Zenmai- A Practice of Unfoldment in Nature

Zenmai is the Japanese name for the Asian Royal Fern or Osmunda japonica. It’s an edible fern that has also been proven to purify air indoors. This is a practice of unfoldment to be done in Nature. It’s inspired by my studying with Steve March (Aletheia) for coaching and Mark Coleman (Awake In the Wild) for mindfulness in Nature. I am grateful for their wisdom and teachings.

Start by taking a long walk in nature where you can be mostly undisturbed. Refrain from talking to people and using your phone. Pay attention to all examples of zenmai or unfurling of leaves, ferns or other plants that you are encountering. Notice the life potential that is unfolding itself naturally in this process.

When you are ready, sit down for a meditation. Take a few deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. Gently close your eyes and turn your awareness to your breath. Once you feel settled and present, allow yourself to just be, let yourself unfold.

What are you feeling? What are you sensing in your body? What are you observing in this moment? Can you sense into your innate wholeness? Bringing back to mind one example of zenmai that you encountered during your walk, remember how beautiful it was in its own unfolding. Can you feel the same about yourself?

Trust that the life you want will unfold from where you are now. As you become more aware of the natural process of unfoldment, the one of the fern or leaves that you observed or your own that you are now experiencing, your trust in it will deepen. Accept, love, and value yourself exactly as you are.

When you are ready to end this practice, gently open your eyes and stretch.

How Can We Be Good Ancestors? Self-Reflection from the book The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric

This is a self-reflection from the book The Good Ancestor- A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking by Roman Krznaric. It’s based on the six ways of thinking long that the author recommends.

Deep-Time Humility:
What have been your most profound experiences of deep time, and how did they affect you?

Intergenerational Justice:
What, for you, are the most powerful reasons for caring about future generations?

Legacy Mindset:
What legacy to you want to leave for your family, your community, and for the living world?

Transcendent Goal:
What do you think should be the ultimate goal of the human species?

Holistic Forecasting:
Do you anticipate a future of civilizational breakdown, radical transformation, or a different pathway?

Cathedral Thinking:
What long-term projects could you pursue with others to extend beyond your own lifetime?

Climate Action Lists from the book Regeneration by Paul Hawken

The following text is extracted from the book by Paul Hawken titled Regeneration- Ending the Climate Crisis in one Generation- p 249

1. CLIMATE CHECK LIST

Where to Start

A climate checklist is informed by straightforward principles. They help you guide your endeavors, from farms to finance, cities to clothing, groceries to grasslands, and are applicable to every level of activity: people, homes, groups, companies, communities, cities -and countries too. The guidelines are yes or no questions. Every action either moves toward a desired outcome or heads away from it. The number one guideline is the fundamental principle of regeneration. The remaining are outcomes of that principle.

1. Does the action create more life or reduce it?

2. Does it heal the future or steal the future?

3. Does it enhance human well-being or diminish it?

4. Does it prevent disease or profit from it?

5. Does it create livelihoods or eliminate them?

6. Does it restore land or degrade it?

7. Does it increase global warming or decrease it?

8. Does it serve human needs or manufacture human wants?

9. Does it reduce poverty or expand it?

10. Does it promote fundamental human rights or deny them?

11. Does it provide workers with dignity or demean them?

12. In short, is the activity regenerative or extractive?

How you apply, score, or evaluate these principles is up to you. Most of what we do does not tick all the boxes. However, like a compass, it shows us the direction and where to go. By employing these guidelines, you pivot and begin, action by action, bit by bit, step by step to create regeneration in one’s life. What am I eating? Why? How am I feeling? What is happening in my community? What am I wearing? What am I buying? What am I making? Etc.

2. CLIMATE PUNCH LIST

A punch list is a personal, group, or institutional checklist. Because of the differences among people, cultures, incomes, and knowledge, there is no one common or correct checklist. The top “ten” solutions to reverse global warming are an abstraction. The true top solutions are what you can, want, and will do. The value of a punch list is that when you commit to something, things can happen. A punch list can be for an individual, family, community, company, or city. It is the list of actions you or your group will undertake and accomplish over a predetermined span of time -one month, one year, five years, or more. You can make different lists for different time periods -this week and this year, for example. If you go to www.regeneration.org/punchlist you will find a kit, a worksheet, and more sample punch lists.

A sample punch list from an individual:

1. Phase out single use plastics by use case, starting with food and beverage purchases outside the home and moving on to kitchen, bathroom, and lifestyle goods

2. Purchase renewable energy credits for the energy use in my apartment.

3. Set a clothing budget for the year of no more than ten new garments, at least 8 of which from vintage stores or smaller sustainable brands.

4. Engage with a citizen’s climate action group, such as the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, to pressure my state and federal representatives to support climate policy and set ambitious emissions reduction targets.

5. Support First Nations landback movements with recurring donations or by paying a land tax to the nations whose traditional lands I inhabit.

6. Engage with my city council and other community groups to advocate for urban green space as well as the protection of open space preserves and local wildlife sanctuaries and/or corridors.

7. Start or join a monthly climate and environmental justice reading group with friends and family to keep us all learning and in discussion about ways to joyfully hold one another accountable to Just Transition efforts.

If you need help creating your punch list, contact me. I’ll be glad to help.

Practice: Embracing the Unknown

Today as you start your solo meandering walk, preferably in Nature, bring this theme of Embracing the Unknown with you on the path. As you meander, forget about reaching a specific destination, or walking a number of miles, or being on a schedule or navigating a given trail. Let go of the need to know where you are going. Notice when your mind is busy trying to figure things out and pause to reconnect with your intention to practice Embracing the Unknown. Experiment with walking as if in a liminal space where you do not know what is next: whom you may encounter, what the next turn may show, or what else you may discover on the path. Pay special notice to what you may be attracted to in this special state of awareness and of any insights that the natural world may give you about Embracing the Unknown. When you get back home, journal about these images or insights to further understand the wisdom that you may received about releasing the need for certainty in life.

Cultivating Wabi Sabi- A Nature Practice

Start by taking a long walk in nature where you can be mostly undisturbed. Refrain from talking to people and using your phone. Pay attention to all examples of wabi sabi that you are encountering. Can you see that a tree, among many other trees in the forest, does not judge itself, compare itself, blame itself? Can you see its beauty despite the fact that it may be twisted, decaying, broken, unbalanced or otherwise imperfect? Can you see how it still provides value for the forest ecosystem just by being there, despite (or may be because of) its imperfections?

When you are ready, sit down for a meditation. Take a few deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. Gently close your eyes and turn your awareness to your breath. Once you feel settled and present, slowly reflect on a part of yourself that you may not have been fully accepting. How can you use the concept of wabi sabi to look at things differently? Can you see the beauty in this physical or character flaw? Bringing back to mind one example of wabi sabi that you encountered during your walk, remember how beautiful in and of itself it was, no matter its imperfections. Can you feel the same about yourself?

Now reflect on the fact that you are original in this world. Can you see how -your mind, heart and body- are completely unique? Can you see that you too, like every thing else in this world, has value and worth simply by existing?

When you are ready to end this practice, gently open your eyes and stretch.

On The Wisdom of Walking in the Woods

“When the eyes and the ears are open, even the leaves on the trees teach like pages from the scriptures”

— Kabir

If you have visited my website, you may have been intrigued by my Medicine Walk offering called (Inner Compass) Wisdom Walk. Or, if you are a client, I may have suggested that you take on a walk as a new practice for your coaching program: labyrinth, hike or meditation walks are some of the practices I recommend often. But why? I strongly believe in the benefits of walking in nature to reconnect with oneself and the world. In this newsletter, I want to share some texts that point to the same conclusion.

Much has been written over the years about the physical, emotional and spiritual benefits of walking in nature (Thoreau: “An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”, Muir: "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.", Rousseau: “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think, my mind only works with my legs.”), but in recent times, nobody has written more beautifully and more completely on the subject than Rebecca Solnit in her 2000 masterpiece Wanderlust: A History of Walking.

She writes: “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.[…]

Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.[…]

The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along ..“

When you go on a Medicine walk, this is exactly what happens. Your mind, heart and body are in a conversation with the world. Your body relaxes, your mind slows down, your heart opens. You suddenly hear a message that you had missed before. Your attention is drawn by a natural element and you inquire: “what is this?”, “why am I receiving this now?”. As Kabir, a 15th-century Indian mystic poet and saint, says: When the eyes and the ears are open, even the leaves on the trees teach like pages from the scriptures.

Further proof of the benefits of being in nature with or without walking, can be found in the book The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. The Nature Fix demonstrates that our connection to nature is much more important to our cognition than we think and that even small amounts of exposure (just 5 hours per month according to the author) to the living world can improve our creativity and enhance our mood. Earlier in the year I wrote about Shinrin-Yoku or Forest Bathing and I was excited to read about it again in this book The Nature Fix- Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and more Creative by Florence Williams. Written in a journalistic style with tons of supporting evidence, scientific data, anecdotes and well told stories, Williams explores different beneficial aspects of Nature and takes us on world tour starting with Japan, then Korea, Finland and Scotland. She also takes us on a tour of our senses: starting with our sense of smell (aromatherapy in Japanese cypress forests), our sense of hearing (bird songs in Korea) and our sense of sight (fractals in Finland). Her book brings a global perspective on the status of the latest studies of nature practices and their alleged benefits. She affirms that 5 hours a month immersed in nature is enough to make a difference to our well-being. The best summary of the book is given in this YouTube video created by the author.

So remember: “Go outside. Go often. Bring friends. Breathe”.