The Practice That Teaches Presence: Why I’m Starting with Sit Spots
Developing a 13-day challenge has reminded me what transformation actually requires
I’ve been developing something new, a 13-Day EcoSpirituality Challenge for a community I work with, timed to culminate on October 24, the International Day Against Climate Change.
As I’ve designed these daily practices, I keep returning to a truth I learned on the Camino: transformation doesn’t begin with dramatic gestures. It begins with showing up to one ordinary place, again and again, until it becomes extraordinary. Day 1 of the challenge asks participants to find a sit spot.
As I wrote the invitation, I realized I needed to practice it myself first.
So this morning, I went outside and sat. Five minutes. One place. No agenda.
It reminded me why this practice matters.
The Sit Spot Practice
The concept is beautifully simple: choose one place in the natural world and return to it regularly.
Same place. Same practice. Different you each time. This practice comes from generations of naturalists, contemplatives, and indigenous wisdom keepers. What makes it powerful isn’t the spot itself, it’s the relationship you build by returning.
When you visit the same place daily, you stop being a tourist in the natural world.
You become a neighbor. You notice what changes, the light at different times of day, the birds who live there, the way wind moves through particular trees, the seasonal shifts in sound and scent. The place begins to teach you its rhythms. You begin to learn its language.
This isn’t about finding the most beautiful or dramatic location. It’s about committing to presence in one specific place, allowing that place to know you as you come to know it. The more you visit, the deeper the relationship develops.
What Returning Teaches
Here’s what surprised me most when I began sitting regularly with Hermann, a tree in the Luxembourg Gardens. The place changed me more than I changed it.
Each return taught me something about patience. About showing up even when I didn’t feel like it. About how presence works, not as a destination we arrive at once, but as a practice we cultivate through repetition.
This is why I’ve walked the Camino five times.
Not because the first walk wasn’t enough, but because each return taught me something the previous walks couldn’t. The second time, I noticed stones differently than the first time. The third, I understood how the sun, moon, and rain invited careful planning and celebration based on how they worked together. By the fifth, which was also my first time walking alone, I walked to be on the path itself.
The places that transformed me weren’t the dramatic vistas or famous cathedrals—they were the ordinary stretches I returned to year after year, watching how my relationship with them deepened.
A sit spot is pilgrimage compressed into a single location. It’s where you practice what I’ve learned on the Camino, namely showing up, being present, and listening, trusting that transformation comes through returning, not through novelty.
An Invitation
The 13-day challenge I’m developing runs through October 24, building from this foundation of finding a sit spot into practices of deep listening, water connection, breath exchange with plants, and looking beneath the surface.
Each day builds on the one before. I’m not asking you to join that specific challenge. The community I’m working with has their own space and rhythm for this work.
But I am inviting you to try the practice that grounds it all:
Find a spot. Someplace in the natural world you can visit for a few minutes and return to easily, even if just for a few days.
It doesn’t need to be remote or dramatic. A corner of your yard. A tree in the park. A bench near water. Even a window view if getting outside isn’t possible.
Spend five minutes there. Notice what’s around you. No agenda, no fixing, no solving. Just presence.
Then, if you’re moved to, come back tomorrow.
Watch what changes. Watch what stays. Notice what the place teaches when you give it your attention. One participant in the challenge shared something beautiful after today’s practice.
Her attention kept returning to a river birch they planted four years ago—a tree that’s survived freezes, storms, and setbacks. Today it asked her to be patient with how equanimity and beauty emerge, not always in the time, shape, or form we envision.
This is what happens when we show up to the same place with presence. The place begins to teach us.
Why This Matters Now
We’re living in a time of profound disconnection from the more-than-human world.
We know intellectually that we’re part of nature, but we don’t feel it in our bodies. We talk about climate change as an abstract problem “out there” rather than a relationship that’s breaking down. The sit spot practice isn’t a solution to climate crisis.
But it is a beginning.
You cannot care for what you don’t know. You cannot protect what you haven’t loved. Love requires presence over time.
This is the work I’m trying to support through the challenge I’m developing, and through everything I share here with you.
Moving people from disconnection and separation toward authentic relationship with the natural world. Helping us remember we’re not visitors to nature. We’re part of it.
What I’m Learning
As I develop this 13-day series, I’m relearning my own lessons. Deepening into my own practices. Contemplating on what invited me into this work initially.
The practices I’m inviting others into are the practices I need myself. Finding my sit spot again this morning reminded me that I teach what I most need to practice. Over the next weeks, I’ll be sharing what I’m learning as I guide others through this work.
Some of you may choose to practice along. Others may simply witness the journey. Both are valuable.
For now, here’s the only invitation that matters: Find your spot. Spend five minutes there. Notice what you notice.
The Earth is speaking. We just need to show up and listen.
I’m developing a 13-Day EcoSpirituality Challenge for a community I work with, and I’ll be sharing reflections from this process over the coming weeks. If contemplative practices and nature connection speak to you, I invite you to practice along—or simply to witness what emerges when we commit to presence.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Do you have a sit spot? What has it taught you?