Walking the Fort River Sanctuary in Hadley, MA—the air felt like early spring not late winter.
Walking Fort River 02.21.2016
mindfullness
Facilitated Walk 06.05.2013
Photos from the Unwind in Nature Facilitated Walk on 06.05.2013.
Facilitated Walk 05.29.2013
Photos from the Unwind in Nature Facilitated Walk on 05.29.2013.
Starting with some open blue sky above us, we ended with spellbinding light as the sun began to set off to the West.
Dramatic Landscape Transformation in Hadley 05.15.2013
A nine image photo set showing the transformation of the landscape over a one hour period while on a facilitated walk in Hadley May 15, 2013, 5:30–6:45PM.
Unwind After Work In Nature!
Wednesdays After Work
Ongoing Series (Drop-ins welcome if room available)
May 15–June 19
Wednesdays from 5:50–6:30 PM
Free Introduction May 8
Enhance your connection to nature and your authentic self. Join me for a 6-week series of facilitated walks on “Wednesdays After Work.” Feel your tension and stress melt away as you experience nature’s healing presence through a facilitated mindful walk.
Different from a regular walk, I will guide you in easy-to-follow ways that significantly enhance your relaxation and sense of peace. It’s quite powerful, even for people who have struggled with other relaxation methods. Learn to use the power of your senses combined with mindful awareness to feel refreshed and energetically alive after your work day.
We will walk out in the open space of Hadley, where the feeling of big sky is present. Each week will focus on a slightly different aspect of experiencing nature, often dependent on what the weather presents. There will be an emphasis on experiencing the openness, luminosity, and visual diversity of the sky, but we will have opportunities to connect deeply with all aspects of the landscape, including spending time along the Connecticut River. This is primarily a meditative practice and we will always be walking on well-worn paths. There is room for about ten participants, and if there is sufficient interest I will set up another group for a different day of the week.
Call Chris Page at 413-237-3466 to sign up
Facilitated Walks
Promoting feelings of joy, ecstasy, and greater connection with nature, the core of my work uses guided or facilitated walks. Similar to the instructions found in a yoga or meditation class, I gently guide your attention to particular aspects of the landscape, especially the sky, helping you keep a focused awareness with an emphasis on maintaining unbroken concentration. My guidance assists you to stay present and develop ever greater capacities of concentration, so you can have a more refined and powerful awareness of both of your inner and outer world.
Facilitated walks are quite powerful even for people who have struggled with other relaxation methods. You have to experience a facilitated walk to fully understand its power.
Below is a sample facilitation using a late afternoon cloudless blue sky:
“Let your eyes relax and your gaze soften. Stay present to the blue sky, let you mind rest in the luminous blue. Notice any mild or strong resistance to being totally absorbed in the blue. Give yourself permission to move past any resistance that you noticed. Invite the blue into your heart. With each breath let it penetrate you more and more. Open to the radical emptiness of this infinite blue field. Hold presence in the emptiness, resist any boredom that might be arising and continue to stay present, letting the azure purity wash you clean. Let your heart-mind become as luminous and clear as this azure blue sky.”
Self Care and the Dilemma of Chasing vs Searching
I was talking with a friend the other day and he used one of his favorite phrases, “chasing the great American nightmare.” I happened to be reading about the spiritual process of searching after the Beloved and the notion of spiritual certitude. I began to realize that we often confuse searching for truth, meaning, and happiness with chasing the dreams that almost always fail to satisfy. Most material ambitions are at best based on deep compassion for improving the state of the world, or perhaps the desire to improve the opportunities for yourself and family, but far too often are an unsubstantial mania for the latest and greatest.
Our corporate consumer society puts more and more demands upon us and often leaves little time to consider one’s own well-being. How many professionals I meet who do not have a sense of trusting they can truly take care of themselves, physically but especially spiritually. I feel that we have confused chasing for searching. My work in nature starts with the simple notion of moving out of the state of chasing for a while. Put simply, I want you to stop chasing and simply become present and aware. From a place of awareness and presence, awakening of your inner self can begin to have the space to come back to life and clarify the quality of search.
Harmonizing with the Four Elements
FIRE, AIR, WATER, EARTH
I use the four elements as a rough guide to creating a balanced awareness, both in nature as well as within.
So, for example, the experience of the sun acquaints me with the nature of FIRE, the sky with AIR, the ocean, lakes, rivers and rain with WATER, and the land, trees, and flowers with the EARTH.
Through developing conscious awareness of these four qualities while out in nature I believe we can find the balance of well-being within.
I generally work from the EARTH element into the FIRE Element and back to the EARTH element. I try to create a balance of natural energies, ending in awareness at the EARTH level, which is the plane of action.
These four elements I work with come out of ancient knowledge and were refined and reconsidered in the writings of the Báb and Bahá’u’láh, the two manifestations of the Bahai movement.
Know that the first tokens that emanated from the pre-existent Cause in the worlds of creation are the four elements: fire, air, water and earth…. Then, the natures (ustuqusát) of the four appeared: heat, moisture, cold and dryness—those same qualities that you both know. When the elements interacted and joined with one another, two pillars became evident for each one: for fire, heat and dryness, and likewise for the remaining three in accordance with these rules, as ye are aware.
Bahá’u’láh
According to Aristotle in his On Generation and Corruption:
- Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry.
- Air is primarily wet and secondarily hot.
- Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet.
- Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold.
My interest is mostly as a metaphor for the different aspects of experience in nature, as well as seeing time as a continuous cycle of change and development.
Relating to the process of time, the calendar year can be seen as a cycle moving through these aspects.
Chris Page 