This document provides an overview of mindfulness and its relationship to the environment. It defines mindfulness, explores how mindfulness relates to the brain and our connection to nature. It discusses research showing that mindfulness can increase pro-environmental behavior and compassion. The document then provides mindfulness exercises, poems, and calls individuals to take mindful actions to help globally impacted species and places.

1. Global Environmental
Mindfulness Experience
Roxann Riskin, M.S. Ed. MCP, Learning
Experience Designer & Mindfulness Educator
Twitter @roxannriskin
Email: rriskin@student.fairfield.edu

4. Mindfulness Defined
Shinzen Young
Equanimity
Concentration
power
Sensory Clarity
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Awareness that arises
from
Paying Attention
On Purpose
In the Present
Moment
Nonjudgmentally
*Relationality of the
self to the world
Daniel Seigel
Unfolding of experience
moment by moment

5. What we're really talking about is a way of living your
life as if it really matters.
It’s about being present for the moments that are
yours to live, instead of being lost in thought, caught
up in endless emotional reactivity, or being led
around by the nose of your own likes and dislikes.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Awareness and Relationality

6. Mindfulness and THE
BRAIN

7. Vagus Nerve
Sympathetic
Parasympathetic

8. Mindful 3,4,5 Breathing Practice
When you hear the chime sit up straight in
your chair with both feet on the ground.
Your spine is as straight as you can manage.
If you feel comfortable and safe close your
eyes or soften your gaze on one object in front
of you that is not moving.

9. Mindful 3, 4, 5 Breathing Practice
1. Place your hands over your heart
on your chest and notice how you
are breathing right now. Breath
normally.
2. Now breathe in for a count of
three seconds and breathe out for
four seconds in your head.
3. On the next in breath, breathe in a
little longer for a count of four and
breathe out for a count of five.
4. Now move your hands down to
your abdomen or belly, and on the
next breath, breath in for a count
of five and breathe out for six
seconds.
Mindfulness and Nature
“Our minds and bodies are
embedded within the natural world
such that when we breathe in, nature
breathes in with us, and when we
breathe out, nature also breathes
out.
We are of the nature of nature; it
exists in us and we exist in it.”

10. 1 Million Animals and Plant species
are now threatened with extinction.
Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human
history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating,
with grave impacts on people around the world now likely.

11. The care of nature is increasingly becoming an intellectual concept
severed from the joyful experience of the outdoors.
You have to wonder where will future environmentalists come from?
Despite biophilia and the growing evidence of nature’s benefits,
connectedness with nature seems to be diminishing. 2017
Understanding Why Our Connection with Nature is
Diminishing!

12. Research Studies on
Nature, Pro-Environment and Mindfulness
The effect of connectedness to nature on the relationship between
mindfulness and pro-environmental behavior suggests that
mindfulness increases awareness to pro-environmental behavioral
choices through the intensification of experiences with the natural
environment.
1
2
3

13. SONGS
BOOKS
MOVIES
Nature Words
There is a statistically significant declining use of nature words in books songs and
films. A documented a cultural shift away from nature that began in the 1950s.

14. 4 Natural Elements & 5
Senses
Seeing
Hearing
Smelling
Tasting
Touchin
g
Earth
Seeing
Hearing
Smelling
Tasting
Touchin
g
Air
Seeing
Hearing
Smelling
Tasting
Touchin
g
Fire
Seeing
Hearing
Smelling
Tasting
Touching
Water

15. The Four Elements
Practice

16. Environmental Mindfulness Potentially
• Increases ecological and pro-environmental behavior
• Increases pro-social behavior
• Increases compassion for other people

18. Ecological
Mindfulness
“…This notion is based
on research which
suggests mindfulness is
associated with
ecologically responsible
behavior that is oriented
to the common good.”
Brown and Kasser 2005
“When people feel
connected with nature,
they are more inclined
to spend time in it and
protect it.”
Mindfulness in Nature Enhances
Connectedness and Mood

19. Nature, Environment, Poetry and Mindfulness
“Argues the skills, that poetry, like mindfulness
cultivates, are useful beyond the page or classroom,
and ultimately are necessary to engage with such
global issues as the environmental crisis.”
Poetry and Mindfulness
By Bryan Walpert 2017
Can Poetry Save the Earth, A Field Guide to Nature Poems
by John Feistiner,
Professor of English at Stanford University 2009

20. I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have
been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there
were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever
see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were
before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
I Sit and Think by J.R.R.
Tolkien

21. Global Environmental Mindful Actions
1. Plant milkweed for the Monarch, USA Canada, Mexico
2. Identify areas where polar bears can live on solid Arctic sea
ice for decades to come
3. Secure access to fresh water for elephants in Thailand during
periods of drought
4. Restore beach vegetation to shade marine turtle nests in the
Caribbean

22. Select One Pledge
And
Match the Pledge with One
Globally Impacted
Species/Place
• “….Drawing people's attention to nature
in situ may overcome some of this
habitual environmental numbness
• …Signposts can help users attend
more to nature's benefits and suggests
that tasks designed to make nature's
effects more noticeable will enhance
connectedness.
• Students who attended to nature for 2
weeks had better moods and were
more connected to nature”
Massachusetts Audubon
Organization
World Wildlife Federation

23. Climate Resolution
Pledge
One Globally Impacted
Species/Place
Environmental Social Media Post

24. Compose the Social Media
Global Environmental Awareness Advocacy Post
UNESCO
Image
2
0
2
0
6
0
Call to ActionDescriptionImage, URL Countries

25. Mindsets for Sustainability: Exploring the Link
Between Mindfulness and Sustainable Climate
Adaptation
Ecological Economics
Sweden and the UK
Authors Christine Wamsler and Ebba Brink
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0921800917315550

26. May our planet and the whole universe be safe and protected and free from
harm.
May our planet and the whole universe be happy and contented.
May our planet and the whole universe be healthy and whole.
May our planet and the whole universe experience ease of well-being…
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Try to leave the Earth a better place than when you arrived.
—Sidney Sheldon

27. 1. Sign up for a class in person or online
like Coursera’s Demystifying Mindfulness
– The University of Leiden or The
University of Minnesota, The University of
Florida or Brown University
2. Search online for Mindfulness Practices-
Check YouTube Videos
3. Check out books at your Library
4. Use and App- HeadSpace, Calm, Stop,
Think & Breath… there are lots of free
Apps too.
5. Read and review research journal articles
at your library
Learning More About Mindfulness