Embodying Nature’s Wonder For Urban Well-Being
Blog writing
In October 2021, I delivered a workshop at an amazing African-owned restuarant and community garden called KataKata on Brixton Hill, South London. It was a Sunday with patchy weather that allowed the garden to have the fullness of Nature’s possibilities present - a cool breeze rustling the leaves in the trees, sun beams breaking through the branches and mists of rain fall that mirrored that of a rain forest.
The workshop exercises explored KataKata’s flourishing new community garden to ignite intuition and spark the imagination for well-being by reconnecting with the body's natural defence against urban energy drain.
City dwelling is notorious for causing high stress levels and major causes of anxiety.
The body can be compared to an antenna and memory bank - it picks up and holds positive and negative energies.
Where the mind is brilliant is when it protects the body from the shock of relentless noise and toxicity. It tells the brain to tell the body to disconnect or disassociate from the overwhelming nervous energy that is triggered by aggressive urban environments.
Any disconnection from the body denies us access to the body's inner wisdom to heal and maintain a healthy personal balance.
Nature also competes for space to be.
Trees and plant life are social beings living with intelligent root systems exchanging nutrients with neighbouring trees to help them out.
But trees and plant life can also go into shock when they are young and planted in harsh highly polluted areas. They need tending to.
However, despite the discouraging conversations around how difficult it can be to live in cities, human nature and plant life persists, pushes through. It will break through the tarmac, through the brickwork, and it does not passively wait for cracks in the concrete to appear, or sneak out through the gaps in paving stones.
Undoubtably, there is nothing like having green space, fantastic views that stretch into beautiful horizons and being able to ground oneself next to a large body of water, such as your local lake or pond. But many of us do not have the luxury of this.
Many only have access to allotments, maybe a house plant, maybe a flower box on a balcony. But the point is to be able to tune into a side of yourself that recognises that we are made of the same stuff of plants, trees, flowers, the Earth…
~ Zena ~