The Prescription for Your Anxiety Could Be Hugging a Tree

I started my first vacation in four years with a light heart. I was staying a week at a wonderful inn at my favorite lakeside retreat. No phones. No car traffic. No internet.

And no electricity.

I realized this when I woke up, chilled to the bone, knowing I had plugged in the little space heater the night before. Sure enough, the heater was dead as a doornail, as well as every outlet including the one I had used to charge my phone.

I called the inn host, trying not to sound like a snooty Karen at 7:30 in the morning. A few minutes later, a bleary-eyed young woman in sweats came to the door with a volt meter in hand. The verdict was likely a blown fuse, she said, and after we were both unable to locate the fuse box in the century-old basement, she assured me her father would take a look at it as soon as he had his coffee.

Starting the day irritated, cold, and with a low phone battery triggered some part of me that reacts to bad news with heart palpitations and a searing headache.

Stop, I told myself. Go outside and walk.

And so I did.

I had learned after several years of practicing mindfulness by immersing in nature that the fastest way to turn off the adrenaline flow was to breathe air. Touch the grass. Watch the ripples rise on the lake surface. Listen to the cry of the seagulls circling above.

After a minute or two of walking, my attention shifted away from the blown fuse to the sunlit summer morning. I did what I often do in the wild: I stopped and gathered interesting leaves, a few wildflowers that grow, untamed, along the shore, a few mussel shells with pearlescent insides. I put them down on the grass and moved them around, not really composing but simply playing. Tension evaporated. The tumult of frustration eased.

After a while, an older gentleman walked up and asked if I was the lady who’d blown a fuse.

Ah, the universe winking, I thought.

Balance had been restored along with my electricity.

Unburdening the mind

Anecdotal as my story is, we have always known deep in our bellies that nature is healing to body, mind, and soul. This truth was discerned far back in our human history. Our ancestors lived in a consciousness of unity with nature, one that may have been absent of the high anxiety and worries that burden us today.

Mitchell Diamond, author of Darwin’s Apple: The Evolutionary Biology of Religion, suggests that our more evolved brains which can process so much more information is actually a detriment to our well-being because too much input simply blows our mental fuses. Spiritual rituals, Diamond writes, can be the antidote to overwhelming mental activity. “Even modest expressions of sacred behaviors can quiet the mind and reduce anxieties and fears that we carry with us.”

My ritual for restoring peace of mind is one I call “centering in nature” and typically starts with three mind-quieting approaches: silence, solitude, and seclusion. By intentionally removing the distractions of mental overload, I create space. In that space I open my senses to what surrounds me: colors, sounds, smells, and textures. A leaf can captivate; a dragonfly darting from one lily pad to another can hold me enraptured. Touching the smooth bark of a birch tree or the spikey shell of a horse chestnut draws me back toward my center, my inner sanctuary of joy, calm, gratitude, reverence.

A prescription for joy

Everyday life is overwhelming, enough. Blown fuses, bad starts to the day, irritating events beyond our control come with human existence. Thankfully, we’ve evolved the ability to make decisions in spite of the chaos. But in times like now, when we’re bombarded with a daily onslaught of dire news, our anxiety can become detrimental to finding joy.

Joy is a spiritual experience that can extinguish worry. It’s an aspect of our emotional intelligence that rises to the surface whenever we’re immersed in the silence of a summer morning, the solitude of a forest, the seclusion of a mountain peak shrouded in fog. Seek beauty, and joy emerges.

Here is my prescription for the day: Feel the sun on your face. Breathe in the freshly bloomed lilacs. Hug a tree. Repeat.

To reprint this article, please email me at livingwildwisdom@gmail.com for permission.

Follow me on Substack to read more.