GUIDED FOREST MEDITATION: “Into the Quiet Woods”
Six-minute guided script for a seated posture. 

Begin by finding a comfortable seat.
Let your feet make contact with the ground—solid, simple, sure.
Let your hands rest in your lap or along your sides.
Gently close your eyes if that feels safe. Or just soften your gaze.

Let your breath come as it is.
No performance, no improvement.
Just breath…
just this moment.

Now, allow yourself to imagine…
You are sitting at the edge of a quiet forest.
It’s early morning.
There’s no urgency here. No tasks.
Just you, and the woods.

Notice the air. Cool, fresh, slightly damp with dew.
Let yourself breathe it in.

Beneath you, the ground is firm and steady.
You may feel moss or soft earth below.
The forest holds you—not tightly, not loosely. Just enough.

Now begin to notice sound.
Black capped chickadee calls, and then fades into the distance.
A quarrel among chipmunks in branches high above.
A breeze moves gently through the leaves.
And underneath it all… stillness.

As you sit here, you are not a visitor.
You belong here.
You are part of this place.
This forest is not asking anything of you.
Let your senses open wider.

Notice the light filtering through the canopy.
The smell of pine and rain-soaked earth,
Noticing—without judgment—what it feels like to simply sit and witness this unfolding.

You may begin to feel a quiet in your chest…
a slowing in the breath…
Breath you hadn’t noticed was here all along
And a sense of steadiness, and assurance in the bones.

The forest is at work.
It doesn’t fix you.
It reminds you.

Of your natural pace.
Of your enough-ness.
Of your natural ability to rest and be present… without solving.

Now, imagine walking slowly down a forest trail.
Each step is deliberate, soft.
Held gently by the weathered igneous and mineral-rich soil underfoot.
No destination, just the act of forward movement.
Open space and crisp air.

You arrive at a bubbling mountain brook,
The water is running over millennia-rounded granite.
You pause here, beside a sugar maple so wide, you’d need three friends to reach around it.
There is nothing to do, nothing weighing on you.

Only to be.
To remember that calm is not somewhere else.
It’s right here, right now. Accessible within you.

Let yourself linger in this space a little longer.
Let the quiet settle around your shoulders.
Let the steadiness reach down into your legs, into your spine, into your breath.

Now slowly, begin to return.
Feel the ground beneath you once more.
Feel the air above and cradling you, all around.
Hear the sounds in this moment, in this space around you.

Take one slow inhale through the nose…
and exhale out the mouth.

Wiggle your fingers.
Ever so gently shift in your seat.
Let your eyes reopen slowly, when you’re ready.

Bring the stillness of the forest with you.
Not as something separate,
but as something you can always access within.