The Healing Power of Nature  

Nature is a powerful form of therapy and healing in and of itself, and it seems that we have forgotten the restorative power that it holds and always offers without asking for anything in return.

To align ourselves with nature and to become more true to what we are is a difficult task in modern life, which gives us every opportunity to ignore our inheritance of this most basic and wonderful resource. A resource that not only heals us but at the same time comes at absolutely no cost and comes with an incredible abundance.

Bringing ourselves in touch with nature gives us a freedom that is missing these days, as we over rely on technology and business for entertainment and finances for food, self-preservation and further distraction from a part of ourselves that cries out to be acknowledged – the latent but ever-present wild aspect of our being.

In a sense, we’ve divorced ourselves from this all nourishing life giver for a superficial and cheaply entertaining yet still somewhat dissatisfying entanglement with city life. Over worrying, stress, depression and malaise are of a scandalous proportion in this modern age that values making everything as comfortable as possible, rather than unearthing the call of the wild that runs inside, aching to be acknowledged, expressed and deeply integrated, while the city and its concrete, hard edged buildings have also concretized our inner need to commune with all that is unfabricated, unconstructed and always free. It’s very hard to find someone whose mind doesn’t fall silent while traversing through the untouched beauty of a forest or listening to the soft wind as they sit by a lake. Something just happens to us beyond our conscious awareness. It’s as if a switch gets flicked and we suddenly remember a part of who we are. A part that has been long forgotten.

We are nature itself, nature that has settled for less than we deserve. Evolving with nature, humankind has the cries of natural elements deep within the soul, begging to be brought forth and lived, rather than ignored and shunned to the side in favour of safer, more comforting modalities that stifle instinctual and intuitive knowing, an aspect of the truth of what it is to be human.

Intuitively tuning in to our bodies is also what I would call nature, as there is a part of us deep within that holds the key to true understanding of ourselves and our world. There is a lot to be learned from becoming aware of ourselves from the neck down, rather than relying only on conditioned thought and concept in the head. If we bring our attention to our body and truly listen with patience, we will find answers that we didn’t know were there. This is a natural gift that we all possess, but one that has been buried in favour of allowing others, particularly media corporations and Internet outlets, to tell us who we are and what the world is. Each one of us has our own universe inside, so to allow others to tell us who and what we are, would be an act of irresponsibility on an infinitely grand scale.

When we talk about nature being food for the soul, it would be hard to ignore the food that nature provides for the physical body. The natural world also provides the gift of a nutritional plan we simply cannot surpass. For all of our contemporary healthy eating plans, we still suffer from an outrageous degree of weight issues, as mass market food producers pedal products with an endless list of scientific sounding ingredients that wouldn’t sound out of place in Einstein’s laboratory. But nature’s food with its festival of colours comes in abundance and can also be grown by ourselves, echoing our ancestors as they didn’t spend a small fortune on food that has been argued to decrease our immune system and also keep us craving more at the same time. Salt, sugar and fat are the trifecta of addiction that food companies use to keep us hooked, keep our waistlines expanding and our interests peaked to consume more of the same. Our tastebuds have almost become perverted as we lose our taste for natural, simple, colourful foods that increase our life span and provide us with uncomplicated energy that makes us feel more alive and more at peace, without spikes and crashes in energy, leaving us with much more ability to focus and sustain attention.

Nature’s way also has the effect of slowing us down in a positive sense. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.” Modern life has a way of making us speedy and aggressive, hyperactive and over-competitive. As we rush through life, jumping from one thing to another, as if it were a race to see who can collect the most experiences first, we forget that life is not a race to be won, but an experience that can be truly lived only if we slow down enough to be present for it. Speediness almost always comes with stress. We might ask ourselves, “Is the stress we put ourselves under actually worth it?” At what cost are we so caught up in our endless activities that we have forgot to notice our breathing. In many ways, we’re lucky that our breath happens by itself because if we had to actually remember to breathe, we might be so busy that we would forget. Nature’s calming effect brings us back to our breath and to our body, which can be called meditation.

We must not forget that we are always in nature. Even cities with heightened activity are a part of nature, as they are happening IN nature. They are small built up hives with unnatural landscapes taking place within a broader natural landscape. So, in a sense, we can’t escape nature even when we are in a setting that seems to be its opposite. Nature pervades everything. This can be an incredibly liberating realisation when we feel bogged down by the frantic and relentless sensory stimulation of modern living. We ourselves can slow down and “adopt the pace of nature”, as Emerson puts it. We can tune into ourselves and find solace and serenity in the midst of chaos, as that is our own deepest nature.

So, we might ask the question, if humanity evolved with nature so interdependently and with such great support, how do we expect to continue to evolve further while not only denying and ignoring it, but actually purposely sabotaging this most exquisite of all-encompassing resources. Trees give us oxygen and we continue to cut them down. Rivers give us water and we continue to mindlessly pollute them. These are just two examples of the endless methods used to rid ourselves of that which we need the most in order to cash in on the very thing that sustains us. Money will be clearly worth nothing when we don’t even have life. If we are to further evolve from both a species and a soul perspective, nature could be the simple answer. In many ways, we have severed our connection with spirit and with the natural world, which may be the cause for many sicknesses of the mind today. Evolution may now require coming back to ourselves, to our own nature, re-igniting the spark within and trusting it, rather than always looking outside for scraps of temporary pleasure that can never bring any lasting fulfillment.

May we all find the light of our own nature and may love prevail over fear and greed.