Staff WellBeing Walk – 1 April 2025
Springtime Wandering
Mindfulness Outdoors Experience
Thankful for the glorious springtime sun we were gifted for our mindfulness outdoors session at Altamont Gardens. It was wonderful to get to enjoy the sun warming our skin, bones and hearts through the morning.
The intention on this mindfulness outdoors session was to increase our awareness and decrease our disturbance on this land. We do this by slowing down and coming to our senses as present moment anchors to guide us out of our busy thinking and doing modes and into our direct felt experience and being modes of mind.
We began our mindful outdoor experience by walking off the doing-energy of getting here and entering the formal gardens. We oriented to the time and space that is guardianed with such care and connection by the local human and the more-than-human community that lives here year-round.
Turning towards the season unfolding in the present moment, we connected with the element of ‘Wood’ to inspire some mindful movement that helps to arrive more into our bodies. This spring element invites us to remember ‘flexibility’ as we awaken to bloom and flourish in these unfurling days.
We connected to the rhythm of reciprocal breathing, remembering we breathe in oxygen-rich air gifted by the plant life around us and as we breathe out, we gift back our carbon-dioxide that they need for growth. We connected to some appreciation for taking this time in this way today and for the place and beings whose homes we visit today.
With mindful walking and talking, we walked gently and invited our attention to anchor through each of the senses, from touch to hearing and seeing with fresh eyes. Noticing that when we allow ourselves to align with nature, we naturally respond with ease, wakefulness and curiosity.
As we wandered the trail, greeting the earth with each step, we invited an open curiosity to the reveal of nature’s wisdom at this precious time of year.
Altamont Gardens on a sunny spring morning opens the senses to feast on the aromatic magnolia and pungent wild garlic with the soundscape of nest-building crows and other winged beings waking us up today. We sauntered, with silence, through structured gardens to wilder glens and bluebell woods and down to the Slaney for our riverside sit spot. The change of landscape quietly grounding us in a geology that dates back millions of years. Evidence of ancient woodlands in the wood anemone or ‘windflower’, lus na gaoithe, that follows the direction of the sun through the day.
Reducing our disturbance by slowing down and quietening our words, we settled into our sit-spot on the banks of the River Slaney. Our ‘sit spot’ time allowed us to enjoy a nourishing feast of quietening the heart and mind and savouring the warming sun that danced on surfaces of skin and river, aligning bodies today.
As we took time to share our experiences, we enjoyed the nourishment of tea and the precious gift of bearing witness to each other’s reflections and experiences. Closing with the invite to ‘not come all the way out’ and appreciate the nourishment of allowing balance and a different way of enjoying time together outdoors.
” Listen I say!
On earth we’re known only briefly, like the magnolia.
We only wither O Friend!”
– pre-conquest Aztec poetry
Thank you all for spending some time together on our Mindfulness Outdoors Experience at Altamont Gardens, Co. Carlow.
On this page I share some of the steps of our experience together and the authors I mentioned to inspire connection with the gifts of this season.
Feedback is also welcome on your experience of our time together. You can click on the button below to bring you to an online form where data is gathered anonymously.
With much joy and gratitude for a special time together. May this time serve you well and inspire your future wanders outdoors.
For the One who is Exhausted by John O’Donohue
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
Nature’s Calendar: The British year in 72 Seasons by Kiera Chapman & friends.
Inspired by a traditional Japanese calendar which divides the year into segments of four to five days, this book guides you through a year of 72 seasons as they manifest in the British Isles. A collaboration of four women and their twitter audience, they present the microseasons from ‘Snowdrops emerge’ in the first days of January to ‘Tree skeletons and sky’ at the close of the year, each fleeting season is epitomized by some natural phenomenon, be it a plant coming into bud, a burst of birdsong, or a cobweb spangled by dew.