We Are Nature: Breathing With the Earth
Breathe in.
It seems so simple. An act so constant and automatic, we rarely notice it at all. But this quiet exchange – taking in air, and breathing out – is the most profound relationship we will ever know. It ties us, inextricably, to the Earth. Each inhale draws life from the world into our bodies. Each exhale returns it, transformed, back into the whole.
We often speak of nature as something “out there,” separate from us, something we visit on weekends or vacations, or something we extract from and protect in equal measure. But the truth is far more intimate. We are not in nature. We are nature.
To be alive is to be part of Earth’s breathing body. This planet, alive with forests, oceans, deserts, and rivers, breathes in a slow, constant rhythm—and we are each a single cell within that larger organism, each of us participating in the great act of planetary respiration. Every tree, every blade of grass, every patch of plankton floating at the sea’s surface – we are bound to them through breath. We inhale what they exhale. They inhale what we exhale.
It is a relationship older than words, older than memory. And yet, we forget.
The Great Reciprocity
The Earth gives us breath, and we give it back. This is the most ancient exchange. Carbon dioxide flows from our lungs into the atmosphere. All plant life breaths in what we have offered. In return, they exhale oxygen. This reciprocal breathing is the foundation of life itself, the invisible thread connecting all species, all ecosystems, all time.
But how often do we pause and feel this truth? How often do we take a breath—not just as a biological necessity—but as an act of receiving a gift from the Earth itself? And how often do we exhale with awareness, consciously offering our breath back to the world as nourishment for forests, oceans, and every living thing?
Most of the time, we breathe absentmindedly, distracted and disconnected from the miracle that breath truly is. We treat breathing as a private act, belonging only to us, when in fact every breath is a conversation with the planet. Every breath reminds us: we are not alone.
The Consequence of Forgetting
When we forget this connection—when breath becomes just another unconscious habit—we begin to believe the dangerous story of separateness. We become untethered from the Earth and from each other. The natural world starts to seem like a resource, not a relative. Other beings—human and non-human alike – become competitors instead of kin. We lose the felt sense of belonging to something vast, ancient, and alive.
This forgetting is not merely spiritual or philosophical; it is physical. Disconnection from nature – our own nature – creates stress, tension, and a persistent feeling of emptiness. When we no longer feel ourselves as part of the living world, we become lost within our own skin. This is the root of so much anxiety, loneliness, and longing.
We long to return to ourselves as nature. But we don’t always know that’s what we’re missing.
Breath as a Bridge
The breath can bring us back.
Each inhale is an invitation to remember. Each exhale can be a gesture of reciprocity. With every breath, we have the opportunity to participate consciously in this ancient exchange—to feel the Earth moving through us, and ourselves moving through the Earth.
This is not metaphor. It’s biology, chemistry, and spirit braided together. To breathe with awareness is to step back into relationship with the trees whose oxygen fills your lungs, with the winds that carry seeds across continents, with the ocean whose phytoplankton release half the world’s oxygen. Each breath connects us to every being who has ever lived and every being who ever will. The same air flows through all of us, uniting species and generations in a single, continuous inhale and exhale.
The Original Prescription
Long before medicine became something dispensed in bottles, the Earth itself offered its own prescription for well-being. Step outside. Place your feet on the soil. Breathe with the trees. Let the wind move through you.
This is the original calm, the first and most profound therapy. Nature does not heal us because it “reduces stress” in some abstract sense. It heals us because it reawakens the truth of who we are: creatures woven from earth, water, air, and sunlight. When we enter the forest, sit beside the ocean, or walk in open fields, we are not visitors – we are home.
Science affirms what our bones already know that time spent in nature lowers cortisol levels, regulates heart rate, reduces inflammation, and sharpens cognition. But these are only side effects. The deeper healing comes from remembrance and returning to the body of the Earth, from remembering ourselves as part of a living, breathing world.
Breathing as Ceremony
What if each day we took a few moments to treat our breath as a ceremony?
What if each inhale was received with gratitude, knowing it carries the exhalations of trees, whales, and ancient forests? What if each exhale was offered with reverence, a gift returned to the atmosphere to nourish the life that sustains us all?
Such simple awareness can build our gratitude toward the simple acts in life and simple things we take for granted and change the way we view relationships. The air itself would become sacred. Our bodies would no longer feel isolated, but held within a vast living web. Even in a city, even in the midst of noise and concrete, we would know: the air here too is flowing from distant forests, across oceans, through the lungs of creatures we will never meet but to whom we are bound by breath.
Meaning Rooted in Relationship
When we remember that we are nature – that our breath is the Earth breathing us – life itself becomes richer with meaning. The world is no longer background scenery to our personal dramas; it is kin, family, the larger body we belong to.
From this embodied knowledge, care arises naturally. We no longer protect the Earth out of duty or guilt, but out of love. We care for the Earth because it is ourselves. We no longer exploit, because to harm the Earth is to harm our own breath, our own body, our own future.
And something else happens. When we breathe with awareness, we also begin to see each other differently. If we all share the same breath, then the illusion of separation between people dissolves. The stranger across the street, the child halfway across the world, the ancestor long gone—all are breathing with us, all are part of the same ancient exchange.
We belong to each other as surely as we belong to the Earth.
The Invitation
So this is your invitation. To breathe, not just to survive, but to remember. To treat each breath as a thread weaving you back into the world. To let the Earth breathe through you, and to breathe your life back into the Earth.
Go outside. Stand beneath a tree or at the edge of the ocean. Place your hand on your heart. Inhale. Feel the Earth entering you. Exhale. Feel yourself returning to the Earth.
This is the ceremony of being alive.
This is how we remember: we are nature.
Join us at our Sailing Retreat Days or a Skipperd Yacht Charter – step into nature and a reminder of our innate connection to everything and each other.
