When you use your smartphone to talk, text, shoot photos, or whatever else you can do with your phone, you’re tapping the prefrontal cortex and causing reductions in cognitive functions such as thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation, and “empathizing,” which allows for better understanding of the minds and emotions of others.
Instead, reduce your phone time and let Nature make you “feel more alive.”
Because many aspects of nature were integral to ancient peoples, nature itself was divine with a spark/a micro-star/a micro-sun within all things—Divine Mother Earth. Furthermore, all of nature—waters, rocks, trees, grasses, even the soil—housed spirits and were revered. After all, if not for these elements of nature, people could not have thrived. In other words, everything had a spirit, an intrinsic identity, and value. Trees were not only divine, but were also intrinsically unique providing such things as shelter and food.
The importance of trees to the earth and humanity is a well-known fact. Additionally, the tree is one of humankind’s most powerful symbols. It represents fertility, immortality and the totality of life as well as being a link between heaven and earth. Rooted firmly and deeply in the earth, the tree also reaches up to the heavens and thus provides an appropriate symbology for a central link between the two.
To the ancients, our ancestors, the whole forest was/is sacred, as the source of “Being.” In the manner ancient texts describe, caring for the Earth must also incorporate the Earth’s interaction with the sun (today, consider humanity’s need for solar energy to replace destructive fossil fuels).
More than ever, we need to experience the beauty of nature. This increases positive emotion—perhaps by inspiring awe, a feeling akin to wonder, with the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself—which then leads to prosocial behaviors.
Nature makes you “feel more alive;” nature relieves attention fatigue and increases creativity.
Today, we live with ubiquitous technology designed to constantly demand our attention. But many scientists believe our brains were not made for this kind of information bombardment, and that it can lead to mental fatigue and being overwhelmed leading to burnout. We need “attention restoration” to get back to a normal, healthy state.
Nature provides our renewal: Being in nature while utilizing our senses especially sound, smell, taste, and touch (tactile sensations such as walking barefoot on the earth) restores depleted attention circuits, which can then help us be more open to creativity and problem-solving.
Being in nature decreases stress being in nature has a profound impact on our brains and our behavior, helping us to reduce anxiety, brooding, and stress, and increase our attention capacity, creativity, and our ability to connect with other people. We are physically and mentally healthier when we are interacting with nature.
Love the earth. Show your love by being out in nature away from human-made structures, no smartphones or other devices, just you and the great Goddess – Mother Nature. Kiss a tree and lie on the earth becoming one with her and all her relations.