The Wild Cure: Nature Healing, and Psychedelics

By: Michael Makhinson

“Observe the varied shades of green.” “Close your eyes and take in the sounds of nature.” “Notice the movement of the leaves.” “Touch a tree as fully as you feel comfortable and embrace it as a fellow being.” 

On a temperate weekend morning in the UCLA Botanical Garden, Sylvie Rokab, a forest bathing guide, led a group of healthcare professionals, including myself, in using the senses to connect with nature. The guided experience was peaceful and educational; the ability to move through natural settings more mindfully and intentionally has since become something that I have maintained. These are some basic elements of shinrin-yoku, the Japanese art of forest bathing, and the experience in the UCLA garden was proof that one doesn’t need to be in a vast woodland to reframe one’s relationship with nature. 

It’s clear to most of us that Western society’s relationship with nature needs revamping, with humans increasingly separated from nature due to factors such as widespread urbanization and most children favoring electronic devices over playing outdoors, resulting in an “extinction of experience”. In a recently published study,¹ Miles Richardson, a researcher at the University of Derby, cleverly used the frequency of nature-related words in books published since the 1800s to demonstrate a 60% decline in nature-connectedness over time. Earlier, Richard Louv, in his popular 2005 bestseller “Last Child in the Woods”, coined the term “nature-deficit disorder,” reflecting the change in children’s play relationships with nature. In parallel with our separation from the natural world, Western thinking has embraced individualism, materialism, and human exceptionalism (seeing ourselves as distinct and more important non-human elements of nature). 

There are many paths toward nature-connectedness, such as forest bathing, companion animals and animal-assisted therapy, gardening, urban farming, time spent in parks and other natural settings, and even virtual reality nature experiences (just to name a few). Nature connectedness is built on a foundation of actively noticing and engaging with nature, rather than more passive or superficial interactions. As integral ecologist and nature connectedness researcher, Matthew Zylstra has stated: “it’s not just contact with nature, but the nature of the contact.” A particularly ancient and powerful path to nature-connectedness comes through the use of psychedelic plants and fungi. Western cultures are beginning to find in Indigenous knowledge rituals and meaning that are missing in their own cultures. The resulting mixing of Westerners and Indigenous knowledge keepers has brought traditional plant and fungal medicine rituals of ayahuasca, mushrooms, and peyote to the West, along with both benefits and harms resulting from this cultural exchange. The West has learned that these psychedelic agents can elicit encounters with the sacred or mystical, contact with nature entities and spirits, and an enhanced sense of connectedness to others or the environment. Some of these experiences encompass elements of animism, a belief system present for most of human history’s relationship with natural world – with a repertoire of greater sacred reverence for the aliveness of all things. It is notable that historical use of psychedelic rituals has been outdoors or in settings with more nature contact (as well as largely being in group settings), perhaps optimized to harness the power of psychedelic medicines to improve relationships with the community and the land (as opposed to the common Western model of individual sessions in closed spaces). There has been research on the power of psychedelic experiences to promote nature-connection, but the field is still in its infancy. 

Sam Gandy, an ecologist and psychedelic researcher, is one of the foremost experts in the field^4,5. According to Dr. Gandy, a single psychedelic experience is potentially capable of eliciting a rapid and robust increase in nature-connectedness. He also notes that such shifts may be more likely when psychedelics are used in nature-based settings, and there are commonalities between meaningful experiences in nature and psychedelic experiences, such as experiencing awe, occasioning mystical experiences, and loosening the boundaries of the self and readjusting our sense of identity in relation to the natural world. Though more research is needed, an enticing proposition is whether psychedelic experiences might translate into greater pro-environmental behavior. In essence, nature-based reconnection and reciprocity with the land could be viewed as mutual healing and a road to planetary stewardship.

There is reason for hope that despite the planetary crisis, more people are recognizing the urgent importance of reconceptualizing how we interact with nature. A multitude of movements are being fueled by the ethos that our collective health depends on reframing and prioritizing our relationship with nature in a meaningful way. While the “discovery” of the benefits of nature-based interventions in healthcare and the power of psychedelic experiences to connect us to nature are important, they are, in fact, rediscoveries of long-held Indigenous wisdom that has been largely overlooked by Western science. Deeper connection to nature, with humility and reverence, and a renewed sense of stewardship come from this wisdom, along with a sense of rejoining of humanity with the rest of nature (the more than human).  There are ecological and environmental wounds and injustices that need healing, and perhaps what we learn from nature-connection, Indigenous wisdom, and psychedelic plants and fungi might help us on the right path of human and planetary health. This may help usher in a shift in perspective, where we see ourselves as existing as a part of nature, instead of apart from nature.

It is apt to conclude with the words of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist and discoverer of LSD, who felt that the capacity of psychedelics to reconnect our species with the natural world was their most fundamental role. Shortly before his death, at the mighty age of 101, he said: “alienation from nature and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation is the greatest tragedy of our materialistic era. It is the causative reason for ecological devastation and climate change. Therefore, I attribute absolute highest importance to consciousness-change. I regard psychedelics as catalyzers for this.”