A few years ago I had a client whose health started deteriorating inexplicably following a period where he had been steadily improving. It turned out that he had moved house a few months earlier, and the apartment where he was living was in an area that didn’t have any green space around it. His nervous system was suffering from the lack of nature in his daily life. He is not alone. Since I work in the inner city, most of my clients are suffering from “Nature Deficit Disorder”. Originally coined in relation to children who are speeding too much time indoors on screens, and not enough time outdoors; Nature Deficit Disorder is relevant to both children and adults.
As adults, if we spend most of our times indoors, in air-conditioned buildings under fluorescent lighting, we are disconnecting from our natural environment, and our nervous systems don’t receive the necessary cues from the sun to help keep our biorhythms healthy. Aside from preventing vitamin D deficiency, we also need sunlight to help our bodies know when we should be waking, sleeping and eating. When we are disconnected from these subtle, but essential cues from nature we also begin disconnecting from our bodies. When we are disconnected from our bodies we live in our heads, and become slaves to the constant mental noise in our brains, and our nervous systems don’t receive healthy feedback from our bodies and our environment.
The lack of nature connection increases our susceptibility to stress, anxiety and depression, and can lead to disrupted sleep, poor digestion and decreased immune function. These are also the most common symptoms that I see in my clients… but It doesn’t have to be this way. I have a colleague who works in rural New Zealand, and when I spoke with her about the types of issues I see in my clients she couldn’t believe how much stress and anxiety I come across on a daily basis. I couldn’t believe that all of her clients are really so happy, healthy and relaxed. Then I spent a week at a retreat centre in New Zealand for a chi kung workshop… and I started to see why that was the case.
Once I got over the shock of no mobile phone coverage (it took a few days before my body stopped twitching in withdrawal, and I am not a heavy user!), I started to notice my nervous system calming down, the thoughts swirling around in my head beginning to settle, and most miraculously, I really found my body. Because there are no snakes in New Zealand I felt safe enough to spend most of my time barefoot. Everyday I went for walks along the river in my bare feet, feeling the mud squelching between my toes. I was experiencing the first tentative steps of a process that has recently come to be known as “rewilding”; getting in touch with basic human instincts for living in the wild.
The problem with modern living is that we have become disconnected from these basic human instincts that tell us what safe is and what is dangerous. Our brains and bodies are constantly searching for information about safety and danger, but our ancient instincts are not in sync with our inner city environment, so we get a lot of faulty information. We often feel safe driving in our cars, which is probably the most dangerous thing we do, and yet we sense danger in the workplace, because of threats to our sense of self from workplace politics and mental stress, but at work our actual physical safety is highly protected. So our nervous systems are feeling under threat disproportionally to the actual threats to our physical bodies, leading to chronic stress and anxiety. Craniosacral therapy is a great tool for re-learning how to self-regulate your nervous system, but spending time in nature is also essential – and it’s free!
Spending time in nature is like pressing a giant reset button for our nervous systems, allowing us to recalibrate our inner environments. All you have to do is make time to connect with your body in nature. And nature is much closer than you think. It can be a small patch of grass where you plant your bare feet for 5 minutes to refresh your nervous system. When I came back from New Zealand I was mourning the loss of green space in my working life. I hopped on Google maps and used the satellite function so that I could see where the green was hiding, and it was a lot closer than I thought. There is access to Merri Creak just a 2 minute walk from Five Elements… what green space is hiding around the corner from you?
By Anne McCasland-Pexton
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist
