Sensory Awareness and Climate Change

It can change your life. The work is subtle yet penetrating. Engaging in simple activities reveals how we engage in all aspects of our lives. As we discover how to respond beyond habits that constrict us, we can learn how to be more responsive in our relationships and all that we do. As we come more in touch with breathing, our sensations and our ability to come to quiet in our minds, we can learn to access this capacity more easily in the midst of busy and demanding situations as well.

In classes, we explore what happens in basic activities of life, discovering where we are saying “yes” and where we are saying “no” to our own living. Each class is different and unfolds in its own unique way. The classes are composed of “experiments”— activities offered by the leader with guided questions to help students explore their own experiences. Working with breathing, sitting, standing, walking or any activity, we can discover where we carry tension or resistance. Feeling where changes are needed, we can allow them or we can become more aware of our own resistance and learn what it has to teach us. We develop “sensory literacy” which helps us be present and responsive to what each moment is asking of us.

Our sensations are always with us, and can be guides at any moment to becoming more present. Create opportunities to pause and connect with what you are experiencing. Even pausing for 3 breaths can help us recalibrate and renew. Here are some examples of ways to practice: Download a mindfulness bell app on your telephone and program it to ring during your day so that you can pause for 3 breaths. Pause whenever your own telephone rings or before you send a text message, or at every red light you stop at, or as you are preparing a meal or washing your dishes. Simply connect with 3 breaths and experience how this influences you. Reflect on when you tend to become stressed or harried during your day and intentionally set aside a few minutes to come to quiet and return to your senses. Choosing times during our days when we can become more mindful and aware can transform the quality of what we are doing and how we are living.

The essence of Sensory Awareness practice is “waking up”— opening to the gift of aliveness in each moment. A core question for Lee in her own practice and in her teaching is: “What does this moment ask of me?”  Our planet could not be crying out more clearly for us to wake up. We are being asked to respond. Many people are still in denial, feel helpless, overwhelmed, and paralyzed by grief or avoidance. Yet the realities of what is happening live in our bodies, hearts and minds. Sensory Awareness practice can help us open to what is present and cultivate our capacity to respond. 

Refuge in your own body, in the connection with breath and with the natural capacity to feel tension and to allow it little by little to release. Learning through your own direct experience that there is a longing to let go of “sucking it up” and pushing past what your own body needs, to listening to what is needed and having the confidence and trust to allow the changes. Being with others in a supportive community of practice and growth.

Lee is happy to come to offer workshops when she can fit them into her schedule. She is also committed to offering free programs for Climate Activists to provide renewal and support. Contact Lee and you can explore possibilities for this. The Sensory Awareness Foundation has a list of Sensory Awareness Leaders throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Mexico who are also giving workshops and might be available to help share the work in different places.