Essay: exploring community care and connection with nature as a portal to positive actions for our natural world.

Written By Ellen Rowland

Lately, I’ve been curious as to how nature-based healing practices might generate greater connections with nature and with one another, and whether this might inspire more pro-environmental behaviours and care for the world we live in.

This essay explores some musings and research I have carried out on the subject, and whilst it merely scratches the surface, I hope it will provide some different perspectives on how we think about self care and wellbeing.

As a herbal practitioner, I operate in the (sometimes fickle) world of “wellness”. The industry’s focus on a hyper-individualised version of ‘self care’ often feels extractive and selfish, and fails to consider the collective, the communal and all the other factors that impact our wellbeing.

The focus of wellbeing advice in the context of nature connection is often on the self - and the possibilities for individual humans to gain something from nature, rather than considering our responsibility to our world as an inherent part of it. Nurturing our world and respecting it feels more fundamental to healing: we can’t truly heal in isolation.

How can sensory connections with nature inspire pro-environmental behaviours? 

This summer, I met with land stewards and foragers in wild places, nature writers in botanical gardens, therapists, sound healers and forest bathing leaders to explore how sensory, nature-based wellbeing practices might inspire positive actions and healing for communities and nature alike.

The Nature Cure: another way to commodify the wild?
In recent years, a popular subgenre of ‘nature cure’ writing has emerged. The fact that nature can heal individual mental or emotional health is a happy fact - but some argue that it is not ‘nature’s job’ to heal humans: it exists for its own sake - and writing of this type has received criticism for commodifying nature in yet another way, as something for humans to use to their own ends (1).

But the jury is still out on whether the medicalisation of nature is inherently problematic. For example, green social prescribing has profound healing effects for patients (2, 3). However, most current analysis does not consider nature-based social prescribing holistically. It explores purely contact with nature, as opposed to “contact and connection” to it (4). This idea of connection seems to be the missing ingredient.

These interventions connect individuals with their natural world and the wider community, increasing feelings of happiness and wellbeing (5). Social contact has proven health outcomes: social connection is protective for both health and longevity (6, 7, 8). Despite this, we live in an increasingly disconnected society (9).

Treating nature as separate from humans and exploiting it for our own wellbeing is problematic, since it perpetuates a view of the natural world as a commodity. This mindset has led us to the current climate emergency and keeps us in the extractive attitude of “how do I get more from this earth?” rather than considering the interdependence of all living species - a concept known as ecocentrism.

Britain ranked lowest for nature-connectedness in a 2022 Swedish study that explored our failing relationship to nature, and a lack of nature-connectedness was more prevalent in “affluent, technological consumer-based economies that consume natural resources and reduce biodiversity” (10).

Ecocentrism: the key to unlocking pro-environmental behaviour?

Ecocentric means life-centric, and does not prioritise one type of life over another - it’s a web (11). This approach is a more productive way of viewing our world, since it values all life as having inherent value regardless of species or sentience, and motivates the most “ardent pro environmental actors” (12). Despite this influence, eco-anxiety remains a significant challenge.

Eco-anxiety and nature writing: its influence on mindset

Some nature and climate writing focuses on the negative impact of climate change, which can lead to climate anxiety (13). Environmental challenges can feel so overwhelming that drawing attention to these issues can make the task feel insurmountable, and the individual powerless - leading to poor mental health outcomes (14). In countries disproportionately affected by climate change, it’s harder to know the true toll of the climate crisis-induced mental health epidemic, since data is scarce and psychological diagnoses and support are largely unavailable.

  • A taste for the wild: Foraging as a gateway to stories that inspire community care

    I met with María Fernández García from Healing Weeds, in Bristol. She runs foraging workshops and walks for the local community. She shared that whilst foraging is about finding food, actually, it acts as a gateway to connect people with each other, their surroundings. Attendees begin noticing familiar patterns in leaves, and as they focus, they notice less familiar plants, or see which pollinators rely on certain plants. This mindful attention can lead to greater learning about local environments, and something beautiful unfolds - even unfamiliar places begin to feel welcoming, simply by virtue of recognition of the plants growing there. “We are no longer an alien in our environment - this helps us to feel gratitude for all the abundance around us”, says Maria.

    This is where the real alchemy happens. Whilst Maria thinks there is a risk that people think “I can get free food from foraging - it’s like a free supermarket”, once a community is built around it, it becomes clear how everything and everyone is interconnected. She says: “this awareness of interdependence shows us that the way we do things in this individualistic society is not sustainable”. Once people understand their inherent interdependence, it makes less sense to be focused only on one’s own needs.

    For Maria, foraging means not “taking”, but “learning about”. What really helps with eco anxiety and overwhelm is regulating the nervous system by slowing down and focusing. But there is a growing body of research showing that the way to combat eco anxiety is to take action. “When you learn about an environment, you learn how to love it and take care of it”, says Maria.

    We also discussed the power of storytelling, and how sharing histories of our land, plants, their cultural uses and ancient names is key to engaging people. Humans respond to stories, so in terms of land stewardship, Maria believes re-enchanting ourselves with the natural world will move us towards being better land stewards. Foraging offers a portal for us to tell these stories.


Wellbeing: beyond self-care, to nature and community care

Research suggests that individualistic cultures’ emphasis on personal wellbeing may cause those with low wellbeing to feel distressed, and might have a negative impact on their health (17). The social pressures of individualist cultures can also impact wellbeing: “the more weight is attributed to individual emotional experiences, the greater the pressure may be to conform to socially desirable ones"(18). What’s more, the emphasis placed on personal resilience ignores the values, structural inequity and social determinants that create poor mental wellbeing, and blames the individual for it (19).

In spite of the advantages of high-income countries in terms of health and wellbeing, compared to previous generations, there is increasing evidence suggesting that young people’s psychological wellbeing is reducing - the tendency towards highly individualistic social orientation in Western countries is likely linked to poorer social connections and mental health of these young people (19).  


A connected approach to planetary wellbeing

It seems therefore that focusing on individual or solely human need, to the exclusion of other life, is not the answer to true psychological wellbeing - or for generating pro-environmental action (21). So, how, in practice, can we stimulate more pro-environmental, community-focused behaviours alongside increased collective wellbeing? Research shows “…that actions of others motivate pro-environmental behaviour” (22). And that collectivist, rather than individualist cultures actively promote altruistic, biospheric values as well as pro-environmental behaviours (23). This gives us a clue. Practices that prioritise both nature connection and wellbeing, and are inclusive of all species, might draw our attention to our collective responsibility to nature, and could lead us to understand the interdependencies we rely on for collective flourishing.

This is supported by the practitioners I interviewed. Besides Maria, whose work is clearly targeted at influencing pro-environmental behaviour, Jez, a sound healer and musician, shared that his sound baths have a heightened therapeutic impact when held in natural settings. When blended with the noises from nature, the sound healing can provoke a feeling of greater affinity with nature for participants. Similarly, Olga, from The Forest Bathing Institute, has seen that participants who have focused contact with nature, including touching trees and the earth, experience greater feelings of respect and awareness of the threat to our environment, and often adopt more mindful behaviours, such as litter picking on walks, creating habitats for wildlife by not mowing, or leaving leaf litter to replenish the soil. 

  • A vision for the future
    Imagination, fractals, decolonising the imagination and being in wild service to our land

    I met with Michael Malay, a Bristol-based nature writer and academic on a hot day in Royal Fort Gardens. We watched pond life going about its daily business, and took shelter from the heat under a canopy of trees. We discussed our high dependence on technology and the idea that unregulated AI use may be colonising our imaginations. Could this reliance on automation and abandoning of our creativity prevent us from imagining a future where communities live in harmony with nature? We don’t know, and more time is needed to understand the long term effects of new technologies.

    We pondered the actions needed to effect change in our relationship with nature. Michael shared his belief in the power of local actions situated within a global context: we live in a globalised world and it’s impossible to ignore the interconnectedness of war, climate change, mass migration and the climate crisis across our planet. It’s no longer enough to only take actions for our local community. Whilst action can be local in scale, Michael believes it must factor in those communities and places most impacted by the effects of systemic injustice and climate change. Michael shared how his football team, the Easton Cowfolk, raised money locally for new kits for their team members who were asylum seekers and refugees - just one example of local action/global context in practice.

    We discussed the idea of communities as fractals, the micro being a reflection of the macro - and so multiple local actions impacting on a broader scale. In Emergent Strategies, Adrienne Marie Brown explains the idea of societal fractals as repeating feedback loops and how small scale actions impact the large - for better or worse.

    Lastly, we delved into the importance of becoming more devotional in the way we view nature, seeing it almost as a sacred duty to protect and nurture - and the idea of ‘wild service’, a term from Nick Hayes and The Right to Roam campaign’s recent book of the same name which asks us to develop a relationship with nature that marries conservation action with the reverence and celebration found at festivals, within indigenous traditions and in religious ceremony. Perhaps our lack of lived experience of awe-struck moments in nature is impeding our ability to devote ourselves to wild service? Either way, we concluded, we must find ways to reclaim pockets of awe in our lives, to open the way for us to lean into this channel of devoted action.


Scent and spirituality: aromatherapy, divine connection and a shared respect for plant medicines

Scent and aromatic herbs are widely recognised as a conduit between the physical and the spiritual realms and have been used in communal ritual for centuries. Natural aromas from plants, or essential oils, are immediately captivating and transporting when inhaled, since smell is our only scent with a direct link into the brain, which is why its mental and emotional effects can be so instant and transformative. Scent has long been used to connect humans to the divine, but for me, their divinity lies in the responses aromatic plant resins and oils can produce in us (24). Their chemistry is complex and layered, and compounds can reduce inflammation (lavender), repel viruses (thyme) or expel bacteria (cedarwood). 

Some plants produce aromas to repel predators, some to attract pollinators -  but it’s endlessly mysterious to me how our co-evolution with plants has led them to produce a compound that addresses a specific malady in humans. Their complexity, mystery and provision for our needs is humbling. When my workshop participants learn how to make medicines from aromatic plants, it always provokes excited sharings of knowledge and reverent conversations. The inherent wisdom held within plants is a reminder of their intelligence and elusiveness, and that there are large parts of science we still don’t understand - which commands our respect. In workshops, we often discuss how to work with herbs and oils sparingly and respectfully - so that even a simple connection such as smelling the peel of an orange becomes a sacred connection back to our nature - and stimulates the desire to protect and savour it.

The alchemy of connection
These explorations, although broad and only dipping a toe into the surface of this subject, reveal some common threads. Through working with our senses to connect to nature in a community setting, a sort of magic can occur. Community is convened, belonging is created, stories are told, knowledge is shared and people are connected with the land that supports all life. Might this have the power to catalyse inspiration, produce collective responsibility and pro-environmental action? However small these actions may be to start with, the fractal repeats and spirals outwards.

My explorations and interviews so far have revealed that creative, community-focused, therapeutic and educational practices have an alchemy of their own that leaves a strong imprint on their participants.

Much more research is required to understand any long term behaviour changes, or impact on our environments and communities. But what feels special about these practices is their ability to rekindle the imagination, reconnect us to each other, and in so doing, make us feel safe enough to set aside some of our fears when it comes to environmental activism.

They can conjure wonder to help heal our connection to nature and inspire collective care for community, plants and wild places. If this is what true healing looks like, it’s something I want to be a part of.

Ellen Rowland

Ellen is the founder of AmberLuna Apothecary, a social enterprise aiming to make natural wellbeing accessible to all through aromatherapy and herbalism talks, books, workshops, products, digital content and holistic therapies. She is a Clinical Aromatherapist, Massage Therapist, Facialist and Writer. She is also a course tutor for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a keen gardener, plant lover and training Medial Herbalist in her final year.

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