“It’s the hottest afternoon I’ve had in Copenhagen, a place I associate with the cold.
I can feel my trickling sweat and the supportive ground under my feet. The occasional breeze almost feels like a kiss from the figurative ‘one that got away’.
I’m surrendered to my senses for a moment.
There are birds singing as they nest together and a mother is stealing a moment of peace to read as her children sleep. There are giggles from the lovers hiding in amongst the hanging Willows and runners travelling at such an impressive speed. There is a unique beauty to sound of the fountain falling back into the lake and I can smell the dampness of the grass beneath me. I can taste the water I am gulping, seemingly unable to satiate my need.
There is something indescribably beautiful about where we are, what we are doing, how we are feeling and how our surroundings respond to us from this conscious place.
If I could have a wish it would be for me to breathe in these moments more than I give myself time to. There is a home within this space I’m in.”
I have written about my sensory and imaginative landscapes since the age of 15, trying to capture moments to keep them alive beyond my experiences of them. This is something I wrote when there was a heatwave in Denmark in 2017. It was during a time I often felt anxious and detached from my body so I had integrated a gradual grounding exercise into my journalling.
Sometimes when we are feeling anxious we can get lost within the intangible: thoughts, unwanted memories or painful emotions. A simple way to create a relationship with ourselves and our surroundings is by connecting with your senses and grounding ourselves in them.
What are 5 things you can see?
What are four things you can feel?
What are three things you can hear?
What are two things you can smell?
What is one thing you can taste?
We can transform our experiences by grounding in the here and now moment.
Further reading
Mika Bell Counselling 