In a Nutshell: Connection

This week our bloggers spoke on connection and what it means to them to be connected.  Mind Key IS connection - a way for people of all walks of life to find their personal path to health and enlightenment.  As a community we bring together the resources and support to make that happen.


As member Dr. Kevin Hall of Do Well Be Well says in Connected through Community, “I think that we are all affected by everyone that we meet and interact with, and that sometimes they mold or reshape our way of understanding things."

In large part this happens because no matter who we are or where we live we all have common experiences as human beings. These experiences are what gives teachers the knowledge to help their students, and is what gives children the ability to teach their elders.

Charla Dury calls it "The Human Experience." "Someone out there has been through what you’re going through," Charla said.  "And it’s possible that they’re not just like you."

But there is more to being connected than our similarities and differences.  Connection happens between people and spirit, people and nature, and even through technology.

"Technology has been a bridge to help us understand how connected we all are," Danielle Rose writes in Defining Connection.  "It has helped us better understand the butterfly or ripple effect, proving humanity is just as powerful energetically as we are technologically."

Perhaps because of this more than anything, it is so important to just be at times.  We try so hard to connect to certain aspects of our lives that we forget to recognize the important connections that simply are.

“Outlets for disconnection are what helps me reconnect to what identifies me, beyond what I do for a living,”Mind Key writer Tara Ann Lesko said in "Connected through Community."

This is likely why even people who live in the midst of a concrete jungle find sanctuary outdoors in nature. There are many studies eager to prove why. Shinrin-yoku (森林浴), or forest bathing, has been shown to positively affect hormones and the neurological system. In his book, "Last Child in the Woods," Richard Louv discusses how spending more unstructured time in nature equates to better behavior and better grades.   The Tree Whisperer, Dr. Jim Conroy of Cooperative BioBalance teaches that we are all working members of both small and large ecosystems, and as such are able to connect with them to provide genuine healing for ourselves and the world.

In "Nature Connectedness," Tamara Rokicki writes, "Ecopsychologists say that wholesome connection with nature show an increase of peace, positive attitude and a way to see interconnectedness of all things."

Time to start thinking of ourselves as part of something bigger - something in which we all play an integral role. 

"Community is more than just the sum of the individual relationships within it, and as a whole functions as a higher vibrational energy."
Danielle Rose
Connected through Community


Want to read more?  Click the links below to check out this week's blogs on connection:
Defining Connection
Connection through Community
Charla Dury on the Human Experience, and
Tamara Rokicki on our Connection with Nature 

Connectedness - The Human Experience

Have you ever been sitting in a movie theatre and felt a kinship with the character on the screen?  Ever had something hit a little too close to home? Have you read a book and wondered how they knew what was going on in your head?  There’s a reason for that.  I’m going to call that reason “The Human Experience.”

No matter your station, your race, religion, sexual orientation or creed, if you have “this” experience, “this” will almost inevitably happen.  Cause and effect of the human kind.  Human experiences encompass birth through death and everything in between and they are fact.

• If you live to a certain age, you go through puberty.  Male or female, puberty is hard, no matter what.
• If you are in a monogamous relationship and stay in that relationship long enough, your relationship and sex life will most probably go through a slump.  Relationship slumps come in many shapes and sizes and it’s difficult to judge one against another, but they happen.
• You yearn for something different sometimes.  You wonder, what if?  And you don’t like being lied to.
• If you’re female and experience labor, it hurts.  It really hurts.  If you’re male and get kicked in the crotch, it also really hurts.
• If you choose to raise children, there will be many highs and lows, tough times and times of joy.  Babies cry and wear out the parents, toddlers have WAY too much energy and teenagers try your patience.  And it doesn’t end when they move out.  When you’re a parent, you’re a parent forever.
• If you’re lucky enough to live long enough (and long enough is subjective), you’ll be touched by cancer.  Whether it’s someone you know or you get it yourself, it’ll be there.  And when someone close to you dies, you’ll have to walk the steps of grief.

 

After listing all of these out, I was wondering if this is more a white middle class straight married American experience.  Because that’s where I fall.  Are any of these events only experienced by Americans?  Or only middle class people?  Or white people?  Or straight folks?  Are these experiences unique to North Americans or people of the northern hemisphere?  I don’t think so.

Granted, I’ve never lived anywhere but here or been anyone but me, (for all I know foxes and Martians could have the same stuff happen) but I think these are human experiences, not to be pigeon-holed into anything but the overall umbrella of the human race.

These human experiences connect us.  Even if you choose to live in isolation, playing on your introvertedness and without a physical community, if you reach out (be it online or however people who aren’t online reach out) you can find someone out there with whom to share your human experience.  Someone out there has been through what you’re going through.  And it’s possible that they’re not just like you.

This is important.  We’re all connected.  We’re all the same on the human level.  This fact should bring us closer together, allow us to share and feel each other’s pain and joy.  But today’s society divides us and tells us that we’re all different and should proclaim our differences loudly and with passion.  I don’t mean to discount each human’s uniqueness and place in this universe, and we should all be proud to be just who we are, but we still need to remember…

We’re all connected by the human experience.