Invitation to join our “Sit Spot” practice!

This is something I want to try with our Teaching for Sustainability community, and you are welcome to join: A regular “Sit Spot” practice!

“Sit Spots” are a mindfulness practice recommended for example by Venet (2024) and Bitting et al. (2026). The idea is that you select an outdoor location that you can conveniently visit — for example on campus, or close to your home — and that you then visit repeatedly, once or twice per week, for ca 10 minutes each, in different times, weather conditions, …. While you are there, notice what you see, hear, smell, feel, how your body and your mind react.

I’m interested in trying this because of the mental health and wellbeing benefits described in Bitting et al. (2026), and because it seems like a great activity to include in courses so I would like to experience it for myself before I use it there. It is also a good way to bring place-based elements into a course since it connects participants with the place they are in. One thing I might explore at a later stage, but which might be particularly relevant when using this in teaching, is to provide prompts each week for what to focus on, maybe the change in seasons, maybe sounds, maybe animals, the possibilities are endless (and of course also depend on the context we are using the activity in — could be a great contribution to a course). But while that might make it easier to connect to a course and motivate to you and others that students should do it, it also takes away from the purest focus on mindfulness, so you might or might not want to do that.

If you like to try this with us, you can share your experience with us on this padlet: Post a photo, a text describing your experience or thoughs, a picture and a text, or anything you like. You can be logged in with your LU (or ather) account and thus share who you are, or post anonymously. Please remember that the padlet is public, that we are advertising it widely, and that therefore anything you share on there is visible to anyone on the internet, so please use your own judgement with regard to what you post.

And you are of course very welcome to invite others — friends, family, colleagues, students — to join us, too! The more the merrier!

We will provide headings for every week from now until the end of the year (or longer, if we still feel inspired then), and you are welcome to post about every “sit spot” you do, whether you do one every day, every week, or just occasionally. If you would like a weekly reminder email on Mondays, please let me know and I will email you!