Self-care through nature journaling

Self-care through nature journaling

I recently asked my community of friends on Instagram about their barriers and challenges, the things that hold them back from bringing nature journaling into their daily lives. The most common answer was that they either don’t have time or don’t prioritise the time to journal. So many of us are fully-booked these days. Our lives are filled with obligations and commitments and it feels like there is simply no way to squeeze another thing into our schedule.

In order to start making time for nature journaling in a busy day we need to adjust our thinking a little bit. If we think of nature journaling as another “activity” that we have to somehow find time for, we certainly won’t do it. An alternative is to start thinking about nature journaling as a way to practice self-care. 

It is so easy to get over-stressed, run-down, depleted and burned out. Self-care is the antidote to this. We all know that to take good care of ourselves we should eat well, sleep more and take regular exercise. Did you also know that time spent in nature has been proven to lower rates of stress, anxiety and high blood pressure and to calm the nervous system? Nature journaling can facilitate this. It is a way for us to slow down, calm the body, quiet our busy mind and find our roots again through nature connection. 

Just like we see tremendous benefits to our wellbeing by practicing meditation for only a few minutes each day, so too we can experience huge benefits by connecting with nature for a few minutes whenever we can. We don’t have to schedule a long hike in the forest or a week-long camping trip (though these activities are wonderful when we do have the time). Even taking small snippets of time out of our day to tune-in and connect with nature can be beneficial. The trick is to begin to understand that nature is all around us and we can access it whenever we take a moment to notice. 

A moment out of our busy days just to slow-down and connect with nature through a nature journal is a beautiful and gentle way to start taking care of ourselves.