Nature Speaks

A Nature Speaks Reflection – Post 2 in the Carl Jung Series

There’s a quiet truth that Carl Jung carried through all his work – one that feels even more urgent in our modern lives:

“Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul.”

When we are disconnected from nature, we are not just missing fresh air or green views. We are losing contact with the very ground that sustains our emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being.

Jung saw that the psyche is not an isolated machine – it is a living, breathing ecosystem. And like any ecosystem, it needs a healthy environment to grow.

The Body in the Earth, the Soul in the Body

Our minds have grown fast. But the body – its rhythms, instincts, cycles – still belongs to the earth.

Jung noticed this gap widening. He wrote that as people became more urban, more mechanical in their living, something essential was being lost: a sense of rootedness. Without that rootedness, we become dry, anxious, brittle. We forget the language of our own depths.

This isn’t just poetry. It’s physiology.

When we spend time in nature, our stress hormones lower. Our attention softens. Our breath slows.

But Jung went further than science. He believed nature speaks directly to the unconscious. The rustling of trees, the movement of water, the shape of a mountain – these are not just scenery, but symbols. They touch us in places too deep for words.

Healing is Remembering What We Already Know

For Jung, much of modern suffering came not from what was missing – but from what we had forgotten.

The soul does not crave perfection. It craves aliveness. Contact. Meaning. And that often comes not from doing more, but from coming back to what’s always been here.

This is why he found peace at Bollingen, his simple stone retreat. There, without electricity or running water, his inner world quieted enough to listen. To watch birds. To chop wood. To let the psyche settle into the pace of the natural world.

Not everyone can go off to a tower by a lake. But we can each create small sanctuaries of nourishment.

Simple Practices to Root the Psyche:

• Touch the ground daily. Bare feet on soil, hands in water, or even a few breaths with your back against a tree.
• Watch something natural without needing to change it. A cloud, a river, a flock of birds.
• End your day outside. Let your body close the day not with a screen, but with the sky.

When we restore our relationship with the natural world, we are not just becoming more “grounded.”

We are returning to the ground of ourselves.

And in that quiet return, the soul finds its nourishment once more.

The wild remembers. So do you.