Photo: GettyTim82 - Getty Images
View looking up in forest
Gary and I bushwhacked beneath the bare trees and overcast sky. At my request, he was taking the lead in our trek through a dense forest, one that left him geographically lost and disoriented.
“This looks familiar,” he said, eyeing the terrain.
“It should,” I replied. “We’ve been here before.”
When people become lost in the wild and struggle to find their way out, they usually travel in a circle, returning to square one. This analogy typified Gary’s life conundrum. He sought my counsel because he felt utterly lost and running in circles in an existential sense. Buried under a pile of problems—depression, a job from hell, and a general loss of meaning—he had no idea what direction to take in his life.
Instead of traditional counseling, which he’d tried but with little success, we decided to use something called “nature therapy.” While not for everyone, this unique variant of psychotherapy affords a real-world laboratory for addressing life challenges. What’s more, it engages nature as a co-therapist, a source of wisdom and guidance that compliments the ministrations of one’s human shrink. If we open ourselves to the life lessons inherent in the natural world, there is often healing and growth ahead.
Down to Earth
Nature therapy possesses a unique capacity to ground cerebral issues (like feeling existentially adrift) in concrete, down-to-earth experiences (like being lost in the woods). In Gary’s case, feeling disoriented in a geographic sense set the stage for dealing with his disorientation in a mental sense. Instead of attempting to think through his predicament, he literally walked through it.
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“So now what do we do?” Gary asked, exasperated.
“More importantly, what are you learning from this experience?” I asked back.
Obviously, Gary concluded that, when lost, whether psychologically or geographically, setting off without a clear sense of direction is rarely helpful.
“So, if thrashing through the forest willy-nilly won’t do it, what other choice do you have?” I pressed him.
Lost in the Wild?
Survival experts often recommend that the first thing to do when lost in the wild is sit down (rather than rush off helter-skelter), get one’s anxiety under control, and allow intuition to kick in. And that’s a useful metaphor for how to handle mental disorientation as well. The conscious mind is not necessarily the best resource in addressing that “I’m lost” feeling many of us suffer at some point in our lives. Instead, nature helps us tap into our intuitive mind to generate creative options that rational thinking often overlooks. After all, what’s more creative than the natural world?
So, we sat on a boulder, tuned our senses to the environment, and quieted our thinking minds with breath work. It took a while for Gary’s nattering self-talk to zip its lip, but, eventually, in its absence, his intuition bubbled up.
“Not sure why, but I think we should go that way,” he pointed. And so we did.
After instructing him in navigating a straight line by using a form of visual triangulation, Gary led us onward. Somewhat later, we emerged from the thicket onto an animal path that, in turn, led to a human trail. At which point, for Gary, nature’s guidance became clear. We can think our way through some challenges, but when that fails, as it had for him, we may still be able to act our way through. Being lost in the woods can serve as a living analogy for being lost in life. Solving the geographic challenge posed by nature set the stage for Gary to think creatively about addressing the obstacles in his personal life. There is substantial research showing that interacting with nature in an intentional manner fosters greater calm, creativity, intuition and perspective, attributes that support mental clarity.
Sometimes we can figure things out in our thinking minds. But, other times, we need to work through our issues by analogy, by acting them out metaphorically, one of the primary elements of nature therapy. And with its richness, complexity and challenges, nature offers an abundance of learning opportunities in this regard.
Experiences are the most powerful teachers. And, often, the natural world provides the richest experiential classroom of all.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
