What in the World is Eco Direction?

​I’ve had a lot of people ask me recently to describe to them what EcoDirection is.  The problem is that it’s one of those things that is hard to describe in a few words!  The closest I can get is to say it’s a way of being in nature prayerfully to pay attention to how nature is aiding us, responding to our questions, or showing up in our healing.
But maybe the best way to talk about it is to give a couple of examples. 
I was out with someone the other day, and she was talking about how to find space in her life for herself with all the responsibilities she has.  As we were walking and talking, we came to a long line of lilac bushes, about 12 feet wide and 100 feet long.  On one side of the trees was a lot of noise and people working, cutting the grass, moving things around.  On the other side was a hermitage, a large field, silence, and no people.  We stood in the middle of the line of trees, feeling the dichotomy, sensing the way the bushes were setting a boundary with no feelings of guilt or ‘shoulds’. 
When we were ready, we continued on our way.  After a minute or so I stopped in my tracks with a smile on my face.  There was a car parked by the second hermitage with the license plate, “RU BEEE”.  How perfect!  Can we ‘be’ in the present, allowing the world to fall away, staying in the presence of the Divine, allowing the world to be there without drawing us into its dramas and demands, without expectations or being caught by the needs of the world, just for a moment or three!  The joy on my clients face as we reveled in this unexpected gift of a license plate was expressed with abandon!
Another time, during the training I did, I had an experience I had has stayed with me.  As a child most of my remembered physical experiences were hard and painful.  As a result I spent a lot of my childhood living outside of my body, disassociated from the physical-ness of life.  I have done a lot of work with these painful parts, remembering and re-experiencing them as a path to healing, but it was a surprise when I had a memory of a pleasant physical experience of being a child.  It began one night when the rain was coming down hard, and coming into my tent.  My sleeping bag was wet, and the sound of rain was hitting the tent, leading me back to times of camping with the Girl Guides as a ten year old.  I loved camping, so although this may sound unpleasant to you, it was a gift to have this body memory of a time when I was safe and able to be myself!  During a training session I wanted to explore this feeling, to allow a good physical memory to sink into my being.  As I explored it with my partner, we found a pool of water, and we waded right in, allowing the water sensation to help me truly feel and remember and ground and be in my body as that ten year old.  This was truly a moment of reframing the notion that my WHOLE childhood was physically hard, and allowed me to reclaim that there were moments of joy and freedom that I had full body lived into.
When we are in nature, we can find reflections in the physical (and spiritual) world that can help our inner world, and I find it is helpful for people to not only see this, but to linger for a while, allowing the outer physical things to become a part of us through playing with them, experiencing them fully into the cells of our being, incorporating them into our life and the cells of our body.  Standing on the boundary and feeling both worlds, for example, or moving nature objects around, or finding something that is a reflection of where we are in the moment.  It can help us really embody a new way of being, take a step into healing, find a new, safe way to express feelings with the support of the world around us.