauts from many countries and different cultures share.4 Perhaps the study of this powerful positive shift in awareness will contribute to humanity, in all our diversity, awakening to our interdependence. Perhaps this understanding can inform our actions, including global cooperative efforts to address issues such as climate change and habitat and species loss.
Of course, we don’t need to physically travel to outer space to experience our interconnectedness. We need only to approach our living earth mindfully wherever we are. When we soar high enough in our awareness, we can see above the trees; we can see the world as it truly is, the truth that all life on earth is one, inextricably bound together. This is precisely what yogis and meditators, shamans and wisdom keepers, have experienced through the practices of mindful breathing and being present. These practices allow us to rise above the swirling drama of our mental activity and emotions, to see and enter the abiding awareness that remains still and calm. This awareness guides us to act skillfully through it all. Spiritual practitioners have made the journey inward that astronauts have made while soaring beyond the earth. Both have freed our limited human perspective to expand and to take in the totality of life on earth.
Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world. JOSEPH CAMPBELL5
Edgar Mitchell’s journey speaks to the way in which our innate desire to explore the world outside, to see what is over the next hill, around the corner, and over the horizon, inevitably takes us inside, to the center of our own existence. It seems we can’t explore the outer world without also expanding the dimensions of our inner world.
Mitchell’s story also illustrates what I sometimes call “the slingshot effect”: when we journey outward, in the realm of matter, our senses eventually reverse direction and propel our attention inward, to the source of consciousness itself. Inward reflection builds a strong sensitivity and a heightened awareness that can propel us into a deep, renewed relationship with the world of the senses and the living earth. After a yoga or meditation practice, for instance, you will likely find your senses heightened when you walk outside. Because your perception is clearer, you can appreciate the wonder of nature more easily.
Mindfulness Rewilded
As great as the infinite space beyond is the space within the lotus of the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained in that inner space, both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars. Whether we know it in this world or know it not, everything is contained in that inner space. THE CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD
As someone inside “the mindfulness industry,” I have observed that yoga has become as deprived of nature as the rest of society. With our rubber-soled shoes, yoga mats, and indoor practice spaces, modern humans move from one nature-disconnected space to another. Even during those rare moments between the car and the studio, we wear shoes that prevent contact with the ground beneath our feet. Yet the practices of yoga and meditation were born in the mountains, forests, and deserts of Asia.
A few years ago, I attended a yoga conference in Manhattan, a few floors up at the midtown Hilton. After my second yoga class in a stuffy, windowless room, with hundreds of yogis in spandex moving about on rubber mats, I experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance. I love yoga — it is a powerful beautiful practice — and I believe that the widespread increase in yoga and mindfulness practice is profoundly positive. However, something about this scenario didn’t seem quite right to me — or quite right for me.
Not long after, at a yoga and recovery conference at Kripalu, my friend Tim Walsh, an avid outdoorsman and recovery coach, expressed my own thoughts when he said, “Folks, we’re standing on rubber mats inside a temperature-controlled room on the second floor of a giant brick building. How much more disconnected from the earth can you get!” His words rang inside me, and at that moment, something in my core woke up. I had felt this disconnect for years, and now it was time to do something about it.
I had dreamed for many years of somehow bridging the worlds of meditation, yoga, and mindfulness with rewilding. When I finally started to research the connections between nature and mindfulness practices, I ended up creating programs for students at Kripalu that immersed us in forests and fields while practicing. I wanted to help people become conscious of their inner nature while out in nature and to help them see the importance of conserving our natural environments — the primal parts of ourselves. How did yoga and meditation, wild practices designed to awaken, empower, and enlighten, become so disconnected from the enlivening power and the beauty of the living earth? Because yoga and mindfulness have profound benefits for well-being, they have also been co-opted and commercialized. Products have proliferated — the mats and clothing, the snacks and the food, the shoes and the hats. Our economy is driven by the consumption of things that must be extracted from the earth and produced and marketed and sold. As yoga and mindfulness became imbedded in modern culture’s mostly indoor lifestyle, these ancient practices also became cut off from the presence of the wind, sun, moon, and life of the living earth.
When we disconnect from the living earth, we lose the life-affirming wisdom that is found outdoors. If we consider the fact that we are an evolutionary expression of the evolving earth, then our own self-awareness can be thought of as the self-awareness of the living earth itself. Which is a pretty powerful idea to ponder! And it means that human rewilding can lead to a rewilding of our spirit, a reinspiriting of our essential nature.
Pacification or Liberation?
Yoga and mindfulness today are often used to help people invite calm and to support greater self-regulation and impulse control in stressful situations. But just as I’m concerned about their commodification, I’m also concerned that these ancient practices are being used as pacifiers to help people put up with the negative effects of modern society, because these ancient practices are also the tools for true liberation from the root causes of our distress.
To be clear, yoga, meditation, and mindfulness are extremely valuable practices. The abilities to take a deep breath and step back from the fight-or-flight response, to self-soothe, and to know when to practice self-care, these are all critical tools for living consciously.
I am reminded of an episode of the old television show Kung Fu, in which a martial arts master, played by David Carradine, is taken prisoner and forced into manual labor under the blazing sun. Labeled a troublemaker, he is put into a hot box, a cast-iron oven with an unbearably fierce temperature. In the box is another man who is panicked by their dangerous situation. Carradine calmly teaches the man how to meditate, to slow his breathing and witness his thoughts. At the end of the day they are released, and both emerge from the box alert and calm, much to the surprise of their captors.
A more recent real-life example is the group of boys on a soccer team in Thailand who were stranded for almost two weeks in a complex network of flooded tunnels. They learned to meditate from their coach, who had lived in a Buddhist monastery for ten years. They sat in the darkness, not knowing if anyone would come to their aid, and they stayed calm and connected to one another. They were all ultimately saved by a team of divers who risked their own lives in the effort.
Meditation is a powerful antidote to fear and the modern daily stresses that can harm our health if left unchecked. Meditation can even save your life. But if you are under duress, the first thing to check is whether you can get out of it. See if the door to the hot box can be opened. Look for the escape route in the cave. If a change in the circumstances is possible, the wise action is to eliminate the cause of suffering first, and meditate later.
As a species, we often don’t even know that we are in a hot box or a dangerous cave. The stress of modern life is ubiquitous, so a change of environment may not even seem like an option. And, of course, not everyone can get away from their circumstances or difficulties. Not everyone has easy access to pristine natural places. Many can’t afford to travel to a place with fresh air and water.
I hope that the steps I teach here for connecting with the living earth will open doors for everyone. The sunlight, the movement of air, the presence of the earth that is solid and stable even in asphalt, the dandelion coming up through a crack in the pavement, all can be entries into a wilder, more conscious, more awakened life.
Learning to Soar
The highest spiritual practice is self-observation without judgment. SWAMI KRIPALU
One of the cornerstones of yoga is the practice of cultivating witness consciousness, which in the Kripalu Yoga tradition is a practice of self-observation without judgment. The witness is our ability to watch our own bodily sensations, urges, thoughts, feelings, and mental stories without judgment or reactivity. It’s not that you stop feeling; quite the opposite, it’s that you make the choice to feel fully. You choose to breathe into whatever may be happening right now rather than distracting yourself from it. In many indigenous cultures, this level of consciousness is associated with birds who soar, such as the condor, eagle, and hawk. Cultivating this objective state of awareness is at the heart of mindfulness practice, and it is also a powerful tool in our work to become intimate with the living earth.
Meditation is the practice of focusing attention on the contents of the present moment while cultivating a nonjudgmental attitude. Some of the earliest meditators were ancient hunters sitting for long periods of time while hunting to feed their tribe. Hunting involves not only tracking an animal and knowing its routines but also sitting absolutely still for hours while paying close attention to all movement on the land around you. Of course, in hunter-gatherer cultures, hunting is essential for survival, but for many people in modern societies, hunting is not practical or desirable.
You can still enjoy the benefits of sitting outdoors regularly and inviting your attention to rest on the more-than-human world around you, on its movement and on the qualities of the land. All you need to do is to find a location outdoors that is easy to get to every day where you can allow yourself some time to simply sit and observe what is happening. The centering practice I will share can help you. If you commit to this daily practice, you will become a witness to how your land changes through the seasons and the years. You will begin to know more about the plants and animals that share the land, and you will even get to know individuals as time goes by.
At Kripalu, we have a red squirrel who lives in the hedge that runs all along the south-facing side of the building. Red squirrels are high-energy critters, full of spunk and attitude. One of this squirrel’s ears has a big chunk missing out of it, perhaps from a dispute with another red squirrel. I’ve watched this little guy for the past year and call him “One Ear.” I get such a burst of happiness when I see him. He’s always on the move. It is very sweet and rewarding to get to know an individual wild animal.
Recognition and awareness of individual wild animals can open our hearts, as we feel the animals’ struggles and losses and mourn their passing. One year, a red fox made a den on the property at Kripalu. All through the summer that fox made herself known, hunting rabbits that lived in the hedge to feed her pups (much to the horror of some guests) and moving freely through the grounds at all hours of the day. We all loved to watch for her and share stories of her exploits. At the end of the season, we were saddened to find her body by the road; she had been struck by a car. She was not simply roadkill to us, a random member of a common species; she was an individual with a life story. We had had the opportunity to share a part of our lives with her and to know about her.
Nature connection and nature meditation open our hearts to all lives on the land. With the expansion of awareness comes a deepening of feelings and attachment, not a dependent attachment but a loving appreciation. We need this experience to awaken an ethic of stewardship and responsibility for our world.
To prepare for nature meditation, it’s essential to learn how to invite your attention out of the past and future and in to the dynamic, breathing, ever-changing qualities of the living earth in this present moment. Let’s explore a practice with which you can center yourself outdoors. I invite you to adopt this practice and to use it every day, in your favorite spot outdoors whenever possible. It is a first step in your mindful rewilding. Even if you can’t practice outside every day, I invite you to use it wherever you are, wherever you can. If you are at home, you can sit in front of a plant, some herbs, or a burning candle, something to connect you with the living earth.
At the beginning of any outdoor experience, I pause to center myself. Centering just means inviting your attention to rest in the present moment. I like to close my eyes and focus internally. This brief rest of the senses actually sharpens them so that when I refocus my awareness outward, I perceive the earth around me. Becoming centered shows respect and gratitude for the earth and intensifies our time in nature.
Take a soft, deep breath in, and let your exhalation be twice as long as your inhalation. This stimulates the relaxation response in the body. Continue to breathe softly in through the nose and exhale long and slow. Each time you exhale, feel your mind emptying and your body relaxing. See if you can enjoy the sensations in your body as you deeply breathe in and out. The present moment is the only moment. Stay in it.
When you are ready, release control of the breath and notice how you feel. When you feel complete, open your eyes. Look around and take a few moments to observe your surroundings.
A natural outcome of practicing this over time is an experience of connection with yourself, the people around you, and your environment. When you pay attention to your present-moment experience as it unfolds in your environment, it is easy to see that you are a part of your world. It’s when we get stuck in our heads, walking through life on autopilot, allowing the unconscious mind to move us through our days, that it’s easy to miss the many ways we affect and are affected by our environment and the life-forms we share our world with.
NATURE MEDITATION
Find a place outside near where you live, a place you can get to easily and regularly for your nature meditation. Perhaps there is a tree or a stone you can rest against and get to know. Pay attention to your intuition, and trust that you will be drawn to a spot that has good energy, a place that feels right. Allow yourself at least fifteen minutes in this place; thirty to forty-five minutes is even better.
Once you’re in your spot, find a comfortable seat, and when you are ready, close your eyes and draw a soft breath in through the nose. Hold the breath in for a moment or two and then exhale slowly and mindfully through the nose, so that the exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation. Repeat this breathwork three to five times, until you begin to feel your whole being relaxing into the present moment.
Feel your sitz bones, the two boney knobs at the base of your pelvis, rooted in the earth. Begin to feel the crown of your head lifting up toward the sky, drawing your spine long. Soften your jaw and forehead, and relax your abdomen. Begin to notice your breath and the gentle pulse as it moves in and out through the nose. Invite your attention to stay with your breath, allowing your awareness to float on the gentle waves moving into and out of your body. Be a compassionate observer, taking in whatever might be moving within your awareness. Whenever you notice your mind drift away, return to the sensation of your breath. Notice the bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions as you sit and breathe. Let them all come and go.
When you are ready, open your eyes. Shift your attention from your breath to any movement you see in your environment. Let your attention rest in the flow of movement you are immersed in — the subtle vibration of the grass, leaves bobbing on the breeze, flickering light on flowing water, the swirl of snowflakes. Take as much time as you’d like to experience what is happening in the moment.
Nature meditation is an invitation to enjoy the beauty of nature in each moment. Even sitting inside, you can center yourself and then gaze out a window. The more relaxed and still you can be, the more likely you are to notice activity around you. The animals who frequent the land around your sitting spot will eventually start moving about, and in time, you will be gifted with their presence and gain a window into their world. If you practice nature meditation consistently, over time you will learn much about the land you live on.
When beginning to establish a meditation practice, you may feel that there is a right way and a wrong way to meditate or that you should be able to stop your thoughts and experience perfect peace, emptiness, and equanimity. These are unrealistic expectations to put on yourself. Over time and with practice, the mind will be able to enter greater and greater degrees of absorption — but to begin, you need simply to attend to the breath and to be kind and gentle with yourself.
When we practice cultivating the perspective of the witness, we notice sensations, thought patterns, and habitual reactions. We begin to lift our awareness up above our patterns and habits and take on a process of self-study, which in yoga is called svadhyaya. From up above, we can see the weather inside, the emotional storms and mental stories that play over and over again in the mind, as well as the patterns of action we take, which may or may not be useful. The practice of witness consciousness gives us a higher perspective on life, the same way that being suspended outside our planet’s atmosphere allowed astronauts to see the interconnectedness of our world. As we learn to be compassionate observers and connect more intimately with the earth, it makes sense that we might also grow wiser in our relationships with our home planet.
WITNESS IN THE WOODS
Cultivating witness consciousness is essential to the practice of mindfulness. Try this brief exercise to become more mindful of the present moment. The next time you are getting ready to head out on a walk or into a park or the woods, take a moment to pause and draw a deep breath in and out with a gentle sigh. Close your eyes and begin to breathe a slow but steady breath, in and out. Imagine that your awareness is a boat floating on these slow, steady waves of breath. Notice how fast your mind is going, and see the speedometer in your mind slowing down, gradually and smoothly, until it rests at 0 miles per hour. You are here.
Now, open your eyes and slowly and mindfully take in the colors, contours, and movements of the earth. Notice what you can hear, such as the sounds of wind, leaves, birds. How does the air smell? Can you feel the temperature on your skin? Notice the land all around you, and reach out with your awareness to feel the pulse of life you are embedded in. Be still for a few more moments before you start to walk into the land ahead of you. Open your senses to feel the life around you and within you.
Before your first step, set an intention to remain present and connected to your breath. Then take your first step. Go slowly, and as you take each step, walk with awareness. With each mindful step, feel the earth beneath your feet. Let your heel, sole, and toes connect with the ground, with its ancient strength and solidity. You might consider each step a caress of the earth and extend gratitude as you move over land. If your mind drifts away from the breath and your steps, just bring your attention back to the land and your breath. Be a mindful witness of the living earth.
As you practice this way of being on the land, you will notice things you didn’t before. You will also become more aware of yourself so that every time you enter the land, your feeling of belonging will grow. Pause often and take in anything that fascinates you. Enjoy the wonder of each moment.
In my own journey into mindfulness and rewilding, I have been deeply influenced by the writings of Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay, as he is called by his students, encourages a simple path to mindfulness which emphasizes conscious breathing, among other things. When I began to connect deeply with my own breath, I felt I had found the master key, the secret I had been waiting for, the practice that would open all doors. Thay taught me that the breath is always rising and falling in the present moment, so, when you bring your attention to it, you have an anchor in the now. No matter how many millions of times your attention wanders away from the present moment, the breath is always there to bring you back.
As I began to establish a more consistent relationship with my own breath, I had an immediate and powerful experience of being connected with the life force on earth, the pulsing, ever-moving atmosphere that all breathing beings share. The more I practiced mindful breathing, the more attuned I felt to the earth around me, the air, the animals, and the elements. Breathing with awareness, I realized that I enjoyed the way it felt to breathe deeply. The breath slowed me down and helped me get out of my head and into my feeling body. I started taking long walks in the woods while focusing on staying with my breath. I started to feel more awe. I noticed more of the details in the forest. Where I once saw the forest as a blur of generalized categories — trees, stones, ground, sky — now I noticed individual pine trees, carpet mosses, cup fungi, drops of water. And beyond that, I was also sensing the interconnection of these life-forms in the forest.
There was no specific point of focus for this sense of connection; rather, it was an embodied experience, a felt sense that the air I was breathing, along with the wind, the trees, and the earth, were not distinct and separate objects but interdependent and living subjects. I was sensing the intersecting ripples of energy in which I was immersed. Staying with my breathing and being mindful of my embodied experience was helping me to expand my awareness and receive the grandeur and majesty of the earth. I felt more human than I had ever felt before.
Breathing with awareness can open many doors. Some take us inward, and others guide our attention outward — but inward and outward are both parts of a single spectrum of awareness. Nature dwells in both directions, not just outside us. Our inner world is also nature. Our minds and bodies are manifestations of the evolution of the living earth.
One of the miraculous things about breathing is that it truly is a constant reminder that we exist in a constant state of interbeing with the rest of life. When we breathe, we bring the atmosphere of the planet into our bodies, and when we exhale, we send our unique essence back into the ever-swirling breath of life on earth. The air we are breathing right now was on the other side of the planet just four or five days ago.6 This means that the air we exhale right now could become part of a cat in France or a tree in Iceland in just a few days. This knowledge and this sense that the act of breathing puts us in relationship with all other living things on earth is ancient. The Lakota refer to the enveloping atmosphere as “the holy air,” or woniya in their language, and they believe that it carries the messages of Wakan Tanka, or the Great Spirit across the world.7 The smoke that rises from the sacred pipes reveals the movement of the Great Spirit, whose medium is the holy winds.
In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram explains that the invisible currents of air in which our bodies are immersed have been considered by many cultures to be the essence of life-giving spirit. In the yoga tradition, the breath is known as prana, which means “life energy.” The art of breathing with skill involves balancing the energies of life present in the body, and even accumulating a charge of prana in the mind-body to enhance a greater sustained aliveness. A simple question you can ask yourself after the mindful walking or breathing of rewilding is, Do I feel more alive?
To breathe is to be alive and connected. When you recognize how vital the air is to life and how powerful the practice of mindful breathing is for well-being, it is easy to feel gratitude and awe for the mystery of the breath. Unfortunately, many people do not bring awareness to their breathing or ponder the necessity of clean air or the gift of each breath and the life it makes possible. Air and water are vital elements. They exist within us and we within them. In the closed system that is planet Earth, how can we be well if our air and water are polluted? How can the earth be well?
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the very first word is atha, which means “now” in Sanskrit. In classical Indian literature, the first word in a sacred text is often the most important, and so in the case of the Yoga Sutras, that would mean the most important concept in the whole book is encapsulated in the word now. In yoga, when the mind, the breath, and the posture or movement of the body are integrated and aligned, the practitioner experiences this unity. The only way to achieve this state of integrated functioning is to hold our awareness squarely in the present moment, concentrating on what we are doing and using the breath and the sensations in the body as anchors. Think about how many times in a day you go on autopilot, how many times you allow your unconscious mind to take control of what you are doing. Maybe you’re eating lunch and looking at your phone. You’re eating, but you aren’t fully conscious of what you’re eating. Or perhaps you are hiking in the woods, but your mind is elsewhere, thinking about work or some other dilemma or worry. You are missing all the life around you.
Just being outside in nature can have a beneficial effect on your stress level, help elevate your mood, and even help you become more alert and alive. These positive benefits are enhanced exponentially when we are mindful in nature. And though our minds will always wander when we are physically wandering, we can take hold of our breath and return, time and again, to the miracle of the moment. If we are truly paying attention, there is always something to notice and learn from, whether a tiny bird, a flowering bud, or an autumn leaf covered in frost. The gifts are all around us; we need only open our eyes to see them.
Sit Under a Tree and Breathe
Thich Nhat Hanh’s style of mindful breathing requires only attention and a willingness to gently deepen and feel your breath. It is more accessible than the elaborate yogic pranayama practices I have learned. Thay was influenced by the Buddha’s approach, which he offered to his disciples long ago:
A monk having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree or to an empty place, sits down, with his legs crossed, keeps his body erect and his mindfulness alert. Ever mindful he breathes in, and mindful he breathes out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows, “I am breathing in a long breath”; breathing out a long breath, he knows, “I am breathing out a long breath”; breathing in a short breath, he knows “I am breathing in a short breath”; breathing out he knows, “I am breathing out a short breath.” SATIPATTHANA SUTTA8
The Buddha taught that the breath is a powerful tool for cultivating mindfulness, and that he suggested practicing mindful breathing while sitting under a tree. The Buddha himself attained enlightenment sitting under the bodhi tree. Bodhi means “awake,” and under the bodhi tree, a man named Siddhartha became “the awakened one,” or the Buddha. We don’t know the role of the tree in the Buddha’s sitting or the role of the forest network the tree was a part of, but we do know that as Homo sapiens our relationship with trees goes back at least a few hundred thousand years. We evolved living in relationship with trees; we have been shaped by their presence. Perhaps the presence of the bodhi tree, its shade, the sound of its leaves and branches moving in the breeze, its presence as a living being, helped the Buddha to drop into a profound state of self-realization. Studies have certainly shown that views of nature and even the presence of plants in our homes and offices, can reduce stress, improve immune function, and restore our fatigued attention spans.9 When you consider how long we as a species have been sharing an intimate relationship with trees, it is no wonder we feel comforted and supported in mindfulness in their presence.
Thay simplifies the Buddha’s teaching on mindful breathing even further:
(Inhale) Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
(Exhale) Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
(Inhale) Dwelling deeply in the present moment.
(Exhale) I know this is a wonderful moment.10
You may like to try this simple exercise the next time you feel stressed or overwhelmed. I have always found it to be a sweet and powerful practice for supporting mindfulness and bringing the witness consciousness or objectivity back into focus. When you practice it, you may notice that it conveys contentment, which in Sanskrit is called santosha. One of the nine guidelines for living in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, santosha may seem like a strange concept. How often do we hear people say that they feel content? How often do you feel content? Have you ever felt content? Take a moment to think about the last time you felt content. Where were you? What were you doing? Why did that feeling leave you?
“Dwelling in the present moment, I know it is a beautiful moment.” When you are truly present and allow yourself to experience life exactly the way it is, rather than how you think it should be, the miracle of the moment shines forth. The more you practice mindfulness, the more likely you are to appreciate the simple wonders of life on earth — a beautiful sunset, a cool breeze, the smile of a stranger, a hug from a loved one, a crisp apple. Rather than focusing on what we don’t have, mindfulness encourages us to focus on what we do have. When we practice mindful breathing, we are continually reminded that we are alive, that we have this breath, and in this, we can be content. Isn’t life itself the most fundamental thing we possess?
To practice contentment and find fulfillment in simple things are gifts to the living earth. “In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer. “Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness.”11 We have been told that we need material things to make us happy or to feel fulfilled, but this is not true. All you need to do is go camping for a week or two and you will soon realize that a roof over your head, a hot meal at the end of the day, a fire, and good company go a long way toward fostering a sense of contentment. The oceans on our planet today are choking with gyres the size of the state of Texas made of plastic garbage from our throw-away economy. Cultivating contentment through mindful engagement with the living earth can help us begin to make the shift to living more simply and transforming our economy from one that is anthrocentric to one that is ecocentric.
As a yoga teacher, I make a practice out of breathing with awareness every day. Over the years, this practice has become almost second nature. I find myself taking deep inhalations and complete exhalations at different points in the day to help me release stress and tension not only from my body but also from my awareness. I discovered early on that if I took a few moments to center my awareness through mindful breathing before heading into the forest for a hike, my experience in the forest changed dramatically. The breathing helped to quiet the activity of my mind, relax my body, and heighten my senses, while I maintained a state of alert relaxation. This is a key component in the outdoor experiences that I lead.
INNER-SPACE AND OUTER-SPACE MEDITATION
On your next outdoor adventure or quiet sit in your backyard, try the following exercise. Take a comfortable seat on the earth and lengthen your spine up through the crown of your head. Feel your sitz bones anchored firmly into the support of the earth and imagine that they are growing roots into the soil. Begin to slowly and consciously deepen your breath. Allow your eyes to close, and with each exhalation, let go of tension in the mind and body.
Next, begin to recite the following two phrases as you breathe in and out. With eyes closed, breathe in and say, I feel my body, and then with eyes opened, breathe out and say, I feel the living earth. Continue this cycle for a few minutes, noticing the flow of awareness traversing the boundary between your inner space and the space all around you.
When you have completed the exercise, rise and take a few minutes to walk with an awareness of your breath, or spend a few minutes journaling about the experience. Where is the boundary between your inner experience and the living earth? Has this boundary shifted or changed as a result of working with this meditation? If so, how?
Awake in the Forest
In this body, the mount Meru — i.e., the vertebral column — is surrounded by seven islands; there are rivers, seas, mountains, fields, and lords of the fields too. There are in it seers and sages; all the stars and planets as well. There are sacred pilgrimages, shrines, and presiding deities of the shrines. The sun and moon, agents of creation and destruction, also move in it. Ether, air, water, and earth are also there. All the beings that exist in the three worlds are also to be found in the body; surrounding the Meru, they are engaged in their respective functions. (But ordinary men do not know it.) He who knows all this is a Yogi; there is no doubt about it. SHIVA SAMHITA, 2.1
Ancient schools of yoga sought to maximize a sense of aliveness through diet, exercise, attitude, and breathing practices. It was believed that yogic disciplines could help the yogi penetrate the depths of human consciousness and that the elemental forces that gave rise to all phenomena of the physical universe lay at the very foundation of consciousness itself. These schools saw the body as a sacred temple and believed that we could learn to live free as awakening human beings, liberated with wisdom and a greater capacity for goodness and purpose. Such people have reached a state known as jivan mukti, which means “liberated in life.”
The fact that the yoga and the Buddhist traditions emerged from practitioners and monastic communities living in wild and often remote natural places tells us something about where we might go to find peace, wisdom, and a feeling of more aliveness. In my own experience, the awareness I have been able to cultivate through yoga has profoundly enhanced my connection to the living earth.
Living at the Kripalu Center as a young man, I practiced yoga three to four hours each day for a six-month period. It was a very special time in my life, one in which I was able to dive deep and focus on drawing close to myself in a safe and supportive environment. During that time, the mindfulness I was cultivating on my yoga mat and in my work as a volunteer dishwasher stayed with me when I wandered into the shadowed hemlock forest that borders the retreat center.
This land, watched over by towering, ancient trees and populated with moss-covered boulders, seemed to breathe and speak. As I walked mindfully out of the temperature-controlled environment of the retreat center and into the cold and refreshing winds of the winter woods, my senses were heightened. I experienced an almost overwhelming sense of awe for the power of the living earth, which seemed to flow around me and through me as I moved farther away from the retreat center’s human activity and deeper into the forest’s more-than-human world. The intensity and frequency of my yoga and mindfulness practices made me more sensitive to my embodied experience in the forest.
In my yoga practice, I was using pranayama, breathing practices, as well as asana, the yoga postures, to take my awareness into realms within the space of my own body, mind, and spirit. In yoga, turning inward and sensing inward is called pratyahara. Yogic tools are used to draw the mind’s focus away from sensory objects and external desires and toward a state of alert and relaxed observation. With practice, they take us through a process of becoming sensitive to an inner field of knowing. I found that when I emerged from my inner journeys and headed out into the deep woods, my physical senses, now attuned to the subtle internal realms, were incredibly sensitive to what was swirling around me in the forest. I was, in fact, awake in the forest.
The loftiness of the ascending hemlock trunks, the bite of the cold wind, the smell of the pines, and the icy burn of the snow on my skin made it difficult for my mind to wander. In these moments, I felt intensely alive. As the months wore on, my sojourns into the lands around Kripalu continued, and as winter gave way gradually to spring, the land became lush and verdant. The hard, sharp ice became flowing water, the frozen earth became soft and aromatic, and the birds returned. What was an arctic world was now green, with misty clouds rising off the hills. The land was breathing again, and I with it.
We evolved in relationship with the ever-changing qualities of the seasons and landscapes, in relationship with trees, stones, mud, birds, antlers, claws, and teeth. Today, most of us live differently than our ancestors did, which is not wrong, but being sedentary and indoors most of the time isn’t good for us. Many people think of the outdoors, of nature, as something other, something foreign and even frightening. Nature has become an abstraction, something out there rather than an extension of ourselves. Without the medicine of streams, forests, and other natural ecosystems, people turn to TV, food, alcohol, and other sedatives to fill an emptiness or to alleviate a boredom. With mindfulness, however, we can pierce the veil of abstraction, the filter of language, and the stories in our minds to directly experience the embodied nature of our right relationship with the earth. Mindfulness offers a way in, a tool to help people overcome their fears and reconnect with something deep, primal, and essential.
During a mindful outdoor experience I was leading on a winter solstice retreat in the forest near Kripalu, there was a woman who was not accustomed to navigating snow-covered, icy, and uneven terrain. While the group was gathered around a small fire, enjoying hemlock-needle tea, the woman came to me to say that she could not walk back the way we had come. It was too rugged, and she was frightened she would fall and hurt herself. I offered to walk back with her so she could make it back safely, and my assistant led the rest of the group ahead of us.
On our walk back, this woman and I got to talking, and it turned out she was writing a book about overcoming fear through mindfulness. As I guided her around the slickest parts of the trail, she held on to my elbow and shared that she was going to include this experience in her book. She realized that by using mindfulness, she could guide herself through the fear. It was a simple, everyday kind of experience, which you might not think of as rewilding, but for this woman, it was. She went beyond her comfort zone and made it through. Rewilding exists on a spectrum, and there are many points of entry for people who have different levels of comfort and familiarity with nature and the practice of mindfulness.
Natural Teachers
When we are disconnected from the living earth, we lose its life-affirming wisdom. In ancient India’s Ramayana, the hero, Rama, who is an incarnation of Lord Vishnu (the sustainer of the Universe), is traveling through the forest with his younger brother, Lakshmana. Both have been unjustly exiled from their kingdom, even though Rama is the rightful heir to his family’s throne. Rama’s soul mate, Sita, has been taken prisoner by the demon king Ravana.
Lakshmana is very upset about all these injustices and is venting to his brother as they make their way through the dense and wild jungle, while Rama, who embodies patience, wisdom, and compassion, encourages his brother to let it go. They come to a pristine mountain lake and pause. The water is clear, cool, and clean. Rama dives into the water and floats out into the middle of the lake. Lakshmana asks his older brother, “Rama, how do you know when to take bold action against injustice and when to remain still and wait?” Rama answers, “When your mind is as cool and serene as this lake, my brother. Then you will know.”
There was a time when more people had exposure to pristine lakes, open fields, mountains, little streams, boulders, and many of the other teachers who dwell in the more-than-human world. These manifestations of our living earth have been our friends, guides, and teachers for a long time, and evidence shows that exposure to such natural settings can be powerful buffers against stress for children and adults alike.12 Yet today, more than half of the earth’s population is urban dwelling. Most people use smartphones instead of the sun to tell time and instead of the moon for light at night. Rather than taking a walk outside and sitting under a tree when life gets us down, we post to Facebook, scroll through our news feed, or binge-watch Netflix. Perhaps we could use what author Richard Louv calls a little “vitamin N” (for nature). Like Rama, we can turn to the lakes, the sky, the earth, and the trees for guidance.
Cities by their very nature are the product of human thinking and expression. In a city, we are surrounded by buildings, roads, signs, stores, vehicles, and marketing campaigns that reflect back to us the cognitive processes of economic, political, and cultural agendas. The more-than-human world can also be found in cities. Hawks nest on tall buildings, and birds of all kinds live in small parks, gutters, trees, and abandoned buildings. In empty lots, insects and plants live, and squirrels, coyotes, foxes, and other wild creatures roam as well. Even in cities, the living earth bursts forth from every crack. So, we can engage in rewilding almost anywhere. The key is our intention, curiosity, and a willingness to look closely.
The more-than-human world is far more ancient than anything man-made. Its beings speak to us of timeless truths, and our consciousness opens to these old friends, as insights and emotions are unlocked in their presence and unfold for us. It is as if these environments hold the keys to our psyches. They help us let go of stress, remind us of our place in the universe, and show us the great cycles with which we are called to align ourselves.
Go and sit by a babbling brook and focus on the sound of the water. Listen to the sound of the wind. Gaze out over the ocean and listen to the rhythm of the water. Sit by a crackling fire and smell the aroma of smoke of dry pine branches popping as they release the stored light of the sun. Place your palms on warm concrete and feel the stable earth element beneath it supporting you. Ponder a dandelion growing nobly through a crack of concrete. Society may be telling us that we need more, always more, but stop and listen to what the earth and sky are trying to tell us. Take a deep breath and empty your mind as you exhale. Look around and receive the miracle of this moment. You are enough.
Ursasana: Bear Pose
People say that what we’re all seeking a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Many years ago, a bear sat down next to me while I was meditating in the woods. It was an afternoon in mid-October in the Berkshires, and I had been mountain biking in my favorite preserve. I took a break from riding to enjoy the perfect fall afternoon. I was overflowing with gratitude. My life was going well.
I sat under a strong oak tree and closed my eyes. I asked Spirit to come and sit with me, to share in my heartfelt thanksgiving. I spoke the words aloud and immediately heard footsteps in the woods behind me. They got closer, but I continued with my meditation, until directly behind me, I heard a twig snap and a loud exhalation through a very big nose. I knew in that moment, in every cell of my body, that a bear was behind me.
My heart pounded, and adrenaline surged through my body. I was totally alert and aware. I very slowly turned my head to look behind me and saw shining black fur from shoulder to rump, close enough to reach out and touch. It was a large black bear. Immediately my mind provided options for survival. Get up and run away? Get up and yell to scare the bear away? Climb a tree? Those ideas seemed bad. Sit still, do nothing, and breathe? Yes, that made sense. And so I did. I slowed my breathing and meditated on the intensity of my body’s response to this perceived threat.
In my yoga I had learned that strong sensations and emotions, including fear, can be powerful doorways into meditation. Rather than turning away from an uncomfortable experience, I had learned to breathe into what I was feeling. In this case, the fight-or-flight response was a huge wave washing over my mind, body, and soul. Instead of making a big story about what was happening, I remembered to face the experience in all of its raw power. I had the thought, This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me! I had another thought, too: This might be the worst thing that has ever happened to me! Many hundreds of hours, I had practiced breathing through the intense sensations of yoga postures, watching my experience without reaction and allowing things to be the way they are. All that training on the mat was now being put to the test in a pose I had never tried before, Bear Pose, or Ursasana.
For a moment, I wondered how it might feel to be bitten by a bear. That was not a helpful thought, so I returned to my breathing. Moments seemed to stretch into hours. The bear walked out from behind the tree and sat next to me. It was smelling me. Still I remained motionless. In time, the bear walked away. I turned to look as it walked away. It turned to look back at me. Our eyes met, and then it disappeared down the hill. I stood up and fell down, my legs weak and wobbly. I stood again and got to my bike. I climbed on board and pedaled out of those woods like a bat out of hell!
For days, I was in a state of profound shock and elation. My life was filled with magic, possibility, and power. Anything could happen. I felt incredibly alive. The presence of the bear stayed with me — even to this day. I have never been a thrill seeker or adrenaline junkie. I’ve never jumped out of an airplane or tried bungee jumping. I’ve always been drawn to more meditative outdoor activities, like canoeing, archery, or watching birds. But sitting in meditation with a bear gave me an unexpected adrenaline jolt.
While sitting with a bear is not likely to happen to many people, you may encounter other life-forms or elements that can help you awaken and experience a greater degree of aliveness. We long for connection with our relatives who roam the forests and wild lands, and we still find nourishment in their company. In mindful rewilding, we open ourselves up to the sensations and life-giving experiences that the land holds for us. Such moments of communion between you and the living earth can open doorways into a more magical, mysterious, and meaningful life. And it makes all the difference to have the right mental tools and preparation to help you ride the waves of powerful energies you will encounter in both the human and the more-than-human worlds.
Skill in Action: Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow
Yoga is skill in action. BHAGAVAD GITA
Imagine if I had acted on my fear and allowed the adrenaline to make me react to the bear standing two feet behind me. What might have happened if I had jumped up suddenly and screamed or tried to climb a tree? What if you are having a challenging day at work and someone sends you an email that you find sharp, disrespectful, or unnecessary? Do you fire off the first reaction that comes to mind? Or do you pause, take a deep breath, and think about the ramifications?
There are times when an instinctive reaction is absolutely necessary, when you are in a life-threatening situation and have no time to reflect. Then the sympathetic nervous system takes control and helps you through it. Most of the time, however, our situations are not life-threatening, which means that reacting unthinkingly can often lead to outcomes that create more pain and suffering in the long run. This is why learning to pause and see the bigger picture can help us act more skillfully. Think about Edgar Mitchell looking down on this planet from outer space — that is what we are learning to do with mindfulness, except that the living earth is the experience we are seeing from a higher perspective, with a bigger view of time and the consequences of our actions.
In Kripalu Yoga, we have a method that helps us more skillfully navigate the strong sensations that arise in yoga practice. When held for long periods of time, yoga postures can generate powerful feelings. They were created to help us move through and release any energy blocks in our minds and bodies, places where stress or life experience has caused us to tense up and armor ourselves. These postures also help us when we encounter the discomfort that direct contact with the living earth can bring, such as experiences of cold, wet rain, mosquitos, or oppressive heat and humidity. When sitting with that bear, I used a technique we lovingly call “BRFWA”: Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow.
You might use BRFWA on your first walk in a park or a wood that is new to you. You might use it during your first solo camping experience or when you see an animal that frightens you. I once used BRFWA when I got caught in a rip current while swimming off the Big Island of Hawaii. It allowed me to remain calm and to act skillfully, possibly saving my life. In any survival situation, the first advice is almost always to remain calm and think, not to react or panic. But how we are supposed to do that is not often explained.
By practicing mindful rewilding, you are not looking to put yourself in a survival situation, though many of these skills can help you feel more confident and capable when you’re away from the conveniences of modern society. Inevitably, the more time we spend outdoors, the more likely we are to come up against our comfort zone or find ourselves in a situation where remaining calm and being skillful are necessary. In these moments, BRFWA can be a great ally.
I recommend that you use BRFWA regularly as a moment-to-moment practice. Using it daily will support you developing a general state of mindfulness. You can also use BRFWA to go deeper into a pleasant experience. Maybe you practice it when you take a walk or when you dip your feet in a cool stream or when you feel a fresh breeze moving through your neighborhood. Practice BRFWA regularly so that when something truly challenging happens, it is second nature for you, as it was for me when I had my encounters with the bear and the rip current.
BRFWA: BREATHE, RELAX, FEEL, WATCH, ALLOW
To begin working with BRFWA outdoors, try the following steps.
1. Go outside. Find a place where you can sit comfortably and have a view of a natural, outdoor space. (This might also be the place where you want to establish your daily nature meditation.)
2. Get grounded. Feel your sitz bones and imagine they are plugging in to the earth. As you ground down through your seat, also lengthen your spine and let it rise up through the crown of your head. Imagine that your spine is the trunk of a great tree and you are the bridge that connects the heavens and the earth.
3. Breathe. Soften your belly, and slowly deepen your breathing with each inhalation and exhalation. If possible, breathe in and out through the nose. A good ratio for this breath is to inhale for four counts and hold the breath gently for seven counts; then exhale for eight counts, and repeat the cycle. As you breathe, notice the qualities of the air. What is the temperature? Is it hot, cold, or somewhere in between? How moist or dry is the air? What can you smell? Leaves, pine needles, the smoke from nearby fireplaces? In which direction is the wind moving? What can you hear? Your breath, your heartbeat, your joints settling? Branches creaking against each other, leaves rustling in the breeze, dew dripping to the ground, chipmunks or squirrels scampering, crows cawing, pigeons cooing, an airplane passing overhead?
4. Relax. As you breathe, begin to consciously scan your body. Notice any places where you are holding tension. Focus on each of these places, as you continue to breathe calmly and deeply, and invite these places to soften and let go. Maybe your forehead is tense, and your brow is furrowed. Maybe your shoulders are tight and raised with tension. Perhaps your jaw is clenched. See if you can allow your jaw to relax, so that your teeth are parted. Invite your tongue to sit heavy and relaxed in your mouth, with the tip of the tongue resting against the ridge of skin behind your two front top teeth. With each exhalation, feel tension melting out of your body, mind, and spirit. Relax into the support of the earth element. Feel the earth beneath you and within your bones and muscles.
5. Feel. As you continue to breathe and relax, notice what you can feel. Notice your body and what your body can feel — the air on your skin, the earth against your buttocks and legs, the light on your skin or coming through your clothing. Notice your heart and how you are feeling right now, not from a place of judgment, but from a place of compassion for yourself, and from a larger perspective, from your witness. Notice how the breath moving in and out helps you to feel more. This is one of the great secrets of yoga: the more deeply you breathe, the more of your own life you can feel.
6. Watch. Be the witness. Observe your experience and allow as much space as you can for whatever is happening to be the way it is. Simply observe the land around you. Notice movement wherever it may be. Watch the play of light and the subtle movement created by the atmosphere’s constant state of motion. Watch everything, and be curious about any life you see, whether birds in the bushes or trees, ants crawling on the ground, or a squirrel leaping from limb to limb. When you come into the present moment using these steps, doors of perception will open to you. You will see the world through new eyes.
7. Allow. Let it be. Let the moment be exactly the way that it is. Let go of grasping to your idea of what this moment should be. Let go of any aversion to things as they are. See if you can simply allow this moment to be as it is, and give yourself the opportunity to experience this moment right now in its pure expression. No matter the weather, no matter the terrain, can you allow this living earth and your relationship with it to be the way that it is? Moment by moment, can you keep letting go of your opinions, preferences, and judgments? It’s not easy for any of us, which is why we practice. This awareness is something to come back to moment after moment after moment, always beginning again.
Moving from the human world, which is often fast-paced and frenetic, into the rhythms and cycles of the living earth is an adjustment. Our modern world is dramatically out of sync with the pace of nature, and even people who enjoy being outdoors don’t always take the time to meet nature where it is. But when we are centered and in a mindful state of being, we are more closely attuned to the presence, cadence, and language of the living earth. We can leave our troubles at the trailhead, exhaling and letting go of any agenda we might be carrying, simply allowing the land to hold us for a time.
When we invite mindfulness in nature, we draw our awareness closer to the wilderness-dwelling spiritual seekers and communities who journey into the higher realms of consciousness. When we inhabit the present moment, we draw closer as well to our wild relatives in the branches, burrows, bushes, and other folded contours in this living earth. With our bare feet on the ground and our breath flowing steady and smooth, we become steady both in our inner and outer landscape.