A Sense of Place

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A Sense of Place

by

Barry Fraser

To love something you must first know it. To protect something you must first love it.

-author unkown

What is this place that we call home? How much do we know about this place in which we choose to live? What does it mean to live in place?

Having lived in Tallahassee for just over 10 years, I've discovered that I am only now beginning to get acquainted with where I live. Not in the usual sense of knowing how to get around, or becoming familiar with the roads, the neighborhoods, and the buildings. But in the sense of truly knowing and understanding what it means to live in a bioregion, a place with its own watershed, soils, climate, plants, animals and history. Developing a sense of place means learning terms to describe that place, including the flora and fauna as well as the processes that make the ecosystem function; understanding its systems and our relationship to them; seeing the lifecycles and experiencing the bioregion's unique rhythms. But most importantly, developing a strong connection and learning to respect this place, opening up to it, and awakening our curiosity.

Below, I've included an exercise designed to help you connect to that place we call home. These exercises will take only a few minutes each day, and can be enormously helpful toward fully understanding and appreciating the beautiful Red Hills bioregion in which we live, with the added benefit of being providing a deeply relaxing and rewarding experience.

Exercise:*

1. Notice how you feel right now, then go to something in nature that you like, that you find attractive (wind, moon, tree, flower etc.). Attractions you find in your area of the bioregion are tangible sensory connections. They invite, welcome and consciously, feelingly connect you to them.

2. Thank the natural attraction that brings you to this area for being there for you. Thank it for safely activating a good, rewarding feeling from nature that you experience through this attraction connection.

3. Recognize that as part of the Earth community, justifiably, this natural area or thing desires and has a right to exist, build beneficial relationships and grow, just as you do. Decide that you are going to respect its integrity by asking for its permission to visit it.

4. Silently, aloud or in writing, ask this natural area for its consent for you be there and do this activity there. It will not give you permission to visit if you are going to injure, destroy or defame it, or if it will not be safe for you. Promise this area that you will treat it honorably.

5. Sense the area for 10 seconds or more in silence and respect. Be aware of negative signals from stress, discouragement or danger from it, such as thorns, bees, poison ivy, ticks, cliff faces or unpleasant memories, thoughts or feelings. If they appear, thank them for their "attractive" message to help you find ways to obtain good feeling and rewards safely.

When the 10 seconds are up, note that if the area still feels attractive, or has become more attractive. If it has, it has consented to your visit through a multitude of your natural senses.

If this part of the natural area no longer feels attractive, or is replaced by another attraction, thank it for its guidance and simply seek another natural part of the area that feels attractive to you. Then repeat the gaining permission process. Do this until you find a ten second period when a safe attraction feeling remains for a place, color, shape or other natural thing. When this occurs, you have multisensory permission to visit it.

6. As soon as you gain a natural attraction's permission to visit, genuinely thank it for giving its consent.

7. Now, compare how you feel about being in this mutually supportive moment with how you felt when you first started doing this activity. Has any change occurred? Does the area feel better or friendlier to you? Do you find it more attractive or rewarding now than before you received its consent and thanked it? Do you feel better about yourself, more supported by the life community in this small area of the bioregion?

8. Write down what occurred, and if you obtained good feelings or rewards from doing this activity, what they were and whether you trust them. Share this information with people close to you or others who might be doing the activity with you.

*From: "Reconnecting With Nature" by Michael L. Cohen
http://www.ecopsych.com/