“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there or not.
“You can put yourself in the way of beauty.”
– Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Yellow and orange hues stimulate melatonin production, aiding sleep.
Melatonin is not just our sleep hormone, it’s an antioxidant and has been studied for its positive mood, hormonal, immune, anti-cancer, and digestive system effects.
Our bodies have adjusted to respond to the light from 3 billion sunsets.
While we can take melatonin in supplement form, use blue light blocking glasses, or use red hued light filters and, while tech can certainly help us live more healthfully, it’s important to remember that the best bio-hack is simply to remember your heritage and put yourself back in nature’s way.
The best tech of all is in the natural rhythms of the planet and encoded in your beautiful DNA.
Optimal health is about re-wilding. Optimal health is about remembering who you are and coming back to your true nature.
You have the code within in you to live your best, healthiest life. I believe healing is about tapping into that code, supporting our nature, and allowing the light of our optimal health template to shine through.
The proximity to water can improve focus, creativity, health and professional success according to marine biologist and surfer Wallace J. Nichols in his book, Blue Mind.
A “blue mind” describes a neurological state of of calm centredness.
Being around water heightens involuntary attention, where external stimuli capture our attention, generating a mind that is open, and expansive, and neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin are released.
He says, “This is flow state, where we lose track of time, nothing else seems to matter, and we truly seem alive and at our best”.
Contrast a blue mind to a red mind, where neurons release stress chemicals like norepinephrine, cortisol in response to stress, anxiety and fear.
From the book Mindfulness and Surfing:
“Surfing is not just about riding a wave, but immersion in nature: the aching silence of a calm sea is punctuated by a cluster of blue lines. The point is to spend a little more time looking and listening than doing.
“Maybe this is not just about being but about what the philosopher Heidegger called “becoming”–a being in time, an unfolding sense of what he further called ‘dwelling’.
“When we dwell, we inhabit.”
Jungian Psychoanalyst, Frances Weller posed the question, “What calls you so fully into the world other than beauty?”
In other words, “Without beauty what is it that attracts us into life?”
Our human affinity for beauty is perhaps the greatest pull of all into aliveness. And yet so many of us feel purposeless, or that life is meaningless. In our world we are suffering from a “Meaning Crisis”, which perhaps partially explains the epidemic of mental health issues that plague us.
We spend so much time bogged down in the business of being alive: bills, chores, work–“dotting Ts and crossing Is” as I like say 😂
This is part of the reason why 1/6th of my 6-week Mental Health Foundations program (Good Mood Foundations) involves getting into nature. For there is nothing more beautiful than the gorgeous imperfection of the natural world.
We are called by it. There are myriad scientific studies on the power of “Forest Bathing” for de-stressing, for mental health, for supporting our mood, hormonal health, immune systems, social relationships, and so on.
And yet so often when we say words like “beauty” we call on images of “perfection”: symmetrical youthful faces, bodies with zero fat on them, etc.
We are focused on the missing parts instead of how the effect of nature’s imperfect beauty has on us–and thus we rob ourselves of the pleasure of being in the presence of beauty.
For what is pleasure but beauty personified? And what is depression other than a lack of deep, embodied soulful pleasure?
I find being in nature brings me closer, not so much to beauty as a concept of commercial idealism, but a sense of pleasure. It pulls me into my body.
I feel my feet on the ground, my breath timing my steps, the birdsong and wind in my ears, and I feel calmed, and centred, called into the experience of being fully alive.
If you’re struggling to find meaning, practice showing up to your sunsets for a few evenings in a row.
Put yourself in the way of beauty.
When the sunsets show up everyday, will you show up too?
