Nature vs. Netflix

Have you ever wondered the impact of Netflixing all weekend on your body or your soul?  I know I often feel empty and uninspired after consuming a series on a weekend bender of Netflix.  Though I thoroughly enjoy the consumption, it is the hangover of consumption that has left me pondering what the impact is on my total existence, i.e. my body, mind and soul.  I have had the opposite experience when out in nature and I go on a bender of wilderness.  I leave feeling refreshed, alive, inspired, connected and ready to meet life again. Though I am not convinced that nature and wilderness experience is the same ointment for all wounded souls, I am aware that I was unaware, and afraid of a wilderness experience until my 40s, which leaves me wondering how many of us could find the same soothing of soul with a consistent dose of wilderness.  

This past week in one of the Men’s groups, a very intelligent, self-aware “bio hacker” felt compelled to share a recent discovery he had stumbled upon and I took this scientific evidence, though limited in size and scope, as confirmation for what my intuition and experience had already confirmed for me; that nature viewed through the windows of the soul does indeed heal.

This young man probably in his late 30s maybe early 40s and very tech savvy has been monitoring a multitude of bio evidences and experimenting with different “bio hacks” in order to optimize his health.  His latest obsession is with HRV, or heart rate variability.  For those who haven’t heard of this metric, it is a measurement of the variance of time between heart beats with a range of 20-200 milliseconds.  The more the variability, the more the health of the system.  This has become a focus of the health community to measure the overall health of the flesh system.  After four years of measuring and experimenting he stumbled upon the “bio hack” that led to his best HRV score…camping.  A weekend away with kids and no technology camping.  He described how he didn’t work out other than moving logs for the fire or carrying camp chairs across the campsite.  He didn’t have the chance to practice his daily routine of bio hacks and he wasn’t able to monitor his stats because he didn’t have a wifi signal.  What he said he did do was sit around the campfire gazing at the tickling flames and listening to the cracking of the fire and the calls of the wild in the distance.   He didn’t eat healthy, in fact he ate camp food.  He spent time with his children playing, he spent time with his wife just being.  In essence he stopped the routine of human doing to enjoy the routine of human being.

When I’m in the wilderness I’m amazed at how every inch that my eye beholds is alive, teeming with creepy crawly things that are moving.  Juxtapose this against the death of the modern home and the false movement of Netflix on your 84 inch screen.  All is static, all is dead.  In the wilderness everything is still within the cycle of becoming and going.  The trees, the grasses, the animals are all moving in synchronicity in the dance of life.  I cant help but ponder the impact on the soul and thus the body as witness to the beauty of this dance.  Truly to be in the wild is to connect to the source of life, to the dance of life, to the beauty of life.  Of course this leads to health.  Of course this leads to a heart filled with joy, dancing in its own rhythm of change, of life, of becoming and going.  As we tune into the rhythm of life, our cells respond by echoing this reality.  As we disconnect in our modern world and stay stuck in the falsity of technology and the static illusion of society are we slowly anesthetizing our soul and our heart?  How can we balance our intake of Netflix with the power of nature and echo the rhythm of life in our modern living?