5 way to Place your spirit in nature

The world can get wild, weird, chaotic, and crazy.  How do we bring peace to our souls?  How do we relax our spirits after a hard day or in times when we feel anxious.? One of the best prescriptions we can fill, is placing our spirit in nature.  Nature uplifts us and reconnects us to who we really are.  It reminds us what is important in life as we see its cycles, its beauty, its peace.  Here are five ways to place our spirit in nature.

1.  Walks in nature--Taking a walk in nature is good for us on so many levels. It gets our body moving, releasing our feel good hormones, and it can put our mind in the present moment.  As we walk, we notice the birds, the sky, the ground, the plants.  If we are connecting with nature, we should put our phones away.  Maybe take them out every once in a while to record with our camera something in nature that speaks to us, but otherwise we want to be aware of what is around us and not get distracted.  We want to use our five senses to explore; the smells of the earth, the sounds of the birds and trees, the touch of the breeze, the sights of the colors, even the taste of the air we are breathing.
2.  Put our bare feet on the ground outside--To feel connected to Mother Earth.  We can take our shoes off and stand in the grass or on the dirt.  We can envision the energy of the earth coming up through our feet and filling us to the top of our head.  We can, also, release all our tension and anxiety into the earth, imagining it flowing out of our feet and leaving us with peace.
3.  Listen to nature sounds as we sleep--To listen to nature sounds, we can open a window and let the noises outside bring us calm.  If we don’t have that option, we can play a naturescape soundtrack and allow ourselves to be lulled to sleep and peace through a rainstorm, crickets and frogs, breezes through the trees, ocean waves, or whatever sounds of nature we connect with in our heart.
4.  Color a nature picture--Sometimes coloring a picture of nature and using her colors can transport us back to a time we were in a place of nature.  As we use the greens for the trees and the browns for the earth, we can recall those images from our past.  We also become more aware of them when we are out in nature noticing the different shades in the world.
5.  Read about nature, birds, animals--If, for some reason, leaving our home to explore nature is not an option, we can transport ourselves into nature through books.  The library has access through our phones and computers to books on birds, animals, landscapes, parks, and zoos.  With computers, we don’t have to look through books, we can explore nature on the computer, taking virtual tours through parks and zoos.
6.  Water--It’s been said if you want to calm a child, put him/her in water.  Why not for us, too?  Water connects us to life.  If we can go to the beach, a lake, a pond, a river, or a creek, that’s the ideal, but if not, we can create the vision in our head of any one of those places as we stand in our shower it can become a waterfall; soaking in a tub can become a lake, add Epsom salt and we have the ocean.

These ideas are just the beginning of our love affair with nature.  As we begin to connect to Mother Earth’s beauty, we will find our own rituals that allow our spirits to soar in nature.