What’s not to like about gardening? It’s a great way to get outdoors, away from everyday routines, and to exercise your creativity. It’s good for your health, whatever your age, and gardeners tend to be happier on average. But gardening is more than just a relaxing hobby. Psychology research suggests that tending to a garden can have an almost magical effect, even changing the passage of time.

I love gardening – I make or remake a garden every time I move house, bringing plants from one place to another while also creating things anew. Gardening is part of who I am. My family are used to me disappearing into the garden at weekends. Once I’m there, time stands still; I can be out there from morning to night without noticing the hours passing.

I’m not alone. Many gardeners past and present have described the same experiences of switching off from their busy lives or troubles when they’re in the garden or yard. The garden and gardening are a retreat, an escape from daily pressures. People have told me that their garden becomes a ‘salvation’ and they would be bereft without it.

Switching off is not solely about not thinking – it is about the perception of time itself.

Gardeners usually say that time in the garden is shorter than it actually is; that planned hour simply slips away. The beginning and end of gardening depends on the tasks that day, or physical limitations such as darkness falling. In the process, time passes from objective clock time to subjective or nature’s time. Tasks such as weeding or checking on progress are neverending; mowing the grass is episodic – it happens regularly, but each time the task is finite. Natural time relies on sunrise and sunset, and seasons, determined by something beyond ourselves. It is measured by the time it takes for seeds to germinate and become carrots or cornflowers, or the arrival of favourite birds. Working with nature’s time disconnects me and other gardeners from externally imposed rhythms of activity punctuated by events such as commuting, meetings or meals.

Time standing still is integral to the psychological phenomenon called ‘flow’. Flow is a highly focused mental state associated with happiness, whereby people get carried along and become so absorbed in an activity that they don’t notice anything else, including the passage of time. This description matches my experience in the garden. Flow puts the process of active engagement centre-stage, along with a blurring of the boundary between self and activity. The concept of flow might explain the attraction of the gardening experience, but it doesn’t tell us what draws people out into the garden in the first place, nor why so many end up hooked.

Perhaps the garden itself has a role to play: tempting us out to see what might have happened in our absence and what needs doing next. This makes the garden intriguing and fascinating, switching our mindset on to the natural environment. In fact, ‘fascination’ is one aspect of attention restoration theory (ART), developed by the US environmental psychologists Rachel Kaplan and Stephen Kaplan, and introduced in their book The Experience of Nature (1989). ART describes how humans seem to be predisposed to engage with the natural world, and to find it relaxing or restorative. ART is about what nature does for us, and thus speaks to this notion of getting hooked. Central to the theory is the idea that engaging with nature helps us recover from feeling mentally depleted or overloaded.

Nature captures our attention. Bees buzzing on lavender, rustling leaves, passing clouds or buds unfurling into flowers can ‘fascinate’ us. They draw our attention away from our own concerns into a world of nature in the garden. If nature is intrinsically interesting, the more that people work with it, the more they become drawn in, and the less they are distracted by other issues. In turn, they become more satisfied by gardening. The idea of satisfaction or happiness seems to bring us back to flow. However, in addition to ‘fascination’, the restoration process described by ART requires ‘being away’, ‘extent’ and ‘compatibility’. These elements combined help to explain how gardeners get completely wrapped up in the garden, and why their sense of time might shift in the process.

Physically escaping from inside to outside, being somewhere peaceful away from home or the office, where I can feel the sun or wind on my back, is relaxing in itself. This is a vital aspect of gardening for me, and reflects the ‘being away’ element of ART. Relaxation means that levels of stress hormones are reduced, so the restorative effect is as much physiological as psychological. Even being away for extremely short periods is restorative. Whatever their size, gardens take you into a totally different world. However, to have an even more powerful psychological benefit, ART says that places should also have ‘extent’.

Extent is the idea that gardens are connected physically and virtually to other parts of the gardener’s life, their past, present and future. Extent configures the garden as a repository for memories and emotions, a place where different times intersect. For instance, I always plant Alchemilla mollis or lady’s mantle in my garden, not only because I am fascinated by the way its leaves hold raindrops, but also because it reminds me of my grandparents. When I see A mollis, I hear my grandfather saying its name and remember how he always found it funny. Family and personal history often pop up in people’s conversations about their gardens or allotments. Memories can be manifested by physical acts of gardening, too. A man I interviewed about his allotment realised that, when he was digging, he was making the same movements as when he was a teenager working in a foundry, and it took him back immediately to his younger self.

This man’s embodied memory of the past also demonstrates what ART calls ‘compatibility’. For him, being physically active was psychologically and emotionally meaningful, and gardening is compatible with who he was and what he can do in the present. Compatibility is about having the time and ability to accomplish things that are personally relevant. Growing fresh food is compatible with your role as a provider for the family, while nurturing chrysanthemums to a perfect bloom could be compatible with my neighbour’s desire to win a prize.

Gardening is a relaxing and rewarding hobby. It provides an opportunity to escape and reflect away from our daily routines, and to relish the intensity of fascination. But it is more than that. The psychological power of gardening derives from the garden’s reach beyond the here and now. My contention is that different and complex forms of time are continuously interacting through the garden and the gardener. Past, present and future collide in a flowerbed, enticing the gardener to lose themselves in the pleasure of ‘flow’. Let someone else worry about lunch.

Harriet Gross

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Tap into a deeper sense of purpose and well-being with the first VR meditation of its kind—A 360 guided mindfulness practice through Muir Woods National Monument with Dacher Keltner of the The Greater Good Science Center.

Discover the power of awe: http://www.mindful.org/awewalk/

I love my goats. They always make me smile. I am a registered nurse and sometimes my days can be a little stressful. One little therapy doeling really brightens my days. Her name is Baby. Baby is a Fainting goat. Every time I look at her she brings a smile to my face. This got me to thinking: I could get the best of both worlds by starting a therapy program using my goats.

So what is a therapy goat? A therapy goat is like any other therapy animal. A therapy animal is an animal trained to provide affection and comfort to people. They are often used in hospitals, assisted living homes, nursing homes, schools, rehabilitation centers, hospices and others areas to help improve their well-being. Therapy animals are NOT required to be certified.

Research indicates that interaction with therapy animals can temporarily affect the release of various neurotransmitters in the brain; levels of oxytocin (linked with bonding) and dopamine (involved in the reward-motivation system) are increased, while cortisol levels (an immunosuppressant associated with stress) are decreased. All of which are very beneficial to the patients. If Baby makes me smile I figured she could make others smile too!

A Therapy animal is different than a service animal. Service animals perform tasks for people with disabilities and have a legal right to accompany their owners into almost any area they need to go. In the United States, service animals are legally protected at the federal level by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Therapy animals are not trained to assist specific individuals and do not qualify as service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Just about any breed of goat can be trained as a therapy goat. I raise Fainting Goats at my farm in East Texas. We call our farm “Playful Acres”. They are all registered with the American Fainting Goat Organization, who strongly believes the Fainting goat breed is a multi-purpose breed. Therapy goats need to be friendly and enjoy human contact. They should be well behaved in public. For a goat to be used as a therapy animal it is best to use either polled or disbudded goats. You must be careful with horned goats. Also, wethers and does make the best therapy goats, because you don’t have to worry about their smell during rut like you would with the bucks.

I am currently working with several different goats in my therapy program. Rio is a therapy goat that is already trained and ready to go to work. He really loves kids so most of his work will be spent working at schools, and maybe making a few visits to the public libraries during the summer when the children have their reading programs.

Rio attended the last Ag Day. There were 400 4^th graders and Rio loved every one of them! He did a great job of letting them pet him and many of them gave him a hug. Some of these children had never seen a goat.

By the end of the day many students had decided that they wanted a goat for a pet. It was a great learning experience for all.

Checkers is another goat that loves people. He is horned so care has to be given when using him. He is a small boy and everyone loves his long hair.

Baby is in training to be a therapy goat. She has been disbudded. Baby is a bottle baby and is very friendly. She loves attention and people.

Study by researchers at UC Santa Barbara finds culture a significant factor in motivating eco-friendly behaviors

Plenty of people give lip service to solving environmental issues, but what actually leads them to change their behavior? According to research conducted by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara, it may have a lot to do with culture.

Individual concern, they suggest, is more strongly associated with motivation to act in countries that espouse individualistic values, while social norms may be stronger in collectivistic societies. Their findings are published in the journal Psychological Science.

“It isn’t that people from different cultures have more or less pro-environmental beliefs or engage in more or less pro-environmental actions,” said Kimin Eom, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the paper’s lead author. “The triggers for these actions are what vary across cultures.

“Our findings suggest that changing personally held beliefs, attitudes and concerns about social issues, which is one of the most frequent strategies for behavioral change, may not guarantee corresponding change in all cultures,” Eom continued. “It is more likely to be effective in fostering people’s actions to address environmental issues in more individualistic cultural contexts.”

Eom became interested in the links between culture, environmental concern and environmental action when he noticed that both public discussion and academic research on environmental behavior typically focus on people from Western countries. This is noteworthy, he said, because Western countries tend to have cultural values that prioritize the attitudes and beliefs of individuals and encourage their expression.

“The assumption seemed to be that once individuals are led to believe in the urgency of environmental issues and have stronger concerns about sustainability, they will change and act to address these issues,” explained Eom.

But, the researchers hypothesized, this relationship might not hold for individuals living in more collectivistic societies, which place more emphasis on social harmony and conformity than on self-expressions. In one study, Eom and his co-authors, Heejung S. Kim and David Sherman, both professors of psychological and brain sciences at UCSB, examined data collected from individuals in 48 countries for the World Values Survey. As part of the survey, participants rated how serious they considered various environmental issues, including global warming and pollution. As a measure of environmental action, individuals also rated their support for two strategies aimed at addressing environmental pollution: allocating a portion of their income and paying increased taxes.

The results showed that expressing concern about environmental issues wasn’t necessarily linked to support for environmental action. “We found that nations dramatically differed in how much personal concerns about the environment were associated with intentions to perform environmentally friendly behavior,” Eom said.

According to the researchers, data from respondents in the United States, a country with a high level of individualism, showed the strongest correlation between the two variables. At the same time, data from participants in many countries showed almost no relation between environmental concern and pro-environmental behavioral intentions.

Further analysis, they said, demonstrated that the link between environmental concern and support for environmental action was associated with national-level individualism: The more individualistic the society, the stronger the link. This remained true even after the researchers took various other cultural factors into account.

To examine whether different factors drive environmental action in individualistic and collectivistic cultures, the researchers conducted a second study with participants from the U.S. (individualistic) and Japan (collectivistic). In line with their previous findings, environmental concern was correlated with environmental behavior — in this case, choosing environmentally friendly products — but only among American participants.

Conversely, believing that a large proportion of people engage in environmentally friendly behaviors was associated with making eco-friendly choices among Japanese
participants, but not among those from the U.S. Together, the findings suggest that personal concerns are more likely to motivate people to take environmental action if they live in individualistic countries, whereas social norms are more likely to drive people to engage in environmentally conscious behavior if they live in collectivistic countries.

The research has direct implications for galvanizing public support and action in relation to environmental issues, but it also sheds light on promoting public engagement in societal issues more broadly, Eom said. “Getting citizens actively engaged is critical to addressing urgent social challenges, such as climate change,” he noted. “Our research suggests that scientists, policymakers and activists need to understand how culture shapes the psychological antecedents of action to develop policies, campaigns and interventions that address important social issues.”

Keiko Ishii of Kobe University is also a co-author on the research.

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

~ John Muir

Shinrin Yoku means “taking in the forest air” or “forest bathing” in Japanese. When you spend time in the forest you reap therapeutic benefits. In addition to the calming sights and sounds, fresh forest air administers beneficial airborne substances released by plants, phytoncides. These wood essential oils can alleviate stress, elevate mood, lower blood pressure and boost immune system health.

The Shinrin Yoku concept was developed in Japan during the 1980s as a recommended component of a quality lifestyle, endorsed by the Forest Agency of Japan. Forest bathing has become a respected element of Japanese preventive health care and healing.

Forest Bathing is simple: Take a contemplative walk in a natural area, pause to observe nature’s details, listen and breathe deeply. Soothing, renewing and therapeutic benefits will be yours.

Enjoy these videos which introduce you to the practice of Shinrin Yoku:

For More Information:
Association of Nature & Forest Therapy

For the most part, our brains didn’t evolve in cities. But in a few decades, almost 70 per cent of the world’s people will live in urban environments. Despite the prosperity we associate with cities, urbanization presents a major health challenge. Cities, with their accelerated pace of life, can be stressful. The results are seen in the brains and behaviour of those raised in cities or currently living in one.

Photo: Public Domain Pictures

On the upside, city dwellers are on average wealthier and receive better health care, nutrition and sanitation than rural residents. On the downside, they experience an increased risk of chronic disease, a more demanding and stressful social environment and greater levels of inequity. In fact, city dwellers have a 21 per cent greater risk for anxiety disorders and a 39 per cent increased likelihood of mood disorders.

A study published in Nature links city living with sensitivity to social stress. MRI scans show greater exposure to urban environments can increase activity in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotions such as fear and the release of stress-related hormones. According to the study, the amygdala “has been strongly implicated in anxiety disorders, depression, and other behaviours that are increased in cities, such as violence.”

The researchers also found people who lived in cities for their first 15 years experienced increased activity in an area of the brain that helps regulate the amygdala. So if you grew up in the city, you’re more likely than those who moved there later in life to have permanently raised sensitivity to stress.

Author and professor David Gessner says we’re turning into “fast twitch” animals. It’s like we have an alarm clock going off in our brains every 30 seconds, sapping our ability to concentrate for longer periods of time. The demands of urban life include a constant need to filter information, dodge distractions and make decisions. We give our brains little time to recover.

How do we slow things down? Nature seems to be the answer. Cognitive psychologist David Strayer’s hypothesis is that “being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s command centre, to dial down and rest, like an overused muscle.”

Research shows even brief interactions with nature can soothe our brains. Stanford’s Gregory Bratman designed an experiment in which participants took a 50-minute walk in either a natural or an urban environment. People who took the nature walk experienced decreased anxiety, brooding and negative emotion and increased memory performance. Bratman’s team found walking in natural environments can decrease rumination, the unhealthy but familiar habit of thinking over and over about causes and consequences of negative experiences. Their study also showed neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness was reduced in participants who walked through nature compared with those who walked through an urban environment.

Korean researchers investigated the differences in brain activity when volunteers just looked at urban versus natural scenery. For those viewing urban images, MRI scans showed increased blood flow to the amygdala region. In contrast, areas of the brain associated with empathy and altruism lit up for those who viewed natural scenes.

In Japan, scientists found people spending time in nature — shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing” — inhale “beneficial bacteria, plant-derived essential oils and negatively-charged ions” which interact with gut bacteria to strengthen the body’s immune system and improve both mental and physical health.

Spending time in nature regularly is not a panacea for mental health but it’s an essential component of health and psychological resilience. Nature helps us withstand and recover from life’s challenges. Even city dwellers can find nearby nature — a garden, local park or trail — to give their overworked brains a break.

Every spring, the David Suzuki Foundation challenges Canadians to spend more time outside for health and mental well-being. The 30×30 Nature Challenge asks people to commit to spending at least 30 minutes a day in nature for 30 days in May. When you take the 30×30 pledge at 30×30.davidsuzuki.org, you’ll receive the latest research on the health benefits of spending time outdoors along with practical tips on how to add green time to your daily routine.

Let’s show our brains — and bodies — some love. Get outside!

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Public Engagement Specialist Aryne Sheppard.

Republished with permission

Monroe County Detention Facility in Key West, Florida is a unique, healing place where inmates and animals care for each other.

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Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Animal Farm

We are spending more time indoors and online. But recent studies suggest that nature can help our brains and bodies to stay healthy.

I’ve been an avid hiker my whole life. From the time I first strapped on a backpack and headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I was hooked on the experience, loving the way being in nature cleared my mind and helped me to feel more grounded and peaceful.

But, even though I’ve always believed that hiking in nature had many psychological benefits, I’ve never had much science to back me up…until now, that is. Scientists are beginning to find evidence that being in nature has a profound impact on our brains and our behavior, helping us to reduce anxiety, brooding, and stress, and increase our attention capacity, creativity, and our ability to connect with other people.

“People have been discussing their profound experiences in nature for the last several 100 years—from Thoreau to John Muir to many other writers,” says researcher David Strayer, of the University of Utah. “Now we are seeing changes in the brain and changes in the body that suggest we are physically and mentally more healthy when we are interacting with nature.”

While he and other scientists may believe nature benefits our well-being, we live in a society where people spend more and more time indoors and online—especially children. Findings on how nature improves our brains brings added legitimacy to the call for preserving natural spaces—both urban and wild—and for spending more time in nature in order to lead healthier, happier, and more creative lives.

Photo: Pixabay, Creative Commons

Here are some of the ways that science is showing how being in nature affects our brains and bodies.

Being in nature decreases stress

It’s clear that hiking—and any physical activity—can reduce stress and anxiety. But, there’s something about being in nature that may augment those impacts.

In one recent experiment conducted in Japan, participants were assigned to walk either in a forest or in an urban center (taking walks of equal length and difficulty) while having their heart rate variability, heart rate, and blood pressure measured. The participants also filled out questionnaires about their moods, stress levels, and other psychological measures.

Results showed that those who walked in forests had significantly lower heart rates and higher heart rate variability (indicating more relaxation and less stress), and reported better moods and less anxiety, than those who walked in urban settings. The researchers concluded that there’s something about being in nature that had a beneficial effect on stress reduction, above and beyond what exercise alone might have produced.

In another study, researchers in Finland found that urban dwellers who strolled for as little as 20 minutes through an urban park or woodland reported significantly more stress relief than those who strolled in a city center.

The reasons for this effect are unclear; but scientists believe that we evolved to be more relaxed in natural spaces. In a now-classic laboratory experiment by Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University and colleagues, participants who first viewed a stress-inducing movie, and were then exposed to color/sound videotapes depicting natural scenes, showed much quicker, more complete recovery from stress than those who’d been exposed to videos of urban settings.

These studies and others provide evidence that being in natural spaces— or even just looking out of a window onto a natural scene—somehow soothes us and relieves stress.

Photo: Pixabay, Creative Commons

Nature make you happier and less brooding

I’ve always found that hiking in nature makes me feel happier, and of course decreased stress may be a big part of the reason why. But, Gregory Bratman, of Stanford University, has found evidence that nature may impact our mood in other ways, too.

In one 2015 study, he and his colleagues randomly assigned 60 participants to a 50-minute walk in either a natural setting (oak woodlands) or an urban setting (along a four-lane road). Before and after the walk, the participants were assessed on their emotional state and on cognitive measures, such as how well they could perform tasks requiring short-term memory. Results showed that those who walked in nature experienced less anxiety, rumination (focused attention on negative aspects of oneself), and negative affect, as well as more positive emotions, in comparison to the urban walkers. They also improved their performance on the memory tasks.

In another study, he and his colleagues extended these findings by zeroing in on how walking in nature affects rumination—which has been associated with the onset of depression and anxiety—while also using fMRI technology to look at brain activity. Participants who took a 90-minute walk in either a natural setting or an urban setting had their brains scanned before and after their walks and were surveyed on self-reported rumination levels (as well as other psychological markers). The researchers controlled for many potential factors that might influence rumination or brain activity—for example, physical exertion levels as measured by heart rates and pulmonary functions.

Even so, participants who walked in a natural setting versus an urban setting reported decreased rumination after the walk, and they showed increased activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain whose deactivation is affiliated with depression and anxiety—a finding that suggests nature may have important impacts on mood.

Bratman believes results like these need to reach city planners and others whose policies impact our natural spaces. “Ecosystem services are being incorporated into decision making at all levels of public policy, land use planning, and urban design, and it’s very important to be sure to incorporate empirical findings from psychology into these decisions,” he says.

Photo: Public Domain Images

Nature relieves attention fatigue and increases creativity

Today, we live with ubiquitous technology designed to constantly pull for our attention. But many scientists believe our brains were not made for this kind of information bombardment, and that it can lead to mental fatigue, overwhelm, and burnout, requiring “attention restoration” to get back to a normal, healthy state.

Strayer is one of those researchers. He believes that being in nature restores depleted attention circuits, which can then help us be more open to creativity and problem-solving.

“When you use your cell phone to talk, text, shoot photos, or whatever else you can do with your cell phone, you’re tapping the prefrontal cortex and causing reductions in cognitive resources,” he says.

In a 2012 study, he and his colleagues showed that hikers on a four-day backpacking trip could solve significantly more puzzles requiring creativity when compared to a control group of people waiting to take the same hike—in fact, 47 percent more. Although other factors may account for his results—for example, the exercise or the camaraderie of being out together—prior studies have suggested that nature itself may play an important role. One in Psychological Science found that the impact of nature on attention restoration is what accounted for improved scores on cognitive tests for the study participants.

This phenomenon may be due to differences in brain activation when viewing natural scenes versus more built-up scenes—even for those who normally live in an urban environment. In a recent study conducted by Peter Aspinall at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and colleagues, participants who had their brains monitored continuously using mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) while they walked through an urban green space had brain EEG readings indicating lower frustration, engagement, and arousal, and higher meditation levels while in the green area, and higher engagement levels when moving out of the green area. This lower engagement and arousal may be what allows for attention restoration, encouraging a more open, meditative mindset.

It’s this kind of brain activity—sometimes referred to as “the brain default network”—that is tied to creative thinking, says Strayer. He is currently repeating his earlier 2012 study with a new group of hikers and recording their EEG activity and salivary cortisol levels before, during, and after a three-day hike. Early analyses of EEG readings support the theory that hiking in nature seems to rest people’s attention networks and to engage their default networks.

Strayer and colleagues are also specifically looking at the effects of technology by monitoring people’s EEG readings while they walk in an arboretum, either while talking on their cell phone or not. So far, they’ve found that participants with cell phones appear to have EEG readings consistent with attention overload, and can recall only half as many details of the arboretum they just passed through, compared to those who were not on a cell phone.

Though Strayer’s findings are preliminary, they are consistent with other people’s findings on the importance of nature to attention restoration and creativity.

“If you’ve been using your brain to multitask—as most of us do most of the day—and then you set that aside and go on a walk, without all of the gadgets, you’ve let the prefrontal cortex recover,” says Strayer. “And that’s when we see these bursts in creativity, problem-solving, and feelings of well-being.”

Photo: Pixabay, Creative Commons

Nature may help you to be kind and generous

Whenever I go to places like Yosemite or the Big Sur Coast of California, I seem to return to my home life ready to be more kind and generous to those around me—just ask my husband and kids! Now some new studies may shed light on why that is.

In a series of experiments published in 2014, Juyoung Lee, GGSC director Dacher Keltner, and other researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the potential impact of nature on the willingness to be generous, trusting, and helpful toward others, while considering what factors might influence that relationship.

As part of their study, the researchers exposed participants to more or less subjectively beautiful nature scenes (whose beauty levels were rated independently) and then observed how participants behaved playing two economics games—the Dictator Game and the Trust Game—that measure generosity and trust, respectively. After being exposed to the more beautiful nature scenes, participants acted more generously and more trusting in the games than those who saw less beautiful scenes, and the effects appeared to be due to corresponding increases in positive emotion.

In another part of the study, the researchers asked people to fill out a survey about their emotions while sitting at a table where more or less beautiful plants were placed. Afterwards, the participants were told that the experiment was over and they could leave, but that if they wanted to they could volunteer to make paper cranes for a relief effort program in Japan. The number of cranes they made (or didn’t make) was used as a measure of their “prosociality” or willingness to help.

Results showed that the presence of more beautiful plants significantly increased the number of cranes made by participants, and that this increase was, again, mediated by positive emotion elicited by natural beauty. The researchers concluded that experiencing the beauty of nature increases positive emotion—perhaps by inspiring awe, a feeling akin to wonder, with the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself—which then leads to prosocial behaviors.

Support for this theory comes from an experiment conducted by Paul Piff of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues, in which participants staring up a grove of very tall trees for as little as one minute experienced measurable increases in awe, and demonstrated more helpful behavior and approached moral dilemmas more ethically, than participants who spent the same amount of time looking up at a high building.

Photo: Public Domain Pictures

Nature makes you “feel more alive”

With all of these benefits to being out in nature, it’s probably no surprise that something about nature makes us feel more alive and vital. Being outdoors gives us energy, makes us happier, helps us to relieve the everyday stresses of our overscheduled lives, opens the door to creativity, and helps us to be kind to others.

No one knows if there is an ideal amount of nature exposure, though Strayer says that longtime backpackers suggest a minimum of three days to really unplug from our everyday lives. Nor can anyone say for sure how nature compares to other forms of stress relief or attention restoration, such as sleep or meditation. Both Strayer and Bratman say we need a lot more careful research to tease out these effects before we come to any definitive conclusions.

Still, the research does suggest there’s something about nature that keeps us psychologically healthy, and that’s good to know…especially since nature is a resource that’s free and that many of us can access by just walking outside our door. Results like these should encourage us as a society to consider more carefully how we preserve our wilderness spaces and our urban parks.

And while the research may not be conclusive, Strayer is optimistic that science will eventually catch up to what people like me have intuited all along—that there’s something about nature that renews us, allowing us to feel better, to think better, and to deepen our understanding of ourselves and others.

“You can’t have centuries of people writing about this and not have something going on,” says Strayer. “If you are constantly on a device or in front of a screen, you’re missing out on something that’s pretty spectacular: the real world.”

Photo: Shutterstock

Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Good‘s book review editor and a frequent contributor to the magazine.

“Are you feeling tired, irritable, stressed out? Well you might consider Nature. From the people who brought you Getting Outside comes prescription-strength Nature, a non harmful medication shown to relieve the crippling symptoms of modern life.”

Nature has a sense of humor. Just ask an emu. Want a second opinion? Consult a tardigrade. Or ask Justin Bogardus, director/producer of Dream Tree Films & Productions. With his talented colleagues, Bogardus has produced a  funny — and effective — mock commercial about the health benefits of the natural world: “Tired, irritable, stressed out? Try Nature.”

The slick production mimics the ubiquitous and often irritating TV commercials for pharmaceuticals: “Are you feeling tired, irritable, stressed out? Well you might consider Nature. From the people who brought you Getting Outside comes prescription-strength Nature, a non harmful medication shown to relieve the crippling symptoms of modern life.”

At first, the commercial seems like a sendup of movement to connect people to the natural world for their health and well-being, but Nature Rx is making a point. “Nature has a marketing problem,” according to Dream Tree: “Often the messages and headlines we get from the news about climate change and mass extinction can be overwhelming, leaving us wondering what to do. Behind the humor of Nature Rx is sound science. Research shows that spending more time in nature improves your health, happiness, and importantly leads to making better environmental decisions.”

Like Bogardus, physician and writer James Hamblin approaches this topic with wit in an article (and his own video) in the October issue of The Atlantic. In  “The Nature Cure: Why some doctors are writing prescriptions for time outdoors,” Hamblin focuses mainly on ecotherapy, which, he notes, is not “intended as a replacement for standard evidence-based treatments.” The positive results reported by some researchers, he writes, “generally have more to do with mood and behavior than basic biology—but mood and behavior are intimately tied to physical well-being.”

It’s important to point out that ecotheraphy, primarily concerned with mental health, is only one approach. Other applications include: changing the environment of neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, play areas and workplaces through biophilic design principles to improve human health and productivity; building programs that provide experiences in nature, especially for children and adults who might otherwise not be exposed to it; and prescribing or recommending nature to patients, in traditional health care settings.

Such efforts are supported by the body of scientific evidence that has grown rapidly over the past decade, and more nature is needed. The Children & Nature Network continues to build a data base of those studies. The C&NN Research Center is now available to anyone in the world.

Time spent in nature isn’t a panacea, but it does offer special properties. In 2013, in a presentation at an event focused on children and nature, G. Richard Olds, MD, dean of the University of California, Riverside, Medical School, made this point: Few medications or prescriptions work both as prevention and as therapy.

Like the other therapies, though, nature can have side effects. Consequently, the Nature Rx “commercial” includes this important warning: “Side effects may include spontaneous euphoria, taking yourself less seriously, and being in a good mood for no apparent reason. So, ask your doctor if Nature is right for you.”

Richard Louv is Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Children & Nature Network, an organization supporting the international movement to connect children, their families and their communities to the natural world. He is the author of eight books, including “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” and “The Nature Principle.” In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal.

Men and persons age 65 and older who have access to natural surroundings, whether it’s the green space of a nearby park or a sandy beach and an ocean view, report sleeping better, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Preventive Medicine.

“It’s hard to overestimate the importance of high-quality sleep,” said Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, a U of I professor of kinesiology and community health and a faculty member in the U of I’s Division of Nutritional Sciences. “Studies show that inadequate sleep is associated with declines in mental and physical health, reduced cognitive function, and increased obesity. This new study shows that exposure to a natural environment may help people get the sleep they need.”

In the study, Grigsby-Toussaint worked with both U of I researchers and scientists from the New York University School of Medicine. The team used data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which surveyed 255,171 representative U.S. adults, to learn whether there was an association between self-reported days of insufficient sleep and access to green space. The team also used a USDA index that scores the country’s geographical areas for their natural amenities, using hours of sunlight, which is important in regulating a person’s circadian rhythm, and temperature.

In response to the survey question about sleep quality in the last month, the researchers found that the most common answer was that respondents had slept poorly for less than one week.

“Interestingly, though, across the entire sample, individuals reporting 21 to 29 days of insufficient sleep consistently had lower odds of access to green space and natural amenities compared to those reporting less than one week,” she said.

For men, the relationship between sleep and exposure to green space was much stronger than for women. And males and females 65 and over found nature to be a potent sleep aid, she added.

Grigsby-Toussaint noted that living near green landscapes is associated with higher levels of physical activity and that exercise in turn predicts beneficial sleep patterns.

But men appeared to benefit much more from their natural surroundings. The researcher speculated that women may take less advantage of nearby natural settings out of concern for their safety, but she added that more research is needed.

The finding should be a boon for people who are having trouble sleeping as they age. “If there is a way for persons over 65 to spend time in nature, it would improve the quality of their sleep—and their quality of life—if they did so,” Grigsby-Toussaint said.

The study points to the importance of conserving nature in general, she added.

“And, specifically, our results provide an incentive for nursing homes and communities with many retired residents to design buildings with more lighting, create nature trails and dedicated garden spaces, and provide safe outdoor areas that encourage outdoor activity for men and women,” she said.

“Sleep Insufficiency and the Natural Environment: Results from the U.S. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey” appears in the September 2015 issue of Preventive Medicine and is available online. Grigsby-Toussaint is the lead and corresponding author; co-authors include Kedir N. Tun and Mark Krupa of the University of Illinois and Natasha J. Williams, Seithikurippu K. Pandi-Perumal, and Girardin Jean-Louis of the Center for Healthful Behavioral Change, New York University School of Medicine. The National Institutes of Health funded the study.