As spring time approaches and the world around us wakes up, I am starting a new ritual with my children. A few times a day we have to stop and pay attention to our senses.
What do you see?
What do you hear?
What do you feel?
What do you smell?
At dinner we take a moment to close our eyes and just focus on what we taste.
In this crazy world of too much information and so much to do and so many things coming at them, getting ready to come at them, I want to give them a foundation of their sense. A place to come to where they inhabit their body fully.
I love meditation and focusing on thoughts, and then trying to settle into that lovely space between them.
I love focusing on breath and how a body moves with each inhalation and exhalation.
But we are more than our breaths, and more than our thoughts, and more than that space. We are our senses as well.
I want to teach my children to possess theirs fully, to capture them, explore them, move through the world with them.
What did that sunset over the Maasai Mara in Kenya really look like?
How did that fresh pineapple floating down the river in Central America really taste?
And then to teach them how to play with them…
How does that kind of silence make you feel?
What do you smell when you taste something that rich?
What do you see when you touch sadness?
Or happiness?
Comments