Mindfulness in Audubon

I’ve always been an anxious person. My parents tell me stories about how when I was little I wouldn’t be able to go to bed unless I told my parents a whole list of rules they needed to follow once they left me to go downstairs. Every night, I would say my script the same way in order to fall asleep. 

Growing up, I combatted these feelings through dance. I could go to my dance classes 6 days a week, forget everything that was going on in the world, and focus solely on the music and movement around me. When it was time for me to go away to college, I needed to find something new that caused me to focus on only one thing and escape from everything else happening, to refocus my attention inward. 

I found myself gravitating towards Audubon Park. It was only a short walk away from Tulane’s campus and I could sit on a bench facing the water, listening to music, and shutting out everything else around me. It was exactly the feeling I had missed while dancing growing up. I felt the weight lifting off my shoulders and the feeling of all my responsibilities drifting away. Even if this was only felt for the 30 minutes I was there, it was effective enough to keep me calm until I could revisit again.

The most recent time I visited Audubon Park, I took notice of what exactly made me feel so calm and free while being there. The live oak trees encapsulated me and made me feel safe. The way the branches are high enough up that I can still see my surroundings, but big enough that I can still feel like I am in my own world alone. People find comfort in knowing that they can see the world around them in case of an emergency, but also enjoy the feeling of being enclosed due to the privacy it gives, and the trees give a happy medium. The wind in my hair lightened my breath and made me focus on my breathing. It’s a similar feeling to what I’d feel while dancing. Even though it was hard work, it was when I felt the most free and weightless. Being outside has proven to have numerous health benefits, like decreased rates of cancer and heart disease, along with increasing positive mental health. The sounds of people talking and exercising in the background made me feel not alone but not distracted. Slyly eavesdropping on other people’s conversations makes the experience more intimate and takes you away from the thoughts of your own life. It’s a form of communication that connects you to the people around you without having to make small talk, which again makes me feel safe in Audubon knowing what is going on around me. The ducks in the water gave me something to focus on that was simple but engaging. There is an emotional bond between humans and animals that is not always discussed. Animals are social creatures, just like humans are, so humans find comfort in the companionship and social support that animals bring, which is where pets often come in. Even wild animals, like these ducks, help to reconnect humans with nature to bring them that same sense of comfort. I could begin to focus on all of these things surrounding me while slowly forgetting my responsibilities and tuning into my music and environment.

This all relates to the concept of becoming mindful. Mindfulness is all about becoming aware of the moment and living in the present instead of dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. It is about employing all five senses and becoming aware of what is surrounding you, which is exactly what I was subconsciously doing while sitting in Audubon Park. I could smell the trees around me, hear the conversations around me, 

see the ducks in the water, feel the wind in my hair, and even taste the crispness of the air around me. There are constantly things to observe in Audubon, to take you away from your own thoughts and reground you to focus on the present. 

Audubon Park is the perfect place to start meditation. There are endless areas to choose where to sit, whether it is completely secluded or completely emerged in the crowd. You can even choose to practice while taking a walk around the path. Depending on the time of day, it can either be crowded or empty. There are endless possibilities of how to meditate in Audubon, which gives you complete control on how you feel comfortable becoming mindful and refocusing your mind on the present.

The reason Audubon is a better place to meditate than say your home or a library is because of the benefits being surrounded by nature also gives you. When connecting to nature, there is a positive correlation with psychological well-being. When combined with mindfulness, which will connect you with nature even more, a person can feel an increased sense of positive well-being. A study done to see the effects of meditation in nature vs nature without meditation, found that meditating in nature increased people’s connectedness to nature. 71 undergraduates went on a 3-day trip to an outdoor guiding program called “Aztec Adventures” and were randomly assigned to either a meditation condition or a non meditation condition. To measure their connectedness to nature, they used the Inclusion of Nature in the Self (INS) scale, which consists of the participants circling pictures that best describes the way they see their relationship with themselves and nature. The results showed that while the two groups had equal scores on the INS scale at the beginning of the retreat, there was a difference on the post-retreat INS scale, which proved meditating in nature increases a person’s connectedness to nature, which again provides numerous health benefits that people would not get by meditating in an indoor space. 

Someone may ask, so why Audubon Park specifically? Why not any outside space in New Orleans? The answer to that would go back to the trees, the ducks, the wind, the people’s conversations. The feeling when all of these come together is something that can’t be duplicated, something that you have to experience yourself in Audubon. You wouldn’t find all of these characteristics in the same place somewhere else. They all come together to create the perfect environment for meditation that really can’t be recreated elsewhere.