WAKA · In Nature We Believewaka.gaiaeducation.org/collection/nature-mandala/
Nature Mandala
Making something beautiful that you then have to leave
Give a group a shared, non-verbal, non-competitive act of making — and a very small, very clean practice in letting go.
- Duration
- 60–120 min
- Group size
- 4–30 people
- Setting
- outdoors
- Energy
- gentle
- Materials
- Nothing. Only what is already on the ground.
A quiet session for the long afternoon, when the group is tired, a little raw from the morning, and would resist anything requiring words.
How it runs
- The one rule: take nothing living. Fallen leaves, stones, cones, bark, feathers, husks. Nothing picked, nothing broken off.
- Mark the centre. One stone, placed by whoever wants to.
- Build outward, in silence. Ninety minutes. No plan, no discussion, no allocation of areas.
- Stop when it is finished. Groups know. Stand and look at it from the outside, then from the far side, then from as high up as you can get.
- Leave it. Do not photograph it. Walk away.
- Talk on the walk back, in pairs.
Facilitator notes
- The no-photograph instruction produces more reaction than anything else in the session, which is what makes it worth keeping. If the group cannot bear it, negotiate: one photograph, taken by one person, after everyone has looked with their own eyes.
- Silence is what makes it collaborative. Groups that talk end up dividing the circle into private plots.
- Come back on the last morning and look at what the wind and the animals did to it. That visit is the real session.
A note on the word
Mandala is a Sanskrit word carrying specific meaning in Buddhist and Hindu practice, where making and destroying one is a formal spiritual discipline. What happens here is much smaller than that. Say so, and consider calling it a ground circle with your group.
