Imagine the possibilities.
If you have a FROG (Finished Room Over Garage), or a Bonus Room, or an extra space at home - either inside or outside - that is under-utilized or currently serves as a junk-repository, think about creating a Soulscape. A Soulscape is a place you set aside to refresh your soul - one that connects you with natural elements that allow you to recalibrate your breath and your sensory awareness to the natural places you love and want to return to for enjoyment, refreshment, and rejuvenation.
Did you ever notice that when you return time after time to your favorite place, whether it's forests or wetlands, rivers, streams, lakes, mountains or oceans, deserts or pastures, there is something truly magnificent, inspiring, healing and calming about that place that just speaks to your soul? Poets, lyricists and artists have been drawing on nature-scapes to evoke potent feelings of love, imagination, joy, gratitude and contentment precisely because being in the natural places that feed us correlates to our overall health, happiness, spiritual renewal and contentment.
When we are immersed in the natural places we love, we thrive. Our soul comes back to its senses, and we can breathe again. That is why Soulscapes are so necessary. They speak to us in the primary language, the Language of Earth, which is the primordial language that we all share. It is the Mother Tongue - the Love Language that speaks to all of us in a profoundly moving way. When we listen to the symphony of Earth's Language, we become more fully in tune with creation, others, and our deepest self. We learn once again that the wider our "We," the more we connect at a deep level with everyone and every living being - the whole biosphere of which we are part.
This is why creating a Soulscape at home can be crucial for our psyche (<Greek, psuche, 'soul'). When we long for the mountains or the oceans, but live in the Midwest, we keep longing for the sacred places that call us to our center, our grounding place. We may not be able to visit those sacred landscapes every day, but we can definitely incorporate elements of those landscapes in our own homes. Water features, natural mandalas, cairns, rock sculptures, leafy, reedy, or petal-laden altars, feathers, pine cone grottos, and seasonal blooms can all contribute to a natural design that feels organic, restful, invigorating, and inspiring. The only thing a Soulscape design requires is a little time and imagination, not a lot of money. Here are a few examples from my portfolio to get you jump-started: https://www.environmentalsoulutions.com/soulscape-design
Soulscapes allow us to connect with our natural places in a visceral way. If you have a FROG/bonus room/outdoor space that needs a little TLC, imagine a Soulscape. It might be just the place you want to get back to each day!
“The Place I Want to Get Back To”
by Mary Oliver
The place I want to get back to
is where in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay, this one is okay,
let’s see who she is
and why she is sitting on the ground like that,
so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream, but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way I go out to the dunes and look and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward and nuzzled my hand,
and what can my life bring to me that could exceed that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed, can’t be repeated.
If you want to talk about this come to visit.
I live in the house near the corner,
which I have named
Gratitude.
Mary Oliver
Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006)
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