Nature connectedness

And how we take meditation into the real world is through mindfulness practices anyway, so that we can be mindful through the things that we're doing and less reactive with more ease and equanimity.

Last week's podcast was about nature connectedness.

It was about how we can shift from using nature, enjoying the thrill of a trail, or using it to get an interval on a hill or something like that, to being in communion and having a relationship with nature.

And I said last week, there's a time and a place for doing our hard work.

Maybe it's the contact points of where you're sitting or what you're touching,

noticing how whatever you're touching meets you differently.

So if you're outside, and this is about nature connectedness, how does feeling the ground in whatever way you're connecting to it, through a bike or through your feet, How is that feeling for you? If you pause and feel the energy that you're receiving from the nature around you.

How it meets you.

And the other thing is how connected we feel.

And there's actually, that's what the podcast I did with Holly and Passmore and Molly Peterson was about, was something called nature connectedness.

And that's our sense of relationship with nature, whether you experience yourself as part of a living world or just using it, being out in it.

And that's a different feeling.

Another way is through just the sheer beauty of nature.

And then the other two pathways are through the meaning that we create and we get from being in nature and compassion.

So if you find that you don't slow down enough in nature, like you don't have to give up on being fast or on your workout goals, but just trying to focus a little bit more on this, makes such a big difference so there's one activity you can do called the three good things in nature and you can do it every single day for five days and just notice don't worry about logging data or like figuring out what bird is making that sound just experience it be there in the present moment and after five days in the research this actually improves people's nature connectedness and it lasts for up to two months later so doing this on a regular basis can make a big difference and it doesn't take very long and that said you know a lot of athletes who spend a lot of time in nature do feel more connected to nature than the average person because you are communing with that world so often so i'm not saying that everybody feels this way but it's just something to think about um Even as you're in nature to enhance your sense of nature connectedness, even if you already have it.

A lot of athletes are part of groups like Protect Our Winters and a lot of races will actually make a donation to environmental societies because athletes are in tune with nature.