GUIDED EXPERIENCE WITH ELENA RIOS
“Nature is Medicine” with Nature Immersion Guide Elena Rios - Video by Julio Alcala
Relax Restore Reset
Elena Rios, a certified Nature Connection Guide/Mentor, Interdisciplinary Artist/Cultural Practitioner and Wildland Fire Professional with the Chumash Fire Department, guides participants through sensory awareness activities to expose them to the healing power of Nature.
There has been a global reduction in access to natural environments which has led to increasing disengagement with Nature. Studies have demonstrated a wide array of health benefits to Nature Immersion, especially in the cardiovascular and immune systems, and for stabilizing and improving mood and cognition.
Nature Immersion builds on those benefits and looks beyond, to what happens when people remember that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and are related to all other beings in fundamental ways. The importance of our relationship to land, plants, and place is rooted in ancestral Indigenous Knowledge all over the world. Experience an integrative mindfulness practice that honors this ancestral wisdom.
During a Nature Immersion you will be given directions, in the form of an invitation, to assist in slowing down, relaxing, and observing with all of your senses. It is a kind of nervous system reset that has the potential to remind us of the Interconnection of All Things and our relationship to the Earth. You may begin to notice things in a way that you may never have noticed them before. Experience the holistic health benefits of Forest Bathing such as enhanced immunity, lowered blood pressure, lowered cortisol concentrations, increased focus, enhanced creativity, and activate the parasympathetic nervous system to support your body in engaging its own restorative processes. The event ends with a sharing of tea and some healthy snacks.
You are the medicine. Tu eres la medicina.
Guided by Nature: A History and Understanding
When everything shut down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Taft Gardens was a space where people could come to reflect, heal, feel, and find center amid all the uncertainty. One of the programs that held and fostered a sense of connection through social distancing were the Nature Immersion Walks guided by Elena Rios.
“In a forest or any other natural environment, I take groups of roughly 15 people out and I give directions in the form of an invitation to assist people in slowing down and observing with all their senses,” Elena Rios says. “It isn’t so much about knowing all the names of the plants as it is about noticing which plants your body feels pulled to. It’s about being here in the present moment. It is a really good integrative practice that helps all the miscellaneous fall away from us.”
This falling away process that takes place during the walks creates an opening for participants to deepen their awareness of self, their connection to all of life, and to trust their inner guidance and intuition.
“Each of us have a certain knowing and wisdom,” says Elena. “When we allow ourselves to be quiet enough and slow down enough it can help us connect with that inner medicine.”
There are several benefits that Nature Immersion Walks provide. They have been scientifically proven to decrease stress, increase mood, help lower blood pressure, facilitate better sleep and rest, lower anxiety, and help participants engage their parasympathetic system, which fuels and supports the body’s ability to restore.
As Elena emphasized, these walks are a one-on-one experience with the ultimate therapist – Nature itself.
“I am not a therapist I am a guide. As a guide, I open the doors … the forest is the therapist. Nature is the therapist,” she said. “I call it a Guided Nature Immersion because we are dropping into a deeper state of connection together and when we do that, it can help us connect with our inner medicine that we have inside of us.”
In addition to being an Association of Nature and Forest Therapy certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide, Elena works as a firefighter with the Chumash Fire Department. She shared that her connection to nature is a thread that is seen and felt throughout her entire life, and it’s this relationship to Nature and ancestral teachings, wisdom, and practices that inform how she guides the walk.
“I hold the space in such a way as to honor all languages and all ways of connecting with Nature,” Elena said. “I believe that all of us, no matter where we are from, have an ancestral or traditional way, or an understanding, that building relationship with Nature is essential to our health and wellbeing no matter where we’re from. When we slow down, relax, and drop into deeper connection, it has an ability to remind us of the deeper relationship to all things and our relationship to Earth.”