Eden Wild Goose Nature
Nature notes from the Focus Magazine September 2020

Nature and Healing

Recently I listened to a talk on YouTube, given by a woman who had lost her 20-year-old son by suicide. She was speaking to other parents who had also suffered the death of a child and was sharing some of the things that had helped her, as she had learnt to live with the tragedy.
 
At the end of her session there was time for questions, and somebody asked her if she could name one universal factor which could be of help to anybody in distress. The speaker tentatively offered a couple of suggestions, thought for a moment or two and then said, ‘Look at nature, observe… the earth gives us all the answers.’
 
What is it about nature and the environment that helps us towards healing and wellbeing? The importance of nature is such a well-researched fact now and it raises many interesting thoughts and questions. There has been so much written about it during the recent lockdown. It was reckoned that even just seeing sky and trees from a window was better than nothing. What does this say about us human beings?
 
Last week I had a couple of days away in beautiful Dumfries and Galloway. The weather was glorious, almost Mediterranean, and we were able to visit
a couple of fantastic gardens. One was quite exotic, featuring many plants from the southern hemisphere which grow well fed by the mild gulf stream climate. The other was more naturalistic and wilder. Different though they were, both were stunning, and I felt my spirit expanding with a sense of joy and peace as
I revelled in the colours and the scents.
 
Another time, another warm morning, I walked through the grasses to the stony beach and as I went, I couldn’t help crushing some of the abundant water mint growing all around me and releasing such a fragrance. It felt like heaven! For me, at least, the big learning is that we’re nature too, not separate from it, only maybe we have lost this reality as we have become more and more urbanised, more and more dependent on technology, more and more hemmed in by bricks and mortar, more and more disconnected.
 
As we go forward into a still very uncertain situation, which continues to cause anxiety for many, let’s take full advantage of the natural world that we are immersed in. Take time, be still, observe, listen, smell the air, watch the seasons. It’s a free gift, wherever we are, just waiting for us to receive. Time perhaps, as Autumn hovers around the corner, for a little ‘forest bathing’ noting once again that unique damp leafy tang that tells us things out there are moving long, whatever we might be up to.
 
Philippa Skinner