The Visit: What the Ocean Leaves Within Us

Hello!

Have you ever just felt completely changed after spending time in the ocean?

It feels like such a sacred home coming. There is something about standing beside the ocean that changes us. There is something about spending time in the ocean that energizes us. For me, I come alive within.

I spend time at a lake often, and it is amazing, but there is something completely different about the ocean. It feels so infinite, so grand, so majestic, and you can’t help but feel the presence of God’s power within this creation. It houses a whole other hidden underwater world of life, energy, and existence.

I encourage you to pay attention to how you feel going in versus coming out.        Feel the difference?

Perhaps it is the rhythm of the waves. The salt in the air. The vastness of the horizon. The feeling of sand beneath our feet and wind against our skin. For a moment, life seems to become both smaller and larger at the same time.

We breathe differently.

We slow down.

We remember ourselves.

The places we surround ourselves with are not simply backgrounds to our lives. We experience them through our bodies. We breathe them in, listen to them, move within them, and respond to them emotionally and spiritually.

In this way, the spaces we consider sacred can become embodied within us.

The Ocean as a Sacred Space

A sacred space does not have to be a church, temple, or meditation room.

Sometimes it is a shoreline.

The ocean has its own rhythm, one that asks nothing of us. Waves arrive and retreat without urgency. The horizon stretches beyond what we can see. Our minds may still be busy, but the natural world invites us into something slower, wider, and more present.

There is humility in standing before something so vast, so powerful.

There is also connection.

Our bodies are largely water. We live within the rhythms of nature even when modern life makes us forget it. At the ocean, that relationship can become easier to feel.

What We Carry Home

Eventually, we leave the beach.

We brush the sand from our feet, pack our belongings, and return to schedules, responsibilities, screens, traffic, and ordinary life.

But the ocean does not leave us.

Something of the experience remains within us.

The rhythm we listened to.

The spaciousness we felt.

The quiet.

The awe.

The feeling of being part of something much larger than ourselves.

This is one of nature’s quiet gifts: We can carry our sacred places with us.

The ocean reminds us that wellness is not always something we need to accomplish. Sometimes it comes through allowing ourselves to be fully present in places that restore us.

And when we return home, our goal shouldn’t be just to simply remember the ocean with nicely posed photographs.

It is to notice what the ocean awakened within us, and learn how to keep living from that place.

Nature is such a sacred home.

If you can’t visit the ocean, I encourage you to spend time in the mountains, the forest, the plaines, the lake, or even your own backyard or garden. Walk barefoot, breathe the air, go for a prayer walk; listen to the birds, toads, crickets, or leaves rustling; feel the sunshine, breeze, water, grass, or rain on your skin; and take in the visual colors of flowers, trees, rocks, grass, sky, clouds, wildlife, and other landscape elements all around. Use not only your 5 senses, but your 6th sense to spiritually embody what you take in. The Earth is sacred, spiritual, holy. Embody that, because you are also sacred, spiritual, and holy. NOW is a wonderful time to celebrate this life!

In Love and Light,

Jami Streyle-Dean

RN, MS, HWNC-BC, HNB-BC, Nurse Coach

jami@bodyofgraceliving.com * www.bodyofgraceliving.com