Healing Trauma through Nature
Trauma is a deeply personal experience that can leave lasting scars. Whether it stems from a single event (a car crash or assault) or prolonged exposure to distressing circumstances (repeated microaggressions, abusive relationship dynamics), trauma can impact every aspect of your life. If you have lived through trauma, you know firsthand how heavy and burdensome its weight can be, and you may feel like you have done everything you’re supposed to move on. But if you find that it’s still hard to unburden yourself from the trauma, connecting to nature may be a way to help you heal. Connecting with the natural world can offer a unique pathway to healing from trauma, providing solace, restoration, and a sense of connection that can be powerful in our healing journeys.
Understanding Trauma
Before delving into the therapeutic benefits of nature, it's crucial to understand trauma and its effects on the mind and body. The trauma we experience is as varied as we are as people. For example, trauma can look like physical, emotional, or psychological abuse, neglect, accidents, natural disasters, or witnessing violence. Regardless of what it looks like, trauma has one unifying factor: it threatens our sense of safety, affecting the trust we have in ourselves, how we view others, and how we view the world around us.
The Healing Power of Nature
Nature has an innate capacity to soothe and heal. It’s no coincidence that many guided meditations and visualization exercises incorporate a tranquil nature setting. From the gentle rustle of leaves to the vastness of a starlit sky, natural environments offer a sense of tranquility and connection that can be profoundly therapeutic.
Grounding and Presence: Nature has a way of grounding us in the present moment. When immersed in natural surroundings, we can engage with our senses fully, focusing on the sights, sounds, smells, and textures around us. Our daily lives are usually characterized by to-do lists, go-go-go rush, and stressors. Nature invites us to slow down, and focus on nothing else other than being present in its beauty. This sensory immersion anchors us in the here and now, which is a very helpful practice when dealing with intrusive thoughts and memories from trauma.
Safety and Security: When we experience trauma, our sense of safety and the agency we feel over our own bodies have been incredibly threatened and strained. Natural environments often evoke feelings of safety and security, allowing our bodies to relax from the constant hypervigilence we may have developed after the trauma. Whether it's the shelter of a dense forest, the embrace of a quiet meadow, or the rhythm of ocean waves, nature provides a safe refuge where we can go to be safe, let our guard down, and relax (just don’t go out to bear country with peanut butter slathered on your hands!).
Mind-Body Connection: In order to survive a traumatic event, our bodies can sever the connection we have with our bodies to protect us. While extremely helpful to survive, this disconnection from our bodies can lead to feelings of disassociation or numbness. Engaging with nature can lead to a reconnection with our bodies, such as increased awareness of physical sensations and increased relaxation. Activities like walking barefoot on grass, feeling the warmth of sunlight on your skin while on a hike, listening to the birds in your backyard, or immersing yourself in the ocean/lake/creek can activate our senses and promote embodied mindfulness.
Space for Meaning Making: Nature is the perfect canvas for us to paint on to create meaning from our experiences. Nature gives us a canvas already filled with symbolism that we can explore and use to express our thoughts and emotions. A towering tree you see on the trail might represent resilience, a flowing river could symbolize the passage of time, and a budding flower might signify growth and renewal. Allow your mind to engage in ‘stream of consciousness meaning making’ while out in nature. Engaging with these natural symbols can facilitate insight, reflection, and meaning making in the context of trauma recovery.
Connection and Belonging: Trauma can lead us to isolate ourselves, and even make us feel alienated from the rest of the world. Nature, on the other hand, has the opposite effect - it reminds us of our interconnectedness with the world. Whether it’s by observing the intricate web of life in a forest ecosystem or witnessing the majesty of a mountain landscape formed thousands of years ago, we can experience a profound sense of belonging and connection. This connection to something greater than ourselves can bring us hope and new perspectives in the face of trauma.
Incorporating Nature into Your Life
It is the unfortunate reality that access to nature is becoming more and more a privilege. Not all of us have the privilege to access oceans, vast mountain ranges, or even transportation to get us to those nature places. But integrating nature into your life can take various forms, depending on your preferences and what’s available to you.
Nature-Based Mindfulness: Find somewhere that has some elements of nature - whether that’s green trees, lots of birds, or even a cool pavement of rocks. Pick something in the nature environment around you - a specific smell, a certain color, the texture of rocks, the sound of leaves rustling in the trees, or the constant waves of the ocean - and give it your entire attention for a while. Practicing mindfulness in natural settings can help us cultivate present moment awareness and even build our self compassion, all the while fostering a deeper connection with the environment.
Nature Art Therapy: Creating (art, music, crafts, or anything!) is also a helpful way to help our brains and bodies heal from trauma, and we can combine it with nature to help us in our healing journey. Try expressing yourself creatively incorporating nature somehow. That can mean painting a landscape, creating a nature mandala, flower arranging, sculpting with natural materials, or anything you can think of.
Animal-Assisted Therapy: Animals, especially those we have a personal connection to, such as our pets, can be incredibly helpful in regulating our nervous system. Incorporating interactions with animals can enhance our feelings of safety, trust, and connection, all of which are in short supply for those who experienced trauma.
Horticulture Therapy: Remember during COVID, and it seemed everyone was suddenly a houseplant connoisseur? Perhaps that was because engaging in gardening or horticultural activities can provide us with a sense of purpose, accomplishment, and connection to the natural world. If you don’t have a garden, look if there are any community gardens in your area. There are also many volunteer groups that work to restore natural plants in their ecosystem. If you don’t have access to any of these, take a page out of the COVID playbook and get a houseplant - even nurturing a houseplant can be helpful.
Therapeutic Power of Natural Connection
Nature has a profound capacity to heal. It offers us solace, peace, safety, restoration, and a sense of connection, which are incredibly powerful for those of us navigating the complex terrain of trauma recovery. By incorporating nature into trauma treatment, we can connect to its power in fostering resilience, empowerment, and growth. Whether through nature walks, mindfulness practices, or creative expression, the healing power of nature invites us to reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. If you want to incorporate nature with therapy in your healing journey, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a free consultation.