Inspired by Nature

I spent a few days in Toronto recently, and while I loved the energy of being in a big city, something interesting happened when I took a shortcut through a tiny park beside St James’ Church.

Almost instantly, the hustle and bustle of the sidewalk was replaced by what I can only call a serenity. By people acting differently than the way we act on the conveyor belt that is the city sidewalk. All of a sudden we’re given permission to just be. I watched a woman feeding breadcrumbs to a flock of pigeons. Someone else was playing with their dog. Everyone was smiling, including me, and I swear it happened as I crossed an imaginary line into a different sense of space. I found myself slowing down; breathing deeply, and while it took no more than a minute to pass through, I felt myself being reenergized by my surroundings. Dare I say, it felt like a one minute reset.

Why is that?
What is it about nature that has that effect on us?

Here’s my take.
I speak a lot these days about The Connection, about the state of flow we experience when doing something we love. We can also experience this state by simply stripping down our experience to whats real. We may not consider ourselves lovers of nature. I mean, you might actually hate camping. You might even think you hate trees. But my guess is that deep down, all of us on some level sense that nature is our foundation. It’s who we are. It’s where we come from.

It’s that connection that we feel when stepping into the tiniest of spaces amidst a sea of high rise buildings and activity that stops us in our tracks, gently reminding us to breathe. To breathe, and just be…

Try it.
It might be just what you need to balance out a busy day; a busy week.
If you’re like me, it might take more than an urban park to balance out the effects of a busy year, or a busy life, and you might need to seek out a bigger space to get that balance. The kind of space I sought out recently on a trip into a remote area of Alaska. You can read more about that trip here.