Tara Jones- Nature and Humans

How Nature Heals One’s Mind. 

My participant in this project is my best friend and roommate, Yves Rogge. She is 18 years old also attending the University of Central Florida and is studying business.

In life, there are many hardships, unfair times, and times where we as humans have emotions take over reality. Going to college as is takes a lot of emotion and toll on one as is. The mind is unique yet very confusing at times as emotions can sometimes take over our soul and leave us lost, hurt, and confused. When I talk to her, we both have learned to realize how beautiful nature is and how truly healing it is to the mind, body, and soul.

Photo One- “Peace”

Yves describes this photo as an example of one of the many scenes that helped her heal and feel peace again with the world, she took this while she was in Costa Rica. “Life gets difficult but when you look around at what the world has created it helps you realize there is so much more to life than just emotions even if at times it does not seem like it. When I go outside and capture these images, I reflect on how they make me feel not only in the moment but when I think about them.” From this quote she told me, she is nothing but correct.  Thinking deeper into this quote, she means that although emotions of your brain takeover and are very strong at times it is important to look around in order to feel peace. When it comes to your mind, sometimes thoughts can seem very uncontrollable and hard to keep positive all of the time and no matter what you do, mental health is always going to affect someone in some way. When it gets hard, nature truly does heal. For example, if you are feeling down for long periods of time, simply just going and sitting in the sun is one of the biggest factors to help improve someone’s emotions and moods. In order to feel any sort of peace no matter how tough the events of life can get, going outside and just viewing nature itself is the best way to start healing. 

Photo Two- “How lucky Are We.”

When talking to Yves she said “We are so lucky to be able to do what we think is the bare minimum, but it really is not the bare minimum. It is so awesome to think about how out of all the galaxies we ended up on Earth with such beautiful sights to see every day.” When thinking about our Earth, it really is a blessing that we ended up here. In order to have full healing and peace, we need to appreciate what we actually do have and the relationship we are able to have with nature as is. Cherishing our relationship with the planet is a start too being grateful for it. Some ways we can cherish our planet is by something as simple of picking up trash if you see it on the ground, even if it is not yours. When we are grateful for the little things such as our trees outside, it gives us an overall better mindset and significantly improves mental health and outlooks on life. It helps focus on the positive instead of the negative we have inside of our head.

Photo Three “Self Improvement”

“When it comes to improving myself, I think one of the biggest factors in doing this was truly starting to from a connection with nature. It improved my mental health which improves my overall health and had so many different positive outcomes.” When talking about self-improvement with her I did notice the main factor in healing was going outside and nature. It is really cool to watch how something that everyone has access to can be healing, even if it’s looking through a window.

From talking to Yves and observing her throughout time, my main idea of my observations is the power of nature when it comes to humans and healing. From talking to her and taking what she was comfortable sharing, there is a lot to take in from it. When you have gratitude for nature, use it to your advantage, and cherish it there are so many different ways one can improve. Mentally and physically, you overall start to feel better. While watching Yves learn ways to improve herself and heal herself, it opened my eyes to how important nature plays a role in doing this as well.  The relationship between one and nature is something that truly should always be prioritized and taken care of. If you ever feel like emotions are out of control, go outside. If you ever feel low and like it can never get better, go outside. People come and go but nature will never leave you.