Discovering Ourselves Through Living Relationships with Nature
Guided Patterns for Lived Function
Renee Lindstrom | @insideawareness
An Invitation to Inner Awareness
What happens when we begin experiencing ourselves in relationship with our surroundings rather than simply moving through them?
Food Inspires begins with a familiar human capacity: sensing, experiencing and discovering.
Before exploring our relationship with food, we begin by becoming curious about how we experience ourselves in everyday life.
Our physical sensations, thoughts, feelings, surroundings and daily activities are interconnected. Yet we may spend much of our time thinking about what we need to accomplish without consciously recognizing how we are experiencing ourselves while doing it.
Level One — Inner Balance and Daily Awareness introduces opportunities to recognize these relationships through lived experience.
The intention is not to change ourselves or achieve a particular state of balance. It is to become familiar with the experience of sensing and recognizing ourselves.
Beginning with Inner Balance
The Infinity Flower introduces four interconnected qualities of our inner experience:
- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional
- Spirit/Faith
At the centre is “I”, representing ourselves as participants in our own lived experience.
Through gentle reflection, listening and simple meditation, we can begin noticing these different qualities without needing to judge or change them.
What am I sensing physically?
What thoughts are present?
What feelings am I experiencing?
What gives me a sense of connection, meaning or inner support?
These inquiries offer opportunities for becoming more familiar with ourselves.
Inner Walking Patterns — Living Relationships with Nature
Nature offers an ever-changing environment through which we can explore our relationship with ourselves.
A familiar pathway may move from an open landscape into a sheltered woodland. The softness of moss, changing colours of leaves, movement of clouds or spaces between tree branches may attract our curiosity.
Light and shade, openness and enclosure, stillness and movement provide contrasting environmental qualities.
The principles of yin and yang may offer a language for recognizing these differences without prescribing how they should be experienced.
As we become curious about our surroundings, we may begin recognizing our own responses.
Perhaps we notice our breathing, a physical sensation, a feeling or a change in our attention.
There is no particular experience to achieve.
The invitation is to discover ourselves in relationship with the environment rather than simply identify what we see.
These explorations can take place through comfortable walking, standing or sitting in nature.
From Sensory Experience to Conscious Recognition
As we move through different environments, opportunities arise to pause and revisit our experience.
What attracted my attention?
What am I sensing?
How am I experiencing myself in these surroundings?
Is something different from a few moments ago?
The intention is not to think our way toward a particular experience.
It is to allow sensory participation to introduce discoveries that may later become consciously recognizable.
Through conversation, drawing, journaling or quiet reflection, we can begin identifying relationships that were present within our experiences.
The experience comes first. Recognition offers an opportunity to revisit what we have discovered.
Bringing Our Discoveries into Everyday Life
As our relationship with nature develops, we may begin recognizing similar qualities of sensory participation in other environments.
The colours and textures of nature may inspire curiosity about seasonal foods.
The changing qualities of a pathway may introduce awareness of movement and physical balance.
Light, colour, space and arrangement may influence how we experience our homes and kitchens.
Recognizing our thoughts, feelings and sensory responses may introduce opportunities for greater clarity around personal intentions and choices.
These are not expected outcomes. They are possibilities that may emerge through a growing relationship with ourselves and our surroundings.
Within Food Inspires, this foundation becomes a bridge to the next level: Timing and a Living Relationship with Food.
The same curiosity that attracts us to the colours, textures and aromas of nature can accompany us into selecting, preparing and enjoying nourishment.
Continuing the Discovery
Level One introduces a foundation for learning through sensory experience and conscious recognition.
It is not a movement program to perform or a collection of techniques for creating a particular emotional state.
It is an invitation to discover the living relationships already present within our everyday experiences.
As we become more familiar with ourselves through nature, we may begin recognizing opportunities for greater participation in movement, nourishment, relationships and personal intentions.
How am I participating in creating balance in my daily life?
The discovery remains open even after we have found words to describe it.
Interested in Exploring Food Inspires?
Food Inspires offers guided opportunities to discover relationships with nature, nourishment and everyday living through your own experiences.
Whether you are interested in participating or learning more about facilitator mentorship, you are welcome to begin with an inquiry.
Make an Inquiry
©Food Inspires — Guided Patterns of Learning for Lived Function – Renee Lindstrom | @insideawareness
