This past week has seen the Wellbeing Team promoting the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week of ‘Connecting with Nature’. Each year the Mental Health Foundation suggest ways to improve mental health. This year with coming out of various lockdowns, the focus looked outwards to the world around us. Over the week the Wellbeing Team have been coming up with ways to engage with Nature.
Monday was all about appreciating the nature around us, drawing as its inspiration our breathtakingly beautiful campus, from the majestic Yew Trees outside the Sixth Form Centre and Old Gym to the beautifully tended Rose Garden; we asked the pupils to stop and take note of what they might normally walk past.
We followed that up with encouraging the girls to bring nature into their Houses and rooms, from opening the window and listening to the sounds of nature around them, even directing pupils to websites that opened up windows on nature globally.
Wednesday saw the Team encouraging pupils to get creative, using nature as an inspiration to create, whether that was poetry, art or music and drama. Thursday saw a challenge, for girls to make an impact and make a bigger difference to the world around them, take small steps such as recycling and reusing to maybe volunteering in local parks and communities.
Lastly, and one of the most vital messages was to connect with others. As the world is slowly adjusting to the easing of restrictions, what better way could we have of reconnecting with others than through using the natural spaces around us?
As one of the Peer Educators involved with the Mental Health Foundation states “Nature is something we see every day but do not fully open our eyes to and I think that by connecting more with nature every day and observing the little things, like the birds chirping or the blue sky and sunshine, we can become more grateful each and every day.”