During my troubled teens I knew I could always go to a park or wooded area and find solace in among the trees. A psychic, actually the first person I ever went to for any kind of “reading”, explained it to me by saying, “You have an affinity with the Devic kingdom”. Which was his way of saying that I have a connection to angels, but in human terms translates roughly to, “You like being around trees, dude”. Eventually, I wrote a guided meditation program about it.
In retrospect, I believe my psychic friend was correct any way you look at it, but the bottom line is that being around nature makes us feel more relaxed, centered, and grounded. It doesn’t solve our “problems”, but it makes them seem to recede into the background, and that’s healthy. Good for blood pressure, heart rate, sense of peace, outlook on life.
One day I went to my favorite park, which at the time happened to be Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore, and immediately noticed a fire in the woods. It was during a weekday afternoon when there were apparently no other visitors, so I looked around and found a fire alarm thingy by the driveway. I pulled the alarm, and waited about ten minutes before the trucks came, and standing in the driveway pointed them to the woods where the fire was slowly creeping. It felt like my way of saying thank you to the trees who had been so kind to me.
The Healing Forest – Guided Meditation Program, Part of A Series
The series of guided meditation programs I began way back in the mid 80s focused on nature, but it’s taken until now for me to come up with one about the forest. Please take a listen to The Healing Forest, and let me know what you think.
When my wife and I were driving home from dinner on the 4th of July this week, we stopped on the side of the road not to see fireworks, but fire. Not far in the distance the forest fire near Los Alamos could be clearly seen scorching the mountains, against the evening New Mexico sky. I haven’t put out any fires since the one I mentioned long ago. Instead, my focus eventually became helping people with their hot spots — identifying them, cooling them down, letting them go. But the time time I spent in nature helped me to get make it through to this point, and I continue to enjoy it when I can.