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Every day I go outside and sit for ten minutes. Call it a meditation, a prayer, mindfulness, breath work, or simply a sit spot. It’s a surprisingly evolving experience in nature.
I first learned about sit spots from Santa Barbara’s twenty-plus-year-old forest school, Wild Roots. All my children have attended forest schools, first in San Francisco, then in Santa Barbara, and snowy Bend, Oregon. The rhythms and pedagogy of forest schools tend to be very similar to Montessori or Waldorf — child lead, creative, legitimately supportive of free play — but totally immersed in the outdoors.
And by outdoors I mean outdoors. Trees provide protection from winds and midday sun, tea is brewed and fires are lit on the coldest days, and tarps are erected for heavy rains. Children learn to identify medicinal plants, birds in flight, types of clouds in the sky. They sing. They do projects. And they always do a sit spot.
A sit spot is exactly that. Pick a spot and just sit. When you sit in the same spot, day after day, the space around you starts to open up and tell a story. It pulls you into a bigger picture, of birds building nests, tides rising and falling, weather systems moving in and out. To sit spot (yes, it can be a verb!) is to take a deep breath, put away your busy thoughts, and open your awareness to what is around you. Wild Roots coaches children: “Put on your owl eyes, what can you see? Put on your deer ears, what can you hear? What can you smell? Does the air have a scent, a taste?”
As a mother of four young children, I have three different sit spots: one outside my bedroom, one at Miramar Beach, and one along Cold Spring creek. I am often interrupted, by dogs following their scent or kids needing something non-urgent that just can’t wait. My sit spots are not perfect, but what is?! I sit where I am, on that day, at that time. Over the years, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about each of my sit spots. And slowly, sit by spot, I’m learning about myself in the process.
How to Sit Spot
Find a place outside where you will be comfortable sitting for a time. Ideally select a spot you can revisit over and over; the power of a sit spot comes in the ritual and familiarity of sitting in one spot, over and over. So go outside and take a seat. Any spot outside, in any position, will do. Take a few deep breaths, let go of tending things, and open up to the environment around you. As Wild Roots founder Lia Grippo encourages, “Just be, just for 10 minutes. You have permission.”
The act of turning off to turn on can be instructive, calming, even transformative. And sit spots allow for flexibility; you sit in your spot, I sit in mine; you hear birdsong, I hear waves crashing. Both sitting. Both noticing. Both pressing pause in an active, productive, and restful way.
So, go forth and sit spot. It promises to give you more than just sitting in one spot.
