How to Connect With Nature Through a Daily Sit Spot Practice
One of the most powerful ways I’ve found to connect with nature isn’t dramatic or grand. It doesn’t require hiking gear, perfect weather, or disappearing for a weekend retreat. It begins with something far simpler: sitting still in one place, long enough for the world to reveal itself.
Years ago, I learned about the “sit spot” from author Jon Young. He uses it to study bird language, but as I practised, the experience widened—stretching far beyond birds, into a quiet and surprising relationship with all of Nature.
This small ritual changed me. Not in a lightning-bolt way, but slowly, the way light shifts across a room. And I want to share it with you.
1. Find One Place to Return to Again and Again
Choose a spot where Nature feels close—where there is a view of green, where birds pass through, where the air carries the scent of earth. It might be a corner of your garden, a park bench, a wild hillside, or a balcony that looks onto trees.
My first sit spot was a simple wooden bench in my backyard in Santa Fe. Nothing dramatic—just a quiet patch of earth, a few hardy shrubs, the big New Mexico sky above. Yet day after day, it became a threshold into the world outside the walls of my house.
2. Visit Often—Daily if You Can
What makes this practice powerful isn’t the location but the return.
Nature begins to trust us. And in turn, we begin to know Nature.
Most mornings, you’ll find me at my sit spot, a cup of tea warming my hands, letting the day arrive as it wishes. Even when life carried me to different homes, different cities, different seasons, I created a new sit spot—another small piece of ground to belong to.
(If you’d like to see my current sit spot, here is a short video from my Lorisavingwild YouTube channel. It’s simple, quiet, nothing curated—just a glimpse of where I listen.)
3. Sit Still, Eyes Open, Senses Awake
For at least fifteen minutes, let the world come to you.
Not in the focused, intentional way we sometimes bring to meditation, but in a softer, more absorbent way.
Let your senses do what they know how to do:
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Hear the rustle, the wingbeat, the distant call.
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See how light shifts on leaves, how a lizard pauses mid-step.
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Smell the earth waking, the sweetness of sun-warmed plants.
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Feel the cool air on your arms, the grain of the bench beneath you.
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Notice—even taste—whatever the moment brings.
At first, you may only catch the loud things, the obvious things. But with time—like tuning a forgotten instrument—your awareness sharpens.
You begin to tell which birds are residents and which are just passing through.
You learn the moods of the plants, how they respond to rain or drought.
You sense patterns in the wildlife you once overlooked.
One day, you realise the birds don’t flee anymore when you arrive.
Another day, a small animal pauses and simply regards you—not wary, not alarmed—just aware.
And something inside you softens with that recognition.
How This Practice Quietly Changed My Life
I didn’t expect a daily ritual of sitting still to reorient me so deeply.
But it did.
It reminded me that belonging isn’t something we seek—it’s something we remember. It taught me that connection with Nature doesn’t require travel (in my case, to Africa) or expertise; it grows in the steady rhythm of showing up.
Even on days when I’m far from my sit spot, I feel its imprint—my senses more awake, my heart more spacious, my gratitude widened.
Some mornings, my sit spot feels like an extension of meditation. Other mornings, it feels like something older, more instinctual. A remembering of how to be a creature among other creatures.
A Simple Way to Belong to the Natural World
In a time when so much pulls us away from the wild, this practice tethers us back—gently, respectfully, consistently.
It’s an invitation to return home to ourselves, not through thought, but through presence.
If you want to deepen your relationship with the living world, with the birds and wind and quiet intelligence around us, start here:
Find one place.
Sit still.
Pay attention.
Let Nature find you.