Hello my friends and welcome to Sacred Elements.

Instead of starting at the beginning, I’d like to take you to the moment I realized what connecting with the Natural World (otherwise known as ecotherapy ) truly means, how it enriches our everyday lives, and why I’m convinced this awareness and connection will heal our ecosystem and change our world .

There I was, walking past the giant Sequoia tree I’d past countless times, but this time I felt drawn to it, like it was somehow calling me to come closer. Placing my hands on the bark of the giant sequoia (and probably looking like a crazy lady) I gazed upward, first noticing it’s jagged trunk, then it’s massive, uneven, sporadic branches. The tree was too tall to see the top, so I traced the branches back down just as a squirrel shook a few cones loose. As they fell, I followed these miniature cones covering the ground, each one a bit different from the rest, each one its own little world.

It all happened in a few seconds, and in those moments I understood what Sacred Elements could become—how it could inspire our daily lives, and how that inspiration could ripple out to affect a positive change in our world. I realized how I could act as a lense to capture moments like these, and how through my eyes (and camera phone) I could share the constant beauty surrounding us. Beauty that so often goes unnoticed in our daily swirling about as we run to catch that bus, or stare for hours at that screen, or drive from one traffic filled street to the next, or work double shifts to make ends meet.

You realize I’m talking about myself, too. Me! Someone you’d rarely find sitting down to relax, but instead find fluttering about each day doing all the things for all the people all the time, until I’d collapse, utterly exhausted into bed, and sleep like the dead before rising again to flutter, non stop (have you seen Groundhog Day? Yeah, like that).

My desire is to share this connection to the Natural World, and invite everyone to join me in this action: of pausing to notice, and then moving forward (slightly altered) with a new lense too. You will never look around you the same way again, because for a fraction of a second you chose to slow you down, you noticed, and it fed your mind and spirit.

That moves the needle.

Can’t wait to share more!

Cheers and much love to you,


Karina Aldredge