Here are several drills to practice with yourself and with your child or friends. These come to open your mind to the input of the senses and to allow the connection between you and your surroundings to thrive.
- Walk with your kid and choose an object to find first. First choose one item such as a cat and slowly evolve the game to finding a sitting cat, a Cheshire cat or a cat in the sunshine or shade.
- Walk with your kid and choose an object to find tracks of. It can be the trails of a plane in the sky, the footprints of a dog in the sand or the change in the color of the leaves where they were crushed by a moving object.
- Walk with your kid and look for a change in the status quo. A car that does not park in the usual place, a loud dog that stopped barking or a new bird in the bush that was not there last year.
- Walk with your kid and have one of you close their eyes. Find the source of the sounds and voices the one with the closed eyes hears and see if you can open your ears when your eyes are open.
- Walk with your kid and stop from time to time with your backs to each other. Note people animals and objects to each other and see if the other can find sign of it from their viewpoint. For example, you can find the shadow of the crane that was constructed last week, you can hear the miau of the cat that walks down the street or smell the dinner being cooked next door.
- walk with your kid and stop from time to time to lie down and watch. See how the ground sign changes from a different point of view and how we can learn more when we release the position we stick ourselves in. Take a white light flashlight with you to light the sign (animal print or another) from different directions and heights and learn to read the mark from any angle.
- Walk with your kid and visit the same sights every time during your walk. Mark the changes in the lighting through the year, mark the aging of the sign (leaves changing shape and color, dog leaving droppings, people littering or gardening and so on) and find why it works that way.
Paying attention pays more than you put in. The more you are open to your senses, the more you are able to act instead of react and the less you are a leaf in the wind.