Nature is the medicine. After 4.5 months of continuous city living, barely leaving my neighborhood let alone the island of Manhattan, I was in deep need of nature. I felt it on the level of my cells. So we masked up and flew to Colorado. Our first stop was the quirky Manitou Springs, where the epic Pikes Peak (or Tava) seems to have created an underground reservoir of mineral springs that bubble up through the ground and nourish the people and the land. For hours a day I simply plugged my body physically into the earth. I stood barefoot in the dirt, I planted my feet in the stream and let the ice cold waters wash over me, I scrambled up red rock formations and planted myself down, letting my bare legs have an exchange with the warm rockbed. The sun kissed my skin, my lungs released their layer of NYC soot and took in this fresh mountain air, my eyes saw green, and my nervous system downshifted several levels. Nature is the medicine, and I’m immensely grateful to be bathing in it after so long.
About the Author Ellen Vora, MD
Ellen Vora, M.D., is a holistic psychiatrist practicing with Frank Lipman, M.D., at the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in NYC. "I take a functional medicine approach to mental health, which is a root-cause approach to understanding and treating illness."