Healing in Nature
I am learning (again) – or maybe I am remembering — how important it is to be in touch with Nature. It’s one of those things that’s easy for me to forget, similar to drinking water (which I do have to actively remind myself to do), yet it is so essential to living. When I am living more connected to the land, plants and animals, I am able to find my place in the family of things. It is also a way for me to receive, which is especially important being a mother and a therapist. And the beautiful thing about being outside is there are always surprises, gifts, and sheer beauty which typically leave me hopeful, inspired, and frankly relieved. It’s as if I can just witness that there is a force of life happening that I have no control over, and this feels like a sweet surrender.
The reality is that we live in a time where the online world can feel more important than the tangible tactile world. We live so disconnected from the elements of the natural world (including one another) and practically bunkered down in our little manmade structures that are so clean (relatively speaking – not necessarily from experience). Let’s do a quick check-in. How often do you do the following (no judgement here, but just taking inventory):
Wake up and immediately reach for the phone, tablet, remote, laptop, watch, etc. before anything else?
Check the weather app before even looking out the window or stepping outside?
Look at a screen as you are drifting off to sleep at night?
Touch the earth with your bare hands or feet?
Smell the cherry blossoms or roses you pass on the sidewalk?
Feel the warmth from fire - whether it be bonfire or candle flame?
Watch the clouds and see the migrating birds high above?
(As I write this list, my nervous system literally shifted as I imagined the last four items!)
I have been making an effort lately to live a little closer to the natural world. Perhaps this is through a cup of tea and reflecting on where the tea came from and how it grew, or simply lighting a beeswax candle first thing in the morning and letting the light of the flame greet me. One of my favorite ways to spend time in Nature is to search for rocks at the beach and find a spectrum of colors to create a rock rainbow. It is quite satisfying.
Another practice is one I have adopted from Morning Altars and Day Schildkret. He teaches a practice of creating impermanent art, typically in the form of a mandala, from sticks, leaves, rocks, cones, or anything else one can collect from the land. Mandalas, Sanskrit for “circle,” are often used to help reduce stress, increase mindfulness, and connect to creativity. I have been able to do this on occasions where I am not bound by time or when I want to incorporate ritual and ceremony (such as on my birthday).
The mandala I created on my 40th birthday at the beach with some oracle cards for the upcoming year.
These two practices have enriched my life as I can integrate being creative while being held by the earth.
When we step back into Nature and realign to its rhythms, we can slow down, surrender, zoom out. It’s a bit radical, actually, to do this. But it is important, for it is nourishment that sustains us in the midst of the things that demand our attention and energy.
So, wanting to take care of your mental health? Get outside, or at least bring elements of outside into your space. Even that can be a little reminder to the greater existence of the natural world from which we all came.
Happy Spring.