Why Travel and New Environments Make Us Feel Free: The Psychology of Personal Transformation

Why Travel and New Environments Make Us Feel Free: The Psychology of Personal Transformation

There's something quite magical about stepping into a new environment. Young people backpack across continents and suddenly discover parts of themselves they never knew existed. We move to a new city, start a fresh job, and find ourselves showing up as the person we've held back from being. In England's summer festival season, thousands shed their weekday personas to dance, express, and move more freely under canvas and open sky.

But this transformation raises a profound question: why do we need to completely remove ourselves from our familiar surroundings to access this freedom? What is it about our everyday environments that keeps us so constrained?

How Environment Shapes Identity and Self-Expression

The answer lies partly in how others perceive us—and how we perceive ourselves within those established frameworks. In our regular lives, we're trapped by a web of expectations: colleagues who see us in a particular role, friends who expect us to behave a certain way, family members who still treat us as we are expected to be. These perceptions slowly become invisible chains, limiting our expression and keeping us locked into patterns that may no longer serve us.

When we travel or attend festivals, we're granted something precious: anonymity. No one knows who we are, our history, our past ‘failures’, our supposed limitations. We're free to just be who we really are in the moment. The festival-goer who dances with abandon may be the same person who sits quietly in Monday morning meetings, and why shouldn’t they be?

What Children Teach Us About Authentic Self-Expression

Watch a group of four and five-year-olds, and you'll see personalities that are remarkably clear and fully formed. At that tender age, there is an essential nature that shines through for them. (although I have to say, I have noticed, from working with young children from 2 years old up, you can see the social conditioning starts to encroach on them, year by year, though none the less they have not dimmed their light in the way that happens with increasing age. Children possess an enviable resilience; they can argue with a friend and be playing together again five minutes later. They don’t waste time carrying grudges and are not paralysed by the fear of judgment.

This isn't childishness—it's actually wisdom. Children naturally access the joy and spontaneity that we, as adults, have to consciously work to reclaim. They haven't yet forgotten how to play, how to laugh without reason, how to free in their bodies with pure expression rather than self-consciousness.

How to Find Freedom Without Changing Your Environment

It feels like a tragedy that we've been conditioned to believe that growing up means growing serious, that responsibility requires us to abandon the very qualities that make life vibrant. We accept that playfulness, spontaneity, and pure joy are a given for children, or reserved for those special occasions—weekends, holidays, festivals.

But what if we could harness that festival freedom in our daily lives? What if we didn't need to travel thousands of miles or wait for special events to access our authentic selves? What if we could stand our ground and be more of who we really are, right where we are?

Creating Internal Freedom Through Movement and Creative Expression

This is where conscious movement and creative expression become powerful tools. Through dance, improvisation, and embodied practices, we can create internal environments of freedom that don't depend on external circumstances. We can learn to shed our old skins—those outdated identities and limiting beliefs—and give ourselves permission to be more expansive.

The goal isn't to become someone new, but to remember who we've always been beneath the layers of conditioning. It's about reclaiming our birthright of joy, spontaneity, and authentic expression. It's about bringing the wisdom of the child and the freedom of the festival into the richness of our adult lives.

We are always growing, always on a journey of possibility. But we're also fundamentally ourselves—those essential qualities that have been there since birth are still there, waiting to be rediscovered and expressed. The question isn't whether we can change, but whether we can remember how to be free.

Here's to a week of freedom, wherever you are, whatever your circumstances. Here's to the courage to shed old skins and the wisdom to dance as both serpent and eagle—grounded in our truth, yet free to soar.

Key Thoughts on Personal Transformation:

Travel and new environments provide temporary freedom from social expectations and self-imposed limitations
Children naturally access joy and authenticity before conditioning teaches them to conform
Internal freedom is possible without changing external circumstances through conscious movement and creative expression
Authentic self-expression can be cultivated through practices like dance, improvisation, and embodied movement
Personal transformation happens when we remember who we've always been beneath layers of conditioning

Categories: : travel