Embodying Nature to Navigate Depression
There are days when I feel like I have to retreat from the rest of the world. Goodbye, responsibilities. You won’t see me for a while. It feels good to be able to rest and to intentionally do so, rather than giving myself rest only when I’ve been “productive enough.”
When we feel depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and other such emotions, we often disconnect from our bodies. We do this habitually as a terrible coping mechanism. I am guilty of this, too. But disconnecting from our nervous system and numbing our body to its sensations only makes us more uncomfortable.
Over time in navigating my depression and anxiety, I’ve unraveled this habit by making it my intention to embody nature. Embodying nature is recognizing the same life flows through you as it does in the soil, the water, and the animals, and then imagining you are the soil or the water or other life forms. What this usually means is being still.
What a marvel it is to be still. Being still is both the ultimate achievement and the original state of our bodies.
If we need or want to, we can embody nature even further. From the perspective of other life, I am incredibly silly. The sunflower doesn’t worry about where its spores will land; it just releases them. Acacia trees don’t fret over their children; they just send nutrients and chemical messages through their underground mycelial network. With the flowers and trees in mind, I reframe my anxiety over my life into a simple intention. I release and give, and life will give something back.
If letting go is what helps me reframe and navigate my anxiety, what helps me with depression is to lean into the heaviness and darkness. When I’m feeling depressed, I think of myself as a sleeping deer or a meandering river. I think of myself as the moon.
What value does a meandering river or the full moon bring? What beauty do they represent? While not productive in the sense that we humans understand it, they represent a journey. The moon journeys from new to full, dark to light. The river is defined in its journey rather than its destination, characterized by its meander. Both provide immense value to all other life, and they help us understand our own journeys.
You wouldn’t tell a moon to be anything other than a moon, and you wouldn’t expect a river to flow in a way other than it does. Nature is allowed to be whatever it is. So should I; so should we.
I’ve long grown tired of the part of myself which has to know why I am feeling a certain way in order to accept the feeling. This line of questioning wants to determine if my level of emotion matches the occasion to make sure I’m not “overreacting” or “underreacting.” Sure, this is helpful in times of anger or jealousy. It’s helpful to make sure I don’t lose track of all my responsibilities. But when I am depressed, there is no “reason” for my mood. I just know that I don’t feel up to my human tasks. I don’t feel like my usual self. To force myself to do work, exercise, or socialize would be incredibly mean and out of touch with myself. So I lean into that feeling of not knowing and embrace alternative identities that do make me feel seen. This is healing.
In doing this, I’ve found that my moods of minor depression lift more readily. The more my minor depression is ignored, the more it can transform into the dangerous kind. A feeling is only a feeling – unless it has been ignored for too long.
Embodying nature is a common human practice. In some cultures, a healer or teacher will lead a group in a physical practice to accompany the mental and spiritual practice of embodiment: a ritual. While I don’t have a community to do that with or the instruments to do so, I do have storytelling. The following is my dreaming ritual. I encourage you to follow and imagine yourself doing the same.
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I take the dusk of the sky and paint it on my skin, covering my whole body with its soft shade. I dip my fingers into moonbeams and dot my cheeks and eyelids with pearlescent ethereal white. I do the same to color my lips. A curious lick of my tongue and I taste the essence of the moon, sending me into a deep and fast sleep. The river carries my unconscious body down its course. Cold and enveloping, she brings me down, down to the mouth. I will be swallowed by the ocean if she gets what she wants, but I will wake up before then. Slowly, I shall come to the sounds of bullfrogs and cicadas and the feeling of river-grasses brushing along my arms. When my eyes open, I’ll be greeted by the moon. I will stay there, on my back, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I’ll swim to the bank, prop myself up onto the mud. I’ll greet the dragonfly and earthworm. With my skin prickling in the cold and my muscles warm, my body has become newly bonded to Everything. I will wipe the colors of moonlight and dusk from my face, stand, and find my way back home.