Spiritual Connection

In my previous post, I shared the evidence of how nature can restore you.  I appreciate that not everyone in London lives within easy access to a green space, and it turns out that it may not be necessary to visit the green space just look at a green space. This first occurred to me a few weeks ago, when I was in Manchester.  In the hotel reception they had screens playing a short video clip of a roaring log fire.  A roaring log fire just happens to be another of those things that I find both calms me, reduces my stress levels and restores me.  What I noticed is that I had a positive response to the video clip, even though it was just a film of a log fire rather than an actual log fire.  So this made me think, would just looking at a picture of nature on your PC have the same positive impact as going out in nature. Li & Sullivan in a randomised controlled experiment demonstrated that views to green landscapes promote attention restoration and help individuals to recover from stress.  In another study, researches in China, have discovered that viewing nature based scenes were restorative and those with more openness but no people were more lived to reduce stress.  So maybe you could just look at a picture instead. So for those of you where its not practical to spend 5 minutes in nature per day, why not look at a picture of a green landscape (without people) on your mobile phone  or tablet or pc, and see if it boosts your attention levels and restores you. References D Li and W C Sullivan, Impact of views to school landscapes on recovery from stress and mental fatigue.  Landscape and Urban Planning, vol 148, 2016, pp 149 - 158.

In my previous post, How to be mindful, I described a mindful breathing exercise.  Now I want to share with you more mindfulness exercises. 1. Mindful Observation Choose a natural object, plant, flower or cloud in the sky.  Simply focus solely on it for a minute or two.  Visually explore it and allow yourself to be consumed by its presence. 2. Mindful Listening Listen to a piece of music you have never heard before.  You could re-turn your radio to a new station or download a new track to your ipod.  The idea is to listen, to become fully entwined within the composition without preconception or judgement of the genre, artist, lyrics or instrumentation. 3. Mindful Appreciation The point of this exercise is to simply give thanks and appreciate the seemingly insignificant things in life; the things that support your existence but rarely get a second thought in our desire for bigger and better things.  All you have to do is notice 5 things in your daily life that go unappreciated. Once you have your 5 things, then consider

• the benefit they bring to your life and the lives of others
• what life would be like without these things

Last week I talked about having a spiritual connection, soul food is what helps increase our spiritual connection. Soul food is spiritual nourishment, it is anything that simply uplifts or inspires us.  One universal source of spiritual uplift is to bring more beauty into life, whether this is through exploring nature, being creative or simply appreciating art.  Beautifying your home or garden is an easy way to feel more spiritually nourished.  Other common soul foods include enjoying the wonder of children or exquisite music.  Making time to catch the sunrise or sunset can seem like a huge challenge in our busy lives yet it never fails to leave is feeling more uplifted.  Similarly climbing to the top of a hill or mountain is worth the effort to see the view which can often uplift us.   Another, key spiritual nourishment is to simply stop, and remember you are a “human being” not a “human doing”, so stop and take the time and space to simply be. We often feel down in the dumps or depleted when we have gotten to bogged down with responsibility, and “doing” while forgetting how to play, sing, dance and make things with our own hands.  That is when its time to stop and nourish yourself with soul food.   Remember soul food can literally be  anything that nurtures us and makes life feel it’s worth living. Identifying your soul food and feeding it to yourself increases your spiritual connection which is profoundly healing and nurturing and probably one of the best form of preventative medicine you can give yourself. If you would like to improve your spiritual connection try exploring the following

• What lifts my spirit and inspires me?  Can I spend more time doing what inspires me?
• Who lifts my spirit and inspires me?  Can I spend more time with people like this?
• Are there any places that inspire me?  How often would I like to visit them?