Healing With Nature Meditations

Meditation Prompts by Maryam Ahmad

Imagine your grief as a night sky. What constellations does it contain? What patterns can you trace among its stars?

Tell me a story about the water--where it came from, where it’s going, the secrets it carries, the mysteries of its many shapes.

Listen to the sounds of this picture--lake water gulping on the shore, wind making melodies with the leaves. Now listen even closer, to the soft-pitched whispers of the trees. Doesn’t it sound like they are saying, stay? Stay, they whisper, over and over again. It’s worth it.

Consider the shape of your grief, the weight of it. Examine its sheer ugliness, that dark underbelly, those strange odors. Think about the unfairness of grief, the unevenness with which it settles. Now, if you can, move outside. Let yourself turn wild, dancing furiously, scattering your grief around you like seeds. The wind will carry these seeds away, and many seasons from now, new growth will bloom from the graves.

Place your index and middle finger on your opposite wrist, slightly off center, towards the thumb. Sit like this for a moment, letting the silence settle in, until you can feel your heartbeat. Take note of its rhythm, the steady pulse of blood. This beat is your body pushing back against grief. The fist-sized muscle of your heart telling grief, you can stay, but you can’t swallow me.

Write or sketch the origin story of Grief. Where did she come from, and where did she settle? Where does she like to hide?

Find a private area outside, one where you are alone with nature. Consider a painful memory or experience you have been carrying, something that makes your body feel like stone. Whisper this grief to the land. Imagine the earth absorbing it from your rooted feet. Now imagine your grief turning into a seed deep within the soil, soon to emerge in a new, beautiful form to greet the sun. Offer a thanks and a blessing to the earth for its work of regeneration.

Come, look at these gentle folds of earth. Monuments to the wild, honoring the edge of things. Unforgiving in their beauty, so human in the way they grieve.

There is a sanctity to the way wild things decay, a precision to their falling apart. Let our dissolutions all be so particular, beautiful, brave.

At first glance, the forest seems still, but for the trees bowing with the wind, leaves whispering under your feet. Stand in the clearing long enough, and you’ll start to notice the living and breathing and dying that’s happening all around you–molecules shifting shape, cells regenerating, plants making magic from the light. You, too, are ever-transforming, slowly becoming something strange, something new.

The magic of rocks lies in their heaviness, their weight. The way they fill up space, refusing to easily bend to human will. Subject only to the forces of wind and water, they erode in jagged layers, disappearing over centuries, leaving traces of their wisdom behind.

Tall grasses make music with the wind, a low-pitched melody to fill your dreams. Hum this song of the prairie to yourself, surrendering to its magic and peace.

Light dances on moving water, and small suns rest on the surface of the lake itself. An infinite reflection; a mirror to the soft parts of ourselves. Peer into the water and tell me what otherworldly things you see.

In the forest, new growth depends on decay. Trees rot into the soil; organisms eat away at leaves. Slowly, the old and dying disappear, yet the new forms that take their place carry the memory of all that was lost. In this way, everything becomes eternal, remnants etched into our bones.

New Prompts

Write down three significant things you have lost in your life, whether it is loved ones, or time you have lost to illness, or dreams you had to let go off. Take a moment to acknowledge and honor these losses, and the grief they have caused. Now imagine the grief resettling in your body, rearranging itself to create space for new dreams, new love.
Spending time in and around nature is a powerful tool for healing, yet we can’t always be in the natural world when we need to. Take a moment to consider the physical space you call home. How can you bring the beauty and healing powers of nature to this space? Whether it is a dried flower, a rock, or a photograph of your favorite place outside, take a moment to place a natural object, artwork, or photograph of nature in your space.
Draw a picture or sketch of your favorite place outside. Don’t worry about how accurate your drawing looks; instead, try to represent the emotions this place evokes in you, whether through color, shapes, or lines.
Draw a picture or write a description of what healing looks like to you. What does it feel like inside your body? How does it affect the way you move, speak, and interact with the world?
If healing had a color, what color would it be and why?
Take a moment to consider the beautiful aspects of rocks—for example, their sloping shapes, the many colors they contain, the way they take up space. The next time you’re outside, take a moment to pick up a rock, or feel the surface of one, and consider the many mysteries it holds beneath its surface.