Enjoying the spring sunshine

I’ve spent years telling myself I ‘should’* enjoy the winter. I ‘should’ enjoy nature in all its changing seasons.

And that not to do so is somehow a personal failing. A lack of appropriate gratitude.

But if I move out of my head and listen to what my body is telling me…

It’s telling me something very clear when the March sunshine starts to warm up.

When the spring bulbs flower, when the blossom buds on the crab apples and the nettle patch goes fresh-green-crazy.

My body reacts. It wants to soak up that warmth. My face wants to turn to the morning sun. My ears gather up all that new energy and life in the birdsong. My feet start to yearn to be bare in the grass.

Winter has its place. For rest. For hibernation. Pause. For turning inwards – and also in the past for communities gathering beside fires to tell their stories and sing their songs.

And, yes, we can put on warm and waterproof clothing and get out and enjoy the crisp frosty days and the wild stormy days and even (maybe!) the seemingly endless damp, grey days.

But/and* spring is quite wonderful when it arrives.

I’ve retreated indoors to the office to write this. But I can hear the great tit’s squeaky call and the robins and wrens singing. I’ve been out photographing all the flowers I could find in my garden.

Us Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years. And for at least 288,000 years of that we lived as hunter-gatherers, dependent on the natural world around us and living in close attunement to it. Agriculture came along around 12,000 years ago, and this strange modern industrialised world around 300 years ago. The blink of an eye in our evolution.

So I still feel that call of spring deep in my DNA. And all those tens of thousands of years our species spent in warmer regions from our evolution in Africa, before moving northwards.

The warmth of spring feels like home.

So this year, I’m allowing myself to delight in it, to really revel in these sunshiny days when the warmth gently seeps through to my bones.

Without feeling guilty that I’m somehow betraying the spirit of winter, or that I ‘should’, somehow, feel the same all year round.

I’ve been stopping myself fully enjoying something in the here and now because of all the ‘shoulds’ and ‘yeah buts’ that circulate in my mind.

And it’s getting out into nature in a different way that is helping me on this journey of learning to be more present, to enjoy what is, to listen to my body as well as my thoughts.

I’ve been on my own journey of changing relationship with the rest of nature. In my early twenties, it was all about adventure and climbing the biggest hills – nature as a playground and a challenge. At other times, it’s felt tamer and more domesticated – canalside walks with handy tea shops, growing veg.

These days, I’m learning to let the rest of nature lead. And to remember that I am nature, part of it all rather than some separate alien creature who ventures out into it when I remember that it’s good for me and that it always makes me feel better!

Taking my therapy practice outdoors and leading group events to help people reconnect with nature is part of my journey.

If you’d like connection with the natural world to be part of your journey, you can join me at an event or come outdoors with me for counselling.

Event details and booking at Eventbrite.

Info on my outdoor therapy service.

*See my Instagram posts on the ‘shoulds’ and the word ‘AND’ in therapy! @natureconnectnw