When you bring your body out into the landscape, you’re bringing your body home to where it belongs. Because human bodies weren’t really made for offices, for streets and corners and tight places.
John O’Donohue
reveal
Photo by Ellen Tynan

Sugarloaf Mountain Walk (Autumn)

Sugarloaf Mountain by Ellen TynanWhat would it be like to enter the landscape and walk the land in a sacred way? What might we discover about ourselves and this living system we call home, if we were to slow down and mindfully explore both our inner and outer landscape? Hindus and Buddhists circumambulating Tibet’s Mount Kailash. Pilgrims trekking the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Indigenous Australians following the Songlines of their land. Hiei-zan monks in Japan practicing 1000-day walking meditations. For thousands of years and in almost every culture and spiritual tradition, people have walked the land as a way of connecting with the sacred nature of the life within and around them.

Our circumambulation will be interspersed with stops for meditation, readings, and contemplations to bring a greater awareness to our experience of being with and on the earth. As Gary Snyder said about his and others’ circumnambulation of Mt. Tamalpais in the early ‘60s – “The main thing is to pay your regards, to play, to engage, to stop and pay attention. It’s just a way of stopping and looking — at yourself, too.  To register please go to the IMCW website or contact Ellen directly.

Details
October 21, 2012