Recorded outdoors, live, with the ducks in it. Music underneath
Recorded on a bench by the duck pond, birds and all. Proof that this does not need a cushion, a candle or a quiet room.
About 13 minutes, recorded outdoors, eyes open.
You label things instead of making stories out of them. Plane. Duck. Thought. No picture, no plot. The ducks do the teaching. One lands too close to another, there is a two second flap, and then straight back to calm. They do not ring a friend about it or complain online for the next five hours.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
You think you cannot meditate because you have not got a quiet room, a cushion and half an hour.
This was recorded on a bench beside a duck pond, birds and passing voices and all. Nothing was edited out because the noise is the point.
What happens in this meditation
Your eyes stay open. Everything coming in is part of it rather than something to shut out.
Then labelling, which is the whole technique. A plane goes over and you say plane. A child calls out and you say child. A duck, and you say duck. No picture, no story, no plot. A thought turns up and you say thought.
Then a couple of minutes of opening your awareness as wide as you can and missing nothing.
Then five to one, and back.
How to get the most from it
Thirteen minutes, and it works best outdoors, though a parked car or an open window will do.
Do not try to block anything. The moment you decide a sound is an interruption you have started a story about it.
The ducks do the teaching, and it is worth watching for. One lands too close to another, there is a two second flap, and then straight back to calm. No ringing a friend. No complaining online about it for five hours.
Questions people ask
Why are my eyes open?
Because this is practice for the life you actually live, and you live it with your eyes open. It also stops you treating the outside world as the enemy of the practice.
Is the background noise a problem?
It is the material. There is a video of this one too, and the noise is in that as well. A meditation that only works in silence is not much use in a normal week.
What does labelling actually do?
It stops the story before it starts. Duck, rather than a duck and a memory and what you should be doing later. It sounds too simple to work, which is roughly why it does.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
live · nature · mindfulness · present-moment
Read the transcript
I thought I would just sit and have a little guided meditation down here beside the duck pond,
along with all the ducks. So if you want to see the video that goes along with this meditation, you
can head to the links in the show notes just below. I've uploaded the YouTube video of this meditation.
This is just a meditation to show that meditation and time out. And mindfulness doesn't have to be
complicated and we can do it anywhere.
although it's a little easier when we've got all these swans and ducks and birds and all that, showing us
how to be at one with nature
so Just relax your body, invite your shoulders to relax,
invite your face and your head to relax and
your neck
it's about just allowing your body to relax In this moment.
And if you're out and about, like me or you're watching this video, I encourage you to do it with
your eyes open, looking around just
the same as your ears are open, looking around
And you're making all the sounds and the colours
all part of the same
meditation
it's all part of it
meditation is about allowing as opposed to
trying to block out
and bring your attention to your breath
and breathing in and you're breathing out
And why are you doing that just
Just be aware of the sounds
And meditation is all about just allowing things to happen.
And if we find it difficult to just relax in this moment and be present, we can label the sounds
and we can label different things, we can label a thought
You may hear a plane going over and you go oh plane you
don't need to do anything with it
you might hear a voice in the background or a child scared
voice child
Normally when we hear something, we jump to a story with it
we hear a duck and we jump to a story and a picture of a duck
what if we just go duck
just the same as the breath what if we just go
breath thought
and what you notice you don't have to do anything with anything.
It's all just arising
Every moment is different. Every sound is different.
And what you notice when you just sit down in awareness when you're out in nature or sat next to
a river or even in your car it doesn't matter where. When we just become aware of what's happening around
us
And we don't jump to story and we don't jump to what we need to do later and just be
here
there's a beautiful gift of I
don't need to do anything with this moment
It is just as it is
And the idea is not to miss a single part of
Don't miss a breath
don't miss a thought.
Don't miss a
single duck noise or a single bird singing.
Don't miss a car driving by
or a child laughing.
Just open your awareness so wide that everything is coming in. But you don't need to do anything with any
of it
and we're just going to sit for a couple of minutes and
just try opening your awareness as much as possible
from what feelings are coming up to the thoughts that are coming in to the sounds that are coming in.
You Don't need to worry about time. I will keep an eye on that
and one thing I notice whenever I'm looking at
nature
is the way things happen and then it returns back to calmness very quickly
A duck lands on the water next to another one and The other one, panic freaks out.
They do their bit and then they return to normal.
They don't phone a friend.
They don't complain on Facebook for the next five hours that a duck landed in my space, they
just return to their peaceful state.
They just return to their calmness.
And if we learn to do that, that's what meditation's about is returning to this moment of calmness So thought
arises, maybe unpleasant or maybe one that we want. So instead of jumping on it and going down the desires
of a nice thought, we
just recognise the thought and enjoy it
Same as if a thought comes in that we don't desire.
We may
Just choose to do nothing with it instead of
laughing about and making a big deal of it
and we notice we don't have to grow these moments into something they're more They're already beautiful and whole just
as they are
so in a moment if you did close your eyes you can open the eyes we're going to bring back
our awareness to this present moment
so five four just gently open your eyes. Three just shake out your arms and take a deep breath and
just really appreciate the fact that every moment is already calm in itself Or it's about
returning to the calm wherever you're to whatever you're doing you don't need to be sat in front of that
pond, although it does help granted I I do get that.
But ultimately, you can be anywhere doing anything and you can just I don't have to do anything in this
moment. In this moment. And there's a deeper wisdom within you that recognizes this and means you can respond
beautifully in any given moment from a deeper calmer Wisdom just like these ducks just like the
wiser zen master the all these ducks are way wiser than us and they're just going about their life
where we make big things of everything
I'm Steven Webb And I also got a another podcast called Stillness in the Storms that talks about these things
and we go a little bit deeper into finding a little inner peace in life. And if this meditation has
helped you, you can always send me a virtual hug instead of a coffee Now I've changed it to a
hug because I don't drink a lot of coffee. I just thought it's more appropriate as a thank you. And
you can download the five Simple practices for Inner peace. Head over to thankyousteven.com I'm wishing you the most
beautiful day and enjoy it and return to calmness whenever you have the opportunity
