“To look at anything, If you would know that thing, You must look at it long…” (John Moffitt)
This practice, of taking in the beauty around us, is something I try to do daily; I just wrote these instructions for our forthcoming book, The Mindful School Leader (Corwin 2014).
I find this practice extraordinarily satisfying. Do you have one like it?
The Beauty Bath
We recommend this five-minute, sensually-engaging practice to reset one’s mood, to appreciate and savor the goodness that is all around us, and to create a transformative pause. We, the authors of this book, use this practice every day and find the act of gazing at something intently and with concentration, taking in its details and appreciating its contours, colors, contrasts, and scents, a transformative act. We hope you will give it a try and report back on its results. As many poets have noted, to really see a thing, you must look at it long…
· When you are feeling the need to a shift or a reset, pause what you are doing and go outside. If you need to put on your coat and shoes, and the weather is terrible, all the better. There is beauty everywhere. If you cannot go outside and are cut off from the natural world at the moment, you can still find something of beauty around you.
· Walk around and notice something your eye alights on, something you have perhaps not looked at closely before. This could be a very ordinary thing: a crack in the sidewalk where a few blades of grass poke through, the petals of a petunia blossom in a window box on a busy city street, the vine that curves around an abandoned fencepost. You might ask yourself, gently, why has my eye alighted here? You do not need to answer this question.
· Now take some deep breaths, which you’ve been practicing since you began reading this book, with a deep gentle inhale and a powerful emptying exhale. You are preparing to let the thing you are observing really come into your eye and your inner eye, a place that sees and appreciates things with a quiet contemplative alternative vision.
· Simply gaze, with appreciative, curious eyes at the thing your eye has alighted on. What is extraordinary about what you see here? How is it a miracle that that leaf has sawcut edges like that? What does the deep pink of that lily blossom evoke in you? What is the effect of simply observing this beautiful and perhaps rather thing?
· Allow yourself to take in all the details, without a plan and without too much thinking. Simply be in the experience of observing. Do this for at least a minute. Let the details of your observation sit inside you, in the clear space you have opened with your breath.
· After a minute or more, thank the object or formation you have been observing, and exhale one last time. (You can say “thank you” silently or out loud.) Remind yourself to be grateful for your capacity to see anything (for vision!), for this sweet object you have just observed, and for the miracles of our planet that lie all around us.
· Back to work! Notice how you feel when you return to what you were doing previously. Allow yourself to imagine that this act of visioning can be refreshing and resetting, and then see how this is.
· Make this a daily habit! Enjoy.
We believe that a daily habit of the Beauty Bath will dramatically increase your capacity for observation, and also broaden and build your sense of appreciation and connection to the world around you. And we think that will be helpful as a leader.
Pedagogies of Abundance 