Living Designs

Have you ever fallen asleep in the grass, or in the woods, on a warm, slightly breezy day? It's the most delicious experience to feel that safe in nature. Copyright 2007 Elizabeth M. Burke

I don’t see children playing outside these days. Not even in rural areas. On sunny, snowy winters, I’d expect to see children out sledding, building snow forts, or skating. In the summers, I wonder why I don’t see children out playing kick the can, or any of the myriad of other games children create when they get together. I’m not the only one who has noticed this. My adult friends say the same. I’ve seen more elderly and middle-aged people outdoors—sledding, flying down a hill, laughing, arms in the air, and then trudging back up the hill, their skin looking healthily flushed, faces open with smiles. I’ve seen middle-aged men out playing with a remote control toy airplane. You could tell from their body language they were having fun. In my youth, kids went outside after school. We were physically very active and healthy. We learned through each other the rules of fair play. We became concerned about changes in our neighborhood that affected our playing fields. We gained in coordinatio...

Anxiety has been treated for years as an individual medical problem, but it has also been treated as a problem related to a stressful environment. Therapists and doctors recognize the role stress has in our lives, even if they don't focus much on the systems we live in. They more often focus on how you as an individual manage the stress. I think it is important to look at both issues, because I believe environments and systems (people systems, work systems, community systems) can be very stress inducing. We think we "should" be able to handle stressful environments, without wondering whether in fact we have created environments we are not really well able to adapt to. It's an odd question to ask one's self: How is it humans could create systems and environments they aren't really well suited to--spiritually or health wise? But I think it is an important question to ask. In fact, humans have created systems of living that end up collapsing. In my work with peop...