The Benefits of Sleeping Outdoors

There’s just nothing that connects us more to nature and to the primal part of ourselves’ than sleeping outdoors. If you sleep in the open air as opposed to a tent, you can stare at the night sky for hours contemplating the magnitude of your existence, watching for shooting stars and identifying the many constellations. Watching, listening and being a part of nature closing down for the night is such a magical thing, sounds of nature drifting ever so slowly into a beautiful yet brief solitude until the creatures of the night make their move. Think coyotes, owls, cicadas and fireflies, and although as far as I know fireflies don’t make any sound, they certainly make sleeping outside more interesting.

Eventually, everything becomes still as if the entire world is sleeping at once and hopefully, you are too. Then, you are gracefully awakened by the first sounds of dawn, a crow, a woodpecker, a bluebird signing their morning song. You awake to a freshness, a morning dew, the smell of wet grass, the smell of new life, the start of a new day. Again, it is magical! It feels so right and natural as if this is the way it was meant to be, a shared e understanding with all existence that everything, and everyone, deserves and needs a chance to rest. Yet we have cultivated this out of our existence, we’ve moved away from nature and into our protective and poshed-out dens separating ourselves even further from the truth of all that is.

It is summer and a wonderful time to sleep outdoors! Drag out your futon, your sleeping bag, your blow up mattress and reacquaint yourself with that from which you’ve come. Become an explorer of your past and a discoverer of your future. Nestle yourself into the bosom of Mother Earth and connect with all that is. Let go. Trust. Breathe it all in – the sights, the sounds, the smells, the deep sense of belonging, and allow yourself to come home to the nature within you!

**An alternative to sleeping outside the entire night (as it IS summer and in some parts of the world that means nothing but mosquitos feasting on warm and quiet flesh) is to rise extra early and sneak outside just before dawn. Allow your final “waking up” to happen outside and soak in the newness of the day. To make this work effectively though, it’s best if you have your outdoor bedding already set up.

Sweet Dreams!