As I walked through the park one morning, I noticed a sweet dog jumping up and down, excitedly pulling at her leash.  She was a distance away, ahead of where I was, and two dogs right next to me were playing with each other as I walked along.  When the human companion let her dog off the leash, the fur-face leapt up and down like a gazelle as she ran toward her two canine friends. 

Their greeting was mutually enthusiastic and filled with the energy of encountering someone you truly enjoy seeing.  It got me to thinking about the gift of friendship and how important it is to let the people we care about know how much they mean to us.  Friendships need nurturing, as do any relationships, and watching these dogs come together and openly and vigorously express their delight in seeing each other seemed to me to be a wonderful example of openly expressing positive feelings to friends. 

And so, for this week's experiment, I invite you to notice how and when you let your friends know how much they matter to you, how and when you check in with them to see how they are doing, and how and when you receive the same kind of nurturance from them.  Remember, receiving is as active a process as giving, and an important element of the mutuality of friendship is to receive what friends offer as openly as you offer your gifts to them.

Whatever your current level of nurturing your friendships, notice what happens this week if you are just a bit more open, just a bit more generous, just a bit more present to them and their process.  Notice what happens in them and notice what emerges in you, in terms of the quality of your experience of having people in your life who matter to you. There's no right or wrong thing to do here - just to add a bit more nurturing to your friendships and notice what happens.

As with all the experiments, please bring along curiosity as your constant companion.  Curiosity brings an energy of openness and "moving toward" the focus of your attention.  Offering our friends our openness is sometimes the greatest gift of all, so notice what happens in your body and your psyche when you consciously bring curiosity into your interactions with your friends.

Also, be sure to leave judgment behind, or at least not give it any energy when it shows up.  So often, when we engage friends, we can fall into old family patterns of not feeling adequate, wondering if they really like us, and so on.  If and when these kinds of responses arise in you, notice how it is to let them be no more than flickers on the screen - arising, moving through and then moving on as you keep yourself from adding energy to them.  So often we take our judgments as sources of information when they are actually signals of activation.  When you take them as signals of activation, you can ask yourself what would help you feel more comfortable or centered.  Then, the supportive thoughts that emerge can become gifts to yourself.