Earth Wisdom
Connect with Nature and Your Inner Self
About nurturing one’s inner connection to nature, Earth Wisdom is a soothing self-help guide.
Equal parts a naturalist’s memoir and a spiritual road map, Jan Hornford’s clarifying self-help book Earth Wisdom introduces gentle practices for rediscovering one’s true self by spending time in nature.
Based in druidry, a spiritual practice focused on love and respect for nature, this book promotes improved well-being through direct engagement with the natural world. It includes meditative practices for connecting with the elements, trees, plants, and animals. It also suggests means of finding joy, calm, and peace of mind via nature’s magical qualities.
Most chapters cover types of wisdom, including wild, inner, and earth rhythm wisdom, showing how the earth, trees, and animals feed the “wild self within you.” Straightforward language is used to champion reviving one’s innate connections to the natural world. Practical reflective exercises—as with a thirty-minute practice that involves walking outside and documenting one’s sensory responses to the world and with a practice for establishing the body’s link between the earth and sky through basic breath and visualization techniques—pair with open-ended questions for optional journal entries. The text also dips into mystical aspects of nature, as with its guidance on feeling nwyfre, or the life force energy in all of creation, by touching a tree to create a physical connection and receive its spirit.
The book’s grounding is multicultural. In discussing earth’s rhythms, for example, it refers to the ancient Celts’ appreciation for seasonal rhythms and shifts. Elsewhere, the seasonal solar wheel—connecting seasons with their corresponding directions and elements—is described in detail with meditations, questions for connecting with the season, and lists of specific actions for honoring each one. For example, noticing which flower or bird first appears in spring creates connection, walking barefoot honors summer, picking apples in an orchard honors autumn, and hanging a wreath on the front door honors winter. And the book somewhat leads by example, as with its inclusion of Hornford’s personal journal entries, which are used to illuminate her own spiritual connection with nature; she credits it with giving her greater awareness, personal strength, and access to her power animal, the sandhill crane.
The prose is soothing and approachable, filled with nonjudgmental advice for beginners and expanded reflections for those already versed in its practices. Furthermore, the chapters reinforce basic concepts of inner connection to nature; specifically, the grounded flow meditation introduced early on becomes the foundation for subsequent meditations. Its universal themes of improved happiness and tranquility harnessed from nature are complemented by its progression from coverage of the physical world to interactions with spiritual realms, which round out its messaging well.
The spiritual self-help guide Earth Wisdom is about rediscovering one’s authentic being through connection with nature.
Reviewed by
Katy Keffer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
