Go into Nature

Last week I wrote about going into the silence.  It truly is the best place to invest your time, whether in quiet thought, meditation, or writing.  Today I want to write about my favorite kind of silence: going into nature.

This doesn't have to be elaborate, like going to some nature preserve.  Instead, you can go to a park, or even slowly walk through your neighborhood, stopping ever so often to just focus on some detail of landscaping and to just  . . . listen.  Or, you can do my favorite method, garden in a way that lets nature in.

The benefits of going into nature as your means of going into the silence have been demonstrated by research.  (As a side note, this leads to one of the great paradoxes our age has not yet grappled with entirely: what to do when science and data vindicate a practice that doesn't seem to follow the rigid or analytic patterns of science.  But that's the thing: analysis the is the tool the human uses to improve life.  When there is a conflict between the system and the human, just go ahead and value the human).

Check out the webMD article on Eco-therapy or this website that clearly enthusiastic on the subject.  If you share my intuition that a connection to nature is the right thing for humans, you might skip the articles.

The real trick, however, is spending the time in nature.  To do that you have to giving yourself permission to spend the time in this way.  To give yourself that permission, in the short run, you might need to get more done in less time.  If you're in that situation, look into my time management tricks.

More on Modified Navy Showers

I have been sticking with modified navy showers for months now.  I do not know how well the practice will hold up in winter, though.

I really like taking most of my showers this way, particularly when I have productive work to do.  For one, it's quicker, so I can get back to work.  For another, by being cold water, I am given a jolt that puts me in a better mental work space for about two hours.

To my subjective experience, it has about the same effect as 30 minute walk in terms of getting me ready for more work, but it is at least 25 minutes quicker (with the set up, clean up, getting dresses, etc.  The actual shower is almost certainly less than 1 minute 30 seconds).

In fact, often I actively seek out a modified navy shower when I am starting to feel a little sluggish.