A Nature Prescription

We crave nature. We crave any connection to it we can possibly find. We crave a connection to nature so much that we bring it indoors through any means possible. We set up aquariums in our homes, we watch nature documentaries, we fall asleep to “thunderstorm sounds,” or in my case, “Black screen 12 hours crickets frogs nature creek sounds guaranteed to make sleep more restful!” 

This week I had a perspective shift. My therapist and I were talking through, brainstorming, round-tabling, if you will — “Elizabeth you can give me one hundred examples of the things you give your energy to on a daily basis. How often do you consider what activities are giving YOU energy? Or what activities are even helping to conserve your energy if not replenishing it?” 

First of all… lower your voice? After searching for a therapist that would actually challenge me, how dare she actually challenge me?

In all seriousness though, she’s right. In the rat race of it all, every Monday morning I lose sight of what refills my cup and replenishes my (already low) energy stores. Avery and I spend our weekends filled with wanderlust and late night conversations of, “What if we just quit our jobs and put all our time and energy into actually living?” Yet every Monday morning I’m off to the races again. Wake up, find a socially acceptable and presentable outfit, commute 15 minutes to work, smile, be social, don’t talk too much about your aquariums or birds of prey or the collection of animal bones in your trunk, make eye contact but not too much, listen and don’t interrupt, get all your tasks done, be productive, show the bosses you’re useful and an asset, commute 15 minutes home, walk the dogs, try to remember to feed yourself, crash and nap for two hours, wake up disoriented at 9pm, doom scroll on TikTok for an hour or four, go to sleep for real this time, wake up to your “Up All Night” by Mac Miller alarm and repeat. 

So this week my perspective shifted. I told my therapist that the idea of scheduling time for myself seems impossible; it makes me feel guilty for taking time away from “more important” things. I joked that the only way that might work would be if I viewed it like any of my other prescriptions. I paused and thought about that for a moment and I’ve been thinking about it most of my waking hours since then. I take meds for my brain chemistry, for my auto-immune disease, vitamins for my body to function its best. What if I prescribed myself a “medication” to refill my own cup? 

We broke it down. She asked, where is your energy going currently and more specifically where are you overexerting yourself? My answer was essentially a 50/50 split between my 9-5 and home life (which encompasses feeding myself, caring for pets, household chores, etc). So naturally in typical therapy fashion, the next step was, “Well in an ideal world, what would that pie chart of energy exertion look like?” What a loaded question, doc… obviously I’d want to quit my job and frolic in the woods and eat nice cheeses without the negative impacts of lactose on my GI tract. 

I’ll spare you the monologue, but at the end of the day what I narrowed it down to is that really the only things that I can consistently count on to refill my own cup involve immersing myself in our natural world. 

My specifics came down to: 

1. Walking through the woods slowly; observing and listening and paying attention to everything I can see, hear, feel. Stopping to flip over a log or a rock to see if any critters are hiding underneath. Standing perfectly still until I can hear the wind in the trees, hear the beetles moving the leaf litter. 

2. Spending time quietly in or near natural bodies of water. I prefer the ocean, but the love of my life moved us to a land locked state, so the complex river systems and mountain lakes of Southwest Montana will do just fine. 

So that’s the case for me. This week and in the weeks to come, I’m prescribing myself an immersion in nature. If that’s 5 minutes sitting underneath a tree outside my job, great. If that’s an hour walking through a half-dried up riverbed looking for cool rocks, wonderful. I’m starting small and setting a goal of doing this at least twice a week. I want to be as present as possible and really allow my nervous system the space to breathe and relax and reset in these calming, safe spaces. 

I look forward to reporting back with how this new prescription works out for me both mentally and physically, and I challenge you to do the same. Even if it’s just one time and you never return to it, this week I challenge you to spend at least 10 minutes quietly outdoors. Try and use each of your five senses in that time and allow yourself the space to decompress as much as you’re able to from the oppressive routine of overworking yourself that far too many of us have normalized. Let me know how it goes.

Liz