Episode 4 - Dod at ein Coed - Coming to our Senses

Session 4: Engaging with the senses: noticing sight

This session invites you to bring mindfulness to the sense of sight. Often, we tend to under or overuse particular senses, so spending some time deliberately engaging with a particular one can help us to practice choosing where we place our attention. For example, taking a broader perspective if we're getting a bit locked in with an unhelpful train of thought.

You can listen to the podcast or follow the potted guidance in the invitation below. You might
like to try inside with the recording first and then have a go outside...

This week, the nature sounds that abut the recording are bird song from a young birch woodland on the lower slopes of Llefn and Gyrn.

Invitation 3: noticing sight practice

• Finding a comfy spot and letting the body settle...
• Noticing....any sensations in the feet or the rhythm of the breath...
• Now, resting the attention with the sense of sight - what's here? Taking a friendly interest in shapes, colours, movement or stillness...
• Noticing any thoughts or stories about what things are when they pop up, and coming back to a more direct experience of what you can see...textures...shades
• Playing with your focus, perhaps zooming in to explore the detail of a particular field or tree then broadening out to the bigger picture, like the curved outline of mountains or a wood.

Mindfulness myth buster: You have to sit very still to practice mindfulness

It can be good to practice mindfulness sitting, alongside bringing awareness to whatever we do, whether it’s noticing the feel of our footsteps, the detail of what we can see or the sound of the wind whilst out walking.

The next session will have sounds from a different part of the Carneddau and a mindfulness practice about mindfully engaging with the senses.