Sit spot
{19 minutes}
Sit spot
A core routine of deep nature connection.
One of the most fundamental core routines of deep nature connection, the sit spot is a place, in nature, that you pick to return to again and again, to study the natural world and yourself in it. A sit spot can be any place in nature, but it should be close enough to where you live that you can access it without great effort. There are no particular requirements for what it should look like. If you have the good fortune to be near a forest, it could be there, but if you are in an urban environment, a tiny strip of green space will do. What is important is that you like being there, and that you are interested in and curious about the environment around you. The basic core practice of sit spot is to return to this place with regularity, and to go about the business of building ropes with the living world that is present there. At a practical level, this means getting quietly to your sit spot, settling in without creating disturbance, and engaging in the practice of externally -oriented mindful awareness to begin noticing what is happening around you. A good sit spot might be in a transition zone; it might be a place where there is obviously a lot of animal activity, where you can find birds, but what’s more important is the quality of your observational attention. In some traditions, people go out to a sit spot with a dedicated notebook, and make observational recordings—field notes—on a regular basis. An easy way to do this is by setting up 10-minute increments, and recording major activities for the period. Some people like to make a miniature map of the spot, and record activities on this. For others, a brief journaling after sitting is sufficient, while some prefer not to take notes at all.
Once you arrive at your sit spot, settle in as inconspicuously as possible. Increase your zone of awareness while decreasing your zone of disturbance. Turn on your soft focus eyes, and your owl ears with all of your senses, of what is happening around you. Do this without exerting effort, without working, but in as relaxed and open a way as possible. You want to notice when a hummingbird dives across your left shoulder, and where she perches. You want to notice where the squirrel drops down out of the canopy, and who he is scolding, and for how long. Become attuned to the felt qualities of your spot. First, begin to become aware of what it feels like in baseline, when there is settling. Then, become aware of what it feels like when there is disturbance. (Hint: you are the disturbance until you are still enough to settle into baseline. Every time you arrive, for probably the first five to ten minutes, you are the disturbance.)
With sit spot, we want to get to know this spot so well that we know whose home is here, who the neighbors are, how they interact. You can rest assured that they know each other already. You want to get to know when they are asleep and when they are awake, and how they spend their time. What are the plants here, the sources of food, the sources of shade? Who walks through this spot on their way to somewhere else? Is it coyote? Is it raccoon? Porcupine?
Sit spot is often an externally -oriented mindfulness practice initially; you are noticing who is around you in the living world, and what they are doing, but many indigenous cultures also use a spot like this—Australian aboriginal cultures call this a ‘think spot’—to practice what we call indigenous intelligence. As Unangan (Native Alaskan) elder Ilarion Merculieff points out, in the West we think of intelligence arising from thinking, whereas indigenous people are aware that intelligence arises when thinking stops. So in addition to tracking the world around us, in our spot we can make a distinct yet related practice of attuning to our inward sense, but in a way that harmonizes with an awareness of what is going on around us. This practice of dropping the boundary between internal and external, of allowing our attention free play around us as a form of listening to ourselves, is itself a connection practice of deepening the relationship between inner and outer. We can go to our sit spot, hold a question or problem in our minds—something we are examining in our lives, in our inward study—and allow ourselves to engage our senses while holding this question, and observe what the living world has to say about it. This is something that indigenous and ancestral cultures have been doing since the dawn of time.
Our sit spot is a place that we want to visit with regularity, at different times of day, in all seasons and weather. There are people who have been visiting a sit spot every day for many years, and over time, as you settle into your spot, you become instantiated, neurologically, into this place, as it becomes instantiated in you. It is a place that you can then call upon in your life, a refuge you can return to in your mind, a way to drop back into connection when you are deviated from it.
At first, you might sit for fifteen to thirty minutes, and build from there. When you arrive, you might practice a brief orientation meditation, externally -oriented, to give structure to how you settle your senses. Treat it as an awareness practice, and when you find yourself drifting into discursive thought, bring your attention back to your senses and your surroundings. Meditators–beware of the temptation to withdraw your awareness from your senses and go internal. Certainly you are welcome to practice meditation outdoors, and this is a wonderful thing to do, but this is not the SIT SPOT. The sit spot is attention oriented into the living world.
As you practice in your sit spot, as you build and deepen your connection to place, you will find that it opens a door for you into deeper connection with the land and all the living world upon it. It is relevant to note that a fundamental component of indigeneity is relationship to a particular place. Indigeneity arises in deep relationship to the land, to a particular ecology, the plants, the animals, the elements (geology, minerals, water, wind, landforms) of a particular place. In Hawa'ii, this word for land is ‘aina’ and the natives are called ‘kama aina:’ children of the land. The aina is a spiritual force, a place that is not simply a what, but a who. It means, “That which feeds us” or “feeding spot”. Clearly the feeding is not simply of the material kind: it is food for the body and more. The aina is always particular. Every indigenous culture comes unfolding a story of place. This is a story of land, the foods that grow there, the necessities of climate and ecology, that dictate how we should live well in relationship to it. Everything from transportation–consider the ancestral technologies of kayaks developed by sea-faring Alaskan people versus the harnessing of reindeer by the Sami people in Lapland–to the foods people eat–consider the three sisters of the Haudenosaunee confederacy (corn, beans, and squash) with the ancestral technologies of permaculture associated therewith, versus the terraced taro farming of the Hawa’iian islands, where elaborately engineered canals diverted the streams flowing down from the mountains to the taro patches–to the forms of shelter the people built–consider the mobile teepees of the plains-dwelling tribes of the middle west of the Unites States, which allowed them to move with herds of buffalo across the land, versus the cave dwellings in Chaco Canyon, where the people had established more permanent agriculture–arises in relationship to place. Every indigenous culture’s modes of relating to place are site-specific, land-specific.
As our advisor John Stokes points out, everything in the Creation desires to be appreciated, so when we come out into nature with an attitude of thanksgiving, of gratitude, the living world feels this, and it deepens our reciprocity. So, in this way, as we return to our sit spot, day after day, and direct gratitude, and interest, and mindful awareness to notice more of what is happening around us, we are not only enriching ourselves but restoring an appreciation that benefits the living world itself. (See the Thanksgiving address of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.)
Related Practices:
The awareness aspects of this practice are connected to Meditation, but the practice is really focused on Building Ropes. See Study the Pattern Language of Nature. See Tracking as Governing Metaphor. See bird language. Sit spot, Tracking, and Bird Language together form a triad of core deep nature awareness practices. See Interoception. See Tracking Physiology.Photography: | Licensed from Pexels.com, used with permission.