When life's challenges become overwhelming, I yearn for the calm, peace and beauty of the great outdoors. Problems have a magical way of shrinking, if not disappearing altogether for a little while. The focus changes from modern-life challenges to the visceral; avoiding puddles, not losing the dog, finding your way when the map lets you down. Suddenly, you’re breathing slowly, fortuitously capturing a heron’s flight, a curious bee, a shy deer spotted between the trees.
Worries melt or shift along with the changing seasons, a healing metaphor of new growth after calamity and loss.
I was born in Belfast and lived there till the age of 7. Growing up in a turbulent and violent Northern Ireland in the early 70s had its impact. Walking in the outdoors has always been a salve. My family left Belfast behind and escaped to the rugged North Antrim coastline with its wide, sandy beaches, luminous rock pools and the geological majesty of the Giant’s Causeway.
I would roam the countryside alone for hours, make dens in overgrown forests, prepare woodland feasts for fairies, talk to the sheep, ramble around teetering cliff tops. We'd hike the Mourne mountains, Blackstairs, Bluestacks, Derryveagh, Macgillycuddy's Reeks, Nephinbeg, Silvermines, Slieve Mish, Twelve Pins. It was invigorating and freeing - undoubtedly wet - but a wonderful escape from everything.
As a therapist, one of the first things people ask is what practical things can they do to get better. Of course, talking through their problems, seeing things from different perspectives, being listened to without judgement, challenging fixed ideas about themselves is all beneficial. But beyond all that, my suggestion is a simple one - spend time outside. Bathe in a forest. Notice life going on outside yourself.
Forest bathing is a Japanese practice promoting a process of relaxation; known in Japan as shinrin yoku. The simple method of being calm and quiet amongst the trees, observing nature around you whilst breathing deeply can help both adults and children de-stress and boost health and wellbeing in a natural way. Studies have shown again and again that
Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.
For centuries, people have used nature as a powerful source of healing. In the early days of my training, I came across the pioneering horticultural therapy work of the Natural Growth Project at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, where psychotherapy takes place in a natural setting on allotments and in a Remembrance Garden. Using nature both as a medium of communication and as a source of healing, transpersonal psychotherapist Jenny Grut and her team work with refugees; individuals and families whose lives have been shattered by torture and organized violence.
More recently, some wonderful books have been released about nature and its healing qualities. Sixteen-year-old Dara McNulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist is full of insights about his struggles of living with autism and finding peace in the wild expanse of Northern Ireland. Following periods of bullying at school, dealing with the noise and clutter of classrooms, the trauma of moving home, McNulty finds solace in the outdoor world, again and again.
Nature is magnified, snapshots of time plucked like a series of filmic moments. While watching bats, he writes: “We jump up and down and hug each other, tension leaking out…This is us, standing here. All the best part of us, and another moment etched in our memories, to be invited back and relived in conversations for years to come. Remember that night, when fluttering stars calmed a storm in all of us.”
American Poet Mary Oliver captures these moments beautifully too, and reminds us that small, incredible moments of beauty are around us all the time - if we are open to looking - in her poem The Summer’s Day:
“…I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
So i'll continue to spend some time outside, let nature build me up, strengthen me, remind me that time passes, we move on and the beauty of small things can always give us joy.