Gaia: Saving Her, Saving Ourselves – An Excerpt | Gaia, Saving Her, Saving Ourselves

My seventh (!) book recently came out — Gaia: Saving Her, Saving Ourselves — and I wanted to share a small part of it with you as a sort of holiday treat. 🙂

Exercise: Deeply Listening with the Senses

(This is a portion of the exercise found in the book.)

I encourage you to travel to nature in some way. This might be stepping outside in your backyard, or it could be traveling to a local park. If you cannot leave your location, turning on a nature show or looking at a nature-inspired picture will work too.

However, you can and will, allow yourself to be immersed in nature. You can use your senses to do this – and use as many as you have access to. You might begin by looking around at the place you are to see what you see. The colors. The shapes. The gradient of light. What can you notice when you use your eyes to experience a place in nature?

Moving to your ears and sound. You might close your eyes to focus or you might simply draw in your breath to become still. Try to listen to things that are close to you. Maybe that’s your breath. Perhaps it’s an earring that moves when you turn your head. Once you can hear things near you, try to expand your awareness to things that are a little farther away. This might be an animal or a tree branch. Continue to move your awareness out until you can’t quite distinguish things that are further in the distance.

Notice next the things you can touch and feel. You might reach out to a plant or to the ground. What does it feel like? What can you notice when you touch nature? What does the wind on your skin feel like? What is the temperature, and how does it change?

You might think about the scents in the air. What can you smell? Do you smell things in the air or do you need to get close to objects to find out what they smell like? If you can’t smell anything, can you smell your skin? Can you notice any scent of lingering food on your fingers?

Finally, you can see what you taste in your mouth. This can look like opening your mouth to the air to see if you notice anything new. You could also taste plants that you know to be safe. Or you can make foods from nature and taste what you create.

You can listen deeply to the world as it unfolds around you in all of these moments. It can be so tricky to slow down enough to know this beautiful earth. It is easy to stay on screens and watch videos about things versus being in the real world. Though there might be times when this is safer and easier, I encourage you to continue to find ways to connect with nature to get to know what She might need from you. From us.

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Thank you for reading and supporting my work!

You can find any of my books at my publisher and major booksellers online, as well as at my website, my Bookshop storefront, and some local shops.

Happy Solstice to you and yours.

Much more to come in the new year! www.irisanyamoon.com

Irisanya