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Sounds of Sedona

7 June 2016

Allison listened to a faraway flute while she hiked the red rocks of Sedona and was delighted when she met the flautist on her way back down the mountain. He helped her lock in a new level of calm, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Tags: allison read, allison watched, balance, mindfulness

Hiking is one of my favorite pathways to mindfulness. I have to figure out where I’m going and what to bring with me, but once I start the hike, I find it’s easier than usual to be in the moment because the task requires a certain amount of concentration so I don’t trip. Then the sounds and sites of nature always give my mind an easy place to rest.

Two years ago, I blogged about Proof That Hiking Makes You Happier and Healthier. I described the hardest hike I’ve ever done; a 13.2-mile trail called Three Ridges with an elevation of 3,960 feet and three really, really high peaks. When that hike started, I was worried about all sorts of things I couldn’t do anything about, but once again the trail took over, and I found myself able to stay in the moment with a little help from the mindfulness tools I described in this post.

My mama and I have always gone on wonderful vacations, but two years ago we began deliberately working on her bucket list when we visited London, England, and the Lake District. This past weekend, we travelled to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, Arizona. While the Grand Canyon was magnificent, the red rocks of Sedona resonated with us on some deeper level. They are majestic, but also soothing and close enough to touch. As in, we could step out of our hotel room and touch these rocks.

As I made my way up the trail across the street from the Enchantment Resort, I set my sites on Warrior Rock and noticed the sounds of a flute in the distance. The tune was similar to the Native American music we’d been hearing throughout the hotel. I wondered briefly where it was coming from, but returned to the task at hand and kept making my way up the trail. It was 9:00 a.m. and only 90 degrees. I knew I wanted to be back in the hotel room before the afternoon temperatures of 105+ degrees.

As the elevation rose and the small rocks became more abundant, increasing the risk of a turned ankle, I found myself latching onto a mantra I’d come up with two weeks earlier when Rachel and I were at our annual Allison Partners leadership retreat at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA. We decided to visit the labyrinth on the property (another exercise in mindfulness).

When my silent, winding, circular walk began last month, I noticed a lot of edgy chatter in my mind about all the things on my list and all the ways I felt behind on a couple of big projects. Here I was trying to have a meditative experience and my monkey mind was distracting me.

When this happens, I do my best to notice how I’m talking to myself, and how that talk is making me feel. I really try to listen to my inner voice before I do anything else. I try not to be too judgmental and instead just make internal observations. Once I think I’ve got a handled on what’s going on, I try asking myself some of the same questions I ask my clients. “How do you wish you felt right now?” “What do you wish you believed?”

Answering those questions in the labyrinth helped me to come up with this statement, “There is enough time for everything and everything will be okay.” I know I’ve come up with a good mantra when the cynical part of my mind doesn’t believe it! Then I rely on the fact that fake it til you make it is a worthwhile endeavor when I’m trying to change the negative self-talk in my head.

As I made my way closer to the peak in Sedona, I started saying my new mantra to myself over and over again. (A mantra is nice to have when you’re huffing and puffing in the desert heat wondering if you’ve had enough water.) Once I finally reached the top of Warrior Rock, I offered to take a picture of the couple who had arrived before me, and then they did the same for me. I think this will always be one of my most favorite pictures.

Then that couple left, and I had some time by myself to enjoy the cool breeze and stunning vistas. And that’s when my mantra popped into my head for the first time as a statement I actually believed, “There is enough time for everything and everything will be okay.” I breathed a sigh of relief, because I know from experience that when I start to feel anxious about everything I need to do that I’ll be able to say this to myself just a few times and settle down. That’s the beauty of repetitive statements. While they feel like a lie for the first couple of weeks, my brain eventually starts to believe what I’ve been telling it, and then I can say the words just a few times and relax more quickly. It doesn’t always work, but it works often enough that I’m a believer in the process.

As I came down the trail, the flautist I had heard earlier was walking up. He gave me a heart shaped out of the red rocks, told me about a few of his experiences on these trails, and played me this song as I walked back to my hotel room.

 

It felt like the kind of energetic experience people talk about in the vortexes of the red rocks. I’m not sure what all of that is about, but I do know that it felt very good to start believing that, “there is time for everything and everything will be okay.” Once again a hike took me exactly where I needed to go.

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