Great points. Nowadays "healing modalities" are big business and one of the reasons is because we are so far removed from natural living. From just going outside, taking a walk, breathing; we dont need protocols for that. Ive told people many times: go to the top of a mountain and tell me how you feel. Our internal issues are there for a reason, but we dont need "hacks" to fix them. Healing is in being.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! I want to scream this from the mountain tops! We are not broken, we never were. Today, just a few hours before I saw this, I saw down and started writing a piece I’ve preliminarily called “Im done trying to fix myself”. Im done with self help. Im done with supplements (well… most of them). I don’t need fixing. I am whole. I was born this way. Off to take a walk in the hills of Vermont.
This! I can't say none of it never helped and our paths are our paths. But it's really liberating to get to a point where you're like wait being a human is hard, we can't bypass the hard parts and I'm not broken this is just life as a human.
Depression and anxiety that have overwhelmed the world have arisen because of our disconnection from nature. The entire lifestyle we lead in the city, with our fancy jobs and sitting at the computer for at least 8 hours, is designed to set us back. That’s why this story doesn’t surprise me at all. On the other hand, “fixing ourselves” comes from the program that we’re not good enough, while healing is nothing more than releasing blocked emotions. It’s important with what intention we approach these practices. My own simple practices, which are just tools to return to our factory settings, actually directed me toward nature, and I started to enjoy nature in a similar way. I certainly would never give them up—they’re there when I need them. I think the main problem is when we listen to the mainstream personal development industry, which really plays on our programs that we’re not good enough.
"This idea that we’ve gone so far from a natural way of living that we have to actually schedule time from the living to do all these things so that we can feel good and right enough to get back to living."
I hadn't thought of it in that way before, but it's so true and ridiculous. I think this idea is similar to growth — many people seek out growth hacks and content, but growth is inevitable. It's a product of living; it's not something we need to manufacture or chase.
It’s funny because yesterday I had this morning of rituals set up - I’m going to get back into it and feel better I told myself, but that inner nudge in me was like “go outside” and I spent most of my day outside, felt an expansion of energy within me naturally and felt 100% better / more whole! 🤍💚
I had a similar realization this past year. Meditation had become exhausting as there was always the pressure to do it "right." I ended up overanalyzing my sessions to the point that the practice itself became a stressor. Definitely what you want in a mindfulness practice, right? Taking the rigidity out of my approach and adding in movement made a big difference!
"Living" isn't just peak experience, that's just getting high. (in this case, literally, on a mountain)
I as a person with chronic fatigue can't just go out and scale a mountain and not deeply feel it for weeks.
I did this last year. I did a lot of beautiful, hard things, each of which had 8x the recovery period than the event itself. Was it traumatic?
No
But it was exhausting.
I have needed to learn how to "live" in my daily life. Taking walks, bathing myself, writing an essay, organizing regular gatherings with friends, doing research, writing poetry, making art, dancing, taking a pause, listening to birds.
Our lives aren't in mountains, they are when we are in the mundane. depressed and exhausted. It's learning how to delight and joy within the presence of grief, sorrow, rage. My life isn't over there in the mountains.
It's right here. and my hygiene, my routine, my rituals, are a fully-lived, beautiful, heart-filling part of that.
Sometimes I need a reset, sometimes I'm rutted and need to do something severe
Usually, I need to literally walk backwards down the street and choose to receive my pain as a poem, or a joke, and play a game with it. A game which involves taking my glasses off, hearing the birdsong coming in through the window, yawning, and drinking some water. When the opportunity shows itself though, I'll walk on mountains every time.
I feel that. I had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia for 17 years. This wasn't about the mountain. It was about letting life lead me. I also gave an example of laying in the grass for hours every day for a month because I was too exhausted and sick to do anything else. Also something life called me to. Also something that created a radical shift for me. These days climbing peaks isn't really a peak experience for me. It's something I do regularly where I live - my life is actually in the mountains. But that day it was exactly the medicine I needed because it broke me out of my fixation.
That's real, and I think that's an important thing to press into more. What's your process been to be able to approach moving with your life? To what degree is luck involved? I enjoy hearing about the fruits of your practices- but I'm interested in what your process is, in order to center life-as-process in a social structure that's so deeply production and extraction oriented. That's where the humanity lives, that's the juice.
In what way has following life been punished or discouraged by yourself or others? How did you interact with that adversity, and what did you learn about pain or fear? How do you relate to your pain, fear, and compulsions differently after shifting your mindset? What was necessary in your life for that mindset to be shifted?
I don't expect you to answer all, or any of these questions. I think your article is missing some nuance. It feels like you're trying to sell a mindset in it, as apposed to being in relationship about a process of adorning a mindset. I doubt that was your intention, this is how I relate to your article. Do with it what you will 🙏🏻
This to say, I enjoy hearing more about your disability, please consider writing from this stuff from a lens that puts disability more forward. We are becoming an increasingly disabled society, and folks don't seem to want to be talking about it.
I love this. I think about this all the time when it comes to therapy as a whole - as a practicing therapist, I frequently find myself in the middle of the work day wondering about how strange it is that we’ve had to build an entire system to go pour out our psyches to a stranger who at best has our best interest in mind and cares about guiding us to our own inner wisdom and at worst do all kinds of gnarly shit people do when they’re put in a position of power. Behind closed doors. Documentation, rules, practices to implement, but again, when at its best, offers meaningful relationship, presence, deep listening and curiosity, a willingness to witness without trying to fix someone. And we pay this stranger money to do that, people pay me to do that, we warden it off to a corner of some office building or behind a screen. When at some point in time this kind of transformation and healing through relationship was a given, a natural outcome when living fully as our authentic selves connected to others authentic selves within a community. Oh how far we’ve come…
I am also a therapist and really resonate with this. It makes me rethink my practice constantly because the system is so oriented towards fixing and self-help and I am always wondering how (or even if) I can do my job in a way that leads people back to themselves and their own inner wisdom, or if therapy (at least in a Western model) is just another part of the problem.
Have y'all ever read the book the Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller. It's not about nature per se but rethinking how therapists view patients and the impact faith and spirituality have. Her research was truly astounding!
Yeah it's not so much about taking anything up, just removing all the daily activities you do that keep you in the diseased state (alarm, technology, stress, etc). Health and wellbeing are innate, after all.
My Sunday is a day with no recreational or spiritual activities planned. If I do something like that, its because I feel like doing it. I've restarted meat and sugar, and never feel more whole and complete.
Oh, this prompt appears just a the "right" time! Currently, I face a paradoxical situation which is the decision if or if not to admit myself to a psychosomatic clinic for the 2nd time. The first stay has been transformational, yet I am aware that behind the fixing actually looms a wish twofold: experiencing togetherness, healing in community, and nurture. And: living. Simply being human and doing what humans are biologically made to do. So I came to wonder: Wouldn't it be more helpful if I packed a 45 L bag and went hiking for some long distance in Aotearoa New Zealand (my second home)? Something I had always desired to do and felt as vibration when I was - more recently - working as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps? At the moment, I wish to stay put and indulge in the feeling of home, but I am aware there could be compromise. Between the fixing-healing and the natural-flow.
It delights me to read about your story and that life's inert intelligence graced you with the intuition to return back to living life. Truly amazing. 💫🙏🏼🌻
I love this thinking! I am sick with several chronic diseases, and there are so many protocols to follow! What would happen if I just put everything aside, and then lived in sync with nature? 🌲☀️🌦️🌅🪐
Great points. Nowadays "healing modalities" are big business and one of the reasons is because we are so far removed from natural living. From just going outside, taking a walk, breathing; we dont need protocols for that. Ive told people many times: go to the top of a mountain and tell me how you feel. Our internal issues are there for a reason, but we dont need "hacks" to fix them. Healing is in being.
Just go outside
Wow. How beautiful and aligned is this post?
I believe the powers that be want this message to flow out today.
I wrote a similar post today that was restacked by the same person and that is how I landed here.
I wrote my piece late last night because I needed it.
And upon reading yours, I now know it’s not a coincidence.
Thank you for doing your part in sharing this wisdom.
We are not broken.
We are already whole. Personal development is a work in remembering and moving about from this wholeness.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! I want to scream this from the mountain tops! We are not broken, we never were. Today, just a few hours before I saw this, I saw down and started writing a piece I’ve preliminarily called “Im done trying to fix myself”. Im done with self help. Im done with supplements (well… most of them). I don’t need fixing. I am whole. I was born this way. Off to take a walk in the hills of Vermont.
This! I can't say none of it never helped and our paths are our paths. But it's really liberating to get to a point where you're like wait being a human is hard, we can't bypass the hard parts and I'm not broken this is just life as a human.
Depression and anxiety that have overwhelmed the world have arisen because of our disconnection from nature. The entire lifestyle we lead in the city, with our fancy jobs and sitting at the computer for at least 8 hours, is designed to set us back. That’s why this story doesn’t surprise me at all. On the other hand, “fixing ourselves” comes from the program that we’re not good enough, while healing is nothing more than releasing blocked emotions. It’s important with what intention we approach these practices. My own simple practices, which are just tools to return to our factory settings, actually directed me toward nature, and I started to enjoy nature in a similar way. I certainly would never give them up—they’re there when I need them. I think the main problem is when we listen to the mainstream personal development industry, which really plays on our programs that we’re not good enough.
🙌
This part really resonated with me:
"This idea that we’ve gone so far from a natural way of living that we have to actually schedule time from the living to do all these things so that we can feel good and right enough to get back to living."
I hadn't thought of it in that way before, but it's so true and ridiculous. I think this idea is similar to growth — many people seek out growth hacks and content, but growth is inevitable. It's a product of living; it's not something we need to manufacture or chase.
Very insightful and raw…. I believe in our innate intelligence to heal.
It’s funny because yesterday I had this morning of rituals set up - I’m going to get back into it and feel better I told myself, but that inner nudge in me was like “go outside” and I spent most of my day outside, felt an expansion of energy within me naturally and felt 100% better / more whole! 🤍💚
Sometimes, just getting outside is the key 🔑!
Thank you for sharing!! 🤍❤️
Ps that hike looks magical!!! 🫶🏻
💫
I had a similar realization this past year. Meditation had become exhausting as there was always the pressure to do it "right." I ended up overanalyzing my sessions to the point that the practice itself became a stressor. Definitely what you want in a mindfulness practice, right? Taking the rigidity out of my approach and adding in movement made a big difference!
I love this and:
"Living" isn't just peak experience, that's just getting high. (in this case, literally, on a mountain)
I as a person with chronic fatigue can't just go out and scale a mountain and not deeply feel it for weeks.
I did this last year. I did a lot of beautiful, hard things, each of which had 8x the recovery period than the event itself. Was it traumatic?
No
But it was exhausting.
I have needed to learn how to "live" in my daily life. Taking walks, bathing myself, writing an essay, organizing regular gatherings with friends, doing research, writing poetry, making art, dancing, taking a pause, listening to birds.
Our lives aren't in mountains, they are when we are in the mundane. depressed and exhausted. It's learning how to delight and joy within the presence of grief, sorrow, rage. My life isn't over there in the mountains.
It's right here. and my hygiene, my routine, my rituals, are a fully-lived, beautiful, heart-filling part of that.
Sometimes I need a reset, sometimes I'm rutted and need to do something severe
Usually, I need to literally walk backwards down the street and choose to receive my pain as a poem, or a joke, and play a game with it. A game which involves taking my glasses off, hearing the birdsong coming in through the window, yawning, and drinking some water. When the opportunity shows itself though, I'll walk on mountains every time.
I feel that. I had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia for 17 years. This wasn't about the mountain. It was about letting life lead me. I also gave an example of laying in the grass for hours every day for a month because I was too exhausted and sick to do anything else. Also something life called me to. Also something that created a radical shift for me. These days climbing peaks isn't really a peak experience for me. It's something I do regularly where I live - my life is actually in the mountains. But that day it was exactly the medicine I needed because it broke me out of my fixation.
That's real, and I think that's an important thing to press into more. What's your process been to be able to approach moving with your life? To what degree is luck involved? I enjoy hearing about the fruits of your practices- but I'm interested in what your process is, in order to center life-as-process in a social structure that's so deeply production and extraction oriented. That's where the humanity lives, that's the juice.
In what way has following life been punished or discouraged by yourself or others? How did you interact with that adversity, and what did you learn about pain or fear? How do you relate to your pain, fear, and compulsions differently after shifting your mindset? What was necessary in your life for that mindset to be shifted?
I don't expect you to answer all, or any of these questions. I think your article is missing some nuance. It feels like you're trying to sell a mindset in it, as apposed to being in relationship about a process of adorning a mindset. I doubt that was your intention, this is how I relate to your article. Do with it what you will 🙏🏻
This to say, I enjoy hearing more about your disability, please consider writing from this stuff from a lens that puts disability more forward. We are becoming an increasingly disabled society, and folks don't seem to want to be talking about it.
Thank you for sharing your writing, take care
Really appreciate and resonate with this perspective. The magic in the mundane calls each of us uniquely 🩷
Love this! It’s the mundane rituals that keep me sane until I get to higher ground (usually when the boat around me is sinking).
Thank you for this. 🤍
I love this. I think about this all the time when it comes to therapy as a whole - as a practicing therapist, I frequently find myself in the middle of the work day wondering about how strange it is that we’ve had to build an entire system to go pour out our psyches to a stranger who at best has our best interest in mind and cares about guiding us to our own inner wisdom and at worst do all kinds of gnarly shit people do when they’re put in a position of power. Behind closed doors. Documentation, rules, practices to implement, but again, when at its best, offers meaningful relationship, presence, deep listening and curiosity, a willingness to witness without trying to fix someone. And we pay this stranger money to do that, people pay me to do that, we warden it off to a corner of some office building or behind a screen. When at some point in time this kind of transformation and healing through relationship was a given, a natural outcome when living fully as our authentic selves connected to others authentic selves within a community. Oh how far we’ve come…
I am also a therapist and really resonate with this. It makes me rethink my practice constantly because the system is so oriented towards fixing and self-help and I am always wondering how (or even if) I can do my job in a way that leads people back to themselves and their own inner wisdom, or if therapy (at least in a Western model) is just another part of the problem.
Have y'all ever read the book the Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller. It's not about nature per se but rethinking how therapists view patients and the impact faith and spirituality have. Her research was truly astounding!
Yeah it's not so much about taking anything up, just removing all the daily activities you do that keep you in the diseased state (alarm, technology, stress, etc). Health and wellbeing are innate, after all.
My Sunday is a day with no recreational or spiritual activities planned. If I do something like that, its because I feel like doing it. I've restarted meat and sugar, and never feel more whole and complete.
Oh, this prompt appears just a the "right" time! Currently, I face a paradoxical situation which is the decision if or if not to admit myself to a psychosomatic clinic for the 2nd time. The first stay has been transformational, yet I am aware that behind the fixing actually looms a wish twofold: experiencing togetherness, healing in community, and nurture. And: living. Simply being human and doing what humans are biologically made to do. So I came to wonder: Wouldn't it be more helpful if I packed a 45 L bag and went hiking for some long distance in Aotearoa New Zealand (my second home)? Something I had always desired to do and felt as vibration when I was - more recently - working as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps? At the moment, I wish to stay put and indulge in the feeling of home, but I am aware there could be compromise. Between the fixing-healing and the natural-flow.
It delights me to read about your story and that life's inert intelligence graced you with the intuition to return back to living life. Truly amazing. 💫🙏🏼🌻
Ummm where do I find a job as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps?!
Yes! You're not broken. Stop trying to "fix" and live your life. 🙌🙌🙌
Nature is the ultimate healer. I am learning this myself. Thank you for the reminder. 🙏❤️❤️
Yes yes & YES!
Love this 💕 especially after being on a similar journey with wellness & healing
I love this thinking! I am sick with several chronic diseases, and there are so many protocols to follow! What would happen if I just put everything aside, and then lived in sync with nature? 🌲☀️🌦️🌅🪐
Yes! If you can, do it!
Yesterday I actually felt inspired by you and this post, so I took my self out to the waterfall for a skinny dip 🐳 it felt amazing!
https://substack.com/@calmfeed/note/c-151004861