Deep Listening to the Languages of Nature

The practice of deep listening has revealed to me dimensions of nature I never before imagined existed.  

Deep Listening, Recording the Languages of Nature

Along with nature's colors and textures, deep listening collaterally has created vibrant imagined images of nature art for my studio's work.  More importantly though, deep listening to the languages of nature has also reduced much of the stress typical to everyday life and increased feelings of satisfaction and happiness.

Focused listening to the different nature dialects around us can offer many health benefits.  Over eons our human brains evolved an ability to grow new cells and create fresh neurons.  Science has documented that learning new human languages is one way to stimulate brain cell growth.  Careful or focused listening is usually the first step in learning a foreign language.  

With routine exposure to new words and speech patterns our brains over time begin to organize these sounds into neurological patterns that can be quickly accessed, recognized and used during communication.  The more we exercise our brains in ways such as learning new languages the more likely the chance our increased brain activity will provide healthy mental benefits through brain cell growth rather than succumbing to neuronal degeneration.

When learning the languages of nature we may gain similar health benefits, including additional important healing and total body health advantages.  As with the study of foreign languages, learning nature's languages begins with listening.  Intentful listening can take practice and time to master.  Once we are successful at compartmentalizing away our daily distractions and we allow ourselves to focus on the sounds around us, we will then begin to recognize important sound patterns originating from Mother Nature.  

As with any foreign speech we encounter in our day to day lives, nature's languages are always around us even when we don't consciously realize their presence.  Importantly, until we learn to listen and recognize nature's sound patterns, natural dialects can remain an unlearned language to us, lost and seemingly useless chatter in everyday life background noise.

In addition to cognitive health, the adventure of learning nature's languages through deep listening practice can greatly improve the well-being of our heart, cardiovascular system and our body's organs.  'Ecotherapy', or spending significant amounts of time out in nature,  has been shown through a number of scientific studies to improve not just our mental health but total body health too.

I've personally adopted the concept of nature therapy as my primary long term health management approach for years now and will go for a hike through the wilds whenever I get the chance.  Spending time out in nature has had a positive impact on my health by reducing my blood pressure and stress to manageable levels.  This can decrease risks of further aortic damage.  Most of us really do understand and accept the premise the we benefit from time out in nature, but the reality is that though we may acknowledge nature based health benefits as important, few of us take the time required to go outdoors, hike, sit and hear.

I've found the concept of 'deep listening to the languages of nature' to be similar to what I've experienced once I learned how to use intenful visualization to recognize nature's infinite array of colors, textures, patterns and visual hues.  Though I've always had a special affinity for art (right brained me) there have been times I may have looked at the forest as a swath of muddled green rather than an intricate collection of brush strokes, perspectives and countless subtle blends of blue, yellow and red hues.

A focused study of nature's visual arts has created so much good in my life.  Inspiration for my artwork comes so much easier now and subject matter jumps out at me countless times when I am on just a short stroll through the woods.  I see examples of nature's complimentary color use evident in an endless array of flowers, bark and leaves.  Perspectives, textures, shadows and light lay out captivating possibilities before my eyes in the wilds along the path.  Instead of muddled green around me I now live and exist in a dynamic, ever-changing exhibit of mind boggling nature art.

And as with nature's visual arts, so it can be too with nature's languages.  Once we begin to focus on the sounds around us, nature's audio will tell illuminating stories full of all sorts of life information.

But to many, sounds come primarily from the television, car radio, digital audio players or the static in our head generated by our overly stressed brains.  Most of the information our ears gather, other than from human speech and electronic audio is clumped into a group of audio what many think of as background noise.  Unfortunately the healing languages of nature are often lost unnoticed in this ignored class of 'noise'.

And since most background noise is always there around us we ignore the complex sounds, filtering them into the trash file or if we can't quite filter out then suppressing their recognition.  Unfortunately, when we filter out the sounds around us we not only lose the unwanted but we also miss out on healthy, beneficial audio of biological, ecological and geophysical systems too.

My personal journey into deep nature listening involved several meaningful milestones, beginning with my South Florida childhood where until my dad installed an air conditioner in the late 1960s, we slept with our windows open. Spending the weekend with my grandparents also afforded me different windows open nighttime sounds as one set of grandparents lived in an open, sandy grassland type ecosystem while the other lived under far reaching live oaks in a semi-tropical mesic hammock.  Eyes wide open until the late hours I can remember lying there listening with awe to the mysterious sounds of frogs, migratory birds and wildlife as the Atlantic Ocean breezes rustled the live oak leaves.

Sometimes I'd sit under our backyard mahogany tree and listen as rain splashed against the leaves or watched the brilliant streaks of electricity light the darkened sky, creating black and white contrast art behind the old crooked live oak limbs. I came to wonder about and believe, even as a youth, all life, animals and plants could and do communicate.   After all, was there that much difference between air rushing across human's and animal's vocal chords and the wind flowing through, rustling leaves of the ancient live oaks or strumming string like needles of the pines.  They are all the languages of nature I would think, just different dialects but all with rich content.

As a teen my interests in natural sciences continued to broaden.  I'd watch with amazement how during the yearly South Florida hurricane season, birds, insects and wildlife would disappear before an approaching storm would make landfall.  Wherever they went they'd leave behind a deafening quiet, one that made me realize just how loud they must have been on a day to day basis when the sky was storm free.  I'd just never really paid attention or practiced deep listening. I should have more often stopped and cleared my day dreaming mind and focused on the animal and plant sounds about me, a task so hard to do then but especially in today's world of digital audio and fast paced city noises.

And so for most of my entire adult life I've been drawn to the complexities of nature's art.  And recognition of the intricate ways the universe stimulates my senses has bestowed upon me much happiness and a sense of secure well-being, for I know I don't live in a muddled up mess of colors and mumbled sounds.  In fact, we live in the midst of infinite beautiful complexity.  And if we chose to brush aside these complexities as background chatter or generic green then we are missing out on some of life's greatest adventures.

Today I carry small digital recorders most places Judy and I may go.  One never knows when the bullfrogs may begin calling or the swallow tail kites sing.  Storms, thunder and water's courses all speak as do creatures great and small.  Plant leaves, limbs and needles rustle in the wind, each with their own unique vibrations so similar to our own vocalizations, all possessing a message.  It's not so much how great the recorder is either, rather its about just having any recorder to prompt me to listen to those now recognized languages of nature.

Life is so full of amazing possibilities and opportunities to learn, grow, heal, enjoy and reflect.  My path has led me through a period of focus on nature's colors, textures and hues.  Yet I always knew though there was more to learn, so much more.  Deep listening woke and turned me on to the enlightening dimensions of nature's languages.  I know there are many other avenues to explore just ahead, such as scents, tastes, electromagnetic fields just to name a few.  We exist in a dynamic universe.

For now I am glad I've begun to learn of deep listening.  And the languages of nature are pure sublime.

You can hear some of my field recordings of the Languages of Florida Nature here.