It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and the theme for the week is #ConnectWithNature. The organisers, The Mental Health Foundation, chose nature because it “is so central to our psychological and emotional health, that it’s almost impossible to realise good mental health for all without a greater connection to the natural world.” Here are our thoughts…
Nature has the most profound ability to influence healing and recovery.
Nature reminds us of the inevitability of change, but also of the possibility of growth, renewal and rebirth.
In nature, we are compelled to pause, breathe deeply, and expand our awareness beyond ourselves and our inner dialogues.
Nature may not be on your doorstep, but it can still be found everywhere – in a soundbite of birdsong before the morning rush hour, in the peaceful drifting of clouds above, or in the persistent growth of weeds along footpaths.
Sales of houseplants skyrocketed during the pandemic. So many of us yearned to connect with the world outdoors and remember that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Kate Siber, writer for Outside Magazine, shared how nature supported her recovery from her eating disorder:
“Nature is a mirror for who we really are.
“Being immersed in it calmed my nervous system and helped me cultivate a healthy sense of my own smallness in the context of things, but it also helped me connect to a deeper and wilder aspect of my own humanity that I had always tried to efface or control.
“It was as if experiencing the ceaseless changing and rhythmic cycles of the natural world helped me realize the changeable nature of my own body.
“I started to think of it more as an inscrutable collection of processes and a map of sensation to be felt and known, rather than a product to be controlled.”
Below are photos of nature, taken by our clients who were inspired to #ConnectWithNature this week.
