We Belong, We All Belong
On Saturday the 8th June 2024 it is Global Wellness Day, so let's reconnect with nature and find harmony in our relationship with the Earth. Dr Rachel Brown shows us how we all belong.
If we can surrender to the earth’s intelligence, we can rise up rooted like trees’ Rainer Maria Rilke
Sitting by a rushing waterfall it’s almost like there is a river running through me. My thoughts turn to the concepts of power and inevitability, helping me to shift and let go. Nature offers us so many things: containment, inspiration, comfort and nourishment. By watching the seasons change we are reminded that things are always growing and composting, however intractable our problems may feel. An expansive sea view may help to wider our perspective. Walking in the woods can steer us back into a sense of balance. Can you feel the blossoming of a flower in your own heart?
There is a powerful link between our well-being and nature, because we are nature and the Earth is a cocoon for our own becoming. Whilst overtime we have started to see ourselves as separate from the soil, trees, birds, and plants, we are all interconnected. Our bodies are organic matter, just like the soil.
The way we live our lives, behind screens and windows, can perpetuate a sense of fragmentation. We live in a time of overwhelm. We even accept this as normal. Yet when we return to nature, to sit on the Earth and breathe with the trees, we feel tethered and our bodies and minds come back into integration, back into wholeness. The Earth sooths our nervous system and we are reminded that we belong, we all belong to this wild earth, whatever is or has happened to us, we belong. There is a huge potential for the natural environment to serve as a refuge and healer for all of us, and especially those people navigating experiences of trauma. We can all deepen or rebuild our relationship with nature, act to protect it, and then bring this trend into our work with others.
Find a way to connect with nature every day. Perhaps walk to work instead of taking the bus and really notice what is around you. Feel your feet on the earth at least once a day and breath. On your lunch break go for a ‘wander and a wonder’, tune in to smells and sounds. Allow yourself to be delighted by birdsong. Bring tomato seeds in to sow and nurture on a sunny windowsill. Make seed bombs and watch wildflowers grow. Find a place to visit regularly and watch the inevitability of the changing seasons. When you can, take your conversations with the people you work with outside and notice together the environment around you – what does it offer or reflect to you? Just think how a weed pushing its way through the concreate might be a mirror for resilience.
In her poem ‘Wild Geese’ Mary Oliver writes, ‘Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese’.
Written by Dr Rachel Brown; The.Trefoil.Project@gmail.com
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