APNC 2.2 (WI 2018)

[Lyria Shaffer-Bauck]

Aimless Wander / Wander without Purpose:

With all of the over-scheduling we experience in this day and age, the aimless wander is the exercise that I enjoy most. I indulge. It feels like time traveling to an age when the only rule was to be home before dark. What used to be “go-and-see” curiosity, for many has become restricted to a Google search. I am a go-and-see kind of person and often feel saddened by the element of chance/adventure that has been removed by internet connectivity.

Where other activities measure volume, output or revenue, the only metric that matters to me when I wander is my state of mind—and I’m never disappointed. Although I wouldn’t claim to be creating controls and compiling data, I have consistently noticed the importance of the order in which I do things. I have found that evening run + sit spot meditations + circuitous wander back delivers me home most at peace. I may begin this process on the verge of tears (or in tears!), but I always finish it with a lighter load. For me, the stress and anxiety of working and residing in the city compounds throughout the day. Breaking a sweat and switching gears to physical challenge serves as a kind of catalyst that paves the way for deeper work.

Being a botanist at heart, spring is a bountiful time of year to wander about as leaves and flowers unfurl, fragrances are released and animals talk to their neighbors. I would love to repeat my routine twice daily, once at dawn and once at dusk, but the constraints of my job would make this a difficult practice. Still, I hope to someday be able to greet and close the day in this way.

Of course, every day doesn’t provide a perfectly allotted amount of time to do all three, so sometimes sit spot + direct (yet beautiful) walk home is all I have time for. On these days, I usually find myself slogging through a swamp of emotion, as I try to process my day and get out the other end feeling lighter. I would love to hear how others have combined the different exercises to form routines. Please share!

[Cory Steele]

It is very interesting that you point out the stress of working in the city. I believe this is something that a lot of the westernized world experiences. We have so much going on in our lives that we take on and it can become overwhelming. I think the fact you incorporate physical exercise in to bring the awareness back to self is a very helpful way to cope. In today’s world we can take on a lot of things from the external environment, and completely neglect to take care of our individual needs. Exercise is a great way to do that. It causes us to focus on what we are doing in the present moment. Each breath and every step becomes something that we are completely in tuned to and the rest of the distractions and external things seem to dissipate.

[cindy_sell_schulte]

Lyria:
You are such a great writer–I can feel your experiences, each time you write about them. I am excited to hear how you use the lessons and techniques, in your own unique way, and how you ‘allow’ for modifications, and accept that wherever you are, Nature can be/is. Thank you for sharing.
C

[Cory Steele]

I had a deep listening moment with a friend from California. She was talking to me about a guy she had been seeing and was asking me for a different point of view on some things. She was confused on how he was acting towards her because a couple months back she told him how she had felt and he ended up leaving to Africa for a couple months. Then his demeanor changed completely when he got back. He asked her to take a trip with her back to Africa, and she asked me what I think she should do because she didn’t know if she had feelings for him or just this idea of him. I noticed that she had been focusing a lot on who he was based on external things that had stood out such as he had money and the fact that he traveled a lot as a kid growing up. I noticed that she is also the person who is up for an adventure and spontaneous things, and she also loved to travel. I asked her to really go internally and see if she has feelings for him, or if he is someone in her life that is mirroring the qualities in herself that she really enjoyed. We sat for a couple moments in silence and she said, “you know I really don’t know if it’s feelings towards him that I like.”
It really made me start to have this inner knowing and feeling that we also do this in our every day lives. We stay in situations that provide us comfort with things and never really venture out of that comfort zone. I could definitely see it in her, but also in myself. We like things that are how we define ourselves. I started to see that most of the things in my life were mirroring certain things within myself. I noticed several synchronistic things happening the next couple of days. I had a certain mindset that I had about myself regarding specific relationships with people. How I thought about myself was completely mirrored in my external environment with certain people. I noticed that once I took myself out of the comfortable belief system I had before my relationships changed. They had more depth and meaning behind them and were not bogged down by negative patterns of thinking that I had before.
One specific example was my relationship with my brother. I used to have a very toxic belief that I was only now starting to address with him. I thought I was superior to him because I had a college degree and a big checklist of how society deems one “successful” in our modern world. After the conversation with my friend I started to really internalize and feel that I was no better than any other person in this world. Then something profound happened and my brother called as I was going through this realization. It was very synchronistic, and we had a discussion for a couple hours. It was a very genuine conversation and it was something I had not felt whenever we had talked before. It was not a superior mindset, or even a brother to brother conversation. It was this authentic human to human meaningful talk about life.

[Joshua Maze]

I apologize for submitting this late. It took quite some time for the words to arrive this time. The videos gave me some inspiration that I would like to take time to share with you all.

In the past several weeks, I have been able to spend some extra alone time out in the woods and on a long car ride for work. Both of which afforded me the opportunity to really reflect on who I am, why I am here and where I want to go.
In a lot of my posts, I talk about my daughter and how she is an inspiration for me. Of course that is still true, but it goes deeper than that. I came to the realization that I need EBI for ME. I have to complete it for myself. There was a deep and personal calling that led me to find this group, a calling that I’m not sure I truly understood until this module. The things I want for her—curiosity, independence, confidence, I can nurture along the way, but I can only do that if I first take care of me, and thus I can only serve my future clients if I am ware of my own needs.

My soul tells me that my purpose is to serve others, using my gifts of heart and listening, but another part of me remains full of doubt and fear—negative emotions that I am working very hard to learn to understand and overcome. On a recent trek through the woods, it was as if the trees and birds and mud hugged me and told me I was ok and I was enough. I want to share that with other people, to do any less would feel like I’ve let myself down.

[Lyria Shaffer-Bauck]

Thank you for sharing, Joshua! I love the idea of a big hug from nature 🙂 I am so glad you said that and yes, you are right. You cannot give what you don’t have, so you have to start with you! Nature has a similar impact on me in making me feel like I am enough. Often, in the city, I experience loneliness, insecurity, and myriad other negative feelings. However, sitting on a rock alone in the middle of the woods, all of that melts away. It is like the woods are a giant filtration system and, the deeper you go, the less of the toxic stuff gets through. I am so glad you took your time in finding your response and am excited for you in your journey!