by Shanti Mayberry
If you would like to grow older with more vitality, clarity, calm, and joy, let Nature assist you. We often forget that we are not separate from the Earth, but living threads in her vast web of life. Yet modern culture—with its relentless materialism and human-centered thinking—has lulled us into believing we stand above Nature rather than within her. Cut off from her rhythms and wisdom, we spend most of our time indoors, tethered to screens and swept up in endless human dramas—a recipe for depletion and suffering.
Our Indigenous ancestors knew something we are only beginning to remember: Mother Earth is our great teacher, healer, provider, and guide. They lived by her cycles, listened to her seasons, and honored her laws. In doing so, they remained rooted, resilient, and deeply alive. By learning how to reconnect with Nature, both inner and outer, we can awaken this ancient ancestral Earth bond to support our wellbeing, especially as we age.
Reconnecting with Nature is not difficult, but it does take conscious effort to overcome our culture’s trance of separation. There are many ways to connect, such as birdwatching, mindful gardening, sky gazing, tree communion, grounding exercises, or aligning your life with seasonal cycles—to name just a few of the ways. Each practice helps you slow down and become more heart-centered and receptive to Nature’s spiritual presence. You are no longer standing apart, but a participant in a sacred, living communion. The more we expand our relationship with Nature, the more we may feel a sense of wonder and awe awaken as we attune to the wild creativity that surrounds us.
One of my favorite restorative Nature practices is sky gazing for increasing relaxation and expanding perspective. To do this, you can either lay down on the ground outside or on a chaise lounge and begin to softly focus on the sky, allowing clouds to drift by like thoughts in the mind. Continue to look at the spaciousness of the sky until your thoughts disperse like clouds and your body calms down as worries and problems diminish in the vastness of space.
Another wonderful practice is birdwatching, which research studies found to strengthen the areas of the brain that regulate focus, memory, and present moment alertness. It is America’s fastest growing hobby for which you only need binoculars and a local bird guidebook. When I became an amateur ‘birder,’ over 30 years ago, I was amazed to see all the beautiful and nuanced colors of birds who had appeared to be a dull brown or gray to the naked eye, but when viewed through binoculars proved to be bronze, dark red, sienna, beige, and so on. It’s also easy to find birdwatching groups, such as Audubon, that host regular gatherings and offer opportunities for nature-oriented social connections.
In my new book, Come Home to Nature, available on Amazon this summer, I offer many simple, practical methods to restore your relationship with the Earth—no matter where you live. These accessible practices invite healing, guidance, love, and awakening back into everyday life. They have revitalized my own health, joy, creativity, and sense of belonging. Through them, I discovered a profound truth: we are held within a vast field of living intelligence and love. Weare never separate. We are never alone.
As you begin this path of Nature Reunion, your sense of self will gradually widen, like a river expanding into its estuary. You will remember that you are part of a vast, breathing community of earth beings, each one pulsing with life and awareness. Plants and trees may start to feel like old friends, companions who greet you without words. The loneliness that often shadows modern life will begin to soften. In its place will arise a quiet, steady truth: that the world around you is alive, aware, and brimming with beauty.
There are many other benefits as well. Science supports what our hearts already know: Nature connection enhances immunity, lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety and depression, calms the nervous system, fosters creativity, improves cognitive function, restores attention fatigue, increases our sense of happiness, and can impact pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors. It also invites the body into the parasympathetic “rest and digest”state and awakens the body’s self-healing capacities. So whatever health issues you have, reconnecting to Nature and the wisdom of your body (your inner nature) may be the medicine you need.
Our bodies also mirror processes in Nature. Like our planet, we are 70 percent water and our circulatory systems resemble the rivers that remove wastes and deliver nutrients. The interconnected underground fungal communication network of forests is like the structure and function of our nervous system, responsible for carrying information to all parts of our bodies, just as the underground tree network carries messages to the whole forest. Tree branches mirror the networking of our respiratory system, both of which carry out the process of carbon and oxygen exchanges. Our human life is an interdependent process with all of Nature. We are Nature expressing herself in human form.
Interdependence is the fundamental truth of our human existence. It is as obvious as the nose on our face, since every breath we take depends on the oxygen exhaled by plants, algae, and trees, who in turn require the carbon dioxide we exhale. We’re inextricably joined in this planetary reciprocal breath cycle. Our existence is relational, not separate or independent.
Impermanence is another essential lesson that Nature teaches, and is one of the most difficult to embrace as we age, since we will all face loss of various kinds, and must eventually let go of everyone and everything we love. Nature’s cycles are ongoing process of change and transformation, and that is true for our own life seasons. We begin in the bright spring of childhood, full of curiosity and fragile beginnings. Youth arrives like summer — expansive, passionate, radiant with possibility. Adulthood ripens into autumn, a season of depth, harvest, and the golden maturity of experience. And finally, we enter winter — a time of slowing, reflection, and withdrawal into Spirit.
When we recognize ourselves as part of this great rhythm of change and transformation, aging feels like a natural turning of the wheel. Death itself becomes less an enemy and more of a completion — a return to the soil from which new life will someday rise. Impermanence is another essential lesson that Nature teaches, and it is one of the most difficult to embrace as we age since we will all face loses of various kinds, and must eventually let go of our earthly bodies.
Finally, in the midst of the uncertainties and converging crises of this era—political, economic, and ecological— we all need respite and refuge: a place, a practice, a way of grounding that helps us restore our soul and remember who we are. Nature freely offers us this sanctuary. We only need to surrender and connect to be welcomed back Home by our loving Mother Earth.
Dr. Shanti Mayberry HHP, Ph.D. is an ecological psychologist, Nature therapist, Natural Health practitioner, and grandmother, who lives with her extended family and beloved cat near a wildlife preserve in Southern California. She is also a co-founder of the Inner Balance Health Group. Contact doc.shanti@yahoo.com for more information.
