Coming to Your Senses: sight

My last two posts were about this thing called Mindfulness. At this point I would like to suggest a simple Mindfulness exercise. Just go for a slow walk of about 15 minutes. You can be anywhere: your yard, your neighborhood, in the woods, along the shore, or in a city.

Step 1

Simply focus on the various colors and shapes your see. If you walk past a green car, just take in the “green-ness”. If you walk past a lilac bush notice the color and shape of the small little flowers. Now keep going and try to really focus on everything your see. Just really focus on color and shape.

Step 2

Now as you are continuing on your walk try your best to imaging you are colorblind. You can ONLY see in tones of black, white, and grey. What is that experience like? Keep walking in the black, white, and grey. After a few moments allow yourself to again see color.

Step 3

In step two you practiced loosing color, but you still saw the shapes of the flower, car, building, dog, etc. Now for just a few more minutes stop. You may wish to sit down or lean against something at this point. Now close your eyes…pretend you are blind. You see absolutely nothing but darkness. You see neither color nor shapes. What is that experience like?

Step 4

Finally, it is time to finish your short walk with your eyes wide open again. What is your experience now? There is a good chance that previously loosing color and then shapes brings you now into a different and expanded experience of really seeing.

There is a good chance that following this simple and short exercise made you more Mindful of your sight. I don’t know about you but when I practice this exercise, I find myself with a deep sense of gratitude for my sight. This is a pretty cheep and healthy way of “getting high” on life. This is Mindfulness. Something easy to practice every day?

I would love to read your response to this exercise—good, bad, or indifferent.

Tim Berry