Nurturing our Connection with Nature

In body, mind, spirit, soul and whole-being

Hi, I’m Sue and I write about the beauty and ingenuity of Nature, and how we can deepen our connection for our optimum health and wellbeing. Discover more Nature-inspired content on Spiral Leaf, Twitter and my video Nature Channel.

To experience the transformational benefits of spending time in Nature requires us to connect on all aspects of our being. Only then can we fully appreciate and experience the beauty, calm and inspiration provided to us by the natural world.

In a previous post, I found some compelling research about the benefits of being in Nature which perhaps surprisingly, in one study, found that a minimum of two hours a week absorbed in Nature significantly reduces stress and enhances our feeling of wellbeing.

This means we can deepen our connection without having to spend hours walking in the wild or hiking across moorlands and plains - as much as this is a superb way to get closer to Nature and exercise our limbs.

Allocating a few moments each day to nurture our connection with Nature and our inner self, reaps so many benefits over the long term. It’s a form of meditation that helps us to clear our mind, calm our body and channel the love that resides in our heart at all times.

Let’s go through each aspect of self to understand the significance of developing a relationship with our self and how Nature can help us in our quest to find balance and harmony in our lives.

Body

In today’s society, social media platforms have evolved to encourage the posting of photographs and videos that stimulate aggressive comparison and competition between users. This creates a false depiction of what a perfect body is meant to look like and how a perfect life should be led. Both of which bear little relation to real life in any way shape or form.

Many research studies have been carried out to investigate the impact of social media, particularly on young people. It is proven that absorbing constant streams of fake content makes people feel ugly, inferior and left out, often resulting in serious repercussions of depression, anxiety and self-harm.

Being made to focus on outward appearances is perhaps one of the most serious ‘crimes’ committed by the controllers of social media platforms in the name of creating more clicks, likes and shares. The aim is to keep people scrolling for hours on end. This is confirmed in a Forbes article written in 2022: ‘The experts at social media companies studied slot machines and how they become so addictive and then modelled likes and tagging after gaming machines.’

Many of us realise the toxicity of such methodologies pursued by the technocrats who have one aim in mind, and one alone, to keep us glued to our screens and keep their advertisers happy - and to hell with the impact on the lives of those who become addicted to their mobile phones, oblivious to the harm being caused.

You will probably know that overcoming insecurities about our body and heightening our self esteem requires us to love ourselves. This can be harder than it sounds so I proffer a suggestion that might be of help and how Nature can help us in this regard.

Stop for a moment and think about your body as a miraculous design of form and function with a myriad of systems operating for our benefit at every single moment of our existence. These include our circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system, repair system (or immune system), lymphatic system, nervous system, muscular system, reproductive system, skeletal system, respiratory system, urinary system and integumentary system (or skin).

Can you tell me now that your body is not the most stunningly beautiful creation ever to be blessed with a life? Bearing in mind that the above relates only to the functionality of our body. This does not include the even more miraculous aspects of self including our consciousness, intuition, feelings, emotions, personality, talent and so on (see below). All these factors come into play every second of our day as we breathe in the air, employ our minds and go about our daily business.

What we look like (or think we look like) is a miniscule aspect of being human. Go deeper and you will find a zillion reasons to love yourself for who you truly are.

Nurturing our connection

Nature helps us to nurture and appreciate our connection with our body in many ways. It provides the space we need for movement and exercise, the context we need to hone our connection with, and perception of, the world around us. It provides the means to bring our body into a state of tranquillity which is the optimum state required for healing, relaxation, rejuvenation and creative flow.

Mind

Having thought about the miracle of form and function evidenced by our bodies, quadruple that sense of awe by thinking about the workings of your mind.

Understanding how our minds work is something that has fascinated human beings since time immemorial - for both good and bad reasons (such as the nefarious practice of mind control which readers here know so well).

In terms of form and function, our brain consists of three main parts: Cerebrum (interpretation of sight, sound and touch), Cerebellum (maintenance of balance, posture, coordination and fine motor skills) and Brainstem (regulation of automatic body functions).

Our brain receives information from our five senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste which I will be talking about in my next post. It interprets information received so that we can understand and associate meaning to what goes on around us. Our brains are responsible for our:

• Memories and emotions.

• Movements (motor function), balance and coordination.

• Perception of various sensations including pain.

• Automatic behaviour such as breathing, heart rate, sleep and temperature control.

• Regulation of organ function.

• Speech and language functions.

• Fight or flight response (stress response).

I have chosen two articles that take us deeper into the functionality of our mind - one of which you may not be so familiar with which I want to introduce to you today.

The first is by Dr Paul Badcock of the Centre for Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne. His research includes theoretical psychology; active inference; youth mental health; mood and the affective disorders, and evolutionary psychology. His hypothesis of Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind (HMM) posits that the human brain is a complex adaptive system, composed of relatively specialised and domain-general structures that work in tandem to generate adaptive responses to the environment.

In brief, HMM is built upon the idea that the brain is composed of distinct components that have different functions and that exchange information in a hierarchical, integrated fashion. It states that our brains embody a hierarchy of hypotheses about the world based on evolutionary imperatives and experiential, learned observations.

The second, and lesser known concept is Heart Intelligence which suggests our hearts too have a mind represented by the flow of awareness, understanding and intuition we experience when the mind and emotions are brought into coherent alignment with the heart. This is a concept cited in The HeartMath Solution by HeartMath founder Doc Childre and his associate Howard Martin.

This exceptional research found that the heart sends emotional and intuitive signals to our brain to help us govern our lives. It tells us that the heart directs and aligns many systems in the body so that they can function in harmony with one another. It tells us that the heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as the brain in the heart.

Nurturing our connection

Nature provides the stillness required for us to bring our minds into clarity which is necessary for us to be able to think clearly, remove unwanted thoughts and tune into our intuition where true wisdom lies. This, in turn, provides the optimum environment for reflection, introspection, innovation and creativity.

Spirit

I have less to say here about human spirit as this largely comes down to personal experience and has a wide range of different interpretations. Suffice to say, the human spirit is an extraordinary force within each of us. It is responsible for a stunning array of qualities, capabilities and innate talents including our capacity for creativity, compassion, humility and courage.

Our human sprit influences our consciousness, awareness, moral compass, fellowship with other sentient beings and our intuition. For me, our spiritual orientation depends very much on our concept of reality, as in, how we interpret what is actually happening in our lives and what the actual situation is at any point in time.

When we are tuned into the spiritual aspect of ourselves, and when this is in balance, we are more likely to be able to hear and listen to our inner consciousness, consider things from a rational viewpoint, understand the difference between right and wrong, and be more creative.

Our human spirit influences our personality. It gives us the courage to be ourselves and the power to rise above adversity, to generate innovative ideas, connect with others on a deeper level, and maintain hope in the face of challenges presented to us.

Nurturing our connection

Nature provides the grounding we need for stability, connection and understanding ourselves and the world around us. It enables us to find the perspective we need to rationalise the situations we find ourselves in so that we can see things from other points of view and, indeed, evolve our own unique point of view at the same time.

Soul

The dictionary definition of a human soul is described as the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life and the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the Universe.

This isn’t bad at all and, like spirit, is something open to individual experience with a wide range of different interpretations. For me, the soul embodies everything we are as a human being. It is our pure essence that resides within us whatever we are thinking, doing or being at any particular moment in time.

The soul represents who we are, what we are and our true potential in terms of becoming the most beautiful expression of ourselves as we desire to be.

By understanding and looking after our body, mind and spirit, we allow space for our soul to be as it should be, thereby enhancing our lives in ways we have not yet had the opportunity to experience.

With all the adverse effects of living in a system specifically designed to separate us from our soul and soul purpose, thrown at us every-single-day, making this connection so that we can be true to ourselves is one of the hardest things of all.

Nurturing our connection

Nature provides the opportunity for us to connect with our soul and bring serenity into our lives. It provides the quietness needed for us to go deep within ourselves where an ocean of peace and tranquillity lies. This is always there and never goes away. Nature helps us to find this inner peace which is required for devotion, good intention and true awareness - of ourselves, others and the world around us.

Whole Being

Wholeness simply means to be in unity and harmony within ourselves. This has nothing to do with being perfect as assumed or dictated by the society in which we live in. It has everything to do with being imperfectly perfect whereby we are able to express our personality on our own terms and (hopefully) to the delight of those closest to us.

Being whole means being grateful for all the things we have, all the things we know, all the things we have experienced and all the things we have felt which represent who we truly are. It means that we accept we haven’t yet figured everything out and that’s okay. It means we understand that we are continually learning and growing. It means that we are able to find peace and harmony within ourselves and come to terms with everything we have done without feeling any blame, guilt or shame.

Above all, our whole-being is the total expression of everything we are, everything we have been and everything we desire to be.

Nurturing our connection

Being in Nature provides the opportunity for us to bring our whole-being into a state of humility - for ourselves, our loved ones and friends, for our life and chosen path in life, for all sentient beings and for humanity as a whole. It enables us to connect and feel the flow of life’s energy coursing through our veins, to feel vitality for life and to raise our spiritual frequency which in turn, raises the frequency of the Universe as a whole.

This is our true destiny. This is our true purpose. This is how we co-create the life on this beautiful planet Earth we so desire. The wonderful and encouraging news is that we can start doing this right now. It doesn’t matter what life has thrown at us or what madness swirls around us or how broken we feel, we are all capable of rising above the programming and doing the work required.

So, spend more time in Nature and spend more time with yourself. Work on nurturing your connection with your inner self and the natural world around you. By doing so, whatever is going on in your life, you will be able to find tranquillity and inner peace.

Thank you for reading and watching, I look forward to seeing you again soon.