dailyconnectionwithnature feature Mental Health nature

Olive tree insights

March 10, 2019

I’ve been thinking a lot about connections recently – how we make them, or break them, especially with the earth. One of the things I’ve struggled with is worrying that the ways in which I connect with nature are not the ‘proper ways’ and that I ‘should’ (there’s that word again ??‍♀️) be doing it x y or z instead of whatever comes naturally. Shamanic drumming and the journeying used by these processes don’t work for me (fuck knows I’ve tried) and the same goes for long bouts of meditation. The last time I took mushrooms some years ago the plant spirit was pissed at me for using it just to ‘get high’ and told me I’d never get anything from it again – I came right back into myself at that moment and it’s never done anything for me since. I can only do quite basic yoga because anything advanced makes my head spin. Sometimes I see fractals in things just from taking a deep breath. There is this deep connection, I know that I am in constant dialogue with the natural world around me, not in an altered state, it just happens in the same way as breathing, the trees (sometimes singular, sometimes as a group) give advice and I follow this (or not). Because I couldn’t find a framework for this I’ve presumed I’m doing it wrong and so have just carried on ‘being faulty’, but also not trying too hard to fix anything – perhaps because in my heart I didn’t feel so faulty. So it felt strange to listen to a podcast with Bruce Parry this week where he talked of a tribe he visited who also are in constant dialogue with the natural world without the need for all these things mentioned before either, and I realise that the world is a huge multifaceted organism of which I’m just a tiny part and there’s enough magic here for everybody to connect in the ways that are right for them. It’s not better or worse or right or wrong it’s just that we’re all different and although our culture doesn’t tend to celebrate real differences so much, the earth absolutely does. #olivetree

Photo: Andy Garside ?

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