The Transformation by James S. Gordon M.D

Author:James S. Gordon, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

14

Nature Heals

THE FIRST FEW times I saw images of the natural world in the third Drawings I prescribed—the ones that showed people with their biggest problems solved—I was surprised and curious. In their first Drawings, of “Yourself,” the artists had often appeared bent to a task, usually isolated and alone but occasionally in a stiff formal portrait with a family member or a friend. In the second Drawings, of “You with your biggest problem,” they were sometimes hemmed in by prison bars representing family or work constraints, or, like Azhaar, tiny, barely visible in the corner of the page. Sometimes they were being menaced by domestic predators or armed soldiers, stalked by images of medical procedures, or intimidated by implacable clocks.

The third Drawings were, however, quite different. I kept seeing the unmistakable shapes of trees, flowers, mountains, and rivers. Usually the bodies in these third Drawings were more substantial, the faces more expressive, the clothes brighter. Imagining being in Nature seemed to have brought more life to the artists. And far more often than in the first two Drawings, there were others with them—people and animals of all kinds—as if hope for a solved problem was repopulating the natural world, as well as the mind of the artist.

Pretty soon I was noticing that a significant number of third Drawings—maybe even a majority—featured people, happily, even joyously, in Nature. Whatever their problem was, Nature was part of its solution.

It seemed reasonable for someone like Hervé, the security guard who lived in Haiti and loved to garden. I could easily understand why he drew his renewal, after his wife’s death in the earthquake, as plants and flowers coming back to life. But I also saw Nature in the Drawings of Gaza’s children and adults—trees with birds circling them emerging from landscapes of rubble, women covered in abayas, holding hands and looking out to sea.

When I started to pay attention, I found it was the same here in the US, and for city dwellers as well as rural people. The solution for an executive suffering through cancer chemotherapy was a climb on a nearby green mountain under a blue sky. A girl coming to terms with the betrayal and humiliation of her father’s sexual assault was happily walking in her city park.

These Drawings remind us that Nature heals. We are a part of her (and, yes, I do think of Nature as primarily feminine, our nourishing, sustaining Mother). When we feel connected to her, we can relax, like a tree with deep roots. Our tight shoulders drop. Our breathing deepens. I remember these feelings from childhood, running and laughing as I embraced the freedom of New York’s Central Park, or leaning on a railing contentedly watching the East River flow by. When we are close to Nature, our feet fall more happily on the ground. We feel once again that, like Nature herself, we, too, can grow and change.

THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE has begun to urge us to do what the intuition of traumatized people has grasped and our broken connection to Nature requires.

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