Nature – The Ultimate Teacher and Healer
What is it that calls us back to nature?
Is it the simplicity of a world that makes sense where everything happens as it should?
Is it the unmasked beauty that fills us with awe and infuses our senses?
In a world constantly spinning out of control, taking time to revisit nature has never been more important.
It is an interconnectedness with all things that brings stillness to the mind and peace of spirit.
Nature offers us the opportunities to learn from her, simple, yet profound lessons. All of them invaluable to the human psyche. If this were but a fallacy rather than the truth, why then are health and medical professionals encouraging a return to nature?
Professionals in mental disorders; teachers at primary school levels and life coaches are just some of the people veering towards the benefits of healing the human mind and body through communing with nature.
Disconnected from nature, we ultimately become disconnected from ourselves and we lose our “wildness” the human-child in us that admires wildness in others.
Life is becoming increasingly fast-paced, leaving us little time to connect with what is truly important or to recharge our mental, physical and spiritual reserves. Accepting this is what prompted me to investigate what nature has to offer. Like an elixir for all maladies, surrounding ourselves with nature and immersing ourselves in the gifts she has to offer restores the soul and brings an unequivocal feeling of tranquility and togetherness.
After my accident, despite my positive attitude, I had lost my compass. I wanted to find the me that was used to thriving when my wings are spread; the me who was used to moving, exploring and experiencing. I wanted to climb mountains, paddle rough waters and hoist myself up a craggy rock face. I didn’t want to dwell on the physical limitations and the constant nagging pain that had forced me to put my life on hold. When I realised I couldn’t change the facts, my only option was to change my attitude. I had to trust and believe I could find a way to start healing.
To live the rest of my life tame and afraid would not serve me. With that mindset I learned to face my fears, gain strength, courage and confidence in doing what I was told I’d never do again because a life without risk would be like no life at all. There was something waiting to be tested that would prove there was a braver, bolder, better version of who I thought I was.
I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing extraordinary things.
The kind of things that would test my limits to achieve what others could deem impossible.
I wanted to embrace the ‘last life I had to live’ and never have regrets about what I could have, should have, would have, done.
I was driven with an unquenchable thirst for adventure.
My drive was about renewing my strength, putting an end to self-imposed limitations, finding what I had lost, and feeling free.
Nature and my outdoor pursuits have played a key role in showing me how to develop a closer connectedness to all things and my experiences have led me to a more soulful relationship with power, intuition, instinct and creativity.
This is my motivation for choosing to become a life coach using nature as a teaching partner.
