A Meditation on Connecting Lands and Stories

Yuria Celidwen guides us to connect to the land, awakening gratitude and listening more deeply into the natural spaces around us.

By Yuria Celidwen May 6, 2025 Calm

Many modern Western cultures don’t have a deep understanding of how we connect to the land as a source of collective identity, story, or purpose. There is a sense that, yes, land can be lovely—but it is mainly seen as a source of recreation or extraction, not necessarily as an integral part of what shapes us and future generations.

In this guided practice, Indigenous scholar and teacher Yuria Celidwen, rooted in Nahua and Maya lineages, introduces a fresh way to consider our connection to the natural spaces around us. This is a practice that invites reverence, gratitude, and belonging, where our experience of the Earth moves from being strictly transactional to being interconnected and relational.

Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.

If you haven’t done so already, turn off your devices or leave them in a different place from where you will do this practice. Find a place within easy reach where you may feel comfortable. If this place allows you to overlook the landscape, that’s fantastic. If you can sit outside, surrounded by the natural landscape, even better. Wherever you decide to sit, make it easy for you so your practice becomes accessible whenever and wherever in your daily life.  Let your body rest in a way that helps you stay relaxed but attentive. While you may know that some meditation practices engage in contemplation with eyes closed, in this practice, keep your gaze soft but open, taking in your surroundings with a soft, expansive, panoramic view.  Pause. Notice where your attention is. Just notice where your mind is wandering. Where is your mind wandering? When is your mind wandering? How is your mind wandering? Just notice. Gather your attention gently. And bring it back to this present place and moment.  Request permission to enter the lands, offering your gratitude for their welcoming. Open. Breath, anchor, presence. Notice the texture of the lands where you are. What are the smells, fragrances, scents? What are the forms, colors and shades? What are the tones,  resonances, timbres, rhythms? What is their touch, their temperature, their strokes? What are their subtle tastes? Even more subtle memories, imagination?  Breathe, acknowledge, recognize, welcome. Welcome the lands. Pause. Who are the lands? What are they? Where are they? Pause. The lands are telling stories. They have voices. They sing songs. With the utmost care, as you would to a precious elder or a newborn child, just pause to listen. What are the lands telling you right now? What are they singing about themselves? What is their story about you? 

Pause to listen, as you would to a precious elder or a newborn child. What are the lands telling you right now? What are they singing about themselves? What is their story about you?

Take a few moments to hold this experience. Embrace our first opening into our shared sacred space, our discovering of an open welcoming of the lands. Offer them your gratitude for that opening, for welcoming you. Take a deep breath and exhale, bowing to the lands. Now let this experience flow.  Here are a few cues to animate your experience. Feel each of these cues as they rise in your body, heart, mind, memory, imagination, and belonging. Let these inquiries connect you to the world. What emerges? How are the lands connecting with you? What are their languages? How are they arising? And how do you relate and reciprocate?