One of my favourite spiritual leaders, Satish Kumar, reminds us that spirituality is not separate from everyday life: Spirituality is within us and all around us, all the time.
Two years ago I took the year-long course with the Spiritual Companions Trust and I discovered the importance of embedding spiritual connection in my daily life through regular practice. I needed to do this because, as we all know and experience, life is so full of busyness, constant stimulation and demands for our attention. News feeds, emails, social media push in on us all the time and it can be hard to switch off the phone and step back. Sometimes I realise I’m doing everything with an ongoing background level of tension, impatience and irritability that seems normal. This is not how I want to be! Stress may start in my mind but it has a physical impact: tight muscles, disturbed sleep, and upset digestion. I forget sometimes how it feels to be truly relaxed, open, connected.
So I find walking a great way to relieve stress and tension, as well as an opportunity for reflection. Walking in nature is an important gateway to spiritual connection for me, and I have been exploring this as my daily spiritual practice. I’ve noticed that often when I’m walking my mind is busy – I’m thinking about what I’ve been doing, what I need to do when I get home, what I’m going to cook for supper, and so on. I suddenly realise that I’m not present at all: I’m planning, thinking, busy.
So what’s different when a walk becomes part of my spiritual practice? While I’m walking, I give my attention to enjoying the rhythm of movement, the fresh air, and what is around me: the sky, the changes in the hedgerows through the seasons. What helps me deepen into spiritual connection is to … pause. This is the most effective way to interrupt my thoughts, change gear, and connect. Stopping for a moment, I instantly notice more of what is around me: the light coming through the leaves, the gentle movement of branches in the breeze.
I drop into my body, maybe taking a couple of deep breaths, feeling my feet on the earth… centring, changing gear. I guide my attention gently from my thinking mind into my feeling body. Consciously opening my senses, I begin to hear the birdsong more clearly, the sound of the wind in the trees, the rustling leaves. I notice the smells around me, discovering that each season has its own scents and fragrances. I notice the feel of the air on my skin, and enjoy touching the soft moss, the rough bark, the delicacy of a spring flower. Sometimes, depending on the season, I might taste some hedgerow offering – wild garlic, hawthorn leaves, blackberries. Exploring my environment through my senses in this way brings me fully present, letting go of the busyness of my thoughts.
*
Now, I am able to connect with what is around me more deeply. I am entering the experience fully, appreciating what is around me and where I am. Consciously opening myself, I yield to the experience, surrender, let it in, soak in it. Appreciation and gratitude arise naturally. I stop to enjoy the view, take time to be with a tree, watch the sheep gently ruminating. I feel more peaceful, grounded, at ease. Consciously guiding my attention in this way deepens my experience into spiritual connection. A walk becomes restorative and nourishing on the deepest level.
*
Pausing, centring, connecting, and yielding are the core skills we all learnt to develop during the Spiritual Companions diploma, recognising our gateways to spiritual connection and deepening our spiritual practice, whatever form that takes. These are skills we can learn, and with regular repetition and practice, become easier and more natural.
As a musician I am very familiar with the concept of practice – to learn and master an instrument takes many hours of practice. I give the piece of music I am learning my full attention, going over any sections I am struggling with, creating exercises to develop the muscle memory so that gradually the parts become a whole. Commitment, repetition and trusting the process are key, until one day I realise I can play something I couldn’t before, with a new fluency and confidence. Then, my instrument becomes part of myself, a vehicle for expression and connection.
In the daily repetition of my spiritual practice I feel I am clearing a pathway within myself to a place that is deep, open, receptive, spacious and connected. Visiting this place frequently helps integrate it into myself and my life, so that it becomes a place of nourishment, strength and replenishment. I am quietening, slowing down, listening within. The practice of pausing, centring, connecting, yielding, helps clear this pathway to a quiet, expansive inner space. I used to think I had to go away to find this, go on retreat, be somewhere else. But recently I’ve discovered that even a twenty minute walk from my house can replenish me in this way, as part of my daily life.
As I am renewed and restored my heart is more open, my mind calmer. I am connected with myself and with life. I feel more resourced to meet the challenges of the day and the busyness of the world around me from a grounded, centred, calm place in myself. This is lifelong learning. This is about every day of my life, for as long as I am on this earth.
Jenny Heaton is a Spiritual Companion and has been a homeopath and massage practitioner for over twenty years. Jenny is based in Devon, where she also works as a gardener. She is also a musician, with extensive teaching and performing experience. jennyheaton.co.uk