Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I'm leaning against this big granite rock.
It's probably about six foot high,
Quite wide and just closing my eyes.
I'm looking west and it's in the evening and the sun is sinking in the sky and there's a beautiful warmth in the last rays of the sun as it glistens across the moorland.
If I turn my eye away from the sun and up the hillside,
So I'm looking now north,
The hillside is bathed in the light of the evening sun and the bracken on the hillside has turned orange.
It's suddenly gone orange,
A deep brown orange glowing in the evening light and above the hillside I can see the blue of the sky.
Sheep are grazing in front of me and this just feels very still,
Very still for a moorland evening as I just feel there's a little bit of damp coolness in the breeze.
I just feel that against my face as I'm leaning up against this grey granite boulder and today I met some friends,
Some older friends with my husband and we were sitting having tea and just chatting and they were telling us about their experiences with yoga and they've been taking part in yoga for a couple of years now and this was the first time I'd heard them talk about it and they were saying about how much they enjoyed the yoga.
The physicality of it was one thing but there was something about the process and action of yoga that had them feel this sense of,
Well I'm going to use my language now,
But the sense of coming back to themselves.
As they were describing it and they were explaining how their thinking fell away and they just felt this rock solidness and sometimes the yoga teacher would take them outdoors and they'd be barefoot in the field or they'd be engaging in yoga in a forest and there was something about this whole sense of presence and beingness that they were able to experience.
I know that yoga isn't the thing that creates the stillness and peace that somebody feels.
Yoga is the activity or the catalyst to bear witness to the truth of who they are.
In the same way as I lean up against this rock,
Close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on my face,
I can sense this real well-being and it's not the outdoors that's creating the well-being.
What's happening is that I am having an experience of who I truly am and this rock feels quite symbolic as I touch it and feel the roughness against my fingers and imagine this rock stretching deep,
Deep into the earth and feeling that sense of groundedness and rock solidness that this boulder is enabling me to feel in the moment.
But knowing that it's not the boulder,
It's not the sun and it wasn't the yoga and it wasn't the outdoors that had my friends feel this sense of connectedness and rootedness.
And it reminds me that in the lives that we lead we lose track,
Lose awareness of who we truly are.
We're distracted with all the the busyness of what it is to be alive and to be human and actually the very thing that we yearn for,
That settled peace of mind that many of us seek and yearn for and wish for,
The irony is that that is actually who we are and we chase it in all the different distractions that we seek in the world.
But actually the truth of who we are is present within us in any moment and in this moment I can feel it.
I can feel the energy,
The universal energy.
I can feel it and experience it as truly as I can feel the sun on my face and the wind against my cheek.
I'm closing my eyes,
Maybe you close your eyes too and allow your awareness to look within and feel that rock solid groundedness of who you truly are and know that that never leaves you.
You are the energy of life itself and it is taking form through you.
Thank you.
