The End of Trauma: Orientation

The power of paying attention to your environment

Exercise #1:

Think about a time or two in your life where your surrounding environment (nature, loved ones, etc.) was important or truly memorable. What comes to mind?

It’s every-time, isn’t it, that the surrounding environment is important.

It’s important now, I’m here taking in what there is and thinking about the places I would rather be. I’m sitting now in a brightly lit co-working space and one of the fluorescent lights keeps twitching, casting epileptic reflections on the glass tables.

A week ago I was sitting outside underneath a fig tree, watching the leaves cast shadows in the sunlight. There were other trees too, apple and lime and a large tree in the middle of the yard whose fruit we didn’t recognize, though Paul said that when you scratched the fruit it smelled like lavender.

It smelled like earth and sunlight, this yard, alive with the sound of birds rustling and singing.

In the mornings I would take a walk through the forest, pausing to smile at the sky and celebrate the trees. It was mostly pine trees (“they were planted here in the 1940’s, they aren’t native to Israel,” Leah told us), they stood tall, a rich russet brown.

(& that’s twenty five minutes