Monika Schaffner was born in Nepal and is now settled in Switzerland. Having grown up in the Himalayas, she cares deeply for the mystic beauty, the vital sanity, the complex harmony of pristine natural spaces. Today a freelance geographer, Monika advocates a holistic co-existence of the human species with Nature.
Blend in with nature, take deep breaths of fresh air, wash off your weariness in a fresh spring, rest on a warm rock, sleep under a canopy of glittering stars. Take a time-out in wild nature to regenerate, clear your thoughts, find your inner balance, and define your path, while acknowledging that it develops as you go. Nature retreats are essential for personal transformation because by (re)connecting with nature, you (re)connect to your inner essence.
Are you ready for the ultimate nature retreat? Do you need a time-out of your busy daily life? Do you feel the call to travel through pristine mountain places and tap into their transformative, regenerative power? Do you long to deeply experience the beauty of wild nature, the energy of the elements, to reflect and explore, to understand and remember, and to reconnect with your purpose of being? Essentially to find the “home” within yourself? But are you unsure how to celebrate this transformative art of connecting with nature?
7 steps to transformative nature retreats
1. Start consciously: Step over the threshold
To start with, find yourself a suitable place in nature, where you would like to spend your nature retreat. This can be a spot close to your home, in your garden, in a park, or it can be a more remote space in the wilderness of mountain places.
Then, take a moment to consciously start your endeavor. You can simply close your eyes for a moment and set a decisive intention for yourself. What are the life questions you carry? What is it you would like to explore, outside or within, during this period you choose to be outdoors?
2. Observe your breath: Your direct entry point into the present moment
The most direct and easiest anchor to the present moment is your breath. Spiritual traditions from around the globe have developed techniques and methods to focus one’s attention on the present moment. Explore and find your method. You can start by taking a deep, conscious in-breath followed by an extended out-breath. Then observe where your breath flows through your body. Does your in-breath stop in your chest or does it flow deeper into your belly? Where does your out-breath pass through your body? What happens at the gap between the in-and the out-breath? Observe, relate, and get in touch with your breath.
When you feel well-centered and present in the moment, slowly open your eyes. Start walking, letting your view wander softly at 360 degrees. Be very still, be an observer.
3. Activate your senses: Channels of observation for a deep nature experience
Come into sensual contact with nature’s elements around you and explore the imprint your senses‘ receptions create in your body. Activate, sharpen, and re-awaken these rich channels of observation.
Look, at the richness of color, shape, pattern, and harmony in nature’s elements.
Listen, to what you hear, sounds very close and also the softest sounds far away.
Smell, the scent in the air, a flower, the musty odor of the earth under feet.
Taste, the sensation an experience leaves on your tongue.
Touch and feel with your fingers, hands, perhaps with your bare feet on the ground.
Try closing your eyes to focus more deeply on all your senses – they become more directly addressed if the eyes, generally our dominant sense, are left out.
Or perhaps you even discover within you a 6th sense? A perception of energy in the air, of the atmosphere around you? Perhaps you perceive a slight shift in the air when you move through different qualities of the space? It is like consciously opening the billion antennas of your body system to a receptive, awakened state of awareness.
Activating your senses brings your attention from your busy mind – labeling, registering, telling stories, running off to past or future scenarios, often only concerned with the surface – to experiencing fully, vividly, the rich overall sensation of an experience in space and time. Nowadays, there is indeed an important practice involved in using your senses for other experiences than watching screens.
4. Find your spot to immerse in nature
As you walk, find yourself a place you feel drawn to. Where you feel deeply comfortable, and at ease. A place you sense as special, a location you feel curious and inclined to explore its many details. Walk slowly, sit down, or even lie down. Immerse yourself into that state which feels most inviting.
Then observe the rich kaleidoscope of the elements of nature:
The larger landscape
The rocks, the minerals, the soil
The plants and their flowers and leaves
The trees, ancient ones, young ones, single trees, and tree-families
The water, in all its multi-faceted forms
The air, still or moved by the wind
Sit and register with your senses, deeply, in every detail. Focus on pure sensing rather than explaining, analyzing, and labeling. Take in, and let your senses‘ impressions arrive and settle within you, touch your emotions, and perhaps stir inner senses deep inside you.
5. Ask a question: Open up to a dialogue with nature
In this state of conscious alertness, with awakened senses: Listen. Open yourself for signs that signal to you, and help you, like stepping stones, in understanding. Signs that bring answers to questions you are consciously holding, or even to questions you were not aware you were carrying. Open yourself to the mirrors of nature that give you – perhaps totally unexpected – life-changing revelations and insights.
In my work, I have felt deeply inspired when asking the question „What is it like to be you?“ (Charles Eisenstein). This question has become a powerful door opener for my dialogue with nature’s elements.
Direct this question perhaps to a tree. A flower. The larger landscape. Or to a rock on your path. Pause your rational mind for a moment, focus on your senses‘ perceptions, and see what happens. Is there any sensation, impulse, or inspiration coming back to you? Are any insights floating up from the depths of your soul?
Quantum physics teaches us that solid matter, like for example a rock, is composed of billions of atoms, and these vibrate and move at tremendous speed – only we cannot see this happen with our eyes.
Spend some time to consider this possibility. What if there was indeed a form of life in the „conversation partner“ you chose? What if there is indeed a soul of sorts in this beautiful flower, in the slender birch tree, in this piece of solid rock? Treat it as an experiment. In any case, it will not hurt to try it out.
To me, it happened for the first time with a rock, standing about hip-high at the edge of my path. I posed this question and felt a very clear answer! The experience of a reciprocal sense of connection was overwhelming!
6. The art of praising nature: Expression of reciprocal appreciation
A few years later, I went deeper, taking an online course at Animas Valley Institute on Awakening Planetary Imagination. This is where I discovered the powerful impact of the art of praising nature. I came to experience firsthand the deep potential hidden in the art of connecting consciously with nature.
One early morning, I was standing on my balcony to practice, opening my conscious attention towards the plum tree standing in front of my house. I was consciously seeing, appreciating, and honoring the soft beauty of its fresh blossoms – when all of a sudden this deep appreciation came back to me in a powerful rush of reciprocal exchange of energy.
In practical experiences like this, I have learned, that the key to a felt-sensed connection with nature is to approach it with a curious, open sense of appreciation, with a readiness to quiet my mind, open all my senses and then listen.
And I came to understand that this deep nature connection is ultimately the most relevant foundation of human beings’ care and respect for nature. The most relevant necessity towards protecting and safeguarding our planet’s beauty and natural resources.
7. Digital detox: Switch off the random influence from the world outside
With the ever-increasing time we spend with screens today, throughout our professional and private lives, with artificial intelligence taking over large parts of our individual decisions and work steps, reestablishing your individual connection to nature is a most important antidote and balance. To maximize the innate power of this antidote, it is essential to switch off your mobile appliances during your time in nature.
Agree with yourself on the period you wish to go offline. One hour. One walk. One day. One night.
Ideally, even resist the constant urge to take photos of the beauty you discover. Although I understand and share this impulse, I also experience how taking photos immediately distances me from direct sensual perception. Taking photos distracts us from taking in and letting nature’s impressions arrive directly, unfiltered, in our body system. Your perspective through the camera dilutes the full, true, sensual experience of the present moment. Of the now.
So try it out, and give it a chance: Leave your mobile phone at home and enter a timeless, direct dimension of experience.
Ingredients for celebrating nature's transformative art
High up above everyday business and density, the air moves differently. No matter how long it has been, a feeling of being connected, supported, and at home on earth is just a few breaths and a few steps outside.“ (Micah Mortali, P. 90/101)
Come to enjoy the beauty and wonder of nature on a larger scale – as in the complete experience of being present in the landscape – as well as zoomed in to observe minute details such as that of a flower’s energy along your path. Here are the most important ingredients to experience transformative nature connection for yourself:
Most essential is your attitude, the conscious intention you set for yourself for the period of your nature retreat.
In an awake, alert state of reception, direct your senses‘ attention to nature’s kaleidoscope of sensory experiences
Curiosity, readiness to experiment and to try out means beyond conventional mindsets
And finally, practice is needed – to master the art of slipping your attention out of your busy mind into experiencing the present moment.
By connecting in a deep and transformative way with nature, you will restore, nourish, and soothe your system. You will come home to wild nature and find your integrated place within it. It is the source you originally evolved from. It is here you will come in touch with your essence, your deeper purpose and your reason for being. This deep-sensed connection and dialogue is the most powerful foundation for life-changing retreats in wild nature.
Would you like to be supported in finding your connection to nature? Do you wish to be guided in this transformative practice? Join us on a Mountain Nature Retreat in the Alps or the Himalayas
Monika Schaffner, Integrative Geographer, Nature & Body Therapist
Monika Schaffner was born in Nepal and is now settled in Switzerland. Having grown up in the Himalayas, she cares deeply for the mystic beauty, the vital sanity, the complex harmony of pristine natural spaces. Today a freelance geographer, Monika advocates a holistic co-existence of the human species with Nature. She develops regenerative approaches to tourism in Nepal, and works at the nexus between water protection and hydropower in Switzerland. As a nature therapist she inspires individuals to reconnect with wild nature and to thereby reconnect with themselves. With her own formula of energetic massage, she creates spaces for her clients to relax, regenerate and experience deep sense of home-coming within.
