Avatar & our Systems of Nature
Thoughts on how our menstrual cycles can help us bond with nature
I went to see Avatar 2 – the Way of Water last week. Have you seen it yet?
I was thinking about the way the native Na’vi people of Pandora use what is called their ‘queues’ (name discovered through an Avatar ‘Fandom’ site!). It’s the long plait of hair they all have with tendrils on the end which is a neural connection that bonds them with nature - a certain plant or creature. When a Na’vi connects these tendrils with another being, their nervous systems are entrained and, “it enables mental communication between the two entities and the sharing of information, including memories, emotions, and sensory input.”1
I believe we humans have a similar ability to connect with nature in a way that exchanges information and creates a mental/energetic bond (obviously in a different way!). Except that we are not ‘tuned-in’ as much as we once were. The subtlety of refined senses can get crushed beneath the onslaught of information and disruption through electronic devices, electromagnetic environments, social media, world news, poor nutrition and modern stressors – leaving us foggy-brained. Senses can become dull.
Unless we deliberately choose to step away and into nature, put our hands on a tree, feet on the earth, dip a toe in the sea; our life-force can drain out. For highly sensitive people, over-stimulation can be exhausting. Nature helps to recharge us like a rechargeable battery.
This is when our menstruation saves us. Particularly if you have the kind of menstruation that forces you to stop and rest. Because you simply can’t ‘push on through’. The type of menstruation in which you are aware of the fact that you are cleansing out in multiple ways (physically, psychically, energetically) and you just can’t stand to take any more information in. It’s your natural pause. A few days to empty out before starting again. And during this time, you may find a longing to be near nature. Perhaps because it elicits calm and peace, or because it helps you to feel closer to your own animal-nature, such as when a woman giving birth is reminded of her mammal-animal body and instinct.
During the first few days of your bleed, you might sense a subtle new closeness between you and nature. It can be an unexplainable knowing, the felt experience of feeling closer, more intimate; a part of you woven in with the sea, with the trees, curled close to the mountains, the air, earth and landscape. The boundaries between what you recognise as you and what you recognise as nature, are not so defined. You are blended.
Systems of Intelligence
We are undeniably woven into natures systems of intelligence because we are that too. And our cycles can help us to feel more connected to them. During a woman’s bleed time, as her body is breaking down and composting the lining of the womb, she is often in a more ‘surrendered’ state of being, more vulnerable, less boundaried, more permeable and sensitive to environment. Which is why it’s possible to feel so much more intimate with nature when we bleed.
Through each phase of our cycles, we can get a sense of the movement of nature through our own bodies. A nature, that we all know, moves in cycles and through seasons, year after year. And, through our blood, our hands, our feet, resting our foreheads or wombs against a tree, lying on the ground or swimming in the sea; we can feel and connect with the healing, soothing and replenishing energy of nature and sense it’s intelligence.
Doing so, can help us to feel a closer bond with our nature environments and in turn, a true sense of home and belonging on our beautiful planet Earth.
Wishing you a nature-connected week,
with love
Jane x
Do you feel more connected with nature when you bleed? Or at other times in your cycle? Share your thoughts in the comments!
*In writing this article about how our cycles can help us feel more connected to nature, I’m referring to natural cycles – a menstrual cycle that is not informed or changed by external hormones of any kind. I’m not suggesting that you can’t connect with and feel nature if you don’t have a natural cycle, however, there is a difference as to how this might work.
Quote sourced from Queue | Avatar Wiki | Fandom