What Nature Teaches Us About Healing

by Dr. Jenn Ron

Every morning, I begin my day with this prayer—drawn from Ayurvedic and Native American traditions:

Dear Mother Nature/Universe, You are inside of me, within my every breath, within each bird and mighty mountain. Your sweet touch reaches everything and I am well protected. Thank you for this beautiful day before me. May joy, love, peace and compassion be part of my day and those around me. I am healing and I am healed.

This prayer anchors me. It reminds me that I am not separate from the natural world—I am part of it. And that connection is where healing begins.

There is a reason we instinctively turn to nature when we need to heal.

We walk through the woods. We sit by water. We watch the sky shift from day to dusk.

Something in us settles. Something remembers.

Nature offers what no prescription can—awe, mystery, curiosity, and a deep-rooted sense of belonging to something far greater than ourselves.

Stay Awhile

The poet Mary Oliver spent her life paying attention to the natural world and translating its wisdom into words. In one of her poems, she writes:

"Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, 'Stay awhile.' The light flows from their branches. And they call again, 'It's simple,' they say, 'and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.'"

Go easy. Be filled with light. Shine.

How often do we allow ourselves to receive such simple instructions?

Oliver also asks the question that stops me in my tracks every time I read it:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

She doesn't ask what we plan to accomplish or accumulate. She asks what we plan to do—how we plan to live, to pay attention, to show up for the brief and extraordinary gift of being alive.

We Are Not Separate

Most of us move through life with what author Ben Page, in his book Healing Trees, calls an anthropocentric bias—the unconscious belief that humans are the center of the natural world, separate from and superior to the rest of life on Earth.

But when we abandon this bias, we face a challenging truth: we live and die just like everything else. The world does not revolve around our desires or our attachment to permanence. We are just as fragile as the oak leaf, the hummingbird, the blade of grass.

Page writes that we desperately want to feel special because we don't want to confront this reality. But when we do—when we truly face our impermanence and the impermanence of the world—something unexpected happens: We encounter immense gratitude.

A Speck of Sand on an Endless Beach

When I read about the history of our planet—the billions of years before us, the vast expanse of time still to come—I feel like a speck of sand on an endless beach. I'm here for such a short time. What am I going to do with my precious days?

This question doesn't fill me with dread. It fills me with clarity. It reminds me that adding life to the moments I have left—being present, soaking up the mystery and awe of this beautiful world—is itself a form of healing. For my mind. For my body. For my spirit.

All Flourishing Is Mutual

Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, offers another lens through which to see our relationship with nature. She writes that all flourishing is mutual—that we cannot thrive in isolation from the living world around us. She invites us to see nature not as a resource to exploit, but as a gift. Imagine, she suggests, that everything we consume—the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe—is a gift from the Earth. Like a beautifully knitted hat made just for you by someone who loves you.

If we truly saw it that way, wouldn't we take better care of what we were given? Wouldn't we take better care of ourselves?

The Invitation

Nature is not a backdrop to our lives. It is a teacher, a healer, a mirror. It shows us how to be present. It humbles us with our smallness and lifts us with our belonging. It reminds us that we are temporary—and that this is not a tragedy but an invitation to live fully, gratefully, awake.

Step outside. Walk slowly. Notice what's growing, what's fading, what's stirring in the wind.

And listen for the trees calling out: Stay awhile. Go easy. Be filled with light. And shine.

Healing the Whole Person

This is why nature is woven into the fabric of integrative cancer care.

A cancer diagnosis confronts us with the very truths nature teaches—impermanence, fragility, the preciousness of time. And in that confrontation, there is an opening. An opportunity to ask: How do I want to live now? What truly matters?

Whether it's a 30-minute walk in the forest preserves or your neighborhood, the practice of forest bathing, or simply sitting outside and letting the world slow down around you—nature is medicine. It calms the nervous system, quiets the mind, and reminds us that we belong to something vast and beautiful.

This post is written in honor of Earth Day—which, if we're paying attention, should really be every day of our lives.

If you are navigating a diagnosis or simply looking to take a more proactive, integrative approach to your health, you don’t have to do it alone.

Schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation with Dr. Jenn Ron to start living your best and healthiest life.

Schedule a Discovery Call