The Quiet Gifts Nature Offers When We Slow Down

Earlier this week, as I wandered through the woods, I noticed the ground scattered with empty hazelnut shells.

The squirrels had been busy.

The hazelnuts themselves still looked green to me, not quite ready, and yet somehow the squirrels already knew otherwise. They hadn't waited for what looked ripe. They trusted something deeper.

If you've ever hoped to gather wild hazelnuts yourself, you'll know you have to be quick. The squirrels usually know first.

It made me smile.

And it stayed with me.

Because that simple moment became the beginning of a quiet reminder.

Nature is constantly offering us small invitations to slow down. Most of them are easy to miss. They're rarely dramatic or attention seeking. Instead, they appear as tiny moments of beauty, curiosity or wonder that gently ask us to pause and pay attention.

As I reflected on the week, I realised it had been full of these quiet gifts.

After one of our Nature Flow classes, a member told me that after exploring the oak tree together, she had picked up a fallen oak twig during a walk and placed it in a jar of water on her kitchen windowsill.

I loved that image.

A woody bunch of flowers. Oaks instead of blooms.

Another member shared that she had changed the screensaver on her computer to a photograph of an oak tree, keeping our tree of the month close by as she worked each day.

It felt as though our practice had gently followed them home.

After one of this week's yoga classes, someone told me how much she enjoys the aromapoints and essential oils that I weave into our sessions. She said they had become one of her favourite parts of the practice and wanted to learn more.

It reminded me that the smallest rituals are often the ones that stay with us.

A gentle touch.

The aroma of an essential oil.

Tiny invitations to become more present.

Then, during one of our Seasonal Yin & Rest classes, with the doors wide open to welcome the summer air, a butterfly floated into the studio.

It circled quietly around us for a few moments before finding its way back outside.

No one had invited it.

And yet somehow, it felt as though it belonged.

At the beginning of that class, I reached for an oracle card from Katja Perez's Goddess Oracle. The message from Demeter, the card that called to me, was beautifully simple:

"I nurture growth in myself and in nature."

Sometimes the words we need seem to arrive exactly when they are meant to.

A few days later, walking through the woods, I found two feathers resting amongst the leaves.

One from a female pheasant, perfectly dressed in the soft browns of the woodland floor.

The other from a buzzard, whose wide circles I so often watch overhead.

One rooted to the earth.

One carried by the sky.

Perhaps they meant nothing more than two birds had passed this way before me.

Or perhaps the gift wasn't in finding the feathers at all, but in allowing them to slow me down enough to wonder.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes so beautifully about paying attention to the living world. That noticing is a way of belonging. A way of entering into relationship with the world around us.

Those words stayed with me.

Then, in James Clear's newsletter, he shared a line from writer Katrina Mayer:

"Time spent amongst trees is never wasted time."

It felt as though the same gentle message kept arriving in different forms.

Nature isn't asking us to do more.

She's inviting us to notice more.

Her timing is rarely hurried.

Like the squirrels gathering hazelnuts before I would have thought they were ready, perhaps there is a wisdom that doesn't always make sense at first glance.

All of this also reminded me of something that happened while I was teaching EcoNidra at a festival beneath the branches of a beautiful old oak tree.

During the practice, one participant seemed just a little fidgety.

Afterwards, once everyone else had wandered away, she smiled and beckoned me over.

Beneath her mat were two tiny holes in the earth.

During the practice, a little mouse had emerged from one hole, paused beside her for a while, and then disappeared into the other.

In EcoNidra, we invite participants to share their practice with a nature partner. It might be a tree, a feather, a pine cone or perhaps a stone.

That day, her nature partner chose her.

As I look back over these moments, I realise they have all been quietly saying the same thing.

A squirrel trusting the season.

An oak twig carried home.

A tree on a computer screen.

The fragrance of an essential oil.

A butterfly on the breeze.

A few words on an oracle card.

Two feathers on a woodland path.

A curious little mouse.

None of them changed the world.

But each one gently changed the way I moved through it.

The world is always offering these quiet gifts.

The question is simply whether we're moving slowly enough to receive them.

If you're longing to slow down and reconnect with nature in this way, this is at the heart of everything we do at Camomile Lawn. Whether it's through yoga, Nature Flow, EcoNidra or simply spending a little time outdoors, these practices offer space to pause, breathe and notice the quiet wisdom that has been there all along.

So I wonder...

What are you just noticing?

Camomile Lawn ✨🌿💚

Nature-led wellness for body, mind & soul