Claire Thompson is the author of Mindfulness and the Natural World and The Art of Mindful Birdwatching. She takes mindfulness practice back to where it works best - the natural world. In this very personal interview, Claire considers the power of awe, enlightenment and the way that nature can be both deeply holding and liberating. Hear tales of mystical enchantment, spiritual insights and alternative routes to awakening ecological awareness. Move beyond labels, learn to manage the controlling mind and find embodied connection to the natural being that you truly are.
Find out more at Claire's website: Mindfulness of Nature
Claire Thompson is the author of Mindfulness and the Natural World and The Art of Mindful Birdwatching. She takes mindfulness practice back to where it works best - the natural world. In this very personal interview, Claire considers the power of awe, enlightenment and the way that nature can be both deeply holding and liberating. Hear tales of mystical enchantment, spiritual insights and alternative routes to awakening ecological awareness. Move beyond labels, learn to manage the controlling mind and find embodied connection to the natural being that you truly are.
Find out more at Claire's website: Mindfulness of Nature
Interview with Claire Thompson
(Transcript with minor edits for clarity).
Adrian:
Welcome to the embodied pathways podcast! Several years ago, I did a keynote presentation on mindfulness of nature at an ecotherapy conference. Now the person whose work I referenced the most was my guest today, Claire Thompson. To be really honest, it should probably have been Claire delivering that presentation. But hey, they got me instead. But don't worry, because here you get the real deal! Claire is the author of two books, ‘Mindfulness of the Natural World’, and ‘The Art of |Mindful Birdwatching’. She's worked with conservation NGOs across the world. Claire is a wellbeing practitioner and teaches mindfulness of nature. Claire, welcome! It’s pretty obvious that I love your work and I'm really looking forward to exploring it with you today. To begin, could you say something about how you got from graduating with a degree in zoology to teaching mindfulness of nature?
Claire:
I'll take you back a little bit. When I was a teenager I was quite reflective and spent quite a lot of time trying to make sense of what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to go next - when you grow up what do you want to do? I did quite a lot of reading of different philosophies, and lots of books on religion and things like that. I struggled to find a sense of meaning in things that I read and the only place where I felt a sense of meaning or something that was trustworthy at the time was my when I was in-touch with nature - So when I was outdoors or when I was in wild places. And that fed my initial interest in biology and natural sciences, which led me to develop an interest in zoology. So that was what led me to take a degree in natural sciences and get a degree in zoology. Alongside that, I started to realise that it was actually more perhaps than the science of biology and zoology - which I was, was and remained very interested in. It was more my, I guess, my felt experiences in nature that were important to me. After graduating with with my degree, and then in the following years working in nature conservation, I started to realise that the connection that I had with nature - that felt experience - was slightly missing in my professional life. When I worked in nature conservation I was working as a Project Manager for the World Land Trust and then for BirdLife International. A lot of that work was designing and fundraising for conservation projects, which involves a lot of time sitting behind sitting behind a desk. I guess that's when I started to realise it was more about being in nature that I was passionate about, that I was interested in and that developed my relationship with nature in the first place.
Adrian:
So it was the nature connection that came first and then a sense of there’s something missing here, and that’s when mindfulness came in?
Claire:
Yeah, I suppose in a way they sort of came together as pathways towards something that I was missing. I realised when I was a teenager my experiences in nature led me to feel more connected and to feel that sense of a greater sense of belonging. but alongside that, I also discovered mindfulness through an interest in Buddhism. And I met some friends in my late teens who were interested in Buddhism and mindfulness. I realised that what they were describing when they were talking about mindfulness, and some of the Buddhist approaches to living and to finding meaning in life, were pointing to the same thing - pointing to a reconnection with our direct felt experience, which was something that I had already felt in nature. I felt that was enhanced by discovering that there was such a thing as the practice of mindfulness and becoming aware of what goes on in our experience, and how to tune out of the mind and a little bit more into the body and the senses.
Adrian:
The mindfulness became a way of tuning into nature more deeply.
Claire:
Yes, definitely. I guess the practice of mindfulness was a way for me to tune into nature more deeply. But the flip-side is that I also found that just being in nature for me was something that almost naturally facilitated a greater mindfulness as well. So you know, if you go for a long, long walk in, in the wild or in a place in nature, then after a while, it's almost like naturally you become more present. And something just sort of shifts in your experience where you come out of your mind and into your body and your senses almost effortlessly, just by being in nature. But I think mindfulness and its practice was a way to - or can be a way to - enhance that experience in nature.
Adrian:
It happens anyway, just by being in nature if you're open to it.
Claire:
Yeah.
Adrian:
The practices that you've learned from your mindfulness training heighten that and they strengthened the experience.
Claire:
Yes, exactly. I guess when we're in nature, if we open to the experience - it felt to me a bit like putting a fish back into water. In the sense of it felt like it was something that I had been disconnected from and then when I was back in touch with the natural world, then it was like I was at home again - before even discovering what the word ‘mindfulness’ might mean, or what a mindfulness practice might be. It was just that when I was in nature, that kind of just came almost effortlessly.
Adrian:
I like that phrase - it was like being a fish being put back into water again. So there's that sense of there was a disconnection and a reconnection through being in nature and mindfulness.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. I think since a very young age, and definitely in my teenage years, I had this sense of - I think a lot of us, a lot of us human beings have this - a kind of longing, partly a longing to be sort of seen and heard. But also, I guess, a longing for connection that perhaps had been lost at some stage. I feel like when I spent time in nature, and particularly during my initial travels to South America in late teenage years, I got a glimpse of what it was like to be heard and seen, just because when I was in nature I could just be who I was. And I could just have the feelings that I had and have the thoughts that I had. And there was no sense of being judged, there was no sense of like, I should be a particular way or I shouldn't be a particular way. So it was that sense of, like you say, reconnection to something that felt like it was allowed again, and that maybe I felt like it had been taken away in various forms before that.
Adrian:
In your book, you talk about the way that nature is completely non judgmental sense of you can just be you here.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess it is something that I found I often experienced in my life in lots of different circles, where I often feel, especially when as I was younger, I often felt like it wasn't okay to be me where I was, and I fell into quite a lot of patterns of, I guess, seeking belonging by actually trying to fit in and trying to keep others happy. And all of that, those sorts of behaviours. And there was a relief for me when I was in nature where it was kind of like, yeah, actually here I can just be who I am, and the wildlife and the landscape and the vegetation and everything can just be with that. It was almost like it could hold my experience in a way that I felt like people hadn't necessarily been able to at that at that time.
Adrian:
Very healing from the sound of it.
Claire:
Yeah, it was very healing. Especially around those teenage years because of all of these expectations that are put on us as we grow up. And the roles that we have to play in our day to day lives - in our family lives, at school, in our social groups, etc. I started to feel a almost like a distrust - a lack of trust in people for a while. And the place where I started to feel like there was a sense of trust, there was something trustworthy again, at that time, was when I was in nature. I think it was because I felt like in nature, I could trust myself, I could trust my own experience, there was something that kind of restored that trust in me, but also something about nature that felt trustworthy to me because it was it felt real. It felt like something that was - There was a reality to it that at that time I couldn't find in the human world.
Adrian:
Going along with that, that sense of reconnection - how healing that is - that's become central to your work, really. You write “paying attention to the life within us and around us is the key to bringing forth a happier, more authentic and sustainable world”.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. I think the thing that inspired me to start to lead mindfulness retreats and workshop in the wild and in natural places was a passion for people to reconnect - reconnect with themselves. And I guess to share what I'd experienced in nature as a teenager, and that healing aspect of it with with others whilst sharing my love of the natural world as well, spending time with them in these places. I think there's something about being a nature that facilitates that for people as well. I think one of the things that I enjoyed the most when I started running retreats and workshops was holding a space for people to explore their experiences of themselves and of each other and of nature around us in those places. It felt like being in nature opened people up and because of the lack of judgement in that space, it felt like people were more able to be themselves and more able to trust that whatever experience they were having. That it was okay and opened up a curiosity about their experience in a way that perhaps in some of the indoor spaces where maybe I’d practiced mindfulness, for example, I didn't feel the same thing. It didn't feel like the same thing happened, or there was just something - maybe an authenticity about it as well, like people feeling allowed to be themselves more when they're out in the wild or out in touch with the natural world.
Adrian:
So there's a sense that nature's very holding.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the fact that when we're in nature, our sensory experience is stimulated in a way that it's not when we're in indoor environments. In our indoor environments everything is kept quite controlled and constant: the conditions, the temperature, sounds, even sights. Everything is kept in a constant state as far as possible to make us comfortable or to ensure that we're comfortable. But there's something about being outdoors in nature that holds us within our own bodies a little bit more, because it's stimulating our bodies with natural scents and sounds and sights, which actually takes me back to that image of putting a fish back into water. It's almost like that's what our bodies evolved to experience or to be taking in, in terms of a sensory experience. I guess to be put back into that environment can feel quite holding for people, because it holds us within our own physical experience a little bit more, which actually naturally takes us out of the narratives of our mind and our thinking and into the body. Yeah, being held in our sensory experience a little bit more.
Adrian:
This whole topic of embodiment seems to be very central to the way that you're working.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I it might be important to say at this point that one of the reasons why it was so important to me, and why I wanted to share it with others, was actually because when I was a teenager, and I was trying to find the answers to what I wanted to do and what was important to me, and looking for meaning - it kind of led me to be very disembodied, because I had been taught in my academic education that the way you find answers to things is by thinking about them and trying to work them out in your head. And when it came to the question of meaning, and what mattered to me, what I was interested in, what brought me alive, then that process of trying to work it out in my head didn't really work. So it's actually the fact that I was particularly disconnected from myself and had had to be, for various reasons, that actually led me to see the value of embodiment, and reconnect with my body and my senses and my felt experience.
Adrian:
That's quite resonates quite strongly with me. My sense is that years ago, I was really quite similar - so a bit disembodied - and it was only through doing some massage practices that it came to me: ‘Oh, hold on a minute. What's this?’
Claire:
Yeah, yeah.
Adrian:
So you said “we are nature, our senses evolved in nature”. When we're out in nature, something happens. To quote you [from ‘The Art of Mindful Birdwatching’]: “It takes us out of the mind into the body, something greater than ourselves takes over and energises us”. Sounds like the sort of thing that you're talking about there.
Claire:
Definitely. In my teenage years, I started to realise that when I was in nature, I felt more embodied and more myself, I then started to think why? What is it about being in nature? Why when I'm in nature, do I feel like this in a way that I don't feel around people or maybe in indoor environments? And that's when I kind of started to think, ‘Well, it's because we are nature’, like you just said, and it's because our bodies are made of exactly the same elements, exactly the same building blocks, as the rest of the natural world. And our species, and so our bodies and psychology evolved in a natural world. Although that can sound quite obvious to say, ‘We're all part of nature’. And actually, it is obvious, but I think that subconsciously, we've forgotten that in the way that we go about our day to day lives. And also in the way we relate to nature - in the the language that we use to talk about nature. I just remember having this this thought when I was volunteering on a nature conservation project in the Chilean Lake District. I just suddenly was like, ‘Oh, yeah, of course, I feel this sense of belonging and connection in nature, because I am this’, and I felt there was a kind of holding and comforting in that in that realisation that I was connected in an undeniable way to nature. Going back to when I was a teenager, I was looking for meaning and I was reading a lot about how do I find my place in the world. I was reading about philosophy, or religion, or, you know, ways of seeing the world, and all of them to me felt like stories that we'd made up to try to make sense of the world. Whereas when I was in nature, it was like, well, it's just a reality that I am nature, so I can trust this. It was undeniable. And so to me, it was more trustworthy because it was undeniable that I was nature and that I was part of nature.
Adrian:
You write about an experience - it might have been the same experience - when you're in the Lake District in Chile. When I read it, it sounded almost mystical to me.
Claire:
Yeah, it was actually around a similar time - I went to volunteer on a nature conservation project in the Chilean Lake District and as part of that project, I got to spend some time in the monkey puzzle tree forest of the Chilean Lake District where some of the tree’s are over 1000 years old. They're very untouched areas of extremely ancient forest. And the trees themselves evolved back in the Jurassic period. So they have something about them that's kind of very primal and very ancient. The passage that you're referring to in the book: I was walking up this path, and it was the first time that I was entering one of the monkey puzzle tree forest areas. I'd never experienced it before. And I just remember this seriously winding path. And then I got to the top and it was completely quiet apart from a couple of bird songs here and there. There was just like this complete stillness to the forest, which I'd never really experienced before. It was almost like a sense of sacredness, like I just walked into what might be a natural version of my church. Yeah, kind of a feeling of sacredness, and a feeling of connection to something that was a lot greater and a lot older and a lot wiser than me. I guess, because I had a very overactive mind as a teenager, it was the vastness of it. And the fact that I'd finally found something that blew my mind! I was like: I can't even try to understand this, and I don't even want to try to understand this, because the experience of it just completely took over me in a way that I was, yeah, that I was kind of in awe of the place and of the the beauty of it, and I suppose the pristineness of it - something original about it, or primal about it.
Adrian:
I've been reading some of the research on awe and it's an extraordinarily powerful emotion that not only brings up a deeper sense of connectedness, but leads people to be more generous, have more concern for others, more humility and deeper nature connection.
Claire:
Yeah, it's really interesting, because I guess my experience of awe has been along the lines of what I've just described. It’s an experience of going beyond myself, as in beyond my sense of being a separate self and being taken into something that is greater than that, and connects me to something bigger, and that could be a natural landscape or connection with a wild animal or something. But it could also happen in human contexts. Like when I've been to live music, particularly connected to the experience of the music, which is like a shared experience with other people. Sometimes that can lead me to feel a sense of awe. It feels sometimes like - maybe going back to what I was saying at the beginning around that feeling of longing. It's like a longing for a connection that I've lost, or, arguably, we've lost. And in those moments of awe you get a glimpse of reconnecting with that. And there's a sense of abundance that comes with that feeling. So I wonder whether, when you're referring to the research, that leads to a feeling of generosity and more openness to others and more creativity, and kind of takes you out of that kind of fixed separate sense of self, which sometimes can keep us a little bit stuck.
Adrian:
Yeah, absolutely. We kind of get caught up in quite a shallow self that doesn't really appreciate that we are actually connected. There's a bit of a denial about the fact that we are nature. It's almost like we're living a lie
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. I think it's really important what you just said about living a lie. I was talking recently to some students in the college where I'm working at the moment. I'm currently working as the Wellbeing Coordinator at Fitzwilliam College in the University of Cambridge, supporting students with wellbeing and mental health. I was talking about how the the fact that we've lost that connection with nature - and by nature, I mean wider nature but also nature within ourselves, so you might talk about the body and the mind. The loss of that connection means that we live in this denial, like you say, of a reality, which is that we are nature. And for me, what we've lost or what it feels like we've lost is the ability to firstly notice feedback. So to pay attention. Well, firstly, to actually be even be aware of the feedback that we're receiving from nature, and that might be from our felt experience of ourselves. So it might be say, we're experiencing thoughts and emotions or sensations through sensations in the body, or whatever our felt experience might be. But firstly, we don't even notice it. But even if we do notice it, then we've lost our ability or the freedom that we perhaps once had, or perhaps could regain, to respond to that feedback in a way that actually serves us. And I think that also applies to our relationship with wider nature. So we're getting a lot of feedback, and we have been for many years on climate change and species loss and what we are doing to our environment, and for all sorts of understandable reasons, we're ignoring that feedback. We're in denial of that feedback. I feel like mindfulness of nature and becoming more mindful of our natural experience is a way of actually paying attention to what is happening inside and outside. And then, once we have that awareness, we can start to develop that awareness of that experience, then we can start to choose how we want to respond in a way that's going to be either wiser or more meaningful to us, or you know, whatever works for different people. I think the denial of that connection with nature within us and externally is, arguably, it's one of the root, possibly the root cause of a lot of the problems that we see or challenges that we see in the world today.
Adrian:
I agree. A really powerful insight from one of your books, is that because of the way we've evolved as animals, that control is what the mind does it constantly trying to get control. Is that part of this mix?
Claire:
Yeah, I think essentially how we as human beings differ from the rest of the natural world, arguably, is the complexity of conscious thought or conscious mind - not to say that other animals don't have some kind of consciousness - that's a whole other area of debate. But, certainly it seems like humans have the most complex and most advanced - for want of a better word, not to be hierarchical - ability to think consciously. It gave us a lot of ways in which we could gain some sort of control over our environment. And it was actually the switch from a nomadic lifestyle, which was very much in tune, where we as species just had to live in tune with the rhythms of nature, we weren't trying to control or change, we just adapted to where the resources were at the time and migrated and moved around based on that, to a time where we could actually settle somewhere and start to change our conditions, being in control over our resources and what we needed. At the time, that served us in terms of in terms of survival and becoming very competitive, in contrast to other species on the planet, but also in contrast to other human groups. The ability that our mind has to find control over our lives can serve us at times, and probably not so so much at other times. And so we're left with a mind that has developed ways to control our external world. But I think sometimes you can get a little bit caught up in your mind trying to also control our internal worlds in ways that sometimes are kind of unhelpful to our well being and mental health.
Adrian:
The way that language comes in as well. And we start separating the world into Oh, that's a tree, that's a cat, that's a bird … Missing the fact that they're all connected in very complex ways.
Claire:
Yeah, it's funny, when you said ‘that's a tree’, it kind of makes me think of what we call a tree is often what we see of a tree. So it'll be what we can see above the Earth. But actually, when you look underneath the soil, then there's all the roots, and then the roots are connected to all sorts of other things and all sorts of other roots. And so I think that the way that we separate the world into categories and labels and words is obviously based on our perception of the world. And going back to the beginning, I said that when I did a degree in zoology a lot of my degree was about labelling and understanding the natural world and categorising the natural world using these words and language. So I think there's absolutely a place for - we need labels and words to organise the world around us. And we do have a mind that wants to be in control and and we need to embrace that part of us. But I think for me, the shift over the years has been thinking about how do we relate to those labels. So you can have labels and they can apply to ourselves as well. If we have a label about ourselves, do we do we allow that label to fix us into something? Or do we see it as just something that we can hold lightly and that maybe we're more than the label that we've been given? So I think labelling and categorising is part of what the mind does. And it's absolutely valuable - it enables us to communicate for a start! But I think it's just seeing that we can be one thing, but we're also all sorts of other things at the same time. We're not just something that's fixed into your label and I think labels can tend to fix things.
Adrian:
It's valuable in its own way. But when it becomes ‘this is it’, ‘this is all it is’, things get messed up?
Claire:
Definitely. Yeah. And I think that applies to people as well, and how we may grow up with certain labels or roles that have been put on to us, or maybe even our job could be a label. Somebody asks you to introduce yourself and says ‘Tell me about yourself’. People often tell you about they do for a living. Maybe they'll tell you that they're a mother or a husband or you know. We try to give ourselves some kind of label that will define us. One thing that's been really liberating - or I found really liberating over the last few years - that I find nature encourages, is actually to be able to hold all of those labels. And actually, that we can play lots of different roles. And we can be lots of different things, there are all these different parts to ourselves that again, for me, when I'm in nature, then it's almost like they can all exist. I was brought up in France so I'm half French in some ways. And both my parents were English and I've lived in the UK since I was 18. And I've never felt very attached to a nationality. So if somebody asked me to define like, ‘Are you French or English?’, then I've always felt a bit like, well, I feel like there are lots of parts of the French culture and my experiences in France that resonated with who I am, and I feel like there are lots of parts of the English culture that resonate with other parts of who I am. But I've never felt the need to categorise myself. When I was interested in Buddhism, for example, I never felt like I wanted to tell everybody that I was a Buddhist, because actually, I don't feel like I am a Buddhist, I feel like I'm very interested in Buddhism, and a lot of Buddhism resonates with my experience of life. And again, I think when I was in nature, then it was like, I could be free from all of that, because in nature, I could just be Claire. And I didn't feel like I had to define myself in any other way and have myself fixed by by these labels. That kind of freedom from being fixed into labels has always felt really important to me.
Adrian:
What's coming to mind – that seems to be related - is this core Buddhist concept of change. Nothing is fixed. We're changing all the time. And that can feel really uncomfortable, which maybe is why we kind of grasp onto ‘No, this is me, I'm Adrian’, because that’s a bit safer. But embracing the transience and change - the reality of that - can be really liberating.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think the two things need to coexist. So I think it's a nice ideal to live completely free of labels and anything fixed. But I think we need that fixed sense of ourselves - it's part of our human psychology. But I think the ability to have the freedom and the ability to embrace the fact that we're also constantly changing and if we remain open to the experiences that we have or to new experiences, then they will constantly kind of catalyse change, catalyse some shifts or change in us, or mould us into a slightly different way. To remain open to that can sometimes feel quite scary. I think it requires courage to stay open in that way. Because it requires us to slightly let go of things that maybe we used to be. And to actually allow ourselves to grow in different ways that maybe we didn't even expect could happen. There's a quote that I have just up here, which I really like and reflects what we're talking about, and links it to nature as well. It’s a quote from Robert Bly, and he said,
‘It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves like the trees and be born again, drawing up from great roots’.
And I really like that, because I think the great roots, and that kind of grounding ourselves and the grounding ourselves in the body and in the senses and coming back to embodiment, is where we can find the strength and the courage to welcome being changed by experience. If we stay grounded in those roots, then there's something holding about it that enables us to let experiences change us maybe or lets us embrace the life experiences that come our way that might lead us to be transformed or be changed by them.
Adrian:
We’re back with that sense of nature being a very holding environment that facilitates change.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. There have been times in my life where the holding of the ground was the only holding I could find that was trustworthy and where I felt a sense of safety. Perhaps nature has always been a kind of holding thing for me, because nature has that kind of holding, grounding side to it, which can feel comforting and nurturing. And there's a sense of safety and belonging in it. But I think nature also is a way to connect with the wilderness as well. So nature isn't just comforting and holding. It's also wild! But it's the combination of the fact that there's a holding in the roots - If we're thinking about trees and metaphor using the tree as a metaphor. It's like there's a holding and grounding in the roots of the tree. But sometimes you see these trees on cliff edges, growing out of rocks and really moulded by the storms and really wild, unpredictable weather. But yet they're able to be changed and transformed. Their shape has changed and transformed by the weather. And arguably what enables them to do that is the fact that they're grounded and that their roots are held by the ground. So yeah, I think it's that combination - that's the way in which for me, nature's helped me to embrace both of those, or at least at least aspire to embrace both of those those things. To feel held and grounded is really important and to keep yourself safe within boundaries is really important, but actually to also embrace the wilderness and embrace change and uncertainty and allow that into your experience is really important. Because if we get stuck in the groundedness, at best, it gets a bit boring! And at worst, it can be quite deadening, I think, to not allow ourselves to be transformed by the experiences of life. And they're not always necessarily pleasant ones. They can be of course, they can be wonderful and incredibly painful. All of those things.
Adrian:
Taking that thought of openness to kind of an extreme, there's this story about when you met the pygmy owl in Cuba. And there was a sense of loss of self, I suppose.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. I remember that was I was travelling with one of my friends and my brother in Cuba. And we’d just walked into this area of rain forest. My friend in particular was very distracted and irritated by the mosquitoes. And I was getting slightly irritated by my friend, who was irritated with mosquitoes! Anyway, all of this distraction that was taking our attention was halted when we walked around this corner. I just spotted this owl in a tree that was probably just like a couple of metres from us. It was just looking straight at us and we were just stunned into silence. And the mosquitoes were completely gone. My friend’s complaints were completely gone. And we were just brought into this moment. I think the dimension that was added compared to the experience that I had in Chile, was that it was an encounter with an individual wild bird. So it was like another individual being, I suppose. It was staring straight at me and our eyes were locked. The actual moment probably lasted maybe a second, but it felt almost like an eternity in a second. And it was this sense of - this glimpse of a feeling of connection where the owl and I were no longer separate. And it didn't last for very long. It was like a barrier sort of disappeared for second. When in the Buddhist traditions, there's talk of enlightenment, sometimes enlightenment is seen as something that we aspire to as an endpoint. It's like one day we will be enlightened and reunited with this great sense of connection with something greater than ourselves. My experience of what we may call something like enlightenment - and I have no idea, it's just how it resonates with me. It's something I feel like we all experience – or can all experience if we’re we open to our experience - in glimpses. By no means do I feel like I'm an enlightened being because I've had experience with the owl! That's not at all what I mean. But it's more that I think those moments of connection to something greater where our sense of self disappears or it feels like our sense of separate self disappears. To me, that's that's how enlightenment resonates with me, rather than something we should be aspiring to achieve as some as a final point. I think it also happens in our day to day lives – you don't have to be in the middle of a beautiful rainforest in Cuba, it could just be with somebody you love, or it could just be on the way to work noticing something that kind of takes you out of yourself or piece of music that you’re really taken by. So yeah, it just it just feels important to highlight that in the context of that story because it felt like a sacred moment, but I don't I think it's an unattainable. I think it's something that's very human. I don't think it's otherworldly. It feels otherworldly, but it's also very human.
Adrian:
I think that's such an important point because we have this sense of ‘Oh, yes, the wilderness is out there somewhere and I need to go and trek across ...’ . Actually, you can go to your local park, and if you tune in deeply enough you can have an experience, just like we're talking about, with an earthworm!
Claire:
Yeah. Yeah.
Adrian:
An occasion comes to my mind of lying down in the grass and just kind of tuning into things, and an earthworm suddenly popped up! It as wasn't quite as intense as your experience, but it really was such a powerful moment of connection.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. I had a similar experience in my garden, and it was just with a daisy! I was lying on the grass and I was just looking at the daisies, I guess from a different point of view, because I was at the same level as them. And I just remember having this – again it was a very short moment - but a moment of like, ‘Wow! What a beautiful flower!’ And I wasn't in a practice of meditation - I wasn't trying - it was more just a moment that came into my experience. And it just kind of came over me, I guess.
Adrian:
This brings to mind a couple of different places you've written about this sense of , ‘we protect what we love’. When we've had these these kind of experiences - My sense is, these are the experiences that can inspire us to really be more environmentally aware and engaged.
Claire:
Yeah, absolutely. I think changing our behaviour in relation to the environment, I think there are lots of different things that are important in terms of achieving that. But I do think that for many years there's been quite a strong focus on trying to convince people of the importance of the environment and of the importance of protecting the environment and changing our behaviours, by using rational arguments. So whether it's data about climate change, or figures about habitat loss, or species loss - and I think they're really important, and they have a place. But I think in terms of changing our behaviour - this relates to the environment, but also just in life in general - I think we tend to change our behaviour, when something matters to us, I think things only matter to us when we feel like they matter to us. And I don't think it's about rational arguing, I think it's much more about a felt sense of, like you say, love for something or someone that leads us to want to change our behaviour. That inspires us to want to change our behaviour. And I do feel like sometimes even in the nature conservation world - having worked in international nature, conservation NGOs- there has been quite a strong focus on using a scientific approach to engaging people with the natural world and trying to change behaviours. And I don't think that's the full picture. I think that it's very important to bring in felt experience and nature connectedness in a way that's not needing knowledge necessarily, not needing numbers or names, but actually just what what do people love in nature? What do people love doing in nature? And actually, I think if people can reconnect with what it is that's meaningful to them in the natural world - and that could be anything that you enjoy when you're in nature in the wild - I think it's more likely that we will be inspired to want to do something to protect it.
Adrian:
This reminds me of the work of Miles Richardson at the University of Derby.
Claire:
Yeah, I’m not 100 per cent sure if it was Miles Richardson, but think it was linked to that - they did a study on what were the predictors of nature connectedness, as in how connected people feel to nature. And essentially they found that when it was a sense of compassion for other living things, or a sense of meaning or a sense of beauty or appreciating beauty, then that was when people felt more connectedness to nature. That was when they were connecting in that felt way as opposed to necessarily the kind of knowledge based - learning the names of species side of engaging with nature. So yeah, there's a really important research going on in that area, for sure.
Adrian:
I’ve been dabbling about with bird watching for absolutely ages, and always have this tendency to think that need to know more about what the birds are and need to do it properly. Reading your book about the art of mindful bird watching sort of flipped it around. It’s like, ‘Just enjoy it. Just engage with the experience of watching the birds. Stop worrying about doing it properly!’
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. I was saying earlier that I feel passionate about people feeling seen and heard. I think one thing that we lose - or we can lose - as we grow up is that sense of natural curiosity, that kind of childlike curiosity about things. Because I guess we develop a sense of what we should and shouldn't be interested in or shouldn't and shouldn't do, or how we should and shouldn't do things. And that whole experience of doing things because we experience joy when we are doing them can be lost in us. And I guess that applies to what you're saying about birdwatching. I often have people who are interested - even just who have bird feeders in their garden - and they’re kind of like, ‘Oh, yeah, but I don't really know anything about the birds’. And this is interesting because actually, it's almost like they're forbidding themselves! There's a sense of like, ‘Oh, I'm not allowed to. I'm not allowed to enjoy birdwatching, because I don't know anything about them’. And I think it applies particularly to bird watching. I think it's shifting, but there has been a bit of a stigma around being a birdwatcher or birder. If you don't fit into that into that group of experts, people who’ve got all the equipment - and it’s absolutely fine that people do have that. But I think it is not a necessity to enjoy it. You may or may not be interested in finding out what their names are. There are artists who just enjoy painting but whether they know what they're called may or may not be relevant - it might be how they're experiencing them which is important, or they might both be important, but I think again, it comes back to this thing of no right or wrong experience and being curious and relating to the natural world in that way. If we could shift it a little bit more towards that, I think everybody could find something in nature that they can connect with or find joy in. And it might not even be through wildlife. I think it could be through a sport like surfing in the sea. It doesn't necessarily have to be a kind of naturalist entry point into nature. I think that we all get value and meaning from nature in different ways.
Adrian:
To bring this to a conclusion, this is like a good place to pick up with a practice, you got something you would give some people as a takeaway, something that would help them to connect?
Claire:
Yeah, sure. The first thing I'd say is just to really emphasise that whatever you enjoy in nature, go and do that! That's the first thing. And that sounds a bit obvious but I think it's important because I don't think it has to be mindfulness based in the broad sense of the term. There's a practice that's really nice that you can do anywhere, whether it's in a wild place, or just in your garden, or just in a city, called the Sit Spot. Jon Young wrote a book called What the Robin Knows, and he kind of coined the term, I think, the SitSpot, but it's become something that's widely used now. Essentially, all it involves is just finding a place, ideally close to where you live - somewhere you can get to quite easily - and then just going to sit there relatively regularly for short periods of time. Ideally, 20 minutes is good, because the wildlife tends to settle after we've been in a place in stillness for that long. So say 20 minutes in a spot that you choose that's near where you live. And then when you go and sit in that place, just taking a moment to notice your own physical experience: Noticing your felt experience of your breathing, and how you're feeling in your body, maybe the points of contact with the ground. Just coming a little bit out of your mind and into your embodied experience. And then just going through your different senses, just paying attention to what you can hear - the different sounds that you can hear in that place - and the smells and the sights. You could break the sights down into colours and shapes and movement. And then over time, you might also start to notice specific individuals of say, bird species that might be visiting that area. If you're lucky, maybe mammals species as well. So yeah, just other individual living things, insects, and just having that curiosity about what they're doing, what they might be doing there, what they might be needing their maybe even what they might be experiencing. It's not so much about having the answers to those questions, but actually just about being curious about what the answers might be. And then just repeating that. Some people do it every day, but it could just be once a week or however often you can fit it in. You may find that you start to develop a bit of a relationship with the place and start noticing what you're bringing to that space on different days; how you're feeling and that might be impacting the wildlife that's actually visiting or not. That's the general gist of the Sit Spot. It's a really nice way to combine a little bit of mindfulness practice and a meditative approach with engaging with nature, but also just enjoying being in a nature base near your home.
Adrian:
That was lovely! Thank you very much, Claire, that's been a rich exploration of the different aspects of mindfulness in nature. And that closing idea of having a Sit Spot is something we can all go out and do and maybe nurture our own connection to nature a little bit more.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Adrian. Having me on the podcast has been really good to talk and reflect on these things. I hope everybody finds a way to start to nurture that love and connection with the natural world in their day to day lives.
Adrian:
If you want to know more about Claire's work, go to mindfulness-of-nature.com. It's got her books on there, and you can learn more and perhaps go along to one of the workshops or close running.
Claire:
Yeah, definitely. That would be it'd be great to see some of you there.
Adrian:
Brilliant! Thanks, Claire.
Claire:
Take care. Thank you! bye bye.