Embodiment
Photo: Somewhere in the desert of Nevada.
It’s been a hell of a journey to become more present in my body. To become more present with myself. More rooted in myself. Throughout my life, my coping mechanisms always involved disassociating from myself in some way.
It could have been worse, I suppose. Some people use heroine. But sometimes, disassociating just looks like holing up in our room for days and getting lost in a book. Those days became years that I could never get back. Eating and later alcohol also became escapes. The high I’d get from eating an entire package of Oreos in a day, with milk, was even better than the booze in some ways.
Sometimes it’s the seemingly harmless habits that do the most damage over time. If distraction becomes a habit, you are likely avoiding yourself. Any type of escape from reality amounts to disassociating. And for any who have suffered trauma, escape was a form of survival. But, it’s unhealthy when it becomes a way to escape from ourselves, when the danger has long passed.
Spending too much time on social media, too much time gaming, too much time on Netflix, too much time swiping through dating apps, is all a form of disassociation. We try to quiet the noise in our own head by feeding it with the noise of others. Maybe we are reaching out for some type of connection, even if it’s imaginary.
The false sense of connection becomes yet another high, making life just a little more bearable. The thing is, connection is not sustainable if we aren’t first connected to ourselves. An irony that may be hard to accept, but true nonetheless.
So what’s the point of all this?
Reconnecting with Nature can be a way for us to begin to be present with our own bodies, our own reality, our own senses, our own emotional experiences.
It gets us away from the noise of modern life. It gives us a space to breathe without demands from job or spouse or kids. Suddenly we can hear our own thoughts, and there’s really not much escape from them. I find it to be like a form of somatic meditation, where instead of only being in the mind, we connect mind with body.
Nature also tests us. You want to see how good a shape you’re in? Climb a mountain. You want to test your navigation skills? Get lost where there is no cell signal to bring up Google maps. Think you’re a good swimmer because you go to the pool every week? Try swimming in a river where there are currents and where the deep end isn’t marked by bold black letters.
But there’s something more, too. Something deeper that you might miss if you’re only hiking to get to the viewpoint and you never stop to slow down and drink it in.
When you step outside of the temperature-controlled, four-walled structure that you live in, you plug into the Matrix of Nature. You don’t have to believe it’s a simulation. The definition of matrix is “the cultural, social, or political environment in which something develops.” Or in biological terms, “the substance between cells that holds structures together.” “A mould in which something is cast.” (Oxford Dictionary)
In Latin it means “Mother.” And in old English it meant “Womb.” Put simply, it’s where we come from. Our origins. It’s who we are. To separate ourselves is to not have a mother. If we disconnect from the mother, we disconnect from the child within us. And when we disconnect from the child, there is no adult. We’ve forgotten entirely who and what we are.
So, when you step outside, are you paying attention? Are you being present with it? Do you allow yourself to feel the rain? Do you run inside because you don’t want to get wet or cold? If so, are you running away from other discomforts in life? Are you avoiding exercise because it’s hard? Are you putting off following your passion because you’re afraid to fail? Are you avoiding conflict because it stirs up old wounds? Maybe you’ve been running from your emotions because they overwhelm you.
Do you see the abundance of food and medicine growing all around you? Do you taste it? Or do you walk by the raspberries growing on the trail, while you turn around and pay too much for store-bought raspberries that are covered in pesticides and shipped from hundreds or thousands of miles away? Isn’t this another form of disassociation? A disassociation from our environment? We abandon the nourishment and the medicine right in front of us and outsource from somewhere else.
Photo: Wild rasberry.
When you see animal scat (aka poop), do you find it gross? Or are you fascinated, because it tells a story about what’s been there, what’s it’s been eating, even its habits?
Photo: Pine Martin Scat.
The photo above pictures two samples of pine martin scat. I know this because of the size, color, contents, and even shape of it. Pine martins are similar to a ferret and about the size of a cat. Their scat is black in color and since they are omnivorous, you can often find traces of fur, bones, and seeds or other plant matter. The top photo shows fur remains. The bottom shows the shiny exoskeletons of beetles. Even the spiral shape tells me it’s pine marten and not fox, because the little rascals wiggle their arse when they do the deed. I mean, I for one love seeing clues that wildlife is nearby. Even if I don’t always see the animals themselves. It reminds me that the world is still a bit wild.
When did we become so averse to bodily functions, anyway? We all have them. The way modern civilization deals with sewage is what is gross. Feeding it into large vats where it becomes a putrid soup and then treating it with loads of environmentally damaging chemicals or pumping it into rivers and oceans. Just because you flush it down the toilet doesn’t mean it disappears. Have you ever used a well- engineered composting toilet? It doesn’t even smell. And you can use the compost in 2 years to fertilize your plants.
Does a rotting animal carcass disgust you? Or do you see it as just life passing to a different form? I get it. It doesn’t smell great. We may not want to look at it. But what can this tell us about our own feelings of shame about the parts of us that are not so lovely or sweet-smelling?
We can learn so much about ourselves by letting Nature be our teacher. We test our mettle. And we can use the feedback to grow. To get stronger. To embody our best selves. To stop running from who we are and instead immerse ourselves in it.
Photo: Hot, dry canyon lands of Arizona.
Much of the world’s views on nature are highly polarized and unbalanced – either complete disregard and abuse or idolization. Neither is productive. The idolization may bring more awareness that we have this beautiful, sacred world out there that is being destroyed, forgotten and misused. But if we put it on a pedestal and paint it as some sort of fairy tale, fantasy world, we are missing the whole picture.
We see beautiful scenes of mountains, flowers, oceans, and rivers, and it gives us a sense of peace. This can be scientifically measured by our body’s release of a host of pleasure-inducing chemicals: dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. It lowers blood pressure, decreases stress and anxiety, and even releases anti-cancer cells.
But the reality of Nature is that it’s not always peaceful, perfect, picturesque moments. There are mosquitoes, ticks and midgies; bone-chilling cold and blistering heat; storms that will take your life in an instant.
Can we sit with that? Can we accept and love Nature through all of its moods? All of the sensations? All of the dangers? It’s not just sun-kissed meadows and butterflies on a flower.
If you cannot sit with Nature through the storms and the ugliness, how can you really know her? And if you reject parts of her, where are you rejecting yourself?
That is how Nature becomes a mirror. That is how Nature becomes the path back to our fully embodied, fully present self.
We are not “part of nature.” We ARE Nature. All things are essentially ONE. The same story being expressed through different characters, different fractals. The people of the world that are still connected to their indigenous roots all believe in a form of animism, where all things have spirit and are connected. This is not coincidence.
We crave nature because we crave ourselves. We crave roots. We crave our truth. We want connection. We want to know who we are and how we fit into all of this.
So, I want to inspire you, to not just be a weekend hiker or a wandering traveler, collecting images and experiences like badges of honor. That was me once. And then I realized Nature had a soul.
I want to inspire you to start going outside, every single day, not just in your car or in between getting out of your car and entering the next building. Make time to be outside every single day, rain or shine. Sit with Nature. Feel it fully.
Engage your senses. Smell, touch, hear, see, and even learn to taste what is around you. Love it completely. Love it unconditionally. And you will find that you aren’t just being present with Nature. You’re being present with YOU. And if you can really sit with yourself, through all the pleasant and the “unpleasant ” parts, you will find that have more capacity to do the same with others.
This is how Nature heals us. This is how Nature makes us whole again. Connected again. When we remember that we always were.
I invite you to come with me on this journey of reconnecting with Nature, where I’ll share about not just foraging, tracking, world travel, sit spots, indiginous roots, forest bathing, mindfulness, awareness training, and wilderness trekking, but doing so in a way that honors the sacredness, the healing, and the profound transformation we can experience by cultivating this relationship.
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