#191 / The Nature Fix

When a friend recommended that I read The Nature Fix, by Florence Williams, I immediately set out to track it down. My research efforts uncovered the video, below, which provides a very nice summary of the main message of the book. It takes only two minutes to watch the video. Reading the book itself takes somewhat longer!

The video argues (and so does the book) that beneficial health impacts flow rapidly and directly from our immersion in the natural environment. Williams is not the only one who makes this claim. As I watched the video, I thought of my son, Philips Patton, pictured at the top. 

Philips now practices acupuncture and traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Cruz, California, at his Elemental Healing Arts Center, but for almost ten years Philips struggled to overcome the debilitating impacts of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a disease that pretty much immobilized him shortly after his graduation from college. Philips has been successful in overcoming this puzzling and dispiriting affliction, and he naturally brings his experience in doing so to bear in his own acupuncture practice. I am almost certain that Philips would wholly endorse what Florence Williams has to say. 

Philips often decamps our urban environment to spend weekends in the Ventana Wilderness, or in the Los Padres National Forest, or in spots he knows along the Yuba River, or (even closer by) at little beaches he has found along the San Lorenzo River. Philips, who has hiked the Appalachian Trail, and who tends to spend long summers in the Sierra, figured out how to rehabilitate and cure himself, with his personal immersion in Nature playing a major role. His experience is a complete confirmation of what Williams says. 

Most of us live, almost all the time, in that "human world" that we have built for ourselves. Ultimately, however, we are born into the World of Nature, and whether you like the "Mother Nature" metaphor or not, Williams marshals "science" to prove that Nature and the natural environment can keep us healthy, and can help us to overcome the diseases that our own "civilization" have brought down upon us.

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.facebook.com/HealElementally/

(2) - https://youtu.be/iwQkTuhId-o

(3) - Gary A. Patton personal photo