Chapter 2

Interwoven: A Sacred Web of Well-Being

Now that the green world has firmly taken root in my being, there is no turning back. A day without conscious connection to the natural world feels uncomfortable, constrained and lacklustre to me. I recognize my need for that wild connection and depend on its support and guidance as much as I need the daily flow of reiki energy pulsing through my life. Yet many of us do not, and our collective rejection of nature and move away from the wild unpredictability of the natural world has led to a deep imbalance and disharmony. We see this not only in the precarious relationship between our rapid human development and its harmful effect on the environment but also in the rise of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual disease. This chapter is an invitation to stop and pause, remember, honour and appreciate the connections that flow through you in the sacred web of life and reflect on what is essential for your personal well-being.

Nature and Well-being

I believe that a key element of our well-being lies in us, each individually and collectively, re-establishing a relationship with the natural world that is more in balance, co-creative and inclusive. A lifestyle that allows the wildness of nature to seep into its order, rather than reject it, also invites inspiration, connection and creativity and flows with a different rhythm. The nature cure that once belonged to the past is making a comeback. Research is now able to scientifically show us what perhaps we have long known in our beings. If you feel energized by green spaces and natural landscapes, it will come as no surprise to hear how important nature is for our physiological, mental and spiritual wellbeing. Studies have shown, for example, that a hospital patient with a natural view from a window will recover faster than other patients. So this is certainly something to consider when working with clients in your treatment space. If you don’t have a window with a natural view, add a beautiful image of a place in nature that inspires you—it will benefit your clients too.

The rise of eco-therapies like shrinrin-yoku, the Japanese therapy that is now commonly known as forest bathing, to help us with common ailments such as high blood pressure, stress, difficulty sleeping, depression and boosting immunity, demonstrates the increasing need in our society to reconnect with the natural world. Not only do we need, for the sake of our survival, to repair the physical damage that we are doing to our environment, but we also need to care for our green spaces and reconnect to our natural environment for the sake of our mental health.

Nature makes us feel alive inside, inspired and empowered, yet sadly we compromise this connection for urbanized comforts and modern technology. I don’t need science to show me that spending time in nature will help me feel better—do you? But I’m glad that plant neurobiology is helping the wider world change our overall view of plants to be more positive. We might even have more in common with plants than we think.

Many of the clients who I see in my reiki practice are suffering from anxiety, stress, overwhelm, grief or depression in some form. I also see in these clients a disconnect from their true sense of self, often in the form of low self-esteem or lack of self-love. The source of much of our illness is disconnection, a disconnection from our true sense of self and our perceived separation from others and our environment. In my experience reiki helps us to journey deeper, open to love for ourselves and others and heal this sense of disconnect, to rediscover a sense of belonging. I have also found that plants have a similar effect, which is why I encourage clients and students to develop a conscious and intimate relationship with the natural world, working with nature as a “spiritual ally”. Aligning with plants in this way helps us to remember the truth of who we are as creatures of this Earth and to feel a sense of connection to the web of life, which provides fresh insight and new perspective on the world. It helps us feel a sense of belonging and connection, which in turn brings more self-confidence, the ability to value our gifts and share our magic with the world.

Once the spirit of the natural world touches our hearts, our inner landscape changes and the natural landscape outside of us also starts to have more meaning, more value and more purpose. We start to move through life feeling more grounded, alive and supported by our environment.

It seems to me that as humans moved away from an agricultural lifestyle towards industry and modernization, we created a whole new set of lifestyle diseases for ourselves. Reconnecting with nature is a great healing tool to help bring back the harmony and balance into our lifestyles and bring subtle healing to many of our modern illnesses such as stress, depression, anxiety and feelings of loneliness. Just as reiki works to rebalance and harmonize our internal systems (homeostasis) and stimulate the body’s ability to heal on the physical, emotional and spiritual level, so too does the natural world. Understanding the language of nature involves nurturing a personal relationship with your natural environment and reaching a greater level of intimacy with it.

This is the type of relationship that we have to dive into and experience for ourselves in order to gain our own first-hand personal experience of the landscape around us and the plant beings that inhabit the space with us. As we break down the invisible barriers between us and the natural world we can begin to perceive and decipher the more rhythmic and subtle ways in which nature communicates with us. This requires an intimate knowing and experience of nature that is unique to each of us. As reiki practitioners we can ask for reiki to flow through us while we are outside in nature to help with this connection. Reiki Level 2 practitioners can also invoke the distance symbol to help us bridge the gap between us and the plant world.

The Sacred Web of Life

Our ancestors experienced a much more integrated relationship with their environment. It was their shelter, nourishment and medicine as well as being part of their mythology and creation story. In the Western world we no longer experience the intimacy that we once enjoyed when our lifestyles tied us more closely to the land. As we industrialized and migrated to the city, it’s as if we vacuum packed our lives and pushed nature’s wildness further away. Our walls keep us safe inside and act as a barrier between us and the often unpredictable dance of nature outside. Even the way that we process and package food now distances us from the natural curves and grit of nature. Consider how far removed French fries are from the dirty potato covered in soil that your ancestors may have dug up in a field.

We know that we are not spending enough time outdoors feeling the elements close to us, and we also know that children in particular are suffering from not having this connection. Nature deficit disorder is a term first used by Richard Louv in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods to describe the alienation that all of us, but especially children, feel from nature, which affects our mental health, making us more vulnerable to negative moods among other symptoms. Another term, nature knowledge deficit, is also used today; this speaks to the lack of understanding that we have of our natural environment. Many of us may be learning more about nature from a wildlife programme on television than we are from a walk in our local woods. This is fine if it’s knowledge that you seek, but if you seek to truly feel and understand, then learning through direct experience is the only way to create a personal connection that will carry more meaning.

We are deeply connected to the natural world that surrounds us and creates our environment. We are all capable of feeling this connection with nature when we allow it in. For most of us, we have to make time to schedule a walk on the beach or in the woods and it takes all our self-control and some open-mindedness to simply be in nature, close to home. Many of us go to huge expense to take ourselves and our families off on far-flung adventures to exotic landscapes, because we forget how to appreciate the beauty of our own local natural landscape.

The intimate relationship between the human and plant world has evolved over generations of experience and practices. Ethnobotany is the term used to denote the relationship between man and vegetation. We often look to indigenous cultures who still value and respect the interconnectedness of humans and nature to teach us how to remember right relationship with the land and with the nature beings. Many tribal cultures still practise and employ the customs, religious rites, myths, song, foods and medicinal practices that they have developed over generations in harmony with the natural world. Certainly these indigenous practices can be inspiring, but they must not be viewed through rose-coloured glasses either; neither can they be transferred into the way most of our lives have evolved today. Our path to well-being involves finding our own way to bring our relationship with the natural world back into balance.

As creatures born of this Earth, part of the same creative force that flows through the wind, the trees, the plants, mountains, ocean and landscapes large and small, we are all interconnected, part of a sacred web of life. We are in a sacred and intimate relationship with the natural world because we are it too. Perhaps the most intimate relationship of all is that of our breath. We breathe the oxygen generated by the plants and phytoplankton that cover the ocean’s surface. They are literally providing us with the breath of life. It’s thanks to them that we are able to live and breathe. In perfect partnership, we breathe out into the atmosphere carbon dioxide, which in turn is absorbed by the plants. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship that most of us take for granted and don’t even acknowledge.

In this sacred web of life we know that we are not separate, we are connected to a much greater whole and much more connected to plants than we acknowledge.

Aside from our breath we are physically connected to the plant world via the food chain. We have to eat plants or an animal that has eaten a plant in order to survive. Of course, when we die our physical body will go back into the earth to be broken down by the thousands of microorganisms in the soil. On a metaphysical level, quantum physics demonstrates that we are all particles moving around in a matrix of infinite potential. We experience this field when we practise reiki and connect with the different vibrations and frequencies in the field of energy that connects us all. In this expansive experience you come to realize there is no distance between the field of energy and you, and you also sense the field itself as you. This can be experienced too when you breathe consciously out in nature, for example with a tree. In fact, it confirms the message and guidance that I receive over and over from the green world. A constant yet subtle whisper from the land that tells me, “We are all connected.”

These are the words that came to me during a meditation out in nature while on retreat in May 2019 in the Scottish countryside.

“We are all connected. There is no separation. I am in every aspect of you and you are in all of me. Each and every piece of me shines out through you. Each and every fragment or lost piece of you can be found in aspects of me (nature). We are all part of the greater whole and we each encompass all of these parts. What you see outside of you is a reflection of what plays out inside of you. What you see out of balance in the world arena around you is also what you sense out of alignment within your body and soul.”

Shinto, Kami, and Nature

Interacting with the natural world has always been important in Japan, where the Sinto religion believes that spirits and the souls of ancestors exist throughout the natural world. Shinto (meaning the way of the gods) is the oldest indigenous system of belief in Japan and is practised by 70 per cent of the population, although many Japanese people consider themselves both Buddhist and Shinto. Shinto can be considered to be a form of shamanism because it shares with other shamanic traditions an animistic view of life, which means attributing a spirit to everything that exists in nature.

The Shinto belief connects us to a sacred web of kami and promotes a sense of awe at the power and mystery of the natural world. Kami are the spirits that can be present in all things. All life, landscapes, mountains, rivers and natural phenomena (like tsunamis), objects, animals and human beings (living or deceased) can be vessels for kami. Kami are not separate from nature; they are part of the natural world. If you travel through the forests of Japan or climb Mount Kurama, you will see many small shrines that honour these natural deities; this is because Shinto strives to maintain harmony between the humans and the kami. The custom of viewing natural events throughout the cycle of the year, such as viewing the cherry blossoms in spring, the autumn leaves and the snow in the winter, aligns with the Shinto ideal of connecting with nature.

Despite the highly modernized society of Japan today, Shinto continues to occupy the central part of spiritual life, with its respect for the sense of power and mystery embodied by the natural world that is often beyond human control or understanding. It’s likely that the system of reiki is also influenced by Shintoism as well as other religions, and the founder of reiki, Mikao usui, may even have been a Shinto priest.

EXERCISE

Self-Treatment in Nature

Refer back to the earlier gassho meditation in nature exercise for details on how to prepare.

When you feel ready, landed and relaxed, connect with reiki and ask reiki to flow in the way that you have been taught.

Begin a self-treatment by either placing your hands in set positions over your energy centres, focusing on areas of your body that feel they need love and attention, or simply in the most comfortable positions for your body.

Invite reiki to flow and, at the same time, invite in the spirit of the plants and the nature beings. You can do this in a very simple prayer, something like this:

May the nature beings and elementals that surround me gift me with guidance, healing and love that I need today for my highest good. May I feel supported by Mother Earth and all her creatures.

If you enjoy visualization, imagine a beautiful green pair of hands reaching up from the ground to hold you. Allow yourself to be held and supported by the Earth.

Allow yourself to open and receive the love and guidance of the natural world.

Continue your self-treatment, moving your hands as you feel guided, noticing which areas you feel drawn to and any sensations that you feel in your body.

You may feel so relaxed that you fall asleep. That is totally fine—you know that you are still receiving the benefits of reiki energy and you are still held by the energy field of the natural world that surrounds you.

When you feel ready, bring your self-treatment to an end in the way that you are familiar with. You may also like to use a prayer like the following to convey your gratitude to the nature beings.

My heartfelt gratitude to Mother Earth and all her creatures. Thank you to the nature beings and elementals for providing me with the guidance, healing and love that I need today.

If you have your journal or reiki logbook with you, make a note of the treatment and how you are feeling now. Note down any insight that you intuitively feel you are being given from the environment that surrounds you. It may be that a particular tree or the shape of a cloud has caught your attention, or that you suddenly have a memory that has been un-remembered for a long while.

Note down everything. often it is the subtle nuances that carry the most powerful messages for us.

Before you leave your space, give thanks to the environment for holding you in that healing space and for any healing or guidance that you feel you have received.

Plant Spirit Reiki Meditation

Questions for Self-Reflection

1 How do you connect with nature and show your appreciation to the green world?

2 What simple and daily action can you take to acknowledge the plants around you?

3 How can you bridge the gap between the natural world outside and your safe space inside? In what way could you incorporate plants into your home, self-reiki practice or reiki space?

Learnings and Blessings

The purpose of this chapter was to remind you of the sacred web of life and the sense of connection that we share with the natural world as creatures of nature ourselves. Shifting our mindset by walking through nature with wonder and gratitude starts to reawaken the knowing of our ancestors. In this way we begin to rekindle the innate bonds and bridge the gap between our human lives inside and the untamed rhythm of nature that plays for our attention outside our windows. This connection provides an essential link at the core of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. It feels like a natural fit for our reiki practice that the Shinto religion, so prominent in Japan, the birthplace of reiki, has such admiration and respect for the spirit of nature that it is woven into almost every aspect of Japanese life.

So how can we take steps to bridge the ever-increasing gap between our human busyness and the wildness of nature that dances outside our window?