Why practice this? Many folks find it hard to slow down. Days are packed with busyness. Common feelings are loneliness, disconnection and anger. Doing this practice, slows us down, inviting and creating space for some other feelings. You may just find your happiness. Many feelings come forward including appreciation and gratitude.   A willing heart will help get you there.  But as your Guide, I’ll help you find this path by asking you to use your senses. As we engage in discovery there will be opportunities to sit and rest.  Just be.  Leave all the minutes and hours of today which have been used up. They are Gone.  Just be here.  That’s all. Be here.

Sometimes we’ll sit. Other times I’ll ask you to walk out a bit and feel something like the wind on your cheeks, or see the clouds, listen to a stream, touch a tree, smell a leaf, pick up something small that delights you. We’ll end with tea, and a small snack, will offer gratitude to the land and the woods. Pack up and walk back. How far is all this? I always have a plan, including the distance, but in truth I don’t know. Generally it takes an hour and a half and sometimes a bit more. It depends on what we discover and how we share those discoveries.

This walk is built on a Japanese practice called Shinrin-yoku. It is a way to rekindle one’s connection with nature and leave behind the noise and demands of our familiar everyday world. No phones, no text, no broadcast media, no demands on your time or your energy. A part of a day that you slow down and enjoy the pleasure of the moment.