How you can use natural beauty to restore yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Over 200 years ago, William Wordsworth alluded to the idea that nature has the power to restore our weary hearts and minds.  In his poem “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798”, he eloquently describes how the beauty of nature can provides us with “tranquil restoration”. 

 

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration.

                                      

These sublime words of Wordsworth also point out that city living, whether in the 18th or 21^st centuries, often causes us to feel depleted, disconnected, and isolated, with a vague free-floating anxiety, or the painful thought that nothing makes sense including our own stressful lives.  As a result of these thoughts and feelings, we work at low efficiency with little creativity and no sense of fulfilment.  We often are irritable being barely able to tolerate the many minor difficulties of living in a complex society. 

 

The good news is that recent psychological research clearly supports the very solution that Wordsworth proposed so eloquently 212 years ago, specifically the solution of taking time to experience natural beauty in order to bring about “tranquil restoration” of our minds and souls.