Mother Earth—the Great Healer

Isn’t it easy to get caught up in our busy lives at work and home, and end up spending days without really connecting to Mother Earth? It is easy to do, but is that good for us?

Being connected and conscious about nature is our normal state. The disconnected way in which many of us live is abnormal. And the isolated way in which we live, disconnected from Mother Earth can literally make us ill.

In my book, The Root of All Healing: 7 Steps to Healing Anything, I share this perspective about our relationship with Mother Earth and its bearing on our health:

It is a common misunderstanding that the earth is a thing we live on to be used to serve our needs. Earth is as alive as we are and we live in symbiotic relationship with her.

When we lose touch with that awareness, we begin living on top of her instead of with her. When this happens we can easily lose touch with our natural rhythms and cycles. Symptoms of being out of sync with our natural cycles, also known as circadian rhythms include stress, physical tension, emotional frustration, depression…and all of these can contribute to ongoing illness.

In fact, there is a medically recognized disorder caused by being out of balance with nature called Circadian Rhythm Disorder or CRD. Your hormones and neurotransmitters are affected when your circadian rhythms are out of balance, resulting in sleep disorders, appetite issues, hormonal imbalance, loss of sex drive, moods and more.

Mother earth helps us both with our physical and emotional healing

Emotional equilibrium can be very difficult to maintain when you have limited or little connection to the earth. Emotions naturally calm and you gain greater perspective when you spend time in nature. Notice what happens when you take a walk in a park or sit by the water. The negative ions help you feel calmer and in that calm, your intuition and spiritual insights have space in which to be noticed.

Physical and emotional healing progress in the presence of Mother Nature because you relax enough for healing to occur.

Animals can sense when we are at peace, and will feel safer to be near us. We witness this at SpiritQuest every year. Last year at the sacred fire, a butterfly flew into our circle and landed for a period of time on every single person.

Three years ago, a deer came up behind one our elders, standing just feet behind her, and offered the elder a blessing. In the last ten years, more than one critter has found its way to my doorstep or backyard to receive healing energy.

(Here are some SpiritQuest participants reflecting on how these experiences have changed their lives in beautiful ways.)

Check out the weeds in your yard for their healing properties before you pull them up

Medicine plants will grow in your yard according to a medicine woman I respect. You might want to check out those weeds you are pulling out of your yard.

They just might be medicinal plants that have found their way to you to assist you. If you know how to harvest them properly, then you can benefit from them with teas, tinctures and balms. If you don’t, you can sit quietly with them and open up your energy to their medicine properties.

Mother Earth helps and protects us if we take care of her

I once experienced a tree in an ice storm that lost all its branches, except the one bending directly over my humble little trailer. That one stood strong as if to protect me in my home.

These are not unusual experiences when we are connected to Mother Earth. These are normal. This is your birthright as a human being. In order to receive that birthright, you may need to makes some extra effort to spend time in conscious relationship with Mother Earth. You may need to break any patterns of isolation from her and create opportunities to experience her precious gifts.