Meditation
Eco Active Blog
Sustainability in Action
Nature Meditation
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By Jonathon Huet
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Being in nature uplifts our mind and body and many look to nature as a place for healing and personal growth.
Why nature? Immersion in nature produces a flourish of nurturing signals, understood by brain and body. It stimulates positive feelings of wellbeing. These in turn help us to cultivate greater openness, creativity, connection, generosity, and resilience. To maintain wellbeing a connection to nature needs to be part of our daily lives and become a constant connection, wherever we live and work. Nature meditation can be effective in deepening this connection and though you can meditate in the wilds on a mountain retreat that is not always an option. You simply need to create the a space and time where we will not be disturbed. This can happen in a small room or a small space within a room in the centre of a busy city. Initially this may be just ten minutes a day and can be lengthened accordingly. By following Jonathon's guided meditation the aim is for you to deepen your connection to nature and experience that one pure moment that can infiltrate your entire life. In Jonathon's words "although I work in nature at the Sustainability Centre, I live in a one bed roomed flat in the centre of Brighton, being a morning person my meditation time is early morning before my partner awakes. For you it could be in the evening or during the day, the important part is not being disturbed". Jonathon Huet is part of our Education team and runs alternative education sessions which reach young people who have challenging lives. The sessions are based on the work and awards of John Muir. Topics include ecology, biodiversity and sustainability. The sessions give the young people a chance to explore nature and have proven to help with self-esteem and social interaction promoting the need for the freedom to be outdoors. Jonathon is also known as a Woodland Bard and is a specialist in tree and plant folklore for over twenty years. He has specialist knowledge of British flora, environmental storytelling and Celtic folklore, told with passion and enthusiasm brought alive with poetry, song and rhythm. |
"This sudden splash into pure wildness - baptism in Nature's warm heart - how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons... Here without knowing it we still were at school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped but charmed into us.
Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!" John Muir |
