Curatives for the Soul: Part 3 – Nature Immersion

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

Journaling and meditation aren’t selective about where or when you embrace them. But nature immersion can take a bit more planning, preparation, and cooperation from Mother Earth. The results, however, are well worth it:

I believe in God, only I spell it nature.
– Frank Lloyd Wright

If you translate God to spirituality in Wright’s revelation, his wisdom aligns with my feelings when I immerse in nature. To be clear, this isn’t about getting away from home by taking creature comforts with you to a modern campground with conveniences, but it certainly can involve camping to an extent. Nature immersion, if you want its curative benefits, requires adherence to this definition:

Immersion — a (particular) state of mind or body to involve something deeply, to steep, to absorb through some action or activity

This curative practice means going into nature in a way and for a time where you have little or no awareness of anything human or man-made. It’s not necessarily a solitary adventure, although usually more effective alone where you can reap the best insights and curative benefits from the deeper states you’ll experience. Simply stated, the purpose of nature immersion is to isolate yourself in nature so you can connect your nervous and mental systems to the purer, natural rhythms of Earth’s natural essence.

By the time we’re 60, we will have been alive for almost 22,000 days on this planet, rarely, if ever, stopping to watch just one. It is this total immersion into nature and commitment to simply being there, that we can entrain our nervous system to the natural, healthy rhythm of the planet. – Stephanie Nash

Nature immersion really is an ultimate unplug and tune-in moment. You’re unplugged from the internet, social engagement online or in person, no news media, no music, no podcasts, nothing but “plugging in” to nature’s essence. And by doing so, you’re instead tuning in to your internal experience, which can lead to rewiring many things from stress to improved awareness of bad habits to a deeper awareness of what’s real and important in this world.

So how does one pull this off? As with most things, there are degrees and levels of nature immersion limited only by your time and willingness to go deeper:

• If you can only start with local isolations for 15-, 30-minutes or more, those will still help you connect better to nature. Take a lunch into nearby woods to sit quietly, eat, reflect on things, and let your mind wander and absorb what you see and hear.

• Or invest a few hours on a sunny afternoon to hike a local forest preserve or park’s trails, leaving the phone off and concentrating instead on what your senses share with you from the forest’s fauna and flora, and the rhythm of your internal systems.

The ultimate experience, though, is taking multiple days and finding an isolated place in nature to go, camp out, and sit and walk in an absence of modern connections or even your own voice. It’s a silent retreat, and one best done without even journaling or noting anything while you’re involved in the immersion.

Immersing in nature, to some, may feel at first you’re abandoning everyone and everything you like to do. It’s only a few hours or a few days, maybe a week, and I’m sure the world will survive while you briefly unplug and immerse.

But the real question is… will you survive if you don’t reconnect with your true self and the natural world you live in?

If you’d like to read a little further on this, I suggest Stephanie Nash’s excellent article about her experiences found here (her quote above is from that article).

A three-part series exploring supportive habits to help ease our paths through life:
journaling, meditation, and nature immersion.