Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [29]
Sense of Purpose: Two years ago, I was leading a retreat at the ocean. During a morning meditation, I heard a clear inner voice: “You need to go and live in nature now. You can’t wait until you are partnered, or have a plan; just do it now!” So, off I went, bringing along a new digital camera, and found myself re-discovering my creativity through the focus of a lens. I have been photographing for the past thirty years, making art as a personal meditation. One thing led to the next, though, and within the year, I was commissioned to do a shoot, presented my first exhibit in San Francisco, and had three more shows lined up for the following year. My passion for artistic expression and for the planet intersected into a newfound purpose: being an emissary for nature.
Healthy Relationships and Social Connectedness: Integral to a sense of purpose is my place in culture as an artist and teacher, and the connection it provides me with a wide range of people. For years I have led retreats at Point Reyes National Seashore to support people in finding their own relationship to the natural environment through movement and the expressive arts. Creatively exploring the body awakens the senses to the body outside our skin. Doom-and-gloom statistics seem to overwhelm people and increase anxiety and despair. A direct encounter with the natural world, on the other hand, reawakens love and appreciation for the self and the planet. As a long-time environmental educator shared with me at the end of a retreat, “I have been teaching the science of the environment for so long I had forgotten how deeply nature moves my soul. I want to use the arts and senses more from now on with the kids.”
Nature is such powerful medicine, and I am moved to share this healing with others. As much as I enjoy taking groups out of the city into nature, I can reach more people by taking my large-format photographs into urban settings, particularly into hospitals and other therapeutic environments, where the soul of nature is needed.
Can we save the planet, and our species, in time? I am not sure, but this much I do know and trust: just as I had to find my own healing solutions and not depend upon experts when first diagnosed, I also need to live my own solutions now and continue to mindfully treat the earth—materially and spiritually.
What good does it do if I eat organically and give money to environmental organizations if I am simultaneously complicit in fouling the air and water through the excesses of my lifestyle? Self-love connects me to my body, and love for the planet connects me to my larger body. The two bodies are really one and the same. If I live mindfully and remember my larger body, I am able to trust life more. If I forget the larger body, I am constrained by the limits of my individual conditioning and more likely to fear the future. Walt Whitman said, “I become multitudes!” As the diagnosis taught me many years ago, survival depends upon participation and communion rather than withdrawal and separation. Creative expression in nature, involvement with the local community, and my daily ritual are all powerful medicine and reminders: I am—and we are—all a necessary part of the unfolding Creation Story.
Jamie McHugh is a registered Somatic Movement Therapist, a performance artist and an award-winning fine art photographer living on the northern California coast. A master teacher of somatics and expressive arts, he has developed “Somatic Expression,” teaching body-based work internationally for thirty years to people of all ages. Jamie is currently adjunct faculty in the Holistic Health Department at John