Wellbeing of trees and other beings

Reading Bill Bailey’s book while i recuperate from an end of summer cold (the worst type).

Bill is talking about ataraxia, the sensor of tranquility and his tree hugging tendencies. Ataraxia specifically arising from looking at or being ‘in nature’ and with trees.

I have felt that sense of tranquility and wellbeing by talking a walk along a river riparian zone or in a back hills of bush near our place. I have felt that sense walking through an avenue of tall bamboos. I have certainly felt that sense in a rainforest where you breathe in the forest moisture as well as bathing in that green hue.

The shinrin-yoku health policy of Japan for ‘forest bathing’ (arising from 1980’s research) and some other ‘nature prescribing’ forward thinkers is a tonic for urban dwellers surrounded by unnatural surfaces and noise, concrete and grey.

Get out there, look up, breathe in, hug a tree.

John Seed and Deep Ecology has a lovely short activity – find a hopeful plant of any kind, a tall tree, a blade of grass, a weed.  Look at the plant for a while then realise as you breathe, that you are breathing of the plant, the oxygen coming out of its pores into the air and mixing to be inhaled through your nostrils. Breathe a few times pondering this fact.  Then realise that as you breathe out, that plant is breathing your air in through it’s pores. In and out, back and forward, sharing life, living together.  Give some gratitude that you can both breathe together.

So how do we be more with nature to find that tranquility, the ataraxia, the sense of wellbeing?

• plant and care for anything
• nurture your weeds (most are very useful or edible).
• create a microforest – it’s a movement all around the world, pocket forests, miyawaki tiny forests – read more here https://earth.org/microforests/
• use your local commons – parks, forests, trails –  for walking, picnics, restful times. By using these spaces, there is more connection with and support for keeping them.
• Breath with a plant deep ecology style.
• observe seasonal changes in your surrounds and make a journal about them.
• Hug a tree or two.

Get some ataraxia in ya!

Bill Bailey’s remarkable guide to happiness Quercus (written during covid times when life was uncertain, fragile and heightened all our senses and we all needed to understand true happiness better). Thanks Bill. Thanks Trees.