The Great Outdoors
Tuesday 05 November 2024
This is not about outdoor sports or activities like running, biking, canoeing, hiking, football or even brisk walking. Those who do it need little encouragement. Those who don't have other things to occupy them, but should ask themselves a couple of simple questions: When you step outside, what do you notice? And, is the outside just a travelling zone for you to get from A to B?
We can get so busy that it's possible to lose sight of Nature altogether, and our relationship with it. Especially as, for many of us, we live in towns, cities and busy suburbs. But you don't have to be in the country to realise that outdoors, wherever you are, the energy of Nature is all around us. In the Far East, they call it ki. There's an old saying: You can live three months without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but not even a second without ki
. It's the invisible, unstoppable energy of life that is holding everything together, including us, constantly renewing every second, like a giant pulse. However much we concrete over, sooner or later a weed will poke up between the cracks. However still or static a tree looks, a tremendous energy turned an acorn into an oak, and it stands there now, sustained by that same energy, as a living, breathing organism (as you probably know, plants and trees breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen - they provide our very breath of life).
Green and blue are the colours of life. Water, sky and vegetation. Greet them and they will greet you. There's plenty of research to show that such a relationship improves your mental acuity, concentration, clarity of thought and creativity. Your immune system gets a boost. Your blood pressure and heart rate can come down. Stress and anxiety can plummet.
Whenever you step outside, breathe in the great energy of your world, your partner for life.