Imagining a Deeper Connection with Nature - February

A note on language:

When we use phrases like “nature suggests” we’re referring to insights that arise from Michael’s conversations with nature as we listen for and shape each month’s theme. These reflections are then expanded through lived experience, observation, and time spent working with the Solutions.

Many people feel connected to nature. For some, this connection has been present since childhood. For others, it happens later in life. 

This connection is real. And it matters.

At the same time, this familiar sense of connection is one layer of a much larger relationship—one that most of us have yet to fully experience.

We tend to relate to nature through proximity. When we’re in it, near it, or surrounded by it, we feel nature. These experiences are genuine, but they are shaped by the mind’s belief that connection depends on our being physically close to nature. 

Imagination helps expand this belief. 

This month’s theme is an invitation to begin sensing this deeper relationship, not by effort or analysis, but by allowing your imagination to open a wider field of connection.

This type of imagination is not something we use to escape reality. Instead, it’s one of the ways that can help the mind open to new experiences.

Nature suggests we can learn to do this by beginning simply. Here’s an exercise that can help.

Nature Imagination Exercise

Set aside about fifteen minutes a day—or whatever time feels manageable—and sit quietly. 

Bring your attention to your relationship with nature.

Your relationship with nature might show up as a place you love, a feeling you associate with being outdoors, a memory, sensation, or even a vague sense of connection. Let whatever shows up be enough.

Then, rather than directing the experience, allow it to unfold on its own through your imagination. Anything can happen while you’re imagining. Follow wherever this goes. What is logical and illogical is the same to the imagination.

When you’ve finished your fifteen minutes of ‘imagining’, go on about your day and commit to returning to the exercise as often as you like over the next two weeks—longer if you wish. You can do this exercise daily, every other day, or at any rhythm that feels right to you.

During the time you’re doing the Nature Imagination Exercise, you may be inspired to create some kind of ‘documentation’ of your experience. You might choose to write some notes, make a drawing, create a song, dance or sculpture. Do anything you’re inspired to do and let your imagination guide you just like it does in the first part of the exercise. Or, if you don’t feel moved to do the second part of the exercise, that’s fine too.

Nature gave us this exercise, which means it has unique qualities. When you start doing it, nature will begin to interact with you. You don’t have to discern nature’s input here. Just know that nature is connecting with you during the exercise.  

This exercise uses your imagination to help you go beyond the predetermined limits of the mind. 

As one example, by using your imagination, your connection with nature can become less dependent on being in a specific place. Instead of needing to be in nature to feel connected, you can start by imagining the relationship as continuous and not dependent upon your location. Eventually, that imagining can evolve into real experience. By doing this, you move beyond your mind’s previous limited belief, allowing it to develop a new, expanded normal.

Nature suggests that we can learn to feel this truth, and when we do—even briefly—it changes how we move through the world. Care deepens. Belonging steadies. Life begins to feel less accidental and far more purposeful. This can bring a quiet reassurance, especially during unsettled or uncertain times.

This month is not about doing more. It’s about allowing your imagination to soften your mind’s boundaries and noticing where nature leads you.

Sit.

Allow.

Watch what unfolds.

What begins as imagination often becomes lived experience, not because it was made real, but because something real was given room to exist.