We are nature just as much as the Oak or the Badger or the air.
Alistair Duncan runs popular courses exploring our connection with the rest of nature. We caught up with him to find out what happens on a day in the woods.
How did you come to run this kind of course?
I spent the first half of my working life working with technology for big corporations. However, something was always pulling me elsewhere, and, around 20 years ago I left all that and began working with people, often those with difficult lives and/or mental health challenges, often in nature. Alongside that I am endlessly curious about how we experience ourselves and the world around us, so along the way I have completed a master’s degree in Phenomenology, trained in various therapeutic and coaching practices, immersed myself in the work of wiser people than me teaching methods of attention and awareness. These two strands - a desire to support others and curiosity about the nature of things - flow into what I now do.
What might someone coming on your course expect from the day?
I always like to begin by asking people why they have come to the workshop. I have a plan for the day, of course, but also lots of flexibility to try to give everyone a rich experience. We also always start with a practice, similar to ones people might be used to at a yoga or Tai Chi class, to connect us into our breath, our bodies and our senses.
The morning of the first workshop explores how, if we do everyday things, such as walking, seeing and hearing, in different ways, this can have quite a dramatic effect on how we feel and how the world around us shows up. The afternoon builds on what we experienced in the morning by engaging more directly with particular natural inhabitants of the wood.
What does being in nature mean for you?
We speak of “being in nature” but actually to even say that positions us outside of it and trying to get back in! We are nature just as much as the Oak or the Badger or the air.
Why is it so important for all of us to notice the natural world around us?
One is resonance, as in how one tuning fork will start to resonate with the same tone of another nearby. As we go into nature, we can pick up the tone of the natural world which can be beneficial to our emotional and mental state. Another is reciprocity, which is the simultaneous giving and receiving of things. Our modern world sees the natural world as a thing “over there", and generally something to be “used”. If we recapture a sense of being a flowing part of something, not just as an idea but as a real experience, then that changes everything. We explore this in the workshops by becoming aware that we ourselves are being seen and heard by everything around us. And I especially like to explore this with air, which we pay almost no attention to in our daily lives.
Where are you most drawn to in nature and why?
I am especially drawn to Beech and Hornbeam trees and love to be near them. And with birds, the sudden awareness of a Heron is always a magical moment, they seem to carry something very ancient. And the thrill of the song of a Nightingale, or Swifts screaming in a empty blue sky.
Book a place on Alistair's next Mindfulness in Nature course, to be held at Woods Mill on June 20.