We enter this world screaming and crying, in a place we don’t know, and completely helpless in every way. Many of us begin our first few moments of life being slapped on the bum in a cold delivery room, which if you think about it, is a pretty harsh comparison from a warm cozy womb. But, regardless of our birth stories, every single one of us has experienced some kind of trauma in our lives.
As natural beings moving through the world and collecting all kinds of experiences, nature always seems to bring us balance and healing support, often in the most unexpected ways. Looking back on moments in my own life, I always felt most called to spend more time in nature during the times I needed to emotionally recover from something. Whether the urge was to relax under the trees, walk barefoot on the sand, or hike up a mountain, I always felt a heck of a lot better after listening to my intuition and stepping outside.
After going through some of my own traumatic experiences, I have found the peace I feel while being in nature — more than anything else — is what helps me reconnect to myself, my intuition, and the natural world around me.
Below is a list of reasons why being in nature is quite possibly the best remedy for anyone looking to heal from trauma. Leave a comment below and let me know what healing experiences you’ve had while spending time in nature.
Enhances Problem-Solving Skills
Spending time in natural environments boosts cognitive functions, helping you tackle trauma-related challenges with a clearer mind and more effective strategies. Research shows that exposure to nature improves attention and memory, allowing you to think more creatively and solve problems more efficiently. This cognitive boost can be crucial when you're working through complex emotional issues.
Supports Grounding Techniques
The simple act of feeling the earth beneath your feet can help stabilize your emotions and ground you, making it easier to manage stress and anxiety. Grounding, or "earthing" involves connecting physically with the Earth's surface. This super easy practice can actually reduce your stress, improve your sleep, and connect you more intentionally to the earth and everything around you.
Encourages Playfulness
Something about being outside can sometimes trigger something in us that makes us want to frolic, especially if you happen to find yourself on a big grassy field. It is a scientific fact that engaging in playful activities outdoors can reignite a sense of joy and freedom, providing a welcome break from the heaviness we sometimes feel in this life. Whether it's running through tall grass, dancing in the rain, or skipping stones across a lake, these activities can help you reconnect with your inner child and bring a sense of lightness and joy back into your life.
Offers Solitude
Nature provides a serene space for solitude and introspection, which can be crucial for personal reflection and healing. Being alone in nature allows you to step away from the noise of daily life, tune into your inner world, and find the peace and spaciousness for creative inspiration to flow to you. Having a solo moment in the wild can also help you process your emotions and gain insight to a solution you are wanting to find.
Strengthens Resilience
Navigating challenges, like a tough trail, builds mental and emotional resilience, which is essential for overcoming personal obstacles. When you face and overcome physical challenges in nature, you reinforce your inner strength and resilience. This newfound resilience can then be applied to overcoming any emotional and psychological hurdles that may appear in your life.
Creates a Sense of Adventure
Exploring the outdoors can reignite your sense of adventure and curiosity, shifting your focus from trauma to new, positive experiences. Adventure encourages you to step out of your comfort zone and try new things. This shift in focus can help you break free from negative thought patterns and embrace a more positive, forward-looking mindset.
Connects with a Bigger Picture
Nature helps you reconnect to something larger than yourself, helping you feel a sense of belonging and purpose that can help make seemingly enormous obstacles appear much smaller and less threatening or impossible to overcome. This connection to a larger world can provide perspective, reminding you that you are part of a vast, interconnected system. This realization can be incredibly comforting and grounding, especially during difficult times.
Supports Detoxification
Breathing in fresh air and being around trees and plants actually promotes detoxification, which supports overall health and aids in your recovery process. Breathing in clean, fresh air helps clear your lungs, expand your lung capacity and helps remove excess phlegm and stagnancy from our body.
Enhances Memory
Studies have shown that spending time in natural settings can enhance working memory and cognitive flexibility. These improvements can make it easier to process and integrate traumatic experiences, and are conducive to emotional healing.
Cultivates Patience
Observing natural processes, like plant growth or seasonal changes, shows us the value of patience and acceptance. Nature operates on its own timeline, and observing these slow, steady progressions can teach you the importance of slowing down, trusting the process, and allowing things to take time.
Reduces Inflammation
Higher inflammation is a side effect in individuals experiencing chronic stress, trauma, and cortisol spikes. Spending more time in nature, along with things like yoga, meditation, restructured water, and better sleep, can help reduce inflammation in the body, and greatly improve your quality of life.
Reminds Us Of a Deeper Meaning
Being in nature can evoke positive memories and a sense of nostalgia, which can help us reflect on how far we’ve come throughout our life. This remembering can even help us see the deeper meanings to the things that we experienced in the past. Reconnecting with these memories in nature can help us heal our inner child wounds, and recover from traumatic events that happen even much later in life.
Final Thoughts
Whether you're seeking solitude, adventure, or a way to ground yourself, nature holds the key to many unexpected paths to recovery. And, as you experience more moments in the wild, you may find that it supports your healing in ways you never imagined.
Nature offers so much more than just a pleasant backdrop, it provides tangible, multifaceted support on our path of healing, joy, and overall well-being. So, if you’ve felt called to take that walk, hike that trail, or simply take a nap under a tree, listen to your intuition and just go do it - your mind and body will thank you later.
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