The Contemplation Garden

How to sit here

The circle above swells and settles about five times a minute. If it helps, breathe in as it grows and out as it shrinks. If it does not help, ignore it, or still it with the button.

Read one thought. Then look away from the screen, at a window or a wall or your own hands, and let it stay with you for a minute or two. There is no need to reach a conclusion. If something comes that seems worth keeping, write it down somewhere private. When you are ready, ask for another, or get up and go for a walk.

A short grounding

If your thoughts are racing, try this before anything else. It takes about two minutes and asks nothing of you except attention.

1. Feel the weight of your body where it rests: feet, seat, back.
2. Find five things you can see, and name each one silently.
3. Find four things you can hear, near and far.
4. Find three things you can feel against your skin.
5. Take two slow breaths, longer out than in.
6. Say one true and simple thing: "I am here, and I am all right for now."

If you are not all right, please turn to wellbeing and care.

All the thoughts on the bench

For those who prefer to read them through, or to choose one for a journal.

1. What did you know about yourself as a small child, before anyone told you what you were?
2. Where do you feel most at home: in what kind of place, at what hour, in what weather?
3. When did you last feel entirely yourself? What were you doing?
4. What do you notice first when you walk into a room?
5. How does your body like to rest when no one is watching?
6. What would be different if you never told anyone? What would be the same?
7. Which of your instincts have you learned to hide, and which have you learned to trust?
8. If the word you are considering turned out not to fit, what would you still know about yourself?
9. What do you admire in the animal you feel close to? What in it is plain, awkward or dull, and can you love that as well?
10. What is the difference, for you, between wanting to be something and being it?
11. Who in your life makes you feel that there is room for all of you?
12. What are you afraid people would think? Which of those people matter?
13. When has doubt served you well?
14. What does your human life give you that you would not wish to lose?
15. If your animal could want one thing for you this week, what might it be?
16. What story did you love as a child, and whom in it did you take yourself to be?
17. What are you in a hurry about? Who set the deadline?
18. What part of this is joy?
19. What part of this is grief, and has it been given its due?
20. What have you been pretending to be certain of?
21. How do you behave when you are kind to yourself?
22. What would it mean to hold this lightly and still hold it?
23. Whom could you be gentler with, now that you know how it feels to be misread?
24. What do you owe to the real creatures whose shape you share?
25. What is one small thing that reliably brings you back to yourself?
26. Where does your attention go when it is free?
27. What have you learned this year that your younger self needed to hear?
28. If nothing about you needed fixing, what would you do with the afternoon?
29. What is asking for patience?
30. What is already well?

On leaving the bench

You may find that nothing was settled. That is usual, and it is not a waste. A question that has been sat with quietly is a different thing from one that has been fought. Come back whenever you wish. The poetry shelf is close by, for those who would like a few lines to carry out with them.