What Our Ancestors Knew About Mental Health That We’re Remembering Again

Long before therapy offices, diagnostic language, or productivity-driven wellness culture, human beings tended to their inner lives in relationship with the land. Emotional processing did not happen in isolation or behind closed doors. It happened while walking long distances, gathering food, tending fires, sitting beneath trees, following the movement of the sun, and listening to stories shaped by place and season.

Across cultures and lineages, nature was not a backdrop to healing. It was an active participant, exemplifying the need for balance in all things. As those that came before us lives aligned with the healing that came with seasons, cycles and rhythms; the same ones that are still present today.

Our ancestors understood something that modern mental health systems are only beginning to rediscover: the body, the mind, and the environment are not separate systems. They are in constant conversation, as we are all part of the ecosystem. When one is overwhelmed or dysregulated, the others feel it too.

Grief was not rushed or hidden. It was walked. It was witnessed by land and community. Stress was metabolized through movement, labor, rhythm, and shared responsibility. Major life transitions were marked outdoors and shared in community, incorporating the elements that surrounded us everyday. Emotional overwhelm was not expected to be resolved solely through introspection, but through embodied presence and connection.

This way of relating to mental health was not perfect or idealized, but it was integrated and effective in certain ways. Emotional life was woven into daily existence rather than extracted from it. Don’t get me wrong, we have come a long way in how we deal with our emotions, but there were things that we just instinctively did that would help us deal with life, without specifically calling it out. And that we are opening up to making use of today. 

In contrast, modern life often asks us to contain everything internally. We live indoors. We sit for long hours. We process emotional pain cognitively, often alone, under artificial lights. We play recordings of nature sounds to help us sleep better.  Even therapy, which is profoundly important and valuable, can become another place where the body is expected to stay still while the mind does the work.

For many people, this creates a subtle mismatch. The idea of sitting in an office, talking about your feelings just doesn’t sit right (pun intended of course).  The insight may be there, but something doesn’t fully settle, if it settles at all.

This is where approaches like Walk & Talk therapy and ecotherapy feel less like innovations and more like remembering something deeply familiar. Being outdoors naturally supports regulation. The nervous system responds to fresh air, natural light, and open space without needing instruction. Feeling the breeze on your face and hearing the rustling of the trees helps the  body exhale and the mind widens.

From an ancestral perspective, there is a knowing that we recognize sub-consciously when out in nature. Humans evolved in motion, in relationship with land, weather, and community. Emotional processing was rarely divorced from the environment. It happened alongside walking, watching, listening, and doing.

Honouring this doesn’t require rejecting modern therapy or romanticizing the past. The opposite is true as we bring together the many truths surrounding mental wellness. Instead we can expand the container of healing, to acknowledge that insight doesn’t only arrive through talking, and regulation doesn’t only come through effort.

Many times, clarity emerges while walking. How many times have you heard “I am going for a walk to clear my head.” Sometimes, grief softens when held sitting under a tree watching the daily micro cycles of life in outdoor environments rather than four walls. And sometimes, our bodies need to feel supported by elements in nature before the mind can let go.

Nature-based therapy is about returning to a primal origins, allowing us to reclaim our natural connection with something foundation to the human experience. Something our ancestors understood intuitively and that we are now, carefully and respectfully, learning to integrate again.

Carolina Gutiérrez is a Registered Social Service Worker and Hypnotherapist with over 20+ years of clinical experience. She is a member in good standing with the College of Social Workers & Social Service Workers of Ontario. Her practice focus areas are entrepreneurship, infertility, childhood sexual abuse, childhood trauma/neglect, life transition and spiritual exploration. Carolina approach’s mental wellness from a holistic perspective, incorporating her professional training, spirituality and somatic work through the lens of her Ancestral Wisdom practices of Curanderismo. Therapywithcarolina.ca is a Downtown Brampton, Ontario based Therapy and Counselling practice offering in person, virtual, walk & talk sessions and group programs for clients both in Ontario and Internationally.

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