{"id":38,"date":"2015-06-15T21:35:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T04:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/?p=38"},"modified":"2015-07-06T12:29:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T19:29:50","slug":"tree-hugging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/2015\/06\/15\/tree-hugging\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree-hugging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0823\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One night I went to bed thinking about what other meditations could be done in the park.\u00a0When I woke up the next morning I had the answer. Hug a tree. I wanted to have a more direct\u00a0physical connection with some of the oldest organisms in the park. Besides, hugging is good for health. It makes us feel good. The plan was simple: walk up to a tree and hug it. This exercise turned out to be the most uncomfortable meditation experience I had in my microsite.<\/p>\n

As I approached the alder tree in my microsite I was by overcome by a deep respect for the tree and felt that I should proceed accordingly. Not because I thought the tree would appreciate it. The process I went through was for me. When I first approached the tree in my microsite I put my hand up to them as if to shake hands. I felt thankful for them\u00a0being there. I felt thankful for them\u00a0cooling the hot air around me, providing shade, taking in carbon dioxide, emitting oxygen. What other chemicals were they taking in and giving off? I thought about how their\u00a0roots go deep down into the ground drawing up nutrients and interacting with billions soil organisms. I stroked their\u00a0trunk, felt her rugged bark. After a couple minutes I moved in closer. There was nobody around but I still felt self-conscious and looked around to make sure there were no humans to see me. What would they think? \u201cWho is this CREEPER\u00a0hugging a tree?\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, I wrapped my hands around and hugged. Whoa, trees feel hard. Part of me felt like I was taking something (energy?) so I focused on giving\u00a0some energy back as well. Was this some sort of\u00a0exchange? I also tried to feel love for the tree, which intensified as I squeezed harder.\u00a0I stood there hugging for about 10 minutes. I had to relax my tired arms after a few minutes though and hugged intensely every few minutes. My mind did wander a lot during those 10 minutes: \u201cI\u2019m hugging a tree, this is silly, what if someone sees me?, it\u2019ll make a good story though, am I doing this for the story?\u201d I cannot say that some sort of “energy” from the tree was flowing through me making feel incredible but the whole experience felt good. Afterward, on the bike ride home I noticed that my mood was quite cheerful.<\/p>\n

Time<\/u>: 5-10 minutes<\/p>\n

Instructions:<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rather than have set instructions I would encourage anyone to hug a tree in their own way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One night I went to bed thinking about what other meditations could be done in the park.\u00a0When I woke up the next morning I had the answer. Hug a tree. I wanted to have a more direct\u00a0physical connection with some of the oldest organisms in the park. Besides, hugging is good for health. It makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16449,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summerdialogue2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}