Why Nature is a Powerful Resource during Somatic Sessions
I don't know that I can talk about nature without talking about Thailand. Outside of Bangkok's concrete jungle, Thailand is extraordinarily alive, rich in sunlight, water, and jungle, an ecosystem teeming with life, and oceans equally so. It was only when I left that I had the embodied feeling for the first time that places are people.
Maybe that sounds strange, but leaving Thailand felt the same as separating from a partner. I grieved in the same way, I missed her in the same way, and I still think about her from time to time, wondering if I made the right decision to leave and whether we will find each other again. What's more interesting is that unlike with people, where there can be a feeling of growing apart or a relationship slowly becoming less nourishing, my connection to Thailand feels like something that can't be broken, more like a mother-child bond than anything else.
When I think about the ocean in Thailand, it makes me cry. There is something about her waters that is a resource for me in a way I've spent a long time trying to understand. It's a longing I've met in more than one somatic session, something so pure and simple but so deep it confuses me. How can thinking of the ocean produce this much feeling? How can it hold on with the same voracity as a lost lover you didn't want to give up?
I don't have answers. I only know that in honoring this loss, I believe it has to lead me back to her somehow, whether that's back to the physical place itself, or to a deeper connection that this longing points toward. Maybe she's the closest thing on this physical plane to the mother with a capital M, mother nature, the goddess, the divine feminine, whatever you might like to call it. I wouldn't sit with this idea if it weren't for the hole in my heart and a longing so deep that at the end of the day it has to feel spiritual.
What strikes me is that it isn't just me. In somatic work, when we want to help someone access a felt sense of safety, we often invite them to bring to mind a place or memory the body already knows as safe. It's very often nature that surfaces, and often the ocean specifically. There is something the body already knows about her, and when we visualize a place in nature we love, the nervous system responds as if we were actually there, breathing shifts, muscles soften, a felt sense of safety arrives. It is one of the most reliable resources we have for creating the stability needed to stay present with grief, fear, or older pain. As if we share some collective memory of being held by her. The ocean surrounds us, holds us, and asks nothing in return. It's a place of presence and nurturance, and I know I'm not the only one who longs to go home.
