When the Sunset Does Not Reach You
- Heidi Schreiber-Pan
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Three practices for returning to the world around us
Recently, I was sitting in a beautiful place at sunset. The sky was changing color, and the light was settling across the landscape.
I was also on the phone with my mother.
My father is struggling with dementia, and we were trying to figure out his care so that my mother could come visit. I was brainstorming solutions, considering possibilities, and trying to hold the needs of both of my parents.
My mind was working hard.
I think I looked up at the sunset.
But the sunset did not reach my soul.
Being outside did not automatically change what was happening inside me. My body was in a beautiful place, but most of my attention was somewhere else.
Many of us have had some version of this experience. We take a walk while replaying a difficult conversation. We sit beside a lake while planning tomorrow. We look at the trees without really seeing them.
A recent article by counsellor Andres Miranda helped me think more carefully about these moments. In “Ecological Contact and Psychological Well-Being: A Process-Based Account of Experiential Coordination,” Miranda suggests that contact with the natural world may support coordination among our thoughts, bodies, senses, and surroundings.
The article is theoretical rather than an experimental study. It does not claim that going outside will cure anxiety or that every outdoor setting will feel restorative. Instead, Miranda offers a way to understand why physical presence in nature is not always enough.
Our attention also has to arrive.
When Thought Takes Up the Whole Field
During periods of worry, stress, or rumination, attention can narrow. We repeat the same questions. We rehearse possible outcomes. We become less aware of our breathing, posture, and physical surroundings.
The world continues around us, but we participate in less of it.
Miranda describes this as a disruption in experiential coordination. Thoughts begin to dominate an experience that also includes bodily sensations, sound, temperature, movement, light, and contact with the ground.
This does not mean that thinking is the problem. I needed to think about my father’s care. My mother and I were discussing something real and painful. A sunset could not solve it.
Still, my experience was almost entirely organized around the problem. The color in the sky, the evening air, and the landscape around me could not enter very far.
Ecological contact involves allowing the surrounding place to become part of our experience again. A sudden breeze changes the temperature of our skin. Uneven ground alters our pace. A bird call interrupts a familiar train of thought.
The worry may remain. It simply becomes one part of a larger field.
Looking Up From the Knight Bus
I experienced this in a smaller and much less serious way while sitting beside a lake.
I was reading Harry Potter again, simply because it's that good of a summer read. I was in the middle of the scene in which the Knight Bus picks up Harry when I happened to look up.
A kayaker was interacting with a duck on the water.
For a moment, I was still partly on the Knight Bus. Then I decided to put the book down.
I felt the breeze. I watched the duck splash as it moved away from the kayak. I noticed the water and the activity around me. My attention shifted from the imagined world in my book to the emerging experience in front of me.
There was nothing wrong with reading. The story was holding my attention exactly as a good story should. Yet when I looked up, another world was already unfolding.
I had to choose to enter it.
That small decision helped me understand Miranda’s argument. Ecological contact is more than occupying an outdoor location. It involves becoming available to what is happening there.
Nature Is Not a Neutral Background
A park, garden, shoreline, or forest is not a static background for human activity. Each place is changing through relationships among weather, soil, water, plants, animals, fungi, and people.
We enter those processes whenever we step outside, but we do not always notice them.
This does not mean every outdoor experience will feel peaceful. Natural settings can be uncomfortable, inaccessible, unfamiliar, or unsafe. Heat, insects, difficult terrain, past experiences, discrimination, and physical limitations all shape how someone experiences a place.
The goal is not to force calm. It is to experiment with widening attention in a setting that feels sufficiently safe and accessible.
Miranda offers several practices for doing this. The three invitations below are adapted and expanded from his article. They can be practiced in a park, backyard, garden, or other outdoor space. They can also be modified for a porch, an open window, a houseplant, or a view of the sky.
Practice One: Notice Before You Name
The mind names things quickly.
Tree. Bird. Flower. Weed. Cloud.
Naming is useful, but it can also end our attention. Once we decide what something is, we may stop looking.
Choose one living being, natural object, or small area that catches your attention. You might notice a leaf, stone, patch of moss, moving shadow, or section of sky.
Spend three to five minutes observing it.
Before identifying or explaining it, notice:
Its shape and edges
Areas of light and shadow
Changes in color
Movement or stillness
Texture and pattern
Nearby sounds
When a name appears, notice that too. Then return to what your senses are receiving.
Instead of stopping at “tree,” you might see deep lines in the bark, a small opening where an insect entered, or one branch moving differently from the others.
Instead of identifying a bird, listen to the spacing and direction of its calls.
The purpose is not to give up knowledge or language. It is to remain with direct experience a little longer.
Before finishing, ask yourself: What did I notice that I missed at first?
Practice Two: Walk Without Trying to Arrive
Most walking has a goal. We walk to reach a destination, finish a route, exercise, or complete a certain number of steps.
For this practice, choose a safe area with clear boundaries. Give yourself about ten minutes.
Begin walking without selecting a destination within that space. Let your pace respond to your body and surroundings.
You might:
Pause when something catches your attention
Follow a sound
Move toward shade or sunlight
Change direction when you become curious
Slow down when the ground changes
Stop when your body wants to be still
Notice the impulse to make the walk productive. You may want to cover more ground, identify plants, take photographs, or decide whether you are doing the practice correctly.
See what happens when you do not follow that impulse.
From time to time, ask:
What is guiding my movement right now?
There is no required distance. You do not need to discover anything important. The practice is to experience movement without turning it into another task.
Practice Three: Let Thoughts Share the Space
Going outside does not silence the mind. Thoughts may continue planning, remembering, evaluating, or worrying.
This practice does not ask you to stop thinking. It asks you to notice that thought is only one part of what is happening.
Find a place where you can sit or stand comfortably for five to ten minutes.
Begin by noticing three points of physical contact:
Your feet against the ground
Your body against a chair, rock, or tree
Air touching your face or hands
Listen for one sound. Notice where it begins, how long it lasts, and what follows it.
When a thought appears, name it quietly and simply:
Planning.
Remembering.
Worrying.
There is no need to analyze it or push it away. Let the thought remain while reconnecting with one part of your surroundings.
Notice a movement.
Feel the temperature.
Listen for another sound.
Sense your breathing without trying to change it.
A concern can be present alongside wind, birdsong, traffic, muscle tension, and the pressure of your feet against the earth.
The aim is not to make the thought disappear. It is to keep the thought from becoming the entire field of experience.
Letting More of the World Enter
A sunset could not resolve the challenges facing my parents. It could not make my father well or give my mother an easy decision.
But perhaps I could have paused after the phone call. I could have felt my feet on the ground and noticed the remaining light. I could have allowed the evening to accompany me, even if it could not fix anything.
That is different from expecting nature to work its magic.
Choose one of these practices this week. Give it five or ten minutes. Select a place that feels accessible enough for you to remain curious.
You may not feel calmer. Your thoughts may continue.
Still, you may notice the breeze, the pressure of the ground, the movement of water, or a duck splashing nearby. For a few moments, the concern or story holding your attention may no longer be the only thing present.
Reference
Miranda, A. A. (2026). “Ecological Contact and Psychological Well-Being: A Process-Based Account of Experiential Coordination.” Australian Counselling Research Journal, 19(1), 37–43.
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