“Passing Clouds
Look up at the sky and notice the clouds. Are they moving fast or floating by slowly?
Pick a cloud that speaks to you and keep your gaze fixed on it. Breathe as you stay connected with that cloud and follow it across the sky. Does it change form? Does it speed up or slow down?
At the end, draw your cloud.”
A Creative Field Guide and Journal
by Alexandra Frey and Autumn Totton
The Experiment, 2018
This "creative field guide" for nature novices suggests activities for engagement with the outdoors. It aims to inspire readers to explore the natural world and record their findings with sketches and journal entries that lead to greater mindfulness.
"It includes instructions for excursions into the wild and exercises that will help you connect with nature, right where you are," says Alexander Frey and Autumn Totton, founders of The Mindfulness Project which produced this journal.
The bulk of the book consists of an Exercise Log with some seventy suggested activities to stimulate mindfulness in nature, such as watching and drawing clouds, cataloging flowers by their color, lying beneath a tree and breathing consciously, making an inventory of sights and sounds on a seashore, climbing a tree, making a snowman, and tracking time on a homemade sundial.
A Field Notes section at the back of the book suggests ways to document excursions with time and date, weather data, sights, sounds, smells, and wildlife sightings.
The main objective of this book is to encourage readers to pursue mindfulness in an outdoor setting. "Give yourself permission to take time out, disconnected from your devices, to spend time in and be with nature."
