Let nature heal your mental health

I had been sensing a build-up of nausea in the pit of my stomach since the start of this year. It brought along gruesome auxiliary elements like fatigue, anxiety and an uncanny sadness. My initial internet based self-diagnosis revealed that I was suffering the bitterness of post-Covid symptoms.

But the irrepressible uneasiness clambered steadily to new heights as winter rolled into spring and then summer. Despondent, irritable, dissociated and struggling to ascribe meaning and purpose to my life, I was, perchance, facing my first ever existential crisis.

A diffident voice at the back of my head whispered to me: you are not alone. Every day, countless people go through this excruciating trial. Opening up about mental health can be a herculean task on its own. Talking helps, but finding empathetic people with affectionate and attentive ears to lend, in this tumultuous world, is quite a treasure hunt. Professional aid is expensive, it might not even be conducive. And so, we suffer, cowered amid what we deem our own mire.

No two people experience psychogenic disharmony in the same way, and so, tackling it is different for each individual. For me, like a lot of us, the antidote was nature itself. I had an outburst one morning when I saw the only plant in our house was almost dead. The word 'dead' gnawed at my heart, making me cry uncontrollably. Suddenly, the presence of the word 'almost' dawned on me, like a revelation. Thus the process of propagating and ultimately resuscitating the plant back to life began, so did my healing.

The nurturing of my withered plant was in fact nurturing me. While working on it, I relearned patience and perseverance. I found out how stillness stopped the cacophony in my head. Being close to this one plant, so small and discrete, taught me to value each brown leaf alongside each green one. Innocuous though they might seem, weeds are wolves in sheep's clothing.

Water is life, yet too much of it destroys, the same goes for sunlight. I fathomed the universality of these lessons when I started walking, barefoot at times, in the park that I abandoned at ten years of age. And now, a decade later, I am back there, looking at the same trees that looked after me as I played under their canopy of leaves in my girlhood. That voice at the back of my head, so unsure before, whispered to me again, now confidently: you are not alone. Numerous articles on how therapeutic nature can be assured me that I was on the right path.

Ecotherapy is a meditative approach of observing the greater nature and emulating it; of carrying a terrarium inside us at all times, so to say. Basking in the sanctity of the outdoors reduces allergies, obesity, depression, juvenile delinquency, and various kinds of addiction, experts say. The essentiality to immerse in nature's warm embrace can be seen in the cottagecore aesthetic as well. The followers of this fad romanticise the silence of the blue hour, the mollifying chirps of birds, and overall, the being one with Mother Nature.

Nature promises a tripartite healing that involves the revivification of the mind, body and spirit. In an age that doesn't permit respite, sometimes, sniffing at a bunch of wildflowers can work wonders.

Reference:

The Guardian (June 17, 2014). Ecotherapy: how does the great outdoors improve mental health?

Mastura believes Hozier himself is a balladic masterpiece. Tell her you agree at choudhurymasturamahbub@gmail.com