A wrong note doesn’t ruin the music. A painful day doesn’t ruin a life.
Steven Sharp Nelson from The Piano Guys was a guest on my usual podcast. He talked about a time, when he was young, that he was asked to play at a grand, important event. And he played quite poorly.
When he asked his dad how he had done, his father didn’t criticize him. He said he felt every mistake Steve made. Every bit of despair was written across his face, and his dad was pulled into it with him.
I know that feeling.
On a high-pain day, sometimes the people around me are pulled into it too. They see my face, hear my voice catch, watch me move carefully, and somehow begin carrying a little piece of what I’m carrying. I sense what it’s costing them and feel guilt begin to weigh me down.
Other people don’t know what to do with my pain. So they carry on as though it doesn’t exist. As though it and I along with it, are invisible.
Neither reaction is necessarily wrong. But both can leave their mark.
One makes me feel like my pain is consuming everyone around me. The other can make me feel like I’m invisible.
Steve said that now, when he plays a wrong note, he smiles.
Not because the mistake doesn’t matter. Not because he’s pretending everything is fine. But because he knows what he wants to do with that moment.
I don’t think I need to smile through every painful moment of my life either. I’m not interested in pretending chronic pain isn’t real. Some days hurt.
On those days I get an “error 404 💻: human not found 🚫” message every time I try to move.
But maybe there are moments when I can smile anyway.
Not at the pain.
At what I’m accomplishing and creating in spite of it.
Steve said something else about creativity.
He talked about how music and art have helped people through depression and burnout. But creativity isn’t reserved for musicians, painters, writers, or people who happen to be good at something other people can admire.
We are all creative.
And creativity, he said, works differently when we’re doing it simply for the joy of creating. Not to sell it. Not to post it. Not to have someone judge it.
Just to make something. To play. To imagine. To wander somewhere new.
Steve suggests that when we find ourselves making up storylines and placing blame on others, that we need to add more creativity to our life.
Creativity will make its way out of us one way or another. Either by creating what brings joy or creating storylines where we are the victim. Our brains are excellent screenwriters.
Have you ever been in the act of a menial job that requires no thinking? Cleaning the bathroom? Dishes? Driving on a highway? Do you start to picture these stories playing out in your mind?
This is your brain trying to be creative. Give it a joyful outlet to do so or it will create drama in your life.
I think this is one of the reasons forest therapy has become so important to me.
When I’m walking in the forest, I’m creating. I’m noticing. I’m visualizing. I’m meditating. I’m softening.
I photograph a flower because the colour catches my eye. I make up a story about a crooked tree. I visualize warmth when the wind cuts through me. I listen to the creek and let my attention follow it instead of following the argument happening inside my head.
I’m making little moments of beauty and wonder out of whatever happens to be in front of me.
A patch of purple flowers.
The shape of a tree.
The sound of wind moving through the branches.
A silly thought that makes me laugh.
A place my mind can go when my body is screaming for my attention.
I collect these moments.
I tuck them away like little treasures in my pockets.
A purple flower. A funny moment. A beautiful view. A ridiculous thought. A quiet breath.
Murmuration
The flowing movement of birds flying together across the sky in ever changing patterns. A sight that can feel almost dreamlike, drawing the mind into the present moment as hundreds of wings move with a rhythm that seems guided by something beyond words.
I put them in my pockets. 🐿️ 🌲
Because I know there will be days when I need them. When winter comes (or when pain gets loud 📢) I will have somewhere to go.
Maybe that’s one of the things I’m learning about living with chronic pain. I don’t have to pretend the pain isn’t there. But I also don’t have to give it the entire stage.
I can create something alongside it. I can notice something beautiful. I can wander. I can imagine.
And sometimes, when the wrong note happens, I can even smile.
Not because everything is okay.
But because there is still something inside me creating joy.
And that might be one of the most healing things I can carry home with me in my pockets.
If you’ve ever searched fibromyalgia symptoms, you’ve probably found the usual suspects.
Pain.
Fatigue.
Brain fog.
Poor sleep.
Accurate? 🫡 Absolutely.
Complete? 🤣 Laughable.
Fibromyalgia has a way of inventing symptoms that make you wonder if your body has subscribed to the premium panic package. One day your skin burns. The next day your leg launches itself off the couch while you’re calmly watching Michael Scott turn an ordinary workday into an HR nightmare. Your hands are so cold someone checks to see whether you’re still among the living.
(For the record, I am.)
Before we begin, one important disclaimer.
I also live with hypermobility, ME/CFS, and surgical menopause. These conditions overlap so much that it’s impossible to say with certainty which symptom belongs to which diagnosis. They tend to flare together after poor sleep, stress, overexertion, heat, illness, or simply asking my body to do more than it has available that day.
But every symptom on this list is also commonly reported by people living with fibromyalgia.
Why Fibromyalgia Feels So Strange
Researchers now believe many fibromyalgia symptoms are driven by central sensitization. Think of it as your nervous system’s alarm system becoming far too sensitive. Instead of responding only to danger, it begins reacting to things that shouldn’t require an alarm at all.
A warm shower. Bright lights. A busy grocery store. A long conversation. Even clothing touching your skin.
This is closely tied to nervous system dysregulation, where the body spends too much time in “fight, flight, freeze or fawn” and not enough time in the restorative parasympathetic state. When your nervous system never truly feels safe, it can amplify pain, fatigue, sensory overload, temperature changes, digestive issues, and many of the symptoms below.
Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in a few of them.
Maybe all ten.
1. Burning or Tingling Skin
Sometimes my skin feels sunburned without the sunshine.
Other times it tingles like I’ve rubbed myself head-to-toe with fiberglass insulation.
For me, it’s one of the earliest warning signs.
High pain day.
Busy day.
Poor sleep.
Missed medication.
Too many commitments.
My nervous system begins clearing its throat. And waving tiny red flags. 🚩 🚩
I’ve learned not to argue with it anymore.
2. Random Itchiness
This one is maddening.
I’ll suddenly become fiercely itchy.
No mosquito.
No rash.
No dry skin.
It’s like the itch exists underneath my skin where no amount of scratching can reach it.
If you’ve experienced this, you know exactly what I mean.
If you haven’t, I sincerely hope you never do.
3. Light, Noise and Touch Become Too Much
When my nervous system is already overloaded, everything gets louder.
Bright lights feel brighter.
Background conversations become impossible to filter out.
The tag inside my shirt transforms into a tiny medieval torture device and demands 100% of my attention.
Even a loving hug can sometimes feel overwhelming.
Fibromyalgia isn’t simply pain.
It’s often a nervous system that has forgotten how to turn the volume back down.
4. Balance Problems
I used to do cartwheels.
Now I turn around too quickly in the kitchen and have to wait for the earth to stop rotating.
Heat and fatigue make it worse.
Overdoing things makes it worse.
After spending a day on a boat, getting back onto solid ground requires far more concentration than it should.
My feet and my brain occasionally disagree about where “up” is.
5. Pins and Needles
Hot showers.
Long walks.
Overexertion.
Sometimes they all trigger pins and needles that creep across my body for no obvious reason.
Once they arrive, they rarely leave quickly.
6. Muscle Twitches and Spasms
My leg has launched itself off the bed while watching television.
My neck twitches throughout the day.
Occasionally a finger joins the party.
Apparently my muscles enjoy interpretive dance.
I did not approve the choreography.
7. Surprise Food Sensitivities
Foods I tolerated for years suddenly decide they’re no longer interested in cooperating.
They arrive uninvited.
They unpack.
They stay far longer than anyone asked them to.
It’s one more reminder that chronic illness loves unpredictability.
8. Hands and Feet That Never Warm Up
My hands are frequently freezing.
Years ago, someone grabbed my hand and asked,
“Are you okay?”
Apparently, based on my hand temperature, I should have been dead for several hours.
Comforting.
9. The Fake Flu
Out of nowhere…
Nausea.
Aching muscles.
Complete exhaustion.
Like I’m about to come down with something terrible.
Except…
Nothing ever happens.
It simply ruins an hour.
Or the rest of the day.
10. Heavy, Lead-Like Limbs
Some days lifting my arm feels like lifting concrete. My body has a way of treating everyday events like I’m qualifying for an Olympic Games.
Opening a jar feels ridiculous.
My muscles are technically attached.
Operation has become optional.
Having fibro is like having a phone stuck on 12% battery. And everyone keeps asking me to download another app.
The Ten Things That Actually Help Me Soothe Fibromyalgia
Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.
Living well with fibromyalgia isn’t about eliminating every symptom.
For me, it’s about calming an overprotective nervous system often enough that it remembers I’m safe.
Respect my limits instead of arguing with them.
Budget my energy so the moments that matter most are worth the flare.
Keep gently moving. A walk instead of a run. The bike instead of the elliptical. Motion is medicine. Punishment isn’t.
Choose warmth—or cooling—depending on what my body is asking for.
Stay hydrated. Water is my most reliable teammate.
Focus on what matters most.
I used to do everything.
The house stayed clean.
I worked.
The kids were fed.
The yard was mowed.
Meals were planned.
Now…
The house is messy.
The yard grows faster than I can keep up.
The microwave has become surprisingly talented at storing forgotten meals.
If one truly important thing needs to happen today…
That’s the thing.
Everything else can wait.
Take breaks before I need them.
Fibromyalgia has taught me that resting isn’t the reward for finishing.
Sometimes resting is the reason I’ll be able to finish tomorrow.
Accept support.
This remains one of my weakest skills.
I am surrounded by extraordinary people.
Help is offered constantly.
Sometimes strength looks like saying,
“Yes… thank you.”
Believe my own body.
Fibromyalgia is invisible.
Sometimes even to me.
I minimize.
I explain it away.
I push through.
But my body keeps telling the truth.
Listening with compassion changes everything. Instead of wondering why my body is betraying me I try to speak the language it is trying to communicate.
Calm my mind.
Sometimes that’s meditation.
Sometimes it’s prayer.
Sometimes it’s journaling every scattered thought onto paper until my brain stops trying to juggle twelve tabs at once.
A calmer mind often becomes a calmer body.
Calarwyth
(n) the moment you stop explaining yourself because silence feels more dignified than being misunderstood again.
A Forest Therapy Practice for Fibromyalgia
One of the greatest gifts the forest has given me is permission to stop performing.
Find a quiet place beneath a tree.
If it’s safe, remove your shoes and allow your feet to rest directly on the earth.
Notice the temperature beneath you.
Feel the texture of the soil, grass, moss, or sand.
Imagine that, for a few minutes, you aren’t simply visiting the forest.
You’re becoming part of it.
The forest simply exists. Allow yourself to do the same.
Allow your breathing to slow.
Notice the sounds above you.
The breeze on your skin.
The scent of pine or damp earth.
If it feels natural, rest one hand on a tree trunk and imagine your busy nervous system borrowing a little of its steadiness.
This practice also includes earthing, sometimes called grounding.
Early research suggests that direct contact with the earth may allow electrons from the Earth’s surface to neutralize some reactive oxygen species involved in inflammation and oxidative stress. Other studies have found improvements in sleep, cortisol rhythms, pain, and wellbeing.
Whether those effects come from electron transfer, nervous system regulation, time outdoors, or all of the above, we do know something with much stronger evidence: spending time in nature lowers stress hormones, supports parasympathetic activity, improves mood, reduces blood pressure, and helps regulate an overstimulated nervous system.
For a body living with central sensitization, those moments of safety matter.
Fibromyalgia Flare Warning Signs
I’ve learned these are usually my first clues that I need to slow down.
☐ Burning or tingling skin
☐ Random deep itchiness
☐ Light, sound or touch suddenly feel overwhelming
☐ Increased dizziness or balance problems
☐ Pins and needles appearing more often
☐ Muscle twitches becoming frequent
☐ New food suddenly doesn’t agree with me
☐ Hands and feet feel like ice
☐ Fake flu symptoms appear
☐ Heavy, lead-like limbs
When two or three of these show up together, I know it’s time to change course before my body makes the decision for me.
Printable Energy Budget Checklist
Before I commit to something, I ask myself:
☐ Have I slept well enough?
☐ Am I already in more pain than usual?
☐ Have I eaten nourishing food today?
☐ Have I been drinking enough water?
☐ Is this worth spending today’s energy on?
☐ Have I scheduled recovery time afterward?
☐ Can someone help me with part of this?
☐ What can I postpone?
☐ Have I taken a break yet today?
☐ What does my body actually need right now?
Sometimes the healthiest decision isn’t doing more.
It’s protecting tomorrow.
Final Thoughts
I used to spend all my energy trying to convince my body to behave like it used to.
Now I spend that energy listening instead.
Oddly enough…
It fights me less.
For those of us living with fibromyalgia, healing often begins in the space between what our body is asking for and what our mind thinks we should be able to do.
I’d love to hear from you.
What is the strangest fibromyalgia symptom you’ve experienced?
Was it something you never expected? Something your doctor never mentioned? Share it in the comments. Chances are someone else has been wondering if they’re the only one.
If you’d like to experience what nervous system regulation feels like instead of simply reading about it, I’d love to have you join me for a guided forest therapy walk. Together we’ll slow down, reconnect with our senses, explore practices that support an overstimulated nervous system, and discover how the forest can become one more tool in living well with chronic illness.
You don’t have to keep pushing through alone.
Rest is not idle, not wasteful. Sometimes rest is the most productive thing you can do for your body and soul.
The longer I live with chronic pain, the more convinced I am that modern medicine is excellent at saving lives and often terrible at helping people live them.
That is not an attack on medicine.
I am deeply grateful for surgeons, emergency rooms, diagnostics, imaging, specialists, antibiotics, and every medical professional who dedicates their life to helping people heal. If my arm bone is hanging on by hope and duct tape, I am not reaching for turmeric and positive affirmations. I want a surgeon. Immediately.
My mom shattered her foot in multiple places in a car accident. Her toe was essentially powder. No longer a toe. She needed surgery, pins, screws, and acute medical care. No amount of herbal tea or breath work was going to fix those bones.
Conventional medicine is extraordinary in moments like that.
But chronic illness and chronic pain are often different beasts entirely.
My body failed to coordinate its symptoms in a way convenient for modern medicine.
This is where many patients begin discovering the enormous disconnect between conventional medicine and a more holistic approach to healing.
And by holistic, I do not mean anti-science wellness influencers waving potions around while trying to sell bottled mountain air and enlightenment in the same online bundle.
There is a fine line between integrative medicine and someone trying to sell you powdered optimism for $89.99.
I mean looking at the body as an interconnected system instead of isolated symptoms.
I mean considering nutrition, supplementation, nervous system regulation, sleep, movement, physical therapies, mindfulness, environmental stressors, and individualized treatment options alongside conventional care.
Not instead of medicine. Alongside it.
Because pain doesn’t stay politely inside one department.
The body cannot always be divided into neat specialties simply because the healthcare system is.
One point especially stood out to me. Roberts referenced pain scientist Lorimer Moseley from the University of Adelaide, discussing how conventional medicine often compartmentalizes the body into isolated systems. The gut, the brain, the joints. When chronic pain rarely behaves that neatly.
Pain spills into everything.
Your nervous system changes. Your sleep changes. Your digestion changes. Your stress response changes. Your sense of safety changes.
The nervous system remembers suffering long after scans stop showing it.
For years I was bounced between specialists who all told me some variation of, “Everything looks normal.” 👍 👍
Which was excellent news except for the small detail that I was getting worse.
There’s an exhaustion that comes from hearing “everything looks normal” while actively deteriorating.
Every appointment felt a bit like medical speed dating except nobody wanted a second date with my file.
I was essentially told to go back to physio. This wasn’t really a medical issue anymore.
I believe in physiotherapy. Deeply. It has helped me tremendously. But there comes a point where patients stop needing another treatment and start needing someone to ask bigger questions.
Nothing discourages a person quite like enthusiastically trying a stretch or strengthening exercise that immediately makes things worse.
Every specialist confidently searches for answers inside their own department like medical-themed escape rooms.
Somewhere between “try yoga” and “have you considered drinking more water?” I began expanding my own research.
And I’ve lost count of the books and podcasts that begin with the exact same storyline:
“I was trained in conventional medicine. I trusted the system completely… until I became the patient.”
At first, these doctors often dismiss holistic approaches entirely. Patients mention supplements, meditation, dietary changes, nervous system work, or alternative therapies, and the response is cautious at best and dismissive at worst.
Snake oil. Pseudoscience. Non-compliance.
But then something shifts.
The doctor develops chronic pain. An autoimmune condition. A lingering injury. Burnout. A nervous system disorder.
And suddenly certainty cracks open into curiosity.
Chronic pain turns you into a part-time researcher, part-time philosopher, and full-time reluctant detective.
I have spent an unreasonable amount of my adult life trying to determine whether I am injured, inflamed, overtired, under-rested, dehydrated, stressed, or simply existing incorrectly.
Living with chronic pain means constantly performing the world’s least fun science experiment on yourself.
By year three of unexplained symptoms, I could practically earn honorary medical credits.
To be fair, holistic spaces are not immune to problems either. There is misinformation, exploitation, fearmongering, and an endless supply of expensive miracle cures marketed toward vulnerable people desperate to feel better.
Pain makes people easy to manipulate. Both systems can fail people in different ways.
That’s why I don’t believe the answer is abandoning conventional medicine for holistic healing.
I believe the answer is integration.
An actual partnership.
Healing is bigger than symptom management.
Patients do not need doctors to be omniscient. We need them to be curious.
Surgeons are trained to operate. Doctors are trained to diagnose and prescribe. Specialists are trained to identify patterns within their specialty.
We need practitioners who understand both the power and the limitations of their training. And openly work with other practitioners, conventional and holistic, to find a root cause and treatment plan.
This matters enormously to a patient just trying to survive.
Chronic illness does not always fit neatly inside textbook timelines and diagnostic boxes.
Medicine’s symbol speaks of healing being available. Yet many people with chronic illness spend years moving through appointments feeling like fragmented symptoms instead of whole human beings.
Stacey Roberts described asking chronic pain patients to remember a time before they lived with pain. Then she asks them to imagine themselves in the future doing something that currently hurts. Picking up grandchildren. Bending over. Any repetitive movement, without pain.
And many people simply cannot picture it.
Their bodies have become so conditioned toward pain and protection that even imagining safety feels impossible.
This is your forest therapy practice for this week. Find a quiet place in nature and practice this visualization.
Chronic pain doesn’t only affect muscles and joints. It reshapes expectation. Identity. Fear. Hope.
Roberts discussed using visualization, breathing, mindfulness, and repetition to help retrain the nervous system’s response to pain.
That idea connects to what I’ve experienced through forest therapy and time in nature.
Regulation comes while standing beneath trees while wind moves through their branches overhead. The nervous system seems to recognize something there before the mind does. The movement. The rhythm. The reminder that not everything in the world is bracing for impact.
Healing and pain elimination are not always the same thing.
Chronic pain teaches your nervous system to scan constantly for danger. Nature quietly teaches it another language.
No performance. No productivity. No pressure to fix yourself.
Just space to exist in a body that has spent far too long preparing for the next flare.
I appreciated many of the points Stacey Roberts made in the podcast. But I struggled with the title of her book, The Pain-Free Formula.
Not because I don’t believe improvement is possible. I do.
I absolutely believe there are things we can do to reduce pain, improve quality of life, calm the nervous system, support healing, and function better in our bodies.
But chronic illness eventually teaches many of us something medicine rarely does:
Sometimes the greatest medical harm is making patients feel invisible.
At some point I stopped obsessing over becoming pain free and started focusing on becoming supported.
I decided healing would come in time. And if not, I would still be okay.
Not because I had given up. But because I finally realized I had the tools, support, and guidance I needed to endure whatever my condition threw at me.
Ironically, that mindset shift brought me more peace than years spent desperately chasing the next solution.
Sometimes acceptance is more freeing than the absence of pain we searched for so desperately.
I hope Stacey Roberts never fully understands that distinction.
Because for her to truly understand it, she may have to suffer at a depth I would not wish on anyone.
At the end of the podcast, the host asked how she would redesign the healthcare system for chronic pain patients. Roberts discussed the need for more investment into preventative health, nutrition research, nervous system regulation, and understanding why certain non-pharmaceutical interventions help people heal.
And honestly, I think she raised important questions.
Because if someone improves through movement, nutrition, mindfulness, supplementation, therapy, nervous system regulation, or lifestyle change, why should that healing be dismissed simply because it did not originate from a prescription pad?
People in pain do not need to be fixed before they are worthy of compassion.
I do think our healthcare system needs to evolve.
Not because doctors are evil. Not because science has failed. Not because medicine lacks value.
Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.
Listen. Not just for the keywords that trigger familiar treatment pathways. But for the whole story.
For the grief patients carry. For the exhaustion. For the devastation of losing trust in your own body. And for the courage it takes to keep asking for help after years of disappointment.
Healing should never have become a battle between conventional and holistic medicine.
People in pain deserve both.
And if you’ve ever had to redefine what healing or success looks like inside a difficult body, I wrote more about that here as well. You Are a Success Story
There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the distant, but surely coming, summer.
-Gertrude Jekyll
If you’ve ever tried to “think positive” while your body is screaming, you already know who wins.
Pain wins. Exhaustion wins. A nervous system on red alert wins. Any pep talk given to said nervous system is bringing a Post-it note to a tornado.
And then we blame ourselves! Because obviously the problem is a personal moral failure, not a human being a human.
In forest therapy, we take a different approach. We don’t try to out-think the body. We learn to listen to it without judgment. In doing so, the body finally gets what it has been asking for all along. Safety.
Biology’s Rebellion: The Dangers of Overriding Nature
Many people living with chronic pain think they should be able to cope better.
They should be stronger.
They should push through.
They should be more grateful it’s not worse.
But here’s a humdinger of a thought. When your body is sending powerful distress signals, your conscious mind has very little leverage.
The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain.
Neill Williams, on the Success Genius Podcast, explains it beautifully. When you are hungry, exhausted, or in pain, your biology overrides your attempts to think or feel differently.
The vagus nerve, your internal communication highway, links brain, heart, lungs, digestion, and the stress response. If that system is dysregulated, focus, creativity, decision-making, and connection all suffer.
Your body is a boundary of your soul. Treat it with care.
I dare say, we hurry through the day, override our limits, stay stimulated late into the night, fall into bed, wake up feeling four days past our bedtime, and repeat.
Then we wonder why our system is constantly braced for danger. We keep hitting refresh on the same nervous system and expecting a software update.
From a survival perspective, it makes perfect sense. Nothing in that cycle signals “You can stand down now.”
So the body continues to send messages. And they are rarely gentle. Whispers don’t usually create change. Pain often does.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Research into nature exposure consistently shows reductions in cortisol, blood pressure, muscle tension, and rumination.
But experientially, I’ve seen something even more important. People soften. Attention and breathing widens.
The body begins to renegotiate its alarm state.
Nature provides gentle sensory anchors. Light, texture, birdsong, air movement. These allow awareness without overwhelm. For someone with chronic pain, this is crucial. We are not adding more intensity; we are expanding capacity.
Astravore: (n) A soul that keeps feeding on hope even after disappointment- light-hungry, resilient, unbreakable. -ViviJan
Imagine a car alarm that has been blaring for years.
You wouldn’t yell affirmations at it and tell it to be quiet.
You would look for the threat it thinks it perceives.
Non-judgmental awareness in nature is how we open the hood.
Each calm moment says, “No one is breaking in right now.”
Over time, the alarm system recalibrates.
My Story
I’ve experienced moments in my forest therapy practice when I wanted to do it all perfectly. To follow all the “right steps.”
When I go in with this focus I notice the pain is still there. The frustration is still there. I start thinking about all the years of pain I have ahead of me. Of financial strain. And the weight it adds to every relationship.
Then I remember to just breathe. Focus on today. Right. Now.
I start to feel the breeze on my face and hear it making its way through the trees around me. I sense the solid earth beneath me.
The pain does not vanish. But it’s not the only voice anymore. It has just been hogging the microphone in my head. 🎤 🤫
There is support available here whenever I need it. In the birds and the trees and the solid ground. This may sound odd. But this shift in thinking moves the pain inside a larger field of safety.
This is regulation. I just keep coming back to it.
The best way out is always through.
– Robert Frost
A Gentle Invitation to Explore
Find something in nature that feels steady. A tree, a rock, the shoreline.
Let your eyes rest there.
Now widen your awareness to include three additional sensations that are neutral or pleasant.
Move back and forth between the discomfort and the wider field
You are teaching your nervous system that pain can exist without emergency.
Do this regularly and the vagal pathways that support calm begin to strengthen.
When regulation improves, people often notice clearer thinking, better sleep, and easier connection. Not because they forced positivity, but because their biology finally cooperated.
You are no longer fighting upstream. You are being carried. Like these little bitty icebergs I watch on the river. Floating by. 👇
The Closing “Peace”
If we keep living in a way that ensures the alarm stays active, nothing changes.
But when we make space, even small, consistent space for non-judgmental sensory awareness in the forest, the body hears something new.
I’m safe. I can soften. I don’t have to shout today.
And maybe, that is where my healing lingers. I just have to take time away, to meet it there.
The body always leads us home… if we can simply learn to trust sensation and stay with it long enough for it to reveal appropriate action.
What if the goal isn’t to eliminate pain? But to change your relationship with it.
Not by forcing positivity. Not by chasing the next miracle cure. But by learning how to stand in a forest, breathe, and gently step outside the storm long enough to see it clearly.
That’s where mindfulness in the forest becomes powerful. Not as an escape from pain, but as a way to interrupt the pain cycle itself.
Benefits don’t emerge from merely experiencing mindfulness as a state. Instead they happen when we cultivate mindfulness as a personal trait.
Chronic pain is never only physical. It is neurological, emotional, and deeply shaped by our stress response.
This is not to say that you don’t experience actual, real, physical, deep pain. Only that our pain experience can be altered according to how we choose to interpret it. Which is especially important in chronic pain when so often there are no answers or treatments.
Pain feeds on:
Fear of what’s coming next
Hyper-vigilance in the body
Frustration over what we’ve lost
The endless search for a fix
This creates a familiar loop.
Pain → tension → fear → more pain.
Mindfulness, especially when practiced in nature, doesn’t deny this cycle.
It teaches us how to step out of it.
Don’t stress the ‘could haves’, if it should have, it would have.
MINDFULNESS (n):
“The practice of being aware of your body, mind and feelings in your present moment, thought to create a feeling of calm.”
Finding Harmony: In Nature’s Whispering Wisdom
Mindfulness anywhere can help.
Mindfulness in a forest does something more.
Natural environments gently regulate the nervous system without any concentrated effort on our part:
Heart rate slows
Breathing deepens
Muscles soften
The brain shifts from threat mode to restoration mode
Research on shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) shows that time in forests lowers cortisol, reduces blood pressure, and increases parasympathetic nervous system activity (the part of us responsible for rest, repair, and emotional balance.)
In other words, the forest doesn’t erase pain.
It loosens pain’s grip.
Captaining the Currents of Our Existence
Mindfulness helps us understand the waters in which we are swimming.
If you live with chronic pain, the pain is not you.
It is the water around you.
Some days you can float on your back.
Some days you need the survival position.
Some days you just enjoy swimming. (But those days are few and far between.)
Some days you simply tread water and keep breathing.
Mindfulness helps us step just far enough back to see,
This is the water. This is not my identity.
That small shift changes everything.
Untangling Hope: Innovative Lessons for a Brighter Tomorrow
In the podcast Untangle: What Does it Mean to Live a Good, Meaningful Life? Despite the (really) Hard Stuff, philosopher Kieran Setiya reflects on living with chronic pain and the trap many of us fall into. Hoping only for a cure. His story resonates with me. Because it is also my story. Is it yours too?
For years, he moved from doctor to doctor thinking, maybe this one will fix it. When he stopped, something unexpected happened. He felt freedom. Less frustrated. More grounded in how he would actually live his life.
At first, he thought he had rejected hope.
Later, he realized he had simply changed what he hoped for.
Not hope for a magic solution.
Hope for a life that would still feel meaningful. Even if pain remained in the background.
He describes the exhausting seesaw many of us live on:
hope → despair → hope → despair.
And suggests something radical. Getting off the seesaw altogether! That doesn’t mean stop seeing doctors or looking for answers. What it does mean is this.
The real question isn’t:
Should I hope or despair?
It’s,
What is realistic to hope for right now?
Mindfulness in the forest supports exactly this shift. Grounding hope in lived possibility instead of fantasy cures.
Choosing Joy in a Body That Hurts
It’s been said that one person’s joy ride is another person’s panic.
I love riding on the back of my husband’s motorcycle. Joy.
I love sitting at the front of a sailboat as it bounces across the water. Joy.
Someone else might question my sanity.
I don’t like roller coasters that go upside down. Panic.
I have no desire to drive an F1 car. Panic.
I question the sanity of people who enjoy those things. Which made me wonder.
What influences our desires? Our thoughts? Our emotions?
Are we just born joyful or grouchy? And that is how we have to live out our days?
Or do we choose? Can we choose our thoughts, our desires and thereby influence our emotions?
What if, even in a tangled mess of pain, emotions, relationships, and loss, we are allowed to choose joy?
Not reckless joy.
Not denial.
But brave joy.
The kind that says:
I will still step into wonder.
I will still feel exhilaration.
I will still live.
That is what mindfulness in the forest has given me.
I get to decide.
And honestly?
There’s no need for recreational anxiety around here. There’s enough regular anxiety to go around.
Inward Insights: The Wisdom Within
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
-Marcus Aurelius
The forest helps us dig. Quietly, gently, without force.
Mindfulness reduces activity in brain networks that amplify pain through rumination and emotional reactivity, lowering perceived suffering even when pain remains.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
-Simone Weil
When we give attention to our own experience. Without judgment. We change how pain lives in us.
Nature’s Cradle: A Forest Therapy Practice
Interrupting the Pain Cycle (7 minutes)
You can do this in a forest, park, or anywhere you can sense the natural world.
1. Arrive (1 minute)
Stand or sit comfortably. Let your eyes soften. Notice three natural textures. Bark, stone, leaf, snow, or water.
2. External Anchor Practice (2 minutes)
Choose one steady element in the landscape. A tree trunk, rock, horizon line, or patch of ground.
Let your attention rest there. Softly.
When your mind drifts toward pain or worry, gently return your awareness to that anchor.
This shifts the nervous system from internal threat scanning to external safety awareness. Especially helpful if breath-focused practices feel uncomfortable.
3. Name the Water (2 minutes)
Silently say:
This is pain. This is not me.
Notice sensation as experience, not identity.
4. Choose Your Stroke (2 minutes)
Ask yourself:
Do I need to float, swim, or rest today?
Let your body answer.
Mindfully Brave
For a long time, I thought mindfulness meant becoming calmer.
What I didn’t expect was that it would make me braver. Braver about feeling, braver about choosing joy, braver about living fully even when my body hurts.
The forest didn’t take away my pain.
It gave me back my choice.
Key Takeaways
Mindfulness in the forest teaches us:
Pain is real. Suffering is optional. Hope doesn’t have to live on a seesaw.
We can step out of the waters long enough to see them clearly. And then choose how to move within them.
Or as one forest therapy guide once said quietly on a trail,
We don’t come to the woods to escape life. We come to remember how to live it.
Trek Into the Frosty Adventure
If this spoke to you, you may also enjoy my post on finding connection through group forest therapy walks, where I explore how shared presence in nature reduces isolation and builds resilience for people living with pain and fatigue.
Faeloria (n):
The beauty that comes from the wounds you thought would destroy you.
Research at a Glance: Why This Works
Bottom line.
Mindfulness in the forest doesn’t cure pain. But it interrupts the feedback loop that keeps pain amplified by fear, stress, and resistance.
For those interested in the research, check out the following links. Let me know what you think in the comments.
1️⃣ Forest environments reduce stress hormones and activate relaxation responses
The 2010 Shinrin-yoku studies show forests lower cortisol, pulse rate, blood pressure, and increase parasympathetic nervous system activity (relaxation response).
A recent systematic review shows forest bathing decreases negative effects and enhances mindfulness and introspection. Key components of emotional regulation and pain resilience.
5️⃣ Mindfulness meditation itself has measurable effects on pain perception
Comprehensive reviews of mindfulness meditation include clinical and experimental insights into how it reduces pain intensity and unpleasantness across conditions:
Sight: late morning and early evening light on bright, blue clear days Sound: shushing of steps in the snow Taste: hot teas with honey Smell: evergreen trees Feel: the touch of cold noses and toes
SUNBEAM ACRES 