Venturing the wild places and expanding the internal horizon
Time in nature is one of the best medicines.
Living in urban environments, bombarded with external stimulation and wired by technology and air pollution has us tapped into a plus or positive ion charge, speaking energy terms. Exposing yourself to the minus or negative charge of the natural environment, especially the ocean and water sources, has a rebalancing effect on your biochemical system.
Negative ions are beneficial to the human body while positive ions are harmful. Ions are invisible charged particles (either molecules or atoms) which bear an electric charge. Positive ions are molecules that have lost one or more electrons, whereas negative ions are oxygen atoms with extra negatively charged ions. They are present in the air (more saturated in nature) and in our bodies. Negative ions contribute to our health by neutralising free radicals, revitalizing cell metabolism, enhancing immune function, purifying the blood, balancing out the autonomic nervous system and promoting deep sleep and healthy digestion.
The non-linear shapes and patterns in which nature presents itself challenges our brain receptors and our cognitive thinking differently to the very linear structures of our modern urbanisation and thus regulates brain activity. Setting your gaze on the horizon of a landscape allows the mind to expand its vision – with the optic nerve directly linked to the brain – this provides immediate perspective and quite literally gives you that ‘head space’. Exposure to the light of the sun and the moon has a very welcoming effect on our mood and energy levels compared to artificial lighting. And we all know that the simple act of breathing clean air, drinking pure water and paying attention to consuming unprocessed foods renews body and spirit.
Every perceived thought is a reflection and a projection of my internal world and is ultimately what I create in the external world.
Science testifies that everything is made of atoms vibrating at different frequencies, that everything is energy and nothing is really solid. Your energetic frequency will attract the exact same frequency. Think about this for a bit.
Throughout your life experiences you take on an energetic charge/energetic baggage from your surrounding, your up-bringing and conditioning that is often out of resonance with your core frequency. You could say it gets polluted. Recognise every major obstacle, illness or disagreement that you experience as an opportunity to clear this energetic baggage and as a process of cleansing that has been triggered. What has come to the surface is cleared by you becoming aware of the trigger and consciously directing your focus towards a vibration that enhances your resonance for the better. You will experience that you repeat certain patterns or lessons until you have learnt to inhabit and manifest a new vibration that serves you better. They key is YOU – by moving yourself into the vibration you desire to embody, you are creating a world accordingly.
That’s serious internal work. It’s your power and your responsibility.
No one in the world can do this inner work for me.
This is something you only really get to grasp by being alone. Spending assigned periods of time with yourself, from as little as 15 min a day to extended ventures into your heart and soul.
Travelling into places well beyond the comfort zone and navigating through the day to day experiences provokes personal growth – as real as it gets.
Taking up meditation or other mindfulness practices can immensely impact the ways that you see, experience and direct your daily life. Spending time away in nature alone for a few days has always done wonders and embodied great shifts in the ways I could observe myself. Solitude allows you to access your deeper thoughts and feelings and gives you the space to sieve through the subtleties of your sub-consciousness.
I am the only one holding myself back from anything I desire to create or experience.
Apply the work that asks you to shed, to become less of who you are NOT, for you to become who you are beneath and beyond your practical confines, sub-conscious beliefs, emotional and psychological ties. It can often feel like a full time job to patiently, lovingly, firmly look at yourself and identify your fears, patterns, possibilities and potentials towards stepping into the life you wish to create. Make yourself focus, prioritise and act with intention towards your greater aims and values. Identify changes that you need to make to bring you into alignment with your vision. Ask yourself, what is the best that could possibly happen? That’s a high vibrational thought! Let it instigate your next move.
Discomfort is an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth and joy is an internal choice to shift yourself into alignment with what you hold as true.
Become accepting of discomfort, seek it, lean into it. If we are meant to tap into the eternal and expansive part of our being, then that must be boundless and for us to shift our boundaries we need to step into them. Brace yourself with an equanimity of a trained mind in which you remain present in pain as much as you do in the moments of joy. Don’t hold on to either, hold yourself in the moment as it is. No fuss.
The practice of Yoga proves itself as an evidential process in learning exactly this – to expand from discomfort and inhabit integrity. This concept of a physical practice with a metaphysical intention asks you to explore the edges of the gross structure of the body and unlock the more deeply embedded subtleties of the psyche.
The body then becomes a mirror to the reflections of our mind and a redefined medium of the mind’s reactions to the challenges of the practice and to the world around us.
Any practice that you can devote yourself to makes the day more meaningful and by committing to it daily, creates a purposeful life.
By reinforcing a discipline or really just finding something that you can willingly attend to often and make it the pivotal centre of anything you do, continuously sets you up for a good kick-start into the day! You are then tapping into a positive momentum that keeps spinning on its own centrifugal force.
Commit to yourself and take responsibility. It’s an ongoing journey with no actual destination other than you refining the nuances to which your soul responds.
Eva Eichhorn 