a child was born. All too frequently, loved ones are gone, places paved over—in reality or in our hearts. Earth systems, too, are dying. Forests, songbirds, and the air in our lungs are in trouble.
Grief is a natural response to loss. Engaging our grief requires softening our guard. The process includes several essential stages: acknowledging our denial, allowing emotion, accepting death as part of life, and expressing through creative forming—giving voice to the forceful feelings that occur. Our attitudes toward our grief affect our ability to feel and to act.
Environmental Studies is one of the fastest growing majors at universities across the country. Alternative health care is a growing force that challenges traditional medical practices to include a holistic view of the body. Books, magazines, and art reflect environmental perspectives and healthful incentives. There is no discipline, institution, or individual exempt from environmental concern and responsibility. As we become aware of our underlying attitudes toward our bodies and toward the places we call home, we experience the dynamics of living an interconnected life.
Any integrative experience is a spiritual experience, humanist John Dewey reminds us. One component of mystical or spiritual involvement that underlies ecological concerns is the feeling of being an integrated part of the whole planet. Aesthetic experience nurtures this sensibility in people. Thus, the arts have an essential role to play in encouraging us to face the unprecedented challenges of our time.
Our attitudes can be affected by information, inspiration, or direct experience. We can learn how a lake is polluted by reading the newspaper, seeing a painting, or finding a dying loon on the shore. Each instance connects person to place in a moment of alertness.
As we envision life, we create it. As we think, we do. Experiencing ourselves as participants, we foster attitudes in ourselves and in our communities that allow a lively and respectful dialogue between body and earth.
TO DO
Body map 30 minutes
• Draw a map of your body. Start with an outline and fill in the details. Include what you know and what you feel: anatomical information, ideas, emotional connections, colors, images, injuries, words, intuitions, memories. Follow whatever captures your imagination. 10 min.
• Now fill in the context around your body—the environment. 10 min.
• Write about your experience. Read aloud. Pause at the end of each sentence or phrase, and take a full breath—inhalation and exhalation. Allow a final breath cycle at the end of the story. 10 min.
With a group:
Using a large roll of wide paper, cut body-length pieces. In partners, one person lies on the sheet of paper with eyes closed; the partner takes a crayon or marking pen and traces around the outside of the body, in one long continuous line. Change roles. 10 min.
• Take the outline of your body and fill in the contents. Consider context, outside the outline, as well. 10 min.
• Write about your experience. Read aloud to your partner. 10 min.
Breathing spot (Child’s Pose)5 minutes
In constructive rest: Roll to your side, flex your arms and legs close to the body and continue to roll to a “deep fold” position: limbs folded, chest resting on thighs, knees spread slightly for comfort, forehead on the floor, spine curved.
• Rest the warm palms of your hands on your lower back, between pelvis and ribs. Through touch, encourage the movement of skin and muscles in this area as you breathe. On the in breath, your diaphragm is pulled down toward the pelvis, compressing the organs and expanding the back surface of the body as your lungs fill with air; on the out breath, the diaphragm releases (toward the fourth and fifth ribs) and the muscles soften. We call this area of your lower back your “breathing spot.” Encourage its movement with each breath. As breathing deepens, invite sensation to travel all the way down your spine, and spread into your buttocks and legs; then up to the heart, spreading to shoulders, neck, and skull.
In yoga, this is called Balasana, Child’s Pose. Imagine a soft, rounded spine, responding to each breath. If you hold tension in your lower back, this is an excellent exercise to increase circulation and lengthen muscles.
Yoga: Child’s Pose, Balasana.
To write: Place story2–4 hours
Write your history of place, using a chronological approach. Include all the places you have lived and visited. Consider home, travels, dreams, and longings. Reflect on the place-origins of your ancestors. Notice the ways your place history has affected your movement and your attitudes: did you grow up by water, near forests, or surrounded by city streets? How does place affect your life today?
FARMSTORIES: MODELS—THE TRAVELER
My mother was a traveler. She was always at ease with the wealthy. In 1939, after two years of college and before her first teaching position, she took “the grand tour of Europe” collecting the ideas and objects that were to fill my childhood. She sailed across the Atlantic, arriving in England, then in Africa, traveling on the Continent, encountering Mussolini, turning around, and heading for home.
On the farm, this heritage of world adventure was transmitted to us by the Della Robia Madonna and Child porcelain plate hanging over our kitchen doorway, by the leather gloves and amethyst ring from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence; the carved-ivory Coloseum on the bedstand; the transparent blouses embroidered by women in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia; the woven vests and skirts from Norway.
Each of these objects, however small, was to detail a path that would make me a traveler. And so, in my twenties, when I began my own journeys, I walked under the smiling Madonna, wearing a transparent blouse embroidered by women who knew that life is how we embellish it, that’s all we get. That life is the body. That’s how we see it, smell it, taste it, and love in it.
Read aloud or write and read your own story about attitudes.
Place visit: Body scan
Lying in constructive rest or seated comfortably, with a vertical spine and eyes closed, begin a body scan. Pass your attention part by part through the body, beginning with your face and skull. Notice any sensation that occurs on this part of your body. It might be an itch, a tingling, or the pressure of your body against the ground. Move your awareness to your neck. Notice any sensation on your neck at this moment in time: the touch of air to skin, heat or coolness. (Repetition of language helps to focus attention.) If you feel no sensation on an area, notice that, nonjudgmentally. Sensations are happening all the time, whether we are aware of them or not. Move your attention through every body part: the back surface of your body, front surface, sides, pelvis, each arm and each leg. Remember, if you feel nothing, just wait, inviting awareness; then move on. Finish by observing breath as it falls in and out of your nose and mouth, moving the ribs, muscles, and skin. Open your eyes, remaining aware of sensation. Is your attitude toward place affected by deepening attention to body? 20 min. Write about your experience. 10 min.
Body scanning helps to develop an equal relationship to all parts of the body, with no hierarchies or areas of avoidance. It is a component of Vipassana Meditation, a Buddhist practice also known as insight meditation.
