The Call for Simpler Times: Returning to Natural Living and Traditional Skills
- Weaving Grief
- 10 hours ago
- 5 min read
In a world shaped by speed, screen, and constant stimulation and demands, many people are hearing an inner call to return to simpler times. This isn't just nostalgia, it is a deep yearning to reconnect with natural living, traditional skills, and rhythms that honur the earth. The rise of homsteading, slow living, and sustainability practices reflects a collective longing to step away from the consumer culture and reclaim a sense of balance and soverignty.
This blog explore the return to natural ways of being, the revival of traditional skills, and why so many are embracing homesteading and back-to basics living as an antidote to modern burnout.
The Modern Burnout Crisis
Someones gotta say it, life feels incredibily overwhelming most days. Endless notifications, packed schedules, and rising costs, leaves many of us feeling disconnected from ourselves, each other, our bodies, our families, our communities, and the land. Mental health struggles, stress-related illnesses, and burnout are at an all-time high.
It is no wonder people are seeking alternatives. The call for simpler times is not about rejecting progress but rather, about reconnecting to a sense of peace, where technology and tradition can coexist without overhwelming our nervous systems and the planet.
A Return to Natural Living
Natural living emphasizes aligning daily life with the earth's cycles. It's an invitation to move towards eating real and whoel foods, spending more time outdoors, and practicing sustainable habits that nouish ourselves, our family, and the earth, rather than depleting.
Food as Medicine: From growing a garden, baking sourdough, to crafting herbal rememdies, people are rediscovering traditional ways of nourishing themselves.
Rhythms of Nature: Rising with the sun, sun before screens, planting with the seasons, and observing the rythms of nature that reflect cycles of rest and growth, bring balance to our hurried modern lives.
Minimalism Meets Sustainability: Natural living encourgaes less waste, mindful consumption, and valuing quality over quantity.
These shifts aren't just practical, they are soulful, and are ways of inviting and allowing ourselves to slow down and remember that life is not a race, we aren't meant to go fast all the time.
The Return of Traditional Skills
We're seeing it emerge all over, people are retruning, re-learning, and exploring the art and magic of skills like gardening, food preserving, herbalism, and handcrafting. These skills were once essential for survival, and while our modern world provides us a lot of convience the revival of these skills provides a lot of benefit to us.
Homesteading Practices: Gardening, canning, fermenting, sourdough baking, and foraging are gaining traction.
Handmade Living: Skills such a sewing, knitting, woodworking, weaving, and other types of crafts not only provide useful items but also foster creativity and mindfulness.
Community Sharing: Skill swaps, local workshops, and online communities are keeping these traditions alive while creating deeper connections.
Learning traditional skills isn't just about survival anymore, its about empowerment, choice, and soverignty. It reminds us of our resilience, capability, and our capacity to create.
Why This Call is Growing Louder
Some ask, why now? But if we look around I think the answer is clear and quite obvious. We are being called towards simpler times because our lives are overly complex.
Climate Worries: People are wanting to reduce their impact and live in harmony with the earth, and to support the earth in doing what its always done.
Economic Uncertainty: Rising costs, unstabe markets, and overall uncertainty makes self-sufficiency more appealing.
Disconnection from Community: Traditional lving fosters closeness, and we need each other, we are relational beings. While technology makes us more "connected", we are feeling more disconnected then ever before. We aren't meant to just consume whats up through a screen, we are meant to have converations, shared meals, and feel a sense of shared purpose.
Loss of Eldership: We used to learn these skills and ways of being and living from our elders, infromation, wisdom, recipees, practices were passed down through generations and we've lost so much of that. We have other ways to learn and information has never been so readily available, however theres someting different about wisdom being pass down to us from wise elders. I see many, who wish to become wise elders for future generations as we deeply feel the loss of having this ourselves.
Soul Longing: At the core, the shift towards natural ways of living and being is about meaning. Simplier living helps us remember and honour what truly matters.
Benefits of Embracing Simpler Living
Choosing to live more simply is not about deprivation, its abouot liberation. Benefits include:
Reduced stress, and greater presene (can I get an AMEN).
Improved physical and mental health through attuning to natural rhythms.
Deeper awareness and connection to the land, food, and community.
A sense of resilience and empowerment.
Alignment (or re-alignmnet) with personal and collective values.
How to Begin Your Journey Toward Simpler Times
You feeling it? The call, the desire, and the need for simpler times, more meaning, more depth, and less of the stuff that doesn't really matter? Me too.
You don't need a full farm, or acres of land to get started and embrace this way of life. Starting small, wherever you are right now is the first step.
Plant herbs or vegertables in containers
Bring more plants into your home and learn how to care of them
Learn one traditional skill, like baking bread, preserving food, or making bone broth.
Practice mindful consumption, buy less and choose well.
Spend more time outdoors
Practice sun before screens, step outside and let the sunlight touch your face before you open a screen.
Connect with local communities and people who share these values.
Remember, small steps accumulate, leading to profound shifts over time.
Invitation Forward: Returning to What We Already Know
The call for simpler times is really a call to remember what our ancestors knew: life is richest and more meaningful when it is lived intentionally, connected to the land, in rhythm with the seaosns, and in connection and community with others. Traditional skills, homesteading, and natural livng are not trends, they are pathways back to wholeness.
As more of us respond to this call, we not only heal ourselves, but also contribute to a more resileint, sustainable, and soulful world.
Some Favorites to Get You Started
The Year of Less By Cait Flanders
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Weaving Grief specializes in compassionate grief therapy for individuals navigating loss of any kind - death, breakups, relationship transitions, chronic illness, loss of self, and more. By addressing these profound experiences, Weaving Grief empowers clients to grieve freely and live fully. Through somatic practices and meaningful reflection, we’re here to help you navigate these tender moments and rediscover the fullness of life.
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In this Blog: Discover the growing movement toward simpler times, traditional skills, and natural living. Learn why homesteading, slow living, and returning to ancestral practices are becoming essential in today’s fast-paced world.
simpler times, natural living, traditional skills, homesteading, slow living, sustainability, off-grid living, back-to-basics, modern homesteading, ancestral wisdom, self-sufficiency.
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