earth, fully: tending to our garden of attention 🌱

A glimpse of glimmering green, a whiff of jasmine, a shimmering aurora on the horizon, a poppy brilliantly blinding you through the cracks on the sidewalk. Suddenly, the world is alive; the mundane, sacred. Through nature journaling, guided meditation, and storytelling, we will collectively cultivate and tend to our mindfulness practice through an ecological lens to embody interconnection and care for self, community, and land.

Over two months (6 sessions), we will at/tend to an earthly being or presence — be it the moon, coyote families, a houseplant, a child, the wind, or coastal tides — and actively document & share our observations of the world with each other. How may building the muscle, language and maps for deep listening support our well-being, creative practices and spiritual lives? How may we wrest our attention from overstimulation and rest it with the local people & places we want to nourish?

You will grow:

• A personal eco-mindfulness practice that celebrates presence, joy, mystery, and attunement with land and seasonal Bay Area biorhythms inspired by nature journaling, guided meditation, and storytelling practices
• A cross-cultural community of people who are investigating their relationships with land, and intentionally tending to where they are placing their attention in the world around & within them
• A creative offering of care for people & planet that integrates deep listening, attention to joy, wonder, and awe, change, and just futures

Course Overview:

1)  Apprenticing to Awe (Nature Journaling on Outer Earth + Light Hike)

• Learn to observe and experience the outer world on a short, sensory hike, incorporating annotations of shapes, colors, textures, and patterns through nature journaling.
• Craft an “awe compass,” as an orientation tool to support you in choosing an “earthly being” as a mentor for the next few weeks.

2) Body as Landscape (Nature Journaling on Inner Earth + Light Sit)

• Develop a personal storytelling style as you infuse your own emotions, thoughts, and experiences alongside your journal pages in a short, guided sit.
• Craft a personal ritual to support you in understanding that your body is an extension of earth & the environment around you, and likewise, how you might begin to perceive and feel into your larger earth body.

3) Sacred Places: Forest (Hiking Meditation)

• Immerse in the landscape of a local forest ecosystem through a guided hiking meditation that honors the stewardship of Indigenous peoples, ancient, emergent, and future.
• Share your own ancestral heritage’s relationship to trees, animism, and stories around the woodland, and weave our collective tree wisdom into your nature journals

4) Sacred Times: Moonrise (Sitting Meditation)

• Experience an expanded perception of time, collectively waiting for a moonrise on a ridgetop in a guided sitting meditation, complete with cozy blankets and hot cocoa.
• Group check-in and journal on how your ritual and how time has altered your relationship with the earthly being you have chosen to at/tend to, including your inner and outer earth observations.

5) Dream Seeding (Creative Writing)

• Creatively dreamstorm and write into a future, where your earthly being has been at/tended to for multiple generations: what does this world look like? What can you smell, touch, taste, see? How do you imagine this practice spiraling in impact beyond this place and time?

6) Blooming into Being (Oral Storytelling)

• Share your stories for the future and reflect, on how fully attending to the inner and outer earth around you, has changed the way you experience time, space, and a sense of interconnection.
• Celebrate and offer up the “earth fully” practice of care you have cultivated for the last few weeks to our community.