How Reconnecting with Yourself is Part of Nature-Based Therapy
When I first began practicing Nature-Based Therapy or Eco-Therapy, I thought that it was all about being outdoors, going on adventures, practicing mindfulness.. While these can all be parts of Eco-Therapy, I have learned that it is so much more than that. I have started to recognize that all of the work that I get to do with clients and with myself can be informed by Eco-Therapy, whether indoors or outdoors. I have been learning about how Nature-Based Therapy can be an invitation to reconnect with our own nature as human beings, remembering that we are a part of nature. This can happen in so many different ways.
Through Tuning into Your Body
Our bodies experience the world everywhere we go. This may sound obvious but I have encountered many people (myself included) who can treat our bodies simply as mechanisms to take our brains from task to task or view our bodies as vessels to control or perfect. In reality, our bodies hold so much wisdom on how to navigate the world and how to feel connected and alive if only we would listen. When we begin to rebuild a relationship with our selves where our thoughts, our emotions, and our sensations are all valued, there is so much that can be available to us.
This rebuilding can start by pausing for a few moments each day and recognizing one sensation or emotion that may be present for you. It could start by sensing something in the world around you that you enjoy or are drawn towards and taking a moment to really feel how it sits in your body. This can be a process as many of us also have complicated relationships with our bodies due to many forms of bias and oppression that target our bodies. It’s okay if it takes time to begin considering redeveloping a relationship with your body and your nature! It’s also okay to lean on community, professional supports, and natural beings who may allow for there to be a greater sense of safety and kinship in the process!
Through Noticing Your Intuition
Do you ever have a “gut feeling” about something? Do you ever get a sense that you don’t want to be somewhere? Do you ever feel particularly drawn to a certain person, experience, or place? These may all be forms of intuition.
It is important to name that traumatic or overwhelming experiences may shift our felt sense of safety and/or how we respond to stimulus in the world AND that does not mean that your intuition is invalid. Getting in touch with your intuition, your instincts, your innate sense of the world and your connection to it in any given moment, is an important part of human nature. If you find yourself not trusting yourself or feeling overwhelmed by emotions or stressors, maybe see if you could just begin to acknowledge your experience before reacting to it. A starting point for reconnecting to your intuition may be re-opening a relationship with yourself by acknowledging what you are feeling or noticing, even if reacting to it may not feel safe or useful in that moment.
Through Allowing Curiosity about Your Experience
Curiosity is essential for us. It allows us to explore the world, to witness other beings and wonder about their practices and how we could learn from them, to find ways to survive difficulty, to open ourselves up to connection with others. Curiosity allows us to expand, to learn, to experience. Curiosity can also be difficult when we may have been raised to know the answers, to find solutions, to fix things, to be productive at all times.
Tapping back into curiosity may allow us to begin reconnecting to our true nature. It can allow us to look towards ourselves with openness, wondering about sensations, emotions, or thoughts that we are having and, instead of trying to solve them, sitting with them, wondering about them. Maybe it could also allow us to treasure whatever we are finding within ourselves for a moment without needing to do anything with it at all.
Through Gathering Messages from the World Around You
Tuning into weather patterns, ecosystems, plants, animals, seasons, and cycles has been essential for human beings to survive for generations. While this is not true for everyone, in much of modern society in the United States, people have not had to access these skills as readily to be able to survive due to the conveniences available in more urban areas. We have begun to lose touch with the information we receive from the natural world and how this informs our relationship with ourselves and the world around us.
In all of the different seasons and cycles, many of us have similar routines and similar perceptions of what we need to “get done”. This does not actually align with our nature. When we begin to remember our connection to the cycles of the Earth and nature, we can begin to return to our own need for cycles of living. We can begin to listen to ourselves more when we are tired, when we are energized, when we are drawn to be outdoors, exploring the world and when we are drawn to be in shelter, resting, recovering. We can begin to notice that we do not need to go at the same pace every single day forever. We can begin to recognize that we can find greater access to connection, to well-being, to aliveness when we don’t override our cycles and needs all of the time.
Reconnecting to Sense of Place & Story
What do you know about the land you live on? What do you know about the history of the people and beings who lived there before you? What do you feel when you connect to the world around you? What other beings also live where you are?
Many of us struggle to answer these questions in any depth. We can name the city or street we live within, the kinds of weather we may experience, maybe some of the activities and jobs available nearby. But we often do not know the names of the beings who live around us or the stories of the people and beings who have been here before us. We often do not consider how our connection to place and the beings within the place are essential parts of our nature, parts of how we come to understand the world.
Whether you’ve lived somewhere for a long time or you are someone who frequently moves around, see if you could begin to be curious about the names or history or stories of the places you are within, the beings you encounter, the land and the people that came before you. I wonder what you may notice if you deepen into connection wherever you may be right now.