Leaning in to Terraphilia

Strength Training for the Heart and Spirit

Hello Friends,

I feel like we’re living in a cyclone, all howling winds and fearful noise. The constant churn of change ratchets up our stress and anxiety, and makes it difficult to focus and take action, even to simply live.

Which is why I am leaning in to terraphilia. Practicing that cell-level attachment to a world larger and more lasting than human concerns reminds us to live with love and care, to stay centered, connected and kind.

Practicing terraphilia is not navel-gazing or a distraction from the real issues. It is a strength-training routine for our hearts and spirits, those muscles essential to living as humans. Especially living in times that are overwhelming and frightening.

Cultivating our inner terraphilia offers connection and hope, inspiration and grounding. It right-sizes our egos, reminding us that humanity is not the center of the universe. Nor are we are all-powerful. Humanity is pretty darned minuscule in the vastness of time and space.

Strong, healthy hearts and spirits are essential to taking what Quakers call “right action,” that is, doing things in a way that lasts, that makes a positive difference in this world. Right actions are reciprocal, give back, create community and nurture the bonds of belonging. In short, terraphilic.

Nature-Time: Our Calm in the Storm

Practicing terraphilia reconnects us to nature, the web of interrelationships that create this living Earth, our home as a species and our sustenance always. Spending time in nature is like bathing in wellness.

As little as 15 minutes spent in a natural surrounding—or even just looking at images of natural surroundings soothes many of our modern ills:

• Nature-time lowers our stress levels

• calms our fight or flight responses

• drops our heart rates and blood pressure

• strengthens our compassion circuits

• increases our ability to focus and concentrate

• improves decision making and critical thinking

• heightens our capacity for both empathy and self-love

• lessens depression and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

In other words, nature-time gives us back our best selves. To live, love and act.

Some Resources: Here’s a video with detailed ideas on how to spend mindful time in nature, from nature-based psychotherapist Jeanne Malgren, author of the Rx Nature newsletter, which is a wonderful resource itself.

Two other nature-inspired Substacks to check out: For intimate glimpses of wildness and also writing process, Amy Hale’s From the Smokey Side of the Fire, and Priscilla Stuckey’s Nature :: Spirit for thoughtful and deep monthly musings.

Practicing Terraphilia Could Be What Saves Us

Terraphilia is our species’ superpower. Cultivating that innate connection with nature reweaves our essential bond with our home and community on this planet. It allows our hearts to unclench and our spirits to feel grounded and strong. It renews our capacity to hope and to give back to this world in whatever way we can.

I know this by personal experience: practicing my own terraphilia saved me in the most painful and difficult years of my life, while I was midwifing the deaths of two of the people I lived most in the world: my husband and my mother.

Cultivating my connection to the larger world of nature and this earth is what kept me from losing my mind after their deaths. As I wandered for the next decade-plus, lost and grieving, terraphilia grounded me, taught me who I am and gave me a purpose.

St. Francis of Assisi Dances on Water, sculptural fountain by Monika B. Kaden, Santa Fe, NM. Even though the fountain is dry for the winter, St. Francis is clearly practicing his terraphilia here—what joy!

Practice: Give Your Devices the Gift of Nature

Here’s a simple way to bring the healing and calming power of nature into your daily life as you practice your terraphilia: use images of nature as wallpaper and screen savers on your electronic devices.

So when you pick up your phone or pad, wake your computer or glance at your television, the first image you see offers calm in the storm, lowering your stress levels, clearing your mind, and lifting heart and spirit.

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We need the practice of terraphilia to strengthen our whole selves. To give us connection and inspiration, joy and hope. To hear the voice of the sacred who speaks within all of us. To remember how to reciprocate for the gifts of the earth and our communities. To discern right action. To simply live.

Remember this: Love does win, not easily, not quickly, but it does win. Love lasts.

Blessings, Susan