Nature Deficit Disorder
How do we improve the quality of our thoughts, actions, and decisions? Performance based metrics- measuring athletic, sleep and nutrition are easy to watch, study, and the data are easy and interesting to look at. But understanding why or how these metrics can change requires a slow, deliberate process of modifying one element or piece of action at a time. We are inherently in a fight or flight nervous system mode. We need to shift to a parasympathetic nervous system state to shift from reactive to responsive, learning mode.
The more time we spend moving in nature, working with sounds, smells and movement that has evolved through millions of years, the more opportunity we have to calibrate with our own healing rhythms, sounds, light, and movement.
By reducing technology, artificial light, sounds, toxic materials, excess objects and adjust information to subtle, calming stimuli, we teach our mind and bodies to listen to what is align with intrinsic healing.
From the stripped down version of yourself, you can feel where the gaps, the pain, and the struggle is. If you’re willing to hold a mirror up to your own behavior, in time, you’ll see clearly when and how your withdrawal symptoms appear; when your sleep disturbances peak, and when energy spikes and drops. In this raw state, with little defense, vulnerable without recourse to numbing through food, entertainment, dopaminergic devices, we can observe our triggers and how long it takes before some person, sound, food, pushes you over your edge. And how you behave when you’re pushed.
This information becomes the footprint to start connecting our minds to our bodies, understanding how intricately intertwined body and mind are. Our power in improving performance is through understanding our intimately personal health, our threshold for endurance and our potential for collapse/fail on whatever field, room, or relationship. From our footprint, we can build a tools, specified practices to equip you to adjust, correct and heal.
While vulnerable and receptive, we can start rebuilding our immune system, clean our gut biome, holding 100 million neurons, work with our biology to recalibrate our nervous system to hear, see, feel, and think differently. Through that we’ll then find that we need lower doses of artificial dopamine to be satisfied, lower doses of stimuli from all levels. The question is once we release our dependencies to technology, food, stimuli of any kind, we need an ecosystem to calibrate to. That is nature.
We can shift from being drained by toxic and digital stimuli to being charged by stimuli from nature; natural light, sounds, smells, whole foods and rhythms more aligned with seasons, days, nights, weather, our bodies release anxiety. Richard Louv, a writer who coined the term Nature Deficit Disorder.
“The future will belong to the nature-smart—those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.” (https://richardlouv.com )
Louv adds that our relationship to wild animals specifically is our link to learning about human nature.
“Louv interviews researchers, theologians, wildlife experts, indigenous healers, psychologists, and others to show how people are communicating with animals in ancient and new ways; how dogs can teach children ethical behavior; how animal-assisted therapy may yet transform the mental health field; and what role the human-animal relationship plays in our spiritual health.” (https://richardlouv.com)
Our resistance to nature comes from fear of being irrelevant. We don’t see our noisy tech dependent selves in nature. We’re terrified of our own irrelevance out there. But, when we transfer in tune with nature, our body resonates on a vibration in synch with nature. Once in synch, our bodies can start to heal. We exit our communal anxiety of our fear of collapse, decimation, apocalypse, collapse of our perceived intelligence developed from learning independent of nature, and decision making from a consciousness not connected with nature.
Outside of nature, we use our minds to memorize and collect data, instead of building intuition. We use information to shout our existence- Look! I know these totally random facts! I’m relevant! In that world, we shut down our intrinsic intuitive learning processes, maximizing focus on collecting information to removes us from ourselves. Decades of doing that, disconnecting with our body’s intuitive intelligence sends a message to our bodies and minds that indeed, we are not supporting our intrinsic ability to learn, heal and connect to nature.
Through dedicated time in nature, we increase our ability to heal, allowing our minds and bodies to become acutely aware of actual relevant decisions we need to make, and our attention to certain details becomes very clear.
As our energy system aligns with our inherent rhythm in nature, our minds and bodies align with frequencies that we have aligned with for centuries.
"If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration." — Nikola Tesla (LINK)
In nature, we become subconsciously aware of how light and sound travel in waves, how energy is symbiotic. We can feel and observe how nature and wild animals communicate when in danger, in love, in heat, in fear. As a breeze flows through the trees, sound and light mimic that flow, endlessly caressing surfaces, bringing texture, color and smell into brilliant awareness to the point where we feel a part of a garden, pond or ocean. Animals use these cues to live, move, escape, survive. When we start feeling deeper connection to something so in line with our core energy systems, our body can heal. When our senses are aligned, calibrated to the rhythms, the waves in nature, we start using our senses in a different way. Our senses are intact to warn us, to inform, to soften and bring things into awareness- so that we KNOW when we’re out of alignment with ourselves and we self correct before we’re triggered by some outside anonymous random thing or person.
When we surrender to acutely aligning with nature, our bodies release hormones that initiate healing; endorphins, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. These hormones are typically, in a normal fast pace world, severely out of alignment, and are triggering. In alignment with nature, we learn, slowly allow nature to show us what to pay attention to.
In nature, as we surrender, leave behind ourselves, we learn to notice differently, as both sound and light received by receptors that affect our cells, and if we’re attuned, our cellular structure will reorganize. Immersed in nature, we access an ancient intelligence. We begin to see colors more multi-dimensionally feel more multi-dimensionally, redefine how we respond to which stimuli. A flat red in nature is going to look more diversified in its range of reds, tones, textures and will carry an energy, a reason for being- fire, changing seasons, getting colder, or bursting into the height of summer. And those signs tell us- I will get dehydrated in this potential heat, or if it’s fall, the sun will set earlier, and I need to be prepared for potential freezing night, so move out now. Or fire, obviously, get out. Sounds are going to not only hear differently but feel as though they are affecting our cells. There is plenty of research on the healing effects of sound and light. Our cells respond more nuanced through the sounds in nature, they’re on assault in artificial sounds and reactive. We generate healing cells, through nature’s tones and tools humans have used for millennia.
Data through MRI’s show treating brain tissue with sound waves has healing capabilities (LINK) and heightens activity in the part of the brain where we learn, absorb information more deeply.
Most research is based on men, limiting our data on nature’s affect on human behavior. Women’s interests have de prioritized scientific data collection to less focus on our relationship with natural healing processes. Research becomes the collective understanding of our relationship to nature and our scope of knowledge and is slowly expanding.
“…. A problem that actually manifested back in 1977 when the FDA formally banned all women of child-bearing potential from all clinical research. That ban remained in effect until 1993” (LINK)
Qualitative performance for men and women can be increased through an integrated ecosystem, physical and emotional, avoiding toxins, distractions and clutter, enhanced by natural sounds and light that follow the biology’s diurnal rhythms.
Through a strong connection with our inherent biological rhythms, the body gains equilibrium, broader capacity of performing, learning and healing at greater rates. Then, we can develop a personal protocol to manage technology, social, and family demands. This can only be done successfully with personal, individual investment. It’s not something you can buy, nor does a specialist exist. It requires curiosity, engagement, investment, and time outside.
Imagine consistent time in nature, your biological rhythms are ignited by microorganisms in the air, ground, sounds and light that our biology has evolved in tandem with for millions of years. We begin to smell, taste, see, hear and feel more intensely, and have less desire for high digital dopaminergic hits. Our focus is refined, we see so much more detail, and our attention span is expanding. We are responsive to actual dangers, threats and calls for help, not conspiracy theories or apocalypses. We love whole foods as we can taste the full flavor profile. And because we go to sleep with the light, we wake up with the sun, our diurnal rhythm is attuned and we sleep a full cycle. Our awake hours are exponentially more productive and proficient. When we regularly swim in natural rivers, ocean, streams, we absorb minerals that have healed us for millennia, and our cells are reorganize to a new order of recover, healing and performance.
Anti-aging and longevity practitioners, spas, retreats and modalities are the rage. Some of our fanaticism to longevity stems out of fear of dying, without understanding of fully living. The spa is right out your door. Regardless, without spending actual time in nature, your brain and body will likely decay much more rapidly.