When I trained with Indigenous elders, they never spoke of “nature” as something outside of themselves.

There was no word for it. No distinction.

Life was simply life.

The forests, rivers, winds, and animals were not separate; they were home. They were part of the same living body.

Today, for many of us, that bond has been broken. We treat nature as a place we visit — an escape from the stress we call normal.

But in doing so, we have forgotten something essential: disconnection itself may be what is making us sick. Modern research is starting to catch up with what ancient cultures have always known.

Spending even short amounts of time in nature — not hiking for exercise, not talking outside on the phone, but simply being — has powerful biological effects.

Studies show that just two hours a week among trees can:

• Lower cortisol (our primary stress hormone)
• Slow heart rate and reduced blood pressure
• Reduce inflammation
• Improve mood, focus, and emotional resilience
• Strengthen immune defenses by increasing natural killer (NK) cells — the body’s frontline against viruses and tumors.¹

There is a name for it now: forest bathing — or Shinrin-yoku in Japanese. It doesn’t involve doing anything. It asks us to stop doing, stop striving, and start receiving.

It invites us back to a way of being that is wired into our nervous systems — what researchers call the “relaxation response,” governed by our parasympathetic branch.

But there’s another layer.

Biophysicist James Oschman, Ph.D., points out that our bodies are not only chemical and mechanical — they are electrical. In his work on earthing, he shows that when we make direct contact with the earth — through bare feet on the ground, lying on natural surfaces, or even immersing oneself in the ocean — we reconnect with the planet’s subtle electrical charge, the earth’s negative ions neutralize free radicals, reduce chronic inflammation, and restore healthy cellular function.²

We are not just reconnecting emotionally or mentally. We are literally recharging.

We often talk about how emotional healing is not about fixing isolated parts of ourselves – it is about reconnecting what has been disconnected.

Our bodies know how to heal. Our hearts know how to connect. Our cells remember the original rhythm. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is not add more, but step back into the living world that still remembers what we have forgotten.

When we reconnect with the earth, the breath, and the body of life itself, other reconnections begin to happen — often without effort.

The noise quiets. The pressure eases.

We find ourselves again, not as separate individuals struggling to survive, but as part of a greater web that was holding us all along.

Healing does not always come from doing more. Sometimes, it comes from remembering we were never alone.

¹ Source: Mercola — Benefits of Forest Bathing ² Source: James L. Oschman, Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis (Churchill Livingstone, 2000)