Soulscape Design Elements

Entering your Soulscape should feel like coming home to your happy place. It's where design meets your soul's desire to be bathed in Nature.  In Nature's embrace, do you like to feel wild and unfettered, peaceful and relaxed, reflective and creative, refreshed and energized?  The better you understand what aspects of Nature nourish your soul, the better your design will flow - both because the space will be inviting and pleasing for you, and because your good energy whenever you're there will translate to love for all life around you.

When our arbor-elders, the trees, come to hang out, they invite us to play, reflect, learn, and rest.  They breathe out, and we breathe in their exhalation.  We breathe out, and they inhale ours.  We have an ancient synergy, a respiratory and inspirational rhythm that keeps us constantly in sync.  Like dance partners, we need our arbor-kin to embrace us with gentle guidance and joy.  It matters what types of trees surround us, and how well they'll love the soil, sun, and climate where they're planted.  The shrubs, trees, flowers, fruits, veggies and we are all connected beneath the surface by mycorrhizal networks that nourish and sustain the wood-wide web of life.  Everything thrives when the growing trees and plants enliven the soulscape.

Energy.  Living Stones sing their constant litany of presence if we listen carefully, pay attention to their stories, and water them with our tears of sadness and joy.  Rocks for the soulscape become that perennial grounding energy that creates a steady launching point for whatever drama, vision, or journey we are beginning, enlivening, or culminating.  Without those beautiful textures, shapes, and colors, the soil animating the greens, golds, and red-purples of our trees and shrubs are prone to erosion and rot. Without those gorgeous stones, water has no place to hide, splash, and pool. It's sedimentary, dear Watson.  We need our touch-stones to remember who we are, where and to whom we belong, why and how we are connected. 

Who are our favorite creature-kin? How do we experience their energy and beauty?  What aspect of their being draws us?  Their mystery and majesty? Their playfulness and curiosity? Their resourcefulness and creativity? Their beauty and grace? Their movement and song? Their wily, crafty exuberance?  Their stillness and calm?  When our avian-kin, the birds, populate our soulscape, the forest sings with life and energy.  When pollinators play and forage, everything bursts with color and joy.  Who needs to be invited to the soulscape's sanctuary? Which wild-kin call to us?  What part of the chorus do we hear? Buzzers, chirpers, howlers, screechers, the melodious and the croakers.  They remind us who we are.  They help us rewild our souls.

Living being in the biosphere requires water for life.  Clean, refreshing, nourishing, scintillating water - spraying, bubbling, showering, puddling, pooling, flowing, rushing - frozen, misty, or crystalline.  We need flow. Water gathers all creation near and bathes us with life and energy for seeding, growth, and renewal.  If water finds her place of prominence in the soulscape, all of life cries out with joy.  What about water calls to your soul?

Sunlight illuminates even the darkest gloom in our soul.  When we are deprived of sunlight, like our cousins who process energy through photosynthesis, we find ourselves languishing.  Yet, too much is harmful.  Scorching, withering, dying too soon means cool, shady respite or drought-resistant resilience is required.  Maybe moonlight, starlight, and dusky-dawn times stoke your soul.  How we relate with light and shadow in Nature is explored and celebrated in the sunbeams (consolations) and shadows (desolations) of our soul. Light and shadow nuances the depth of our experience, and reminds us to go deeper, to suck the marrow out of life.  Becoming enlightened or deepening in sacred Darkness, our soul can find rest.