Nature’s capacity to heal

A Changemakers retreat trauma release Katherine Long

One of the most remarkable qualities of Nature is its capacity to heal itself.

We must wonder at the remarkable intelligence that allows all living systems to be able to regenerate themselves in the face of trauma, and to consider healing and trauma as a wider pattern of evolution. This pattern is at work at the cellular level, all the way to the level of the whole organism, and the wider ecosystem.

Despite the ravages of even the most extreme forms of destruction, given the right opportunities, forests regenerate after fire. Space is given for new growth and enhanced bio-diversity. Similarly, ocean floors process natural oil seepage. Microbes capture the carbon and enrich the nutrient profile by weaving it back into the food chain. These are just two examples of Nature’s capacity to heal itself.

As beings of Nature ourselves, this capacity for self-healing is alive within us, too. From individual to the societal levels, we can learn to create the right conditions for these processes to occur.

Whilst healing pathways are diverse, they almost always involve being with the Body, ideally held in Nature, and engaging our capacity to hold presence for our different trauma imprints, to witness them kindly, as a powerful means to enabling entrenched patterns to find their own way towards healing and new levels of wholeness.

I have witnessed this numerous times, where having gently made contact with a place of stuck-ness, that even tuning into the smallest, subtlest inner shifts have enabled profound transformations for individuals. This naturally and symbiotically translates to their organisations and other wider systems they are part of.

Inner healing has the capacity to move mountains, where the inner and outer transformations are part of a much larger fractal pattern. Even non-local healing is enabled, by which I mean the capacity to engage with healing processes as representatives from other times and places.

We know from epigenetic studies that trauma can be carried through from our ancestors, and that what does not receive healing is bound to be repeated through the unconscious replaying of the original trauma. Today more than ever, we need to expand the lens of healing processes to include the work that our forebears could not. In the words of Eugene Gendlin our physically felt bodies are ‘in fact part of a gigantic system of here and other places, now and other times, you and other people – in fact the whole universe.’

We may previously have viewed healers as individuals with very unique capabilities, rather than trusting that, with guidance, we may all step in. As it were to Nature’s morphic field of healing. To experience the resonance of such, in our work and in our lives. Now is the time to amplify those frequencies, to learn and gather together in healing circles, standing in the place of our own and the wider social body’s regeneration and renewal.


Katherine Long Trauma Release Change MakerWritten by Katherine Long who is joining us at Hawkwood this month. She is running The Changemaker’s Retreat, a profound and moving journey inviting participates to move inward in the wisdom of self healing.

Katherine Long has worked in the field of leadership and organisation development for almost 20 years, integrating creative and holistic approaches to supporting individuals and organisations in finding new ways forward. As a registered Focusing Practitioner, Katherine brings embodiment practices to client-work to support deeper levels of presence-in-action.

Share:

Subscribe to our RSS feed:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *