Hello dear walkers 🚶‍♀🚶! Today I'll share a special walk and explain to you, dear walker, why I hugged a tree today and its importance to me.

If you never came across one of my posts, let me start by telling you I'm a person that likes to dive into feelings, emotions and reflect about deep thoughts and my inner truth. I believe it's part of my journey to self knowledge and here on Hive I found the freedom I needed to be able to express it.

If you feel this would be an interesting reading, please allow me to walk you through this post 😁 (note to self - pun intended 😉. Will I succeed?)

I'm not the best at taking photos but let's start with my favourite picture from today 🤗

Hold still. Sit up straight. Place your feet on the ground. Relax your shoulders down. Relax your jaw. Breathe in deeply. Hold 1, 2, 3. Exhale slowly.

Can you feel the birds singing? 🐦🐦

I was working today and going from house to house when I arrived at a beautiful place, a little village near Sintra in Portugal. I had an appointment around 3:30pm and I got there a little bit early because I was afraid I would be stuck in traffic (note to self - I hate being late to commitments).

I'm so glad I did because it gave me the opportunity to stop in this beautiful, quiet and calm neighbourhood.

Don't you just feel an immediate pull to walk here?

Today was unusually hot for the season. We are currently in Spring and at this time, weather is mild and usually varies between rainy days and a little bit of sun lurking in the clouds. But today, as you can see in the picture above, it was a clear blue sky with temperatures around 20ºC.

I thought I should take advantage of this moment and go for a little walk while I waited for the appointed hour with my patient.

Let's go to the interesting part of this walk?

This little crooked tree was the one I selected to hug (note to self - yes, I had a little quick contest to select my tree). Why? Well... Let's just say I'm dealing with a lot lately and my mental health is in a recovering process. In this another journey of mine, I was recently encouraged by a friend to get out of the house more and have more contact with nature.

And yes, she strongly suggested I hugged a tree! Therefore, when I saw this place full of trees I immediately thought of her suggestion. I looked around to see if there was no one near to witness. 😅 I thought about it for about 10 minutes before doing it, I felt embarrassed and silly.

What if someone sees me? What if they think I'm mad?

I breathed deeply, forced myself to think why the hell wouldn't you just try, and went for it!

I felt so silly in the beginning (note to self - and now by sharing it) 🙈🙈. I wanted to run away and just quit this idea, it felt a stupid thing to do.

But then, I started to breathe deeply, focused on the sounds around me, including the little singing birds, and placed my head against the main trunk... And a sort of magic happened. I started to feel the little movements the entire tree was doing in response to the wind. A weird and wonderful connection.

I started to think about it and the tree selection didn't seem so random after all. You see dear walker, just like this tree I too feel fragile, crooked and like any little wind or breeze could knock me out to the ground. Pulling all my roots until total destruction.

I look at myself in that picture above and it's like I don't recognize myself anymore. This is happening when I look at myself in the mirror too. My face feels like it's not my own. My therapist called this depersonification that can happen when your brain is overwhelmed or chemically unbalanced.

This tree has become to me a physical representation of my healing process and for the first time in a long while, today I felt balanced and more grounded. I finally believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that there is, in fact, a way out of the hole I'm currently in.

If you got this far dear walker, I thank you for your time 🙏 I hope you enjoyed walking with me inside my mind 😊

I told my partner about today's experiment and he suggested I should do it barefoot 🤔 It's likely I'll give it a try when the opportunity presents itself, now that I have surpassed the embarrassment and silliness feeling I'm actually excited to give it a go 😎. Maybe I'll come back to share it with you all 🤗

What about you dear walker? Have you ever hugged a tree? I would love to know about how was your experience with nature hugging so please be free to tell me all about it in the comment section 😁