{"id":17,"date":"2025-02-26T16:28:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T16:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migration.beingalive.earth\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2025-08-11T17:04:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T17:04:25","slug":"listening","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/?page_id=17","title":{"rendered":"listening exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We would like to encourage you to become more aware and perceptive of the living world by engaging your senses. To this purpose, the course includes a weekly listening exercise. You will be asked to choose one particular place in the vicinity of where you live \u2013 or study, or work \u2013 where you will come regularly once a week and for half an hour, just listen. As the season changes throughout the spring, you might also observe the changes in light, birdsongs, plants, humidity, and other phenomena. We would like you to try to experience and notice these transformations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Choose a place where you are comfortable, and for thirty minutes, try to be still, focusing on the sounds of the surroundings, observing, but especially listening. This could be a park bench or a garden, but also, for instance, a street corner or a cemetery, a forest or a beach. It is a place you can to go before or after work or college, and listen, noting and becoming attentive to what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-768x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-225x300.jpeg 225w, https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-1152x1536.jpeg 1152w, https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-1536x2048.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_1717-scaled.jpeg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most people rarely take this time to listen to what is going on around them, and by doing this we hope you may become aware of new ways of being alive. By listening, rather than looking, most people find they are \u2018within\u2019 an environment, whilst when looking &#8211; which is what we do most &#8211; one is more inclined to stand outside that which we look at, as if we are apart from it. Thus, one consequence may be to explore different ways of relating to the natural world around us. Another may be that one becomes aware of listening to oneself as much as to what is going on outside of us, and this allows an examination of the sorts of relationships that may occur between one\u2019s inner world and the outer one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the feedbacks given by some previous participants was that they became very uncomfortable undertaking the listening exercise, as they did not want to listen to what was going on inside of themselves (such as becoming aware of the utter awfulness of the earth crises, or other thoughts, fears, anxieties, memories and fantasies), whilst others found that the exercise created a sense of calm and rootedness in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We would like to invite you to write a short diary entry after each of these sessions, and you are welcome to use the final few minutes to write down your experience, reflect on the significance of what you heard, make sketches of what you see, noticing also how it makes you feel. These reflections might then also serve as an inspiration for your final essay or art creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We would like to encourage you to become more aware and perceptive of the living world by engaging your senses. To this purpose, the course includes a weekly listening exercise. You will be asked to choose one particular place in the vicinity of where you live \u2013 or study, or work \u2013 where you will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-17","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beingalive.earth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}