How a Few Mindful Days in Nature Can Help You Feel Better

When life wears you down, what do you do? Normally for me, I’d just kind of suck it up, go to the gym to punch the stress away, maybe grab a book to retreat into another world, or my journal to write my woes away. I mediate, or at least try to, when things get bad, sometimes all you can do is breath. Deeply. I’ve read book after book about dealing with stress, nothing seemed to make a dent in the way I was feeling. Why? Because I wasn’t just stressed, I was burnt out and burnout takes time to recover from. Being a single mother, working full time in a job that just doesn’t suit you, having cancer among other things will do that to you, especially if you don’t take care of yourself. We may think we take care of ourselves, but unless you are truly taking time for you, alone, then you are leaving out an important step.

With everything that has happened in my life, specifically over the past year, I was ordered by my doctor to go on a retreat. It took some time and some planning and finally I did it. Four days of nature, meditation, Tai Chi, Qigong, movement classes, yoga, reiki, charka attunement, among other activities and no phone, no computer, no news, no technology at all. I thought I’d lose my already fragile mind. How can a city girl, that always has her phone by her side manage four full days without it?