Nature Connect – July 2025
Nature is awe-inspiring and wonderful and we need to find ways to connect with nature better. To drive home the point, we organized another event in the “Nature Connect – Through Exploration” series, this Sunday, 13-July-25.
Nature offered us a beautiful day to begin the event with over 40 participants, young and old. This Nature Connect event was different as it brought children and parents together for connecting with nature 🙂
We started-off with a very brief team introduction and then an offering to the nature by first going barefoot, standing on the dewy green grass and then opening our arms to the sky while listening to the variety of sounds from natur – the birds and even the breeze rustling the leaves.
This was us getting ready for the sensory exploration – a way to mindfully and observantly go about connecting with nature. But prior to that we had a short introduction of participants where they shared their names and an element of nature that they feel most close to. Many participants shared how they visualize and feel connected to animals, birds, trees, mountains, the air, oceans and water bodies. What has always intrigued us that none of the participants in this question ever talks about being connected to human beings as element of nature!!
To move on to the activities, the groups were divided and provided the cues for the sensory exploration. It was reiterated that these activities are not competitions and that slowness is the key to make full use of this time. These groups were led off by volunteers and facilitators to various parts within the field and garden where they could observe nature more carefully and mindfully. We returned and reassembled again in the garden where we held a short reflection session to understand which senses were used the most and what did the participants observed that made them wonder about nature!!
Post the sensory exploration, we moved to a warm up activity where our volunteer Aariv showed some animal moves that were later incorporated in a short activity – by Falguni ben- around forest fires, where each group had to run around in their specific animal moves.
While this was fun, it also gave us a chance to talk about the increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires and how it leaves the animals without a habitat. This was left open as a food for thought and we hope the participants think about it later on as well.
This led to the next activity for the day which consisted of different stations. The participant groups were to visit these stations and perform activities that mirror animals and birds in nature including, standing/sleeping like a bird on a single leg, leaping like a deer, crawling / moving like ants, listening like an owl and feeling the tree trunks. Participants enjoyed different activities and reflections at the stations that brought them closer to how animals live in nature.
A final reflection circle was followed by a very short mindfulness meditation by Uditiben to help the participants absorb and soak in the learnings from the day’s Nature Connect.
Thereafter the Nisargopachar Kendra kitchen team provided us all with refreshing organic beverage and delicious hot poha. But that was not all, our volunteer Pupul made beautiful nature themed, leaf-printed thougtful bookmarks for all the participants. These were distributed to all along with some final photographs.
We are immensely grateful to the Nisargopachar Kendra for supporting us with the space and food for this programme; the facilitation and volunteer team comprising of Falguni ben, Uditi ben, Rashmi ben, Pupul, Radha, Aariv and Aakriti. And as usual, the nature for being so bountiful and providing us with everything that we need.
If you are interested in joining the Nature Connect Programme, join us in August.
