The nature of humans and trees
This week I spent a day attempting to teach primary school children about mindfulness with varying degrees of success. The morning the classes went ok, less ok, ok, amazing. Some of the kids got it and some of them didn't. And at lunchtime whilst I was thinking about what I had done wrong and what I could have done differently one of the teachers commented on how interesting that the children who struggled to sit or lie still and breathe were the ones who were struggling with other problems. The boy who had lost his parents, the boy whose parents were fighting all the time. I stopped and breathed and felt the sadness and compassion. You never really know what's going on for the other person. You never really have control to make things a certain way. Taking it personally seemed so bizarre. So when the last class of the day went a bit pear shaped, the children kept moving around, interrupting, messing around. I carried on, noticing I was feeling tired, and I breathed and I smiled.
“When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.”
Why not spend some time turning people into trees this weekend! And spend some time with actual trees in nature, or some time doing something that really resources you.
Doing some mindfulness in nature is a wonderful thing to do. Feeling yourself standing and breathing, feeling the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the breeze. Giving your weight to the ground and letting go of the tension that has built up in the face and the neck and the shoulders. Letting it go with the out breath. Letting the belly soften, the hands relax and seeing the blue sky and the shapes of the clouds, the shapes and colours and textures of the trees and seeing how each of these make you feel inside. Smelling the scent of grass or flowers or deer poo! Smiling at all experiences. You can even spend some time imagining being in nature.
The most fascinating thing about the mind is that what you perceive you reflect and the less tension in the body, the quieter the mind, the more you reflect it. Imagining a beautiful flower, it's colour, shape and smell, and feeling the beauty, imagining a mountain and feeling the strength and steadiness, imagining a calm lake and feeling the stillness and the coolness, imagining the air and feeling the spaciousness and the lightness.
How extraordinary the mind is!
If you have children and you want to try some mindfulness with them Thich Nhat Hanh has a lovely pebble meditation which does the flower, mountain, lake and air. https://plumvillage.org/news/the-pebble-meditation/
And there are some other ideas here https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-18136/7-fun-ways-to-teach-your-kids-mindfulness.html (the bell and other sounds went down well in every class)