This morning during our writer's workshop, we did a new exercise. We continued our morning meditation with a "walking meditation". We used the tunings of our previous mornings and carried them into the trails outside the Sanctuary.
Dani Shapiro has been deft with giving this large group of writers tools to take home and use to help in the honing of their craft. This was a new one for me. Now I walk in the woods almost every day, and I meditate every day, but I've never done them consciously together. The results were interesting and immediately rewarding.
I, along with 40 other, people stepped outside, put our shoes back on and went on an intentionally meditative walk for 20 minutes. Being a trail runner and woodland dog walker, I'm pretty accustomed to being aware of the rhythm of my body and the balance of it moving through space. Whether being a blessing or a curse, I tend to see, hear and smell everything I walk near. In so doing, I've see patterns in nature, and with humans, my whole life.
However, on this walk, retaining the meditative state I'd established in the Sanctuary, it was a heightened experience. I noticed myself moving through space; the light, the air, the crunch of pebbles under my feet and I walked more slowly ("Zombie-like", she suggested before we started the exercise). I walked so slowly at first that I found two flies chasing each other in the shade behind the Sanctuary, zig-zagging from leaf to leaf, while only flying a few inches above the ground. Then I observed an almost dead worm wrapped around some pebbles within the circumference of the leafs and wondered if the flies were planning lunch or a late afternoon snack. My eyes drifted to the ledge face floor and noticed an Indian Pipe plant, which had I been walking at my usual pace, would have been missed. I found humor in it's nickname, corpse plant, as I thought of the worm and the flies.
Next I decided to ascend the path above the Sanctuary, as I'd seen hiking trails drawn there on the campus map. It was hard to downshift my usual pace on the ascent, especially with gate set with the flagstones built into the hillside. This time it was my ears, not my eyes, that directed me. As I reach the top of the landscaped path, I followed what appeared to be a deer path. I was hearing cicadas and some birds trying to call each other through the din. I kept pausing to see the dappled waves of sunlight hitting the skin on my freckled arms and legs. My face would then turn up towards the sun and I'd listen for the bird calls. I knew the calls, but couldn't remember which birds were attached to them.
As I reached the ridge, the trail turned into a human one, complete with red circles painted about 6' up the trunks of pine trees every 50' along the trail or so. The cicadas quited and the bird's squawk to my right grew more incessant. I headed down the trail, following my ears while looking down at the path, until a drumming, loud and clear started against a tree to my left made me look up and across the canopy. Ahhhh.....now I knew who they must be! Sure enough that was all the partner to my right needed and it swooped down, flying just 10' in front of me, through the clearing of the human path, and across to a dead tree near it's mate. It began to drum and drill with it's beak in kind. Reunited the Pileated pair settled down to a happy silence.
http://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/pileated-woodpecker?gclid=CjwKEAjw6IauBRCJ3KPXkNro1BoSJAAhXxpyI5Lk29_odvK12kHE7SYB2CjghCFCzQyKYOL6RbhlUxoCxU7w_wcB
After our morning session, I had lunch with some other writers, as I've been doing every meal, much to my delight. I then decided to go for a swim down at the lake before starting my afternoon writing session.
Once at the lake, I stumbled upon another workshop group ~ Singing in the Stream. The teacher for that group has worked with musicians and singers around the world and taught them how to use the body as an instrument in every way (if you know Bobby McFerren's music, you know what I mean be every way, and BM was a student of this teacher). This afternoon, they decided to actually sing in water, so they were at the water's edge of the beach that we all share. It was a different form of meditation to come upon this group practicing and dancing in the water while kids with noodles jumping off the dock on one side and adults lounging in chairs with books on the other side, passively absorbed the fruits of their song.
I actively tuned in. First on the beach, then in the water and finally as I kayaked around the circumference of the lake, as I was down wind the whole time. Today the lake had a new surprise for me; the duck week was in full bloom, both above and below the water. Oh to be a painter today, or to have remembered my phone-camera! Across the lake circular yellow waxen lilies bloomed and in the coves there were white feather lilies unfurling. Yesterday none of the flowers showed themselves ~ and today it's as if the singing summoned them to open!
So it seems that this place and the work people are doing here is taking hold of my being and I intend to put these new tools in my bag and have the intention of using them daily.
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