The Green Prescription Club: September 2024
In September, let's embrace the night sky.
Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. Join me, Dr. Mariana, as we explore all sides of good health and life. New around here? Get started.
Welcome to edition #4 of The Green Prescription Club!
What a journey, my friends. So far we’ve walked nearby forests, ventured out to discover new green areas and embraced the calming, soulful art of breathing. Our first three months have been a time of new experiences and deep insights. Step by step, you’ve discovered things about yourself you never knew existed and you never knew you needed - as we have found out through our monthly calls together.
Slowly, you are discovering the magic of what it means to go greener, what it feels to be prescribed nature rather than pills, and most of all, to embrace the power within you to accept the challenges and take yourself out of the routine. As a doctor, this makes me happy in ways I can barely express! It’s a mix of joy, pride and a sense of accomplishment for your willingness to choose yourself.
And today, we embrace a new journey together. One where we might even reach the stars…
Just two weeks ago, on August 12th, a Perseid meteor shower was forecast, as it is at roughly the same time every year. As excited as my partner and I get about sky phenomena, we were torn between hopeful and hopeless, as our luck depended entirely on the willingness of the Scottish skies to open - and the summer has been, to put it mildly, a complete washout.
Around 11:45 pm that night, we got a red alert notification on the northern lights app telling us that right now the chances were VERY high for the lights to make an appearance. In disbelief, we poked our heads through the window just to do a quick check of the cloud status and lo and behold…it was CLEAR! Absolutely clear skies full of stars! We grabbed our warmest jacket and raced as fast as we could to the nearby hill just a few minutes away from our flat. Maybe we’d get that lucky, to see the northern lights at the same time as a meteor shower. What?!
My neck had been playing up, giving me quite a lot of pain lately. A week prior I seemed to have pulled a muscle while combing my hair, which turned into a tight muscle contraction all over the left side of my upper back, neck and shoulder. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake it off after a week. A few days of resting and taking anti-inflammatory pills helped a little, but not enough to banish it completely. Oil massages at bedtime helped too. Putting aside my phone and avoiding scrolling in bed helped a lot, and yet, the pain lingered.
Despite it all, the neck pain wouldn’t stop me from climbing that hill as fast as I could…and all was well until I tried to look up.
- ‘AAAGH F@#k! My neck…’
As thrilled as I was to be doing this, my neck didn’t seem to agree. I carefully tried a few contortionist moves so that I could point my eyes to the sky while standing there - and it worked.
-‘There! AAAAAH! I just saw one! Right there, OMG!’
I got a glimpse of one Perseid meteor, then another, then another! Mike was always looking to the opposite side or being confused by seagulls flying by (did I mention he writes a newsletter about how to pay attention?) It was too amazing to miss so we stood there for at least 20 minutes so he could catch some lights too. My neck started struggling after a while - and as much as I wanted to keep hunting for lights in the sky, I was becoming annoyed by this lingering muscle pain. Let me enjoy these tiny once-a-year miracles, will you?
After half an hour, right before leaving and ignoring the night-damp grass, my partner just went down and laid on his back for a couple minutes. I wasn’t keen because, well, my neck. But then he convinced me and I did the same.
As we laid there, in the absolute silence of midnight, away from street lights and surrounded only by the vastness of nature and the night sky, something overtook me. All of a sudden, life felt different…calm, marvellous, magical. The entire sky opened up right in front of my eyes, my neck didn’t hurt (correct position!) and I could finally enjoy the view without any grumbling from my body or mind. I was able to just be; to feel part of the nothingness while feeling whole myself.
Silence. Gratitude. Amazement. Joy.
For a few minutes, waiting for the next streak of light to sear overhead, so many thoughts crossed my mind on how I’ve moved my life from a place of worry, stress and survival to achieve moments like this. I have been pondering about this lately, and this Perseid night helped me to see the patterns I had probably learned while growing up, now willing to work through them and become a better version of myself.
Lying there on my back, even though it was for less than ten minutes, gave me an “overview effect” perspective on my life and all the things I’ve been thinking about. Maybe it was no coincidence, maybe the stars indeed aligned letting me have such a deep moment.
The vastness of nature makes you feel small and also makes you feel a part of it. Have you ever considered that you are nature too? Your body and your mind being nature? Because they are. You are nature, sprung from it and still as deeply wired into it as the trees and plants in the earth. And I think it’s a mesmerising thing to feel.
It only took five minutes of looking towards the sky while laying on my back to make me feel a kind of magic about being human. Completely present in myself, in the moment, free from worries or merciless self-judgment, reminding me how I am a tiny part of all this greatness, but also a manifestation of it, too.
It only took a few minutes for the cosmos to show me this bigger picture of human existence, and to lift me above my negative thoughts, to realise how life can be lived with ease and gratitude - one of the most powerful reminders I’ve had lately of how existing in this complicated world, with all its troubles and struggles, can still feel like a gift and a blessing.
Which is why I want to use September’s Green Prescription to bring a similar experience to you.
An invitation to bring you back to yourself. ❤
