Sarah MurrayWe often treat energy as something we can endlessly draw from — a bottomless well that just needs better discipline or motivation. When we’re tired, we push harder. When we’re stretched, we add more. When something hurts, we ignore it.
Nature doesn’t work like that, and leaning into nature can help to manage and recharge our own physical and emotional energy.
In nature, energy is precious. It’s gathered, stored, released, and conserved. There are seasons of growth and rest, moments of intensity followed by long periods of stillness.
For a very long time, I saw my own depleted energy as a personal failure. If I was exhausted or emotional, I assumed I wasn’t strong enough, resilient enough, or organised enough. But energy isn’t a character issue. It’s a resource, and it’s finite.
In nature, no tree feels guilty for dropping its leaves. No animal apologises for retreating to rest. Energy is managed, not judged. It’s spent where it matters, conserved when it’s scarce, and rebuilt when conditions allow.
Over the last month, my own energy levels have definitely been tested.
I’ve been doing my ‘day job’ helping to deliver one of Canberra’s biggest public events – the National Multicultural Festival. It’s meant long physical days, outside in the heat, and just LOTS to do.
In the past, this kind of work has literally broken me. I have had to learn ways to actively manage the energy I can give to it and find ways to restore my energy so I can do what I absolutely LOVE.
Here are a couple of simple nature-based techniques I now use when I need to recharge or redirect my energy.
First is what I call a ‘borrowed strength’ practice, which can be helpful to restore emotional resilience and physical steadiness when maybe you feel overwhelmed:
- Lean your back or hands against a tree for a few minutes
- Notice its trunk, roots, and stillness
- Silently “ask” for steadiness
- Imagine the stability and strength of the tree moving into you.
The second is a simple ritual of symbolic release that is good if something is frustrating you and consuming your mental energy. It helps create a felt sense of letting go and frees up your mind to focus on more productive things:
- Find a natural object (stone, leaf, stick)
- Hold it and mentally place your worries, tension, or fatigue into it
- Release it back to nature (drop, bury, or place it gently)
- Feel how that creates space and lightness that wasn’t there before.
Nature shows us that managing energy is about doing what’s aligned, at the right time, with the right intensity.
When we live this way, we learn to notice when energy is high and use it well, and when it’s low and protect it fiercely. We begin to live in rhythm, instead of resistance, and accept our own ‘seasons’.
My invitation is this – spend time in nature and watch how energy moves. Observe the wind, the water, the light, and the leaves. Notice where energy gathers, where it pauses, where it flows freely, and where it doesn’t. Let that awareness follow you home.
Because the question isn’t how to get more energy – it’s how to best use the energy you already have.
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Connect with Sarah and learn more about nature therapy here:
Christine Sanson Maudy
Ann Moir-Bussy
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