"Common experience tells us that solitary walk by
the river or ocean, a few calm hours in the woods restore the spirit and may produce more insight....than the best labours of the professional analyst." ____ Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth, cited in Paul Devereus, Revisioning the Earth
Now that the light is growing stronger and the first signs of spring are becoming apparent, it is good to explore the countryside and see its beauty with our own eyes. Nature is the best therapist for putting things into perspective. When we go purposefully outdoors, we enter our true, living context, becoming once more part of a world that is always there but whose gifts excluded when we live entirely within walls, under a roof. Early Irish poetry speaks again and again of Spirit as the thatcher who roofs the sky with stars and keeps all things under divine protection. When we exchange a tiled roof for the roof of the heavens, our soul has more room to expand.
The ancients understood about taking problems for a walk: the measure pace of walking, the juxtaposition of the problem against natural surroundings, the submersion or abolition of worry in the face of the beauties and wonders of nature - all these factors enable us to discover a new perspective. Being under the mantle of nature, we receive a truer reflection of help, a more tolerant understanding, a more profound solution that encompasses not only our labyrinthine mental confrontations but our physical discomforts and our emotional longings.
"Take your own problems for a walk and be open to wider solutions and perspectives."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
How timely this is! Today I am seeking just this kind of nature therapy. Simply listening to the songs of the birds is enough to inspire me.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know what you mean Echo. I was having the same thoughts at how wonderful that a slow woalk in nature can help us solve problems.
ReplyDeleteSobeit