The relationship between nature & the body (pt 2)

Why is it that when most of us need a vacation, we want to go somewhere closer to nature? Why do we even feel we need to “get away” from how we’re living at all?

Whether we consciously realize it or not, I would say it’s because our bodies are craving more of a connection to the natural world, away from our modern technologies. As convenient and helpful as they can be, our reliance on them has become a detriment to our well-being. Our society is becoming increasingly more disconnected from the natural energies we’re actually made of: earth, wind, water and fire. We seem to be getting even further away, doubling down on not only our addictions to technology, but also eating modified foods, taking synthetic medications, breathing stale recycled air, sitting under fluorescent lights, absorbing electromagnetic frequencies, and the numerous other ways we’ve tried to replace or shut out nature. These are all non-natural energies that our bodies don’t know how to process, our nervous systems frayed and overloaded, which is interfering with our ability to recognize the natural energies that we were designed for. Go for a walk through the woods, or sit by the water for a while and see what happens. Odds are you’ll start to feel more calm, settled and connected. This is what our bodies are wired for and what we’ve evolved alongside of for thousands, if not millions, of years. I believe it is our disconnection from nature that is leading to a lot of our anxiety, since our nervous systems aren’t able to fully relax.

Unfortunately, in the last 100+ years especially, we’ve somehow started to believe that we’re separate from the natural world, that we can live just fine without it, relying solely on our intellectual minds to problem solve our way out of needing this connection. It is incredibly arrogant to think that we can live outside of the very system we’re intrinsically connected to without consequences. Or that we can come up with better ways of doing things, rather than simply tapping more into the mindblowingly complex systems of nature that somehow found a way to work in perfect harmony. Our bodies are also part of this system, with their own innate intelligence that knows how to organize and heal itself if we can just learn how to get back into communication with it.

The reality is that the more disconnected and separated we keep getting from our natural roots, the more sick and disconnected we’re going to feel. We’re already seeing the health effects. But we can still choose to start moving back closer to a more natural way of life by eating foods that are actually alive, deeply breathing in fresh air, setting boundaries on our technology use, turning towards holistic methods of healing, spending more time outdoors and slowing down, which will help us to feel more connected to Life again.

Our modern thinking often misses the big picture, losing the forest for the trees. It gets caught up on the individual parts, zeroing in on all of the tiny, isolated pieces while failing to realize that they are simply part of a much larger puzzle. We are intimately intertwined with these larger natural systems whether we want to be or not, so the more we fight and resist surrendering into the flow of it, the harder it’s going to be on us.

As the saying goes, we can’t solve problems from the same level of thinking that created them, so it’s about time we start learning how to work WITH nature and our bodies, rather than trying to control them, which has only contributed to these problems in the first place.