Turn off your MP3 Player and your phone. Take off your sunglasses. Close your computer. Remove any unnecessary coats and hats – you won’t get cold or sunburnt in the space of a few minutes. Now walk out into the garden or the street. There’s nothing you have to do right this moment.
Feel the air on your skin. Feel the sun or the moonlight and the touch of moisture or dryness. Listen to every little sound you can hear, not to identify it but to absorb the quality and nature of the sound. Look around at the colours and shapes; the stillness and the movement. Let your mind rest on the curve of this leaf or the powdery unyielding surface of that wall. Let everything fall away to just the senses. A jumble of shapes and sounds and colour and feeling.
Don’t be frightened. You have the time, you’ll be back in your head soon. But for now just take a few breaths. Be still. When your mind wanders bring it back to the senses. What can you smell? Is it changing, are there textures and layers to it? Relax again and let all the mess of stuff wash in and out of you.
Breathe deep. That’s all around us every moment of our lives and we so rarely take any notice of it. I’ve had a cold the last few days and for some reason I find that leaves me in my thinking head and cuts me off from the world. Perhaps it’s because I’m sufficiently woolly headed that thinking takes a lot of concentration. Then today is blustery and sunny and full of springtime, and I noticed how much of our lives is spent plugged in and shut off. Protected in our cars and houses and clothes and phones and computers and the constant thrum and presence of our fellow humans. Animals don’t live like that. They don’t have a pane of safety glass between themselves and their lives.
I wonder how often humans reach their end rather surprised, suddenly thinking they might have missed something important.