Listening to the habitat - "With our cultural focus primarily on visual experience and manifestation, we seem to have lost the delicate balance informed by incorporating all of the senses in our awareness of place. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we engage with wildness through its multiple dimensions. “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a natural soundscape is worth a thousand pictures.” Bernie Krause

CN Tower Rain & Traffic

This morning's coffee - mindful meditation. Learning to hear my habitat is new light.

"For most of us, the acoustic world has always been an elusive one—an indistinct amorphic entity, unseeable and intangible—and listening is the “shadow sense.” Outside of musical literature, few words in English exist to explain the vast range of attributes that sounds express, especially in the emerging world of bioacoustics, the study of the sounds living animals produce." Bernie Krause

Making coffee on a rainy morning

Mindful Meditation on board a sailboat:

"Meditation is a way to recognize and take the right measures to manage stress. Meditation is a practice where people focus mind on a particular object in order to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state, reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. Specifically, mindfulness meditation involves the process of developing the skill of bringing one’s attention to whatever is happening in the present moment. Several meditation exercises have been designed to develop mindfulness meditation. This technique can fuel performance by managing distressing emotions such as feeling out of control, jumping from one thought to the next or ruminating on negative thoughts by physically altering brain. It is of essence therefore to exercise mindfulness meditation even onboard in order to..."

-To start your day with more energy and clarity
-To find inner peace and be dominated by toxic thoughts
-To deal with creativity backwards

On a J24 at Dock

STEPS FOR DEVELOPING A MINDFULNESS PRACTICE OF LISTENING TO YOUR HABITAT:

To develop a listening mindfulness, pause and try one or all of the following:

Take a slow, deep breath. As you do, become aware of where you feel the breath most distinctly. Can you feel the breath as it enters your nostrils? Do you feel it in your chest or in your abdomen? Slowly release the breath. Repeat this at least three times or until you feel a noticeable change in your body.

Become aware of the sensations in your body. You don’t have to do anything other than notice what you’re feeling. Do you feel any tingling sensations? Any areas of tension, stress, or pain? Just notice any sensations.

As you notice any areas of tension or stress, take a moment to become aware of any thoughts that follow this. For example, do you feel like you need to do something about it? If you feel pain in your back, do you then start thinking about how awful your day is going to be? Just acknowledge the thoughts, commentaries, or judgments about your body sensations.

See if you can tune into the sounds that are going on around you. Open your eyes and become aware of the colors that surround you, the scents and sights. Just notice how much activity is going on around you and take it in.

Stand up, stretch your arms up toward the ceiling while taking in a long breath, and then release it slowly. You can repeat this three more times and then resume what you were doing.

Take a few moments to think and write about your experience:

1. What was it like to be still for a few minutes?
2. Did you notice anything different about your surroundings or about yourself?
3. Did you notice how many judgments, thoughts, commentaries, and stories followed your feelings?
4. Can you see the benefits of not getting hooked into, or following these thoughts and stories?
5. How would this help you be more present to what is going on in the moment?
6. What was it like to take a break from your normal routine?

Walking 2am Thunder Storm

Retro Recordings with a Modern Approach to Empathy

Easy Wonder