Bonus episode: Mother Nature meditation

Welcome everyone to the special bonus episode of the Green the Web podcast. I’m your host as always, Sandy Dähnert. And you might know that next to being a sustainable UX designer, I'm also a yoga and sound meditation teacher. In today's episode, we will have a little meditation, a little nature meditation. It's for us to build more empathy with nature and to really get into the feel of this planet, of the environment that's around us, and just using it as a method to get more into it. In last week's episode, we discussed non-human personas where environment and animals could be mapped out as personas. And you can use this meditation to get a little bit more into that. I will link the last week's episode down below so you can check it out. And for this meditation, you can go out into nature, you can sit down, you can lie down, you can walk around, you can do whatever you want, of course. If you're sitting down or lying down, you're very welcome to close your eyes and just picture nature with me in this little meditation. I'm really looking forward to your feedback afterwards. Just let me know via email, all the communities that I'm in, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, wherever you find me, what you thought of this meditation and how it can help you build more empathy for nature. All right, let's get into this.

When you're not walking around, feel free to close your eyes right now. And then take a deep breath in through your nose. And a deep breath out through your mouth. And a second one. Deep breath in. And deep breath out. Feel your body and feel your breath. There is nothing else you have to do right now.

Then imagine being in a forest. You see all those different kinds of trees around you. All those different greens, tall trees, small trees, little bushes, little greenery that you can see. It's a beautiful day with blue skies and small white clouds moving by. And the sun is shining through those leaves here and there. You can see birds all around you and hear their chirping. You can see other wild animals around you and in this forest. You can see rabbits. You can see deer. Maybe you can see even other animals that are wandering in this forest. And you can smell. The incense of the forest. You walk around on this very soft ground, you can feel nature surrounding you. And then you zoom out and you see this forest in all his glory, and you see that as forest is going up towards a mountain range, a huge mountain range. And you can see that the trees are becoming smaller, the more it goes up. But there is smaller bushes at some point, smaller plants. And at some point, even just the bare mountain surface. Has been there. Testing of time. Thousands of years. And when you see this huge mountain range and go even further up and further up in altitude, you can see slowly starting snowing. At some point you can even see glaciers. When we take a closer look to those glaciers that are white gray and have this intense blue, really bright blue color of glaciers of bare ice. Thousands of years old. And then when you see this glacier on this top of this mountain range can see little waterfalls coming out of it, little rivers turning into big waterfalls, churning into rivers again, turning into smaller waterfalls. And you can see this glacier water dropping down from the top of the mountain down into the valley. You can see this river rising and becoming bigger and bigger. And there are streams coming from all mountains around going into this river. Maybe you can see bears and fish around on this river. Maybe also other animals that you can see. And you follow along this river. And as far as it gets more dense again, and at some point it's suddenly grassland. It's just little small greenery. So it has a warmer tone to it. There's more bugs, there's beetles, There's ants. There's butterflies. At some point there is also cows and sheep. And you follow this river along and it becomes a huge lake. And you follow even further from one river that comes out of this lake and the river gets bigger and bigger. At some point, this river is having all those little arms, little canals. And it's ending up in the ocean. And you can hear those waves. Crashing onto the shore. This very specific sound of waves. And when you go out into this ocean, you can see dolphins, you can see colorful coral reef, you can see whales, you can see all kinds of different fish and animals that live in our seas. And you see this huge body of water. It seems endless. Fascinating. Mesmerizing. Can you follow along this endless ocean? And at some point on the horizon, you can see islands. And you get closer to those islands. And on those islands there's dense jungle and you zoom into this jungle and you can see monkeys. You can see sloths. You can see snakes. Suddenly you're moving around from those islands to the mainland. There's beaches and palm trees. Can see elephants. Two cans. We go even more towards this land and you can see volcanoes coming up. And when you come closer to those volcanoes, you can see hot springs, you can see fumaroles, you can see moving earth breathing. You can see and feel this power. Our planet Earth has so much going on way, way underneath us. And then you go further. You go away, fly away from this volcano, from those hot springs, from this jungle. And at some point, suddenly it's becoming a desert. And you see those huge dunes, soft sand, paintings, shapes. There's light and shade. They're so beautiful forms. Crafted by the wind. And you fly around it, seeing this very soft orange surface. And at some point you see even little or ASIS. Palm trees with water in it. This little paradise is within the desert. And then you go out into the ocean again. And you are again seeing this endless horizon of blue ocean. And do you fly really, really long and at some point you see ice masses right in front of you. They're becoming bigger and more massive. You can see SEALs jumping around in the water. You can see polar bears and nothing but ice. Ice floating around in the ocean. Ice sitting there on. Mainland. It's massive, cold and beautiful. And then use zoom out. You zoom out even more and you can see this whole planet earth you're living on. Can see all the landmasses can see all the water masses. You can see clouds moving. You imagine Mother Nature in all her fullness? With all her colors and shapes, with all the scents and sounds that there are in this beautiful nature on our planet Earth. Imagine Mother Nature with all her seasons of dry and wet seasons, as well as spring, summer, autumn and winter. Feel the different energies Mother Nature offers around our globe. All these and so much more are part of our multilayered nature, so diverse, so unique. Planet Earth itself doesn't care about what we human beings do or don't do, whether we are on it or not. Planet Earth does not really care. But Mother Nature in her state with all her small and big ecosystems, with all her animals. They do care. We are just one tiny part of this beautiful planet, and we need to take care of all of our surroundings. Not destructive, but sustainable and regenerative. We are the last generation that can alter climate change. We have to do it now and we have to listen to Mother Nature.

Thank you for listening today. See you next week.