Sit with your back to a tree. Hands resting. Nothing to do. Twenty minutes or so.
You’re not meditating. Not trying to feel anything special.
Just being there, letting whatever wants to arrive. Arrive.
This is relational awareness.
Not thinking about connection but being in it.
When you first settle against the trunk, your mind might race through its usual catalogue of concerns.
The day’s tasks. The week’s worries. The body’s complaints about sitting still.
Let it all move through.
Don’t push it away, don’t chase it.
Just notice how the tree doesn’t seem bothered by any of it.
After a while, something shifts.
Your breath starts to settle, matching some quiet rhythm that isn’t yours but also is. The edge between you and the tree softens a little.
Not in some mystical sense but in the simple way that bodies respond to presence when given time and space.
The tree’s aliveness becomes obvious. Not conceptually, you already knew trees were alive, but in your bones.
Your nervous system recognises another nervous system, even one that operates on completely different timescales.
Your vertebrae against its bark. Your pulse against its patient growth.
This isn’t about becoming one with the tree or downloading its ancient wisdom.
It’s about practising a quality of attention that our culture has largely forgotten…
…being with rather than using.
Receiving rather than extracting.
Letting the world meet you halfway instead of demanding it bend to your will.
Twenty minutes of this, and you might find yourself moving through the rest of your day differently.
More aware of the relationships already happening around you.
The breath moving in and out.
The ground holding you up.
The intricate web of support that keeps you alive, moment by moment.
Relational awareness isn’t a technique.
It’s a way of being that emerges when you stop trying so hard to be somewhere else.