Soft Peripheral Viewing
I have discovered a whole, new, wonderful way of being in nature! It involves viewing it all in a different way. Instead of looking directly at the forest around me, or concentrating on my peripheral view, it is done using a combination of both at the same time — not all frontal, not all peripheral, but some of each. I call this “soft peripheral viewing.”
At first, I did this indoors while meditating. After doing this for a few weeks, I also started trying to adapt this way of viewing to the nature in Austin, Texas’s Walnut Creek Park. Here the landscape is mostly wild except for the dirt paths that are cleared from time to time. It has very few bikers or walkers so that one’s attention can just be relaxed among all the cedar, oak, and pine trees of all ages, with dead trunks and branches on the nearby ground. On this path, one’s gaze can be wider most of the time, except when one needs to look at a more complicated section of rocks on the trail.
When I started to take this walk in the woods with my daughter’s 70-pound, pit bull terrier, Bosco, I learned something new. Every minuyte or so, Bosco wanted to stop and smell or taste something along the trail, and this necessitated that I stop because I had him on a leash. When I was stopped like this, my soft peripheral viewing of the nearby forest interconnected me with an amazing splendor! I found that pausing with this wider, softer view of the nearby trees is breathtaking!
To practice this way of viewing the world, try the following steps at home:
Sit down with your hands connected in your lap.
Begin to look at them.
Now, gently raise your gaze up to also see the floor in front of you.
Then gently up more to include something in front of you at doorknob height.
Now gently widen your gaze at the same time.
Notice how it is a gentle view.
This is soft peripheral viewing!
The more you practice this at home and on a nature trail, the wider and softer your vision becomes.
Enjoy!
