This place, it feels like home. In the middle of the jungle and with few familiar faces, with critters you’ve never seen before and with all the noises on all the “nature sounds” tracks you’ve ever heard combined. But the feeling of home is still there, and it comes from the feeling of being cared for.
Mother Nature knows just how to care for us.
She forces us to plug back into our own internal nature. Our nature is to be grounded and balanced and feeling good, and simply by being here our Mother gives us exactly what we need.
She shows us how fast our mind is running, because when the mind moves fast, so do the eyes. And in the jungle, when your eyes move fast, you miss everything. You feel blind. And it’s the jungle that highlights this because there is so much to be seen. The jungle itself is almost begging for you to see it. To pay attention and extract all the detail you can.
Because it’s uncomfortable to not feel like you can see when your eyes are wide open.
She stops you to show you how much you’re not breathing.
With quick thoughts and quick eyes, our breath can do naught but follow. And when She shows us how much we cannot see, She’s also telling us to breathe again. And when you take that gulp of beautiful, warm, humid, vibrantly alive air in, you realize that you haven’t done that in far too long. Too long in fact, to remember.
And then you sit in wonder at the medicine that Mother Nature has just given you.
You wonder at the ability to see clearly as your vision eventually starts to pick out the small movements of insects, the different hues of green and the details of a leaf that you were sitting next to but couldn’t see before.
You wonder at the fact that you’ve been missing this without knowing it.
You wonder at the ability to breathe and that each breath seems to lift you, not physically but almost.
And the wonder of feeling as though you can breathe again and see again gives you strength. It also gives you the inspiration to come back for a little more Jungle Medicine each day. Because a little sip of Mother-Nature-care each day feels good.
And being cared for feels like home.
Also read: “The Best Alarm Clock: Howler Monkeys“.