My life belongs to three sensory practices: Ki-Aikido, Tracking, and Forest Bathing. Each practice asks me to feel, and teaches me to pay attention to what’s happening right now.
Ki-Aikido
“No, no. Touch the mat,” says my sensei. “Feel the texture as you bow.” The mat surface in our current dojo space is slightly slubby fabric, rough underneath my fingertips. I feel the slight sponginess of the mat backing as I bow to greet an imaginary partner: attention forward, hands light on the mat, head dropping as my hips rise slightly, my spine a straight line. He tests my stability, pressure against my shoulder and hip: immovable. “Yes! Again.”
As I try to make the same shape to get the same result, I notice it doesn’t feel quite the same. Sure enough, this time the test sends me sideways. Chuckling, I right myself to seiza, and face my teacher’s keen gaze and question: “How do you feel?”
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I’ve trained in Ki-Aikido since October 2012. I never thought I’d become a martial artist; I just knew that my life was falling apart, and I had to find a way out. All the achievements I’d gained through making a shape that was externally praised — the handsome, brilliant, kind husband, great job, new home, board position in the local house of worship — felt hollow. I signed up for a St Paul Community Education class series, “Foundations of Ki Aikido,” and walked into the Minnesota Ki Society, hoping to make it through my fourth Minnesota winter. I found a community of sincere practitioners, dedicated to recognizing mind-body oneness: feeling with the whole body, one experience at a time.
Wildlife Tracking
A year after I began my training in the dojo, my teacher invited me to the first gathering of the Minnesota Wildlife Tracking Project in October 2013. I’d never been tracking before, but I remembered my days as a child in the Piney Woods of East Texas — splashing in the creek and woods behind my home, and knowing I always felt better after time outdoors. That first morning, I was amazed at what was possible to know from just listening and noticing, and resolved to return.
Track and sign identification tends to rely heavily on sight. We are often careful not to touch the tracks we find, to leave the trail intact for documentation, study, and discussion by the survey team. If the substrate is mud, sand, or soil, a accidental touch might erase diagnostic features of the animal’s foot morphology. However, in our February track & sign survey at Cedar Creek, we found this trail of ovals of ice, compressed from the passing of a canid through a snowy field. When the track is sculpted in ice, what a delight it is to run my fingertips across the cold, slick contours, and map the small calloused toe pads, heel bar, and wide domed negative space of the imprint of a red fox’s paw. And what a delight, to see the realization dawn on students’ faces as they felt the features! Even if they cannot see the features in the dim light of a wintry day, they can become familiar with the track topography through touch.
Forest Bathing
I came to Forest Bathing (Shinrin Yoku) much later than my other two disciplines. Like Ki-Aikido, it’s a newer practice. Crafted in the 1980s, Shinrin Yoku was designed as a public health intervention for the Japanese people, but with deep roots in Shinto and Buddhism. There is recognition of the land and lives of beings beyond humans. In this practice, I found a melding of tracking and Ki Aikido: a slow, sensory, meditative stroll in the woods, with no particular intention save noticing.
Sunset creates cattail coronas at Wood Lake Nature Center.
At Wood Lake Nature Center in February, we watched as the sunset flamed over the western marsh. The golden light illuminated ash trees, blonded from bark flaking, marked by hairy woodpecker claws and beaks. The cattails became tiny torches, each with their own corona of light. As the blue shadows grew, I found canid trails moving along the frozen marsh, marking travel routes through the cattails. My participants returned from their brisk walks, sharing the joys of moving in the cold: “It feels good to move, and good to sit still and just notice.” We shared steaming chamomile tea and fruits of the trees, dried figs and cherries and chocolate, as stars bloomed in the sky and ice crackled underfoot: tasting, knowing, appreciating the goodness on our tongues.
To borrow from Bruce Lee: Don’t Think. FEEL.
While Ki-Aikido, Wildlife Tracking, and Forest Bathing look different in their forms, the golden thread that links these practices is a commitment to awareness and opening to the senses. Each practice asks, “How do you feel?” Each practice recognizes the inherent value and contributions of body and mind to the experience of living. I am grateful in turn for the gifts of each practice: greater calm and stability from Ki-Aikido, curiosity and stories of the land from Wildlife Tracking, and the sheer delight of slowing down with the senses through Forest Bathing.
Each practice offers its particular delights. Won’t you join me, and find out what it will share with you?
- Ki-Aikido Foundations Classes: Mondays at 6 PM
- Next Forest Bathing Session: 9 AM to 12 PM, Saturday March 12
- Next Tracking Club: Sunday, March 19
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