What Does Building a "Nature" Site Do?
Building my website about walking meditation in natural settings has turned out to be a rather therapeutic experience for me, I must admit. I ended up experimenting with several features that I had not done before when working on other websites:
a) Each page has a background which is a nature photo
b) I am making extensive use of google docs to allow the site to be more dynamic and collaborative. Visitors to the site have the ability to update a reading list as well as suggest their own lesson plans which incorporate walking meditation
c) Links are being used to allow for easier navigation between site pages
Why "therapeutic", then? What aspect of building this website feels satisfying to me?
1. Confidence Building : I have to admit that one reason has to do with how I perceive myself. I have frequently seen myself as a bit of a novice when it comes to both art and technology. Working with google sites has allowed me to challenge these perceptions I have about myself, but showing that, given a little bit of time and effort, I can create a tool that is dynamic, attractive and somewhat easy to navigate. Thus, I think my self -confidence has improved since I started this project.
2. Connecting with my previous experiences in nature: I have had the fortune of having documented many of my walking excursions in the past, and storing many of these photos in different locations, such as gmail, facebook, google drive, my cellphone, previous blogs, etc. Seeing these natural images on my new blog has been a healing experience emotionally, because it brings me back to the visceral, calming effect that nature has on me. I am convinced that the pairing of nature with technology can have similar effects on those who, for whatever reasons, are simply unable to physically connect with natural environments. Even simple media such as images and sounds can go a great way in at least adding some color to the website and providing an "in vivo" experience of the natural world which can foster meditation.
3. Interacting with Technology Meditatively. There are many ways in which creating this site has become a "flow" experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), whereby I start to immerse in an experience that is sufficiently challenging but also stimulating and offering me a variety of choices. Like any deep learning experience, this experience immerses me in an experience that requires making choices at many points along the way, ranging from how the site should look, to how to arrange the various contents to make a coherent, self-guided course path. There have been times, particularly during the final stages of this project, where I was so immersed in the experience that nothing else seemed to matter, or even receded into the background! Building the site myself (from scratch) and experimenting with formatting, uploads, subheadings document organization and so on, has been one of the most connecting experiences I have ever had with technology. I found myself not worrying about time, and not getting dragged into the lure of surfing online as a "break" or checking emails. I felt myself more and more in the driving seat of being a creator as opposed to passively looking at other peoples' websites.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row
a) Each page has a background which is a nature photo
b) I am making extensive use of google docs to allow the site to be more dynamic and collaborative. Visitors to the site have the ability to update a reading list as well as suggest their own lesson plans which incorporate walking meditation
c) Links are being used to allow for easier navigation between site pages
Why "therapeutic", then? What aspect of building this website feels satisfying to me?
1. Confidence Building : I have to admit that one reason has to do with how I perceive myself. I have frequently seen myself as a bit of a novice when it comes to both art and technology. Working with google sites has allowed me to challenge these perceptions I have about myself, but showing that, given a little bit of time and effort, I can create a tool that is dynamic, attractive and somewhat easy to navigate. Thus, I think my self -confidence has improved since I started this project.
2. Connecting with my previous experiences in nature: I have had the fortune of having documented many of my walking excursions in the past, and storing many of these photos in different locations, such as gmail, facebook, google drive, my cellphone, previous blogs, etc. Seeing these natural images on my new blog has been a healing experience emotionally, because it brings me back to the visceral, calming effect that nature has on me. I am convinced that the pairing of nature with technology can have similar effects on those who, for whatever reasons, are simply unable to physically connect with natural environments. Even simple media such as images and sounds can go a great way in at least adding some color to the website and providing an "in vivo" experience of the natural world which can foster meditation.
3. Interacting with Technology Meditatively. There are many ways in which creating this site has become a "flow" experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), whereby I start to immerse in an experience that is sufficiently challenging but also stimulating and offering me a variety of choices. Like any deep learning experience, this experience immerses me in an experience that requires making choices at many points along the way, ranging from how the site should look, to how to arrange the various contents to make a coherent, self-guided course path. There have been times, particularly during the final stages of this project, where I was so immersed in the experience that nothing else seemed to matter, or even receded into the background! Building the site myself (from scratch) and experimenting with formatting, uploads, subheadings document organization and so on, has been one of the most connecting experiences I have ever had with technology. I found myself not worrying about time, and not getting dragged into the lure of surfing online as a "break" or checking emails. I felt myself more and more in the driving seat of being a creator as opposed to passively looking at other peoples' websites.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row
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