Connection with Nature

By Juliet Davey

Costa Rica changed everything for me.  I was a suburban London girl whose closest experience to wilderness had been the placid, ambling hills of the English countryside.  They are quite charming but at 23 I wasn’t looking for charming, I was looking for great adventures in far-flung lands, challenges and discoveries.

So I came to Costa Rica and here was a land that appeared untameable.   All those fierce rivers with their fierce will to flow, flanked by luxuriant rainforest, all the heavy mango-scented air.  I swear I could even feel the earth’s pulse beneath the clay-rich soil.  I ate rice and beans, my feet got dirty, my hair wild.  I had found my place.

And here I am again 13 years later.  I am somewhat cleaner and writing this article from the stark white-tiled deck of a house removed from the neatly manicured garden over which it has been built.

I do make an effort to go out into the wilderness and am a regular volunteer at an environmental learning centre up in the hills here.  However, I am ashamed to say that I have only made it into Manuel Antonio National Park twice in this year.

On one of these occasions, my boyfriend and I had entered the park early in the morning and headed straight up Cathedral Point.  There we were, feeling at one with nature – just us, the denizens of the forest and the gentle summer breeze lapping at the trees.  “EXCUSE ME” exploded a voice behind us so strident that I lost my footing.  “I AM TRYING TO GET A WORKOUT IN” she groaned – more L.A. than M.A.  We saw nothing more than the peak of her visor before she bounced away splashing us with sweat.

This lady made me think about just how often we take for granted, and forget to notice, the magnificence of our surroundings, which is the very thing that drew us here in the first place.

In my work as a healer at Holis Wellness Center I draw upon nature’s energy to bring about a better quality of life, peace of mind, improve attitudes and clarity of thought, re-energise, rebalance and relax.  My aim is to get the body, mind and spirit to work at its optimum by promoting self-healing.

By getting out into nature and stilling ourselves to connect with the natural world around us we can self-heal.  Life seems to simplify, problems seem to dissolve and we are nourished.

In the words of Edward Abbey, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”