Living in the moment (12/19/2021)

Each year, around this time of the year I seem to write a post where I review what happened in the world and in my life during the past year. I gave 2020 the proverbial middle finger for contributing COVID, my house arrest and tRump at his best. But what did 2021 bring us, or do I even want to write about it?

It is my understanding that the Buddhist are very strong believers of living in the moment. Living in the moment or not dwelling over the past and not being anxious over the future.

Dwelling over the past. My thesaurus tells me that the word dwell also means inhabit or live. This will age me, but it reminds me of one of my favorite Jethro Tull albums and associated tune “Living in the Past.” Part of the lyrics go like this:

Now there's revolution
But they don't know
What they're fighting
Let us close our eyes
Outside their lives
Go on much faster
Oh, we won't give in
We'll keep living in the past
Oh, we won't give in
Let's go living in the past
Oh no, no, we won't give in
Let's go living in the past

Damn, here I go again on a tangent, don’t I? Not really, the Album Living in the Past came out in 1969 and this part of the lyrics can apply to the much of the January 6th insurrection we saw. Those folks did not know what they were fighting for, and I am sure they still do not! They think they did, but was that really what was behind it all? A red-haired wannabe dictator who only cares about himself and maybe his rich cronies as long as they adore him, otherwise he’ll throw them under the bus. He somehow was able to whip up the masses with some popular ideas, but he doesn’t give a damn about them. The perfect demagogue, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro, etc. all in one person.

So yes, maybe it is better for me to live in the past, the times before we lost our innocence, and the country elected this red-haired wannabe dictator? Or should I focus on living in the moment? Boy what a conundrum.

This past year I have been very anxious about the future, my aging, and our environmental future as you can conclude from my blog posts. So, what remains? Yes, I better live in the moment, otherwise I’ll turn into a complete wreck!

But no, we can learn from the past and come to terms with it. I am still trying to do that in my personal life at times, although I think it is working most of the time. Regarding the future, I still need to plan, maybe try to lose those few pounds, my 2022 travel and teaching schedule, eventual retirement, and yes keep fighting for the environment and future generations. I wrote a post about bonsai work and how it is all based on long range planning (actually it was a political post, turned bonsai post, but as regular readers you know how my strange mind twists). So, living in the moment does not mean just sitting here staring at my belly button a.k.a. my computer. I want to try to make every moment count and live life to the fullest; enjoy it.

So maybe my next post will be a yearend review, although maybe not; I think I did a pretty good job at it here today.

I took this photo mid-November of my desk (top).  It is iconic for the year, I suppose.  Working from home and some of my (tropical) plants, inside for the winter months.  It is definitely not my Richmond office; they don't allow live plants there.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet (3/7/2017)

The Buddhist philosopher/scholar/Zen-master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his book “Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life”: 

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”   

That is what I try to do when I walk in the woods behind our house.  I just love to linger, look around and be mindful.  At times I enjoy the blue sky, look at the clouds, or how the sunlight plays with the bark on the trees.  Other days it may drizzle or it may be misty.  You often hear birds, sometimes there are swans in the ponds, sometimes you hear them flying over, and often you see deer darting off the path especially early in the morning or around dusk; no day is the same.  When I can, I will do it: I let my feet, eyes and senses kiss the earth.

I took this picture during our most recent walk in the woods behind our home.  I ventured of the regular path to  look at this pond and liked how the trees lined up.  When I arrived home, Google had somehow enhanced the photograph into what you see here, and actually I liked it and want to share it with you all.

Thich Nhat Hanh is also reported to have said: 

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

Recognizing that miracle, savoring it, and protecting it is so important for us and that curious child and all future children.  I would like to add that we need to live as if we are kissing the Earth with our souls.  

Naturally there are days that I or we cannot linger and enjoy our walk as we should.  We are on a mission, we have to walk the dogs and then go to work, go to church, run errands, or go do something.  Let’s walk to the pond, the green woods, the "cookie tree" (that is the tree where the dogs always get a treat in the hope that when they get lost in the woods that they will return to), or the road we tell each other.  We may even put the dogs on a leash so they don’t doddle.

Sometimes those days can be frustrating, the dogs did not cooperate.  They ran through the mud or went swimming; they were sniffing too long and we were in a hurry, you name it.  Other times, even though we were in a hurry, you come back recharged; you saw something in the woods, you experienced something, or there was something intangible that flipped that switch that made you feel good (anyway).

But the other thing can sometimes happen also: a well-intended walk gone bad!  We had a few.  Recently one of our dogs disappeared.  We split up and spend a frantic hour looking for him, to be called by someone that they had found him and were at our home to drop him off.  This weekend we came upon a place where someone had been illegally cutting firewood in the woods behind our homes.  Instead of ignoring it and continuing our walk, the firewood hoarders we are, we stole two good looking pieces of wood that had been split and carried them home.  All the sudden our mindful walk in the woods became work and heavy lifting in the woods and much less enjoyable.  Gone was the meditation.  On top of that our deaf beagle all the sudden seemed to lose sight of us and did not know where we were and my wife had to chase her down.  There went our nice enjoyable meditative walk kissing the earth with our senses, out of the window.

In his book “Being Peace” Thich Nhat Hanh writes:  

“An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do. If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.”

Those two pieces of wood were oak and we are happy that they are.  They are heavy and will heat our home for an hour, even though it interrupted our more mindful walk.

This is what I have been thinking and writing about lately: "Forest Bathing" and "Nature Deficit Disorder".  It is so important to spend time in and with nature; whether it is walking in the woods, working in your garden, attending your potted plants (or bonsais in my case), or just standing there, staring at a tree.  It heals, lowers the blood pressure and is good for you.  Go outside, enjoy nature and fight to preserve it for you and future generations!

Forest bathing (2/22/2017)

Wow, I learned a new phrase this week: “Forest-Bathing”.  So, now some of you have also.  It has nothing to do with taking a bath or a shower in the woods, although I have always wanted to build an outdoor shower and in our case the shower would look out into the forest, so technically it could be forest bathing.  No, it is spending time in the woods and letting the woods come over you and improve your health. 

Readers of my blog know that I frequently write about "Nature Deficit Disorder", in fact there are 31 posts (32 with this one ... check the "labels" section) by now in which I mention it or at least somehow write that at times I need to reconnect with nature; just to get my sanity back.  Well, it seems that forest-bathing or shinrin-yoku as it is called in Japan is real!  Shinrin-yoku is a very important national public health program that was started there in 1982.  Now research is showing that regular bathers have lower cortisol (stress hormone) levels, lower blood pressure, lower pulse rates, and less variability in their heart rates.  A Japanese study even showed that it increased the activity of the natural killer cells in the human immune system.  These cells appear to fight off viruses and tumor formation and they seem to be associated with cancer prevention according to an article written by Ephrat Livni in 2016. 

Walking through the woods this past weekend it was so warm that even this early in February the turtles were out sunning.  I wonder what they could find to eat.

A much more detailed article was written in 2012 in the Outside magazine, and it seems that an aromatic volatile substance called phytoncides may be involved.  Trees give off these substances and Dr. Qing Li from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo found that when he locked up subjects overnight into a hotel room with this substance piped in the air they also had high levels of the killer cell versus subjects who were locked up without the substance in the air.  Moreover, the killer cells levels stayed elevated in the subjects' systems for a few weeks.  Just breathing the extract from a tree under laboratory conditions gave the author of the article an instant 12 point drop in blood pressure.

But what does forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku entail?  In my eyes it is kind of what you make it.  From what I understand it is a combination of spirituality, meditation, and at the same time a form of aromatherapy.  The phytoncides that the plants give off is a chemical that seems to have a lot of, yet to understand functions.  However, one thing it is sure, it seems to be good for our well-being when we breath it in.  You may not smell it, but it is there.  It is the fresh smell of the forest.  That together with living in the moment the shedding of all your daily worries and concentrating on the beauty around you and being one with nature is what forest bathing is.  It does sound a lot like taking care of the nature deficit disorder, isn't it?

Believe it or not there is actually an organization that teaches you to become a Shinrin-yoku or Forest Therapy Guide.  I would love to do this, but of course it is in California and probably too expensive for my pockets (I really need to start advertising on this blog).  However, I feel I can probably do it without the "formal" seven session training, but it would be nice.  Monica Schwartz took the course and this is the link to her blog about the course.

In her blog about the course Monica details a lot about the spiritual and personal aspects of the program, and her growth as a teacher.  Her website/blog (which is titled Life out of Bounds) is a wonderful place to visit anyway.  The course appears to be on seven Saturdays near the San Francisco area.  It starts with a ritual where people collect a piece of nature (in her case it was a rock from a creek) and put it in a circle, symbolically leaving their worries or baggage behind before spending 20 or 30 minutes just lingering in the woods.  They are called back, share their discoveries and feelings, maybe have a reading and then they go out again for another 20 or so minutes.  Monica brought a camera (she is a photographer) and took photographs, others did other things.  After a third session there was another discussion and that week's session was done.  All very simple and very spiritual.  The leader in her session made tea from the local herbs which they all tasted but I do not think a tea ceremony is a requirement.  One of the members of Monica's group just meditated in a place and played a native American flute.  Wonderful, everybody can experience it in her or his own way.

There is even beauty in this fallen tree.  It amazed me how well distributed the roots were.  I follow a bonsai webcast and this gentleman always talks about raking out the roots to get an even distribution in the pots.  What a gorgeous example and what a shame for the tree.

Forest bathing is really a way to recharge, a way to meditate, and a the breath in those phytoncides.  I need to do it more often, now I know there is real scientific evidence for its benefits.  Come and join me.

Nature Deficit Disorder III (9/30/2016)

This weekend I am doing a presentation on Nature Deficit Disorder at the Adult Education Classes or what is called the Forum at my UU church, so I decided to put a summary of my interest/research in words in this blog.  This is the third entry on my blog with this title and if you look at the labels (keywords) there are 29 posts where I either mention the concept or somehow deal with the concept (that is including this post).  So here it goes.

Our church used this photograph of me in their announcement of my talk.  This picture was taken by Donna Briedé during our hike in Maine earlier this spring.

I guess we all know what the definition of nature is. But just in case, it is: "the physical world and everything in it (such as plants, animals, mountains, oceans, stars, etc.) that is not made by people" (Merriam Webster online dictionary).  So this includes the green and blue nature that I so enjoy and need!

On a recent morning on my way to work I drove by this lovely scene in Yorktown.  It is emblematic of the juxtaposition of the natural world and the man-made world to me.

Earlier readers of my blog know that I need to get out in nature to recharge, to get my sanity back, to get inspired, to meditate, you name it.  I am not the only one who needs it.  In the 1850s Henry David Thoreau wrote about the need to recharge (recreate) himself:

"When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen , most dismal, swamp.  I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum."

In the first paragraph of Moby Dick Herman Melville writes:

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

Reading this paragraph you see that the only way he can keep out of trouble or from killing himself (pistol and ball) is by taking himself to a ship and going out to sea!

So whether it is the green nature of Thoreau or the blue nature of Melville it does not matter nature helps with sanity.

This principle was known for a long time by man-kind, but first articulated by Richard Louv in 2005 in his book "Last Child in the Woods" as Nature Deficit Disorder.  The author related it mostly to children, but later on and in subsequent books also relates it back to teens and adults.  The premise of the theory (book) is that we are spending less and less time in nature as civilization has progressed.  This has led to some of the ailments in society that we are currently experiencing according to Louv, or maybe we could cure some of the problems by bringing people into nature or nature to the people.

Naturally, the world is much more complex than Louv describes it in his books and I try to make it out to be, here in this blog.  But every little bit helps, at least on a personal level.  For example, Louv describes how he saw an almost 180 degree change in a gang leader from west LA when he took him for regular hikes in the nature of southern California.  Studies abound on hospital patients that heal faster when their window looks out over a natural scene as opposed over a city/non-natural scene.  Office buildings now have atriums with plants.  People with nature scene wallpaper and screen savers on their computers appear more productive at work than those who do not.  So maybe there is something to that movement that tries to fill those empty inner-city lots with pocket parks and vegetable (victory) gardens. 

In his book "Blue Mind" Wallace Nichols writes about how science now shows that being near, in, on or under water can make us happier, healthier, more connected and better at what you do.  I wrote a previous post about it called "Sailing meditates me" (Yes you can click on the text and it will send you there).  Blue Mind is a fascinating book that takes you on a trip in neuroscience, ptsd, health, you name it, it is a fun and informative book to read.

But all shameless self promotion aside (and I do not consider myself a great writer or thinker), nature really does meditate me; in fact being in any type nature meditates me, like for so many others.  Some do it in groups or alone like walking meditation (click <here> for a great description of a walking meditation), or you can practice nature meditation <click here>.  Interestingly nature meditation can be done sitting or walking and I think it is nature meditation that I do when I walk in the woods or even when I sail.  My mind is usually empty or when I think of what is troubling me, I can easily divert it and go back to being in the moment and experiencing what is around me.  I have even read of guided nature meditation groups, but somehow I am not a group kinda guy. 

So lets stop being afraid of nature and embrace it.  If we cannot get out in nature lets bring it to us.  Lets push for the greening of our inner-cities, it will not stop the crime, but what do we have to loose?  As Louv puts it in a summary of his book "The term Nature Deficit Disorder refers to behavioral problem that has been seen in children and adults that can be almost directly related to the lack of exposure to nature.  A lot of these problems can be reversed by taking persons with these issues out into nature."  Maybe by bringing nature back to the people we can reverse some of the problems as well.

Sailing meditates me (Any open water, 6/28/2016)

One of the books I am reading discusses the healing power of water; Wallace Nichols describes in his book Blue Mind: "The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do."  It is  a fun and and fascinating book in which I often see myself.  Nichols' book has a similar theme as Richard Louv's books on Nature Deficit Disorder in that Lowe talks about green nature and Nichols talks about blue nature.  But regardless, whether it is the greens or the blues: nature has it.

A picture I took earlier this year on Catalina Island in Maine.  This picture captures the blue and the green that are so important in my life.

What struck me in one of the passages in Nichols' book was his statement about how someone mentioned that once you are near water you do not need to meditate, but that "water meditates you."  I found that a profound statement and it stuck with me.  If you read my previous post <here> where I wrote about when I visit the beach, how I can just sit in the waves for hours; let the water wash over me; forget everything; live in the moment; wait for the next wave; yes, empty my mind; and let it be. It kind of sounds like the definition of meditation to me.  I don't do it consciously, the water does it for me, the water meditates me.  Truthfully, being in nature often does that for me too (I write about it <here>).  Probably less so, because I have to pay attention to what my dogs do, and keep up with my wife who walks faster than I do (we need to get the heart rate up, you know.  Honestly, there is a time for that too.).

I took this picture of a boot at a mooring buoy in the York River some time ago, and I am not sure if I shared it with you already but scenes like this, or doing this, meditates me. 

I was discussing this concept of water meditating me with a good friend at church the other day.  Doc Robin is a band leader, self proclaimed shaman and the leader of the Earth Rising Community in our Unitarian Church.  "I often think that church interferes with my spirituality ... The spirituality that I can get from nature", he quipped when we discussed the concept of nature (or water) meditating you instead of you meditating in nature (or on or near the water).  So there is something to it; being in nature or water, or being able to see it (even in pictures) is good for you, it heals the body and the mind, it lowers anxiety and lowers the blood pressure.

Last week I experienced this again when we went sailing.  You really cannot think about much else when being at the rudder and trying to maintain course and keeping the wind in the sail.  The winds were around 15 knots, which were fairly strong for our small 25 foot boat.  Nothing dangerous, but you need to keep attention to what you are doing, stay in the moment.  Yes, there were dolphins, birds and wonderful weather, but just looking backwards or not paying attention for a few seconds results in a course change, loose the wind out of your sail, or maybe get too much. Even occasionally looking on my tablet (GPS) to see where we were resulted in a course shift.  It could also cause your boat to come about or to gibe.  You had to be in the moment.  I really could not think of anything else that was going on in my life than being right in the moment and concentrating on my sailing, staying on course and reading the wind and the water.

You want to see two people experiencing flow?  Here you have it!  My wife and I look like we are truly enjoying ourselves and I am concentrating on keeping the boat on course and properly into the wind.

Granted, I do not have an autopilot as many people I know have on their boat.  I am not sure if I want one.  I know it would be nice when I solo sail or need to do something in a hurry, but in the past when I sailed on a friend's boat with autopilot it felt that I somehow lost that intimate touch with the water and the wind.  It was great to be on the water and I loved it; it was so much better than being on land, and of course you always have to pay attention, but still, I like the rudder in my hand.  Granted, I have not sailed in my own boat for longer than 4 or 5 hours at a stretch, so time will tell.  On top of that, I always have someone to take over when I have to take a pee-pee break.

After reading Nichols I realized that in reality, our sailing trip "meditated me", there was no time for distractions.  Mihály Csikszentmihálályi describes this as flow.  Flow is an interesting concept that I learned about from a book that he published in 1990 under the same title (boy that was a long time ago that I read that book).  When you are in flow, you are completely absorbed in and energized by what you are doing (no television watching does not count).  Healing at 15 degrees or more, with 15 knot winds and thoroughly enjoying yourself, not thinking about anything else (as I show you in the photograph above), now that is flow.  Kayaking through the marshes, looking at birds and snails hanging on to the marsh grasses is also flow.

I took this picture while kayaking this weekend of all the snails hanging on the the smooth cord grass (Spartina) during high tide.

Think about it folks, get out there, let nature meditate you!  Blue or green, it it good for your physical and mental health.  Go with the flow!

We went kayaking this past weekend.  Another advanture in the blue and green.  My wife took this picture of me, she really had to call be a few times to get my attention and take this picture.  I was absorbed by being out there in it.