Nature.
A place that heals.
THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF CONNECTING WITH NATURE.
Author Richard Louv mentioned ‘Nature-Deficit Disorder’ in his famous book ‘Last Child In The Woods.’
According to Louv, nature-deficit disorder is not the presence of an anomaly in the brain; it is the loss of connection of humans to their natural environment. Staying close to nature improves physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. It makes us feel alive from the inside, and we should not compromise it for recent developments like urbanization, technology, or social media.
The benefits of staying close to nature are diverse. We can enjoy the positive effects of connecting to the environment at all levels of individual well-being. Let’s explore how:
(expand each topic to learn the science behind the healing powers of nature)
Nature Impacts Health
Forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, as they call it in Japan, is a famous way of spending time in nature. Research has shown that people who practice forest bathing have optimum nervous system functions, well-balanced heart conditions, and reduced bowel disorders.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22840583/
Outdoor activities reduce the chances of developing eyesight problems like hypermetropia and myopia. A survey conducted on children in Australia revealed that school-aged kids who participated in outdoor activities had better vision than kids who spent more time indoors (Rose, Morgan, & Kifley, 2008).
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18294691/
Studies have related nature connections to lower BMI. People who exercise outdoors are less fatigued and have fewer chances of suffering from obesity and related conditions.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4380517/
Forest Bathing research also suggested that by stimulating the production of anti-cancer proteins, frequent walks or trips into the wilderness help patients in fighting terminal diseases. Although this is ongoing research and firmer evidence are awaited, this suggestion is strong enough to prove the benefits of being outdoors.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17903349
Nature Improves Psychological Well-Being
Nature helps in emotional regulation and improves memory functions. A study on the cognitive benefits of nature found that subjects who took a nature walk did better on a memory test than the subjects who walked down the urban streets (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008).
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x
Nature walks benefit people suffering from depression. Studies had shown that people suffering from mild to major depressive disorders showed significant mood upliftments when exposed to nature. Not only that, but they also felt more motivated and energized to recover and get back to normalcy (Berman et al., 2012).
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3393816/
Recent investigations revealed that being outdoor reduces stress by lowering the stress hormone cortisol (Gidlow, Randall, Gillman, Smith, & Jones, 2016).
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793341/
Nature walks and other outdoor activities build attention and focus (Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991). There are pieces of evidence that indicate strong environmental connections to be related to better performance, heightened concentration, and reduced chances of developing Attention Deficit Disorder (Faber Taylor & Kuo, 2009).
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1087054708323000
A study at the University of Kansas found that spending more time outdoors and less time with our electronic devices can increase our problem-solving skills and improve creative abilities (Atchley, Strayer, & Atchley, 2012).
Source: http://archive.news.ku.edu/2012/april/23/outdoors.shtml
A study suggests that spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3
Spiritual Enhancement
Environmental psychologists have argued that there is a value component added to the human-nature relationship. By staying close to nature, we feel more grateful and appreciative of what it has to offer to us (Proshansky, 1976). Seeing the wonders of the world outside automatically fosters within us the urge to protect it.
Breathing in nature gives us wholesome sensory awareness. When we spend time outdoors, we are more mindful of what we see, what we hear, what we smell, and what we feel.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886911001711
Nature in Psychology.
Nature has a deep-rooted meaning in psychology that encompasses the core components of our existence, including our genes. The popular nature-nurture concept in developmental psychology explores all the variables that shape and influence the relationship that our internal (personality traits and genetic factors) and external worlds (physical environment that we live in) share.
The Biophilia Hypothesis delved into the human relationship with nature in 1984. The concept was initially used by German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm who described biophilia as the ‘love for everything that is alive.’ The idea of biophilia was later expanded by American biologist Edward O. Wilson, who proposed that the human inclination towards nature has a genetic basis.
Stress and Nature
A large-scale experiment conducted on 120 subjects ascertained the ‘nature-connection’ in stress reduction and coping. Each participant observed visuals of either a natural landscape or an urban environment. The data obtained from this survey revealed that participants who looked at the picture of natural setting had low scores on stress scales and had better heartbeat and pulse counts.
Furthermore, investigators also found that the stress recovery rate was much higher in participants who got a natural exposure than the ones who saw urbanized ambiances. The flow of this study strongly indicated the role nature plays in improving our general mental health conditions including stress (Ulrich et al., 1991).
Source: http://intogreen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ulrich-et-al-1991.pdf
Nature For Building Attention
The fact that staying close to nature improves focus and attention span, was suggested in the Attention Restoration Theory by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan (1989). The theory explains why staying close to nature re-energizes us and reduces fatigue.
Encounters with any aspect of the natural environment – sunset, beach, clouds, or forests grab our positive attention without us paying much effort to it, and the whole process restores the life energy that negative emotions had taken away from us.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2016.1196155
Concentration in Children with ADHD
Twenty minutes in a park setting was sufficient to elevate attention performance relative to the same amount of time in other settings. These findings indicate that environments can enhance attention not only in the general population but also in ADHD populations. “Doses of nature” might serve as a safe, inexpensive, widely accessible new tool in the tool kit for managing ADHD symptoms.
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1087054708323000
Psychology, Values, And Nature
An experiment conducted on the landowners on Pennsylvania disclosed that staying close to nature adds a sense of value toward the self, others, and toward Mother Nature.
It builds connectivity and lets the way for gratitude and appreciation.
Results showed that respondents who had higher connectivity with nature and spent more time outdoors were more environmentally responsible, concerned, and happier in their interpersonal relationships (Dutcher, Finley, Luloff, & Johnson, 2007).
Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916506298794
A Growing Body of Research Suggests that Nature is integral to our health and well-being.
The Human-Nature Relationship And Health
The research paper on ‘Human-Nature Relationship And Its Impact On Health: A Critical Review’ explores all the aspects of the interconnection we have with nature and how it affects our general health and well-being.
Author Valentine Seymour (2016) defined our relationship with nature in close association with Darwinian principles of Evolutionary psychology. The study explained concepts of evolutionary biology, social economics, psychology, and environmentalism and scouts how the interplay of all these influence human health. The interdisciplinary research model suggests that:
Staying close to nature improves physical conditions like hypertension, cardiac illness, and chronic pain.
A strong connection to the natural environment enhances emotional well-being and alleviates feelings of social isolation. Besides, it also helps individuals suffering from mental health conditions like attention disorders, mood disorders, and different forms of anxiety.
Nature-friendly people are more environmentally conscious and responsible. They have a rational sense of using their physical space and are more proactive to enact on issues that might help in sustaining the environment they live in.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114301/
A Multi-Disciplinary Study On Human-Nature Relationship
The multi-disciplinary HNC (Human-Nature Connection) study was a vast exploration of the kinetics involving the relatability we bear with our physical environment and also why many people are still unaware about the benefits of staying close to nature.
The study included a heap of psychometric assessments and personal interviews, and the results obtained by Ives et al. (2017) provided a strong lineup of why the human-nature connection is vital for human life and sustainability.
The University Of Tasmania Study On Nature And Affective Experience
David Hayward published this thesis in 2016 and studied the effect of nature connection with enhanced mental health conditions in students.
With strong evidence and research-backed examples, he suggested that teaching students from a broad perspective is way more effective than showing them only the subject matter (Knapp, 1989).
He studied the implications of outdoor education and concluded that kids who received outdoor training were more satisfied and emotionally well-balanced.
Not only that, outdoor educators, according to the researcher, were possessors of sound mental health and loved their jobs more than teachers in a controlled setting. The study attracted many educational sectors and have encouraged educators and facilitators to embrace outdoor activities as an integral part of educational courses.
Source: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/23510/1/Hayward_whole_thesis.pdf
Research on Connecting Children With Nature
The love for outdoors must grow from the very beginning of life.
Instead of encouraging our children to spend ‘on-screen’, parents and caregivers must push them to spend more time ‘on the green.’
The research ‘Benefits Of Connecting Children With Nature’ (New Zealand Department of Conservation, n.d.) was an authentic initiative to support environmental conservation and increase nature awareness among youngsters today. The study explores the reasons for the disconnect that the young generation is unconsciously suffering from and suggests effective approaches that can help in improving the nature-human reciprocity.
other Interesting Studies.
A Study on Nature And Human Emotions
Scientists Ryan Lumber, Miles Richardson, and David Sheffield published this research paper in 2017 and focused on the affective components of associating with nature. The authors suggested that being close to nature evokes positive emotions.
Outdoor activities such as hiking, gardening, or birdwatching, enhance the nature-human connection and acts as a catalyst to happiness. The study used the Nature Relatedness Scale and recorded responses on a basic Likert Scale.
The results culminated from the study positively correlated outdoor experiences with positive emotions and expanded HNC (Lumber, Richardson, & Sheffield, 2017).
Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177186
Nature And Spirituality
The prime focus of this research was to spread awareness about human disconnection from nature and explain why we must reconstruct this to promote happiness.
Investigator of this study, Professor Helen Lockhart (2011), indicated that the socio-ecological crisis the world is seeing today is due to this breach of connection between humans and nature. She highlights in her study that there is a spiritual enhancement that is linked to the human-nature relationship.
Each encounter with the natural environment takes us deeper into exploring the truth behind our existence and what a happier world would look like. The subject matter of this study was that materialistic gains has blindfolded us and has made us spiritually bankrupt (Okri, 2008).
Furthermore, the research also indicated that since humans are genetically conditioned to stay in close coexistence with nature, an absence of nature-human connection creates a sense of loneliness and unhappiness within us.
It is this feeling of gloom, as the researcher suggests, that is the reason for societal disruptions and human immorality today, and while we may seek for answers outside, the real solution lies in the nature-human relationship.
Source: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37345304.pdf
The Importance of Nature to Well-Being
A 30-days campaign was run by the Wildlife Trusts of the University of Derby, with the prime focus on uncovering the crucial role nature plays in our overall eudaemonia. The study revealed that subjective feelings of happiness and wellbeing were positively correlated with natural activities such as gardening, animal feeding, bird watching, and bushwalking (Richardson, Cormack, McRobert, & Underhill, 2016).
Dr. Miles Richardson, the face of this research, cited valuable evidence on how proximity to the nature improved mood, enhanced respiratory functioning, regulated hormonal malfunctions, and impacted on the thought structure of individuals as a whole.
Just by being outdoors and using all our senses to appreciate nature, we can be more mindful of the present, gain emotional resilience, and combat stress with more vitality.
We become naturally immune to anxiety, emotional ups and downs, and thought blocks, thereby feel more lively and energetic than before.
The survey further pointed that people who lived close to natural wilderness like the beach, mountains, or parklands, had better mental health and reported of falling sick lesser than those living in congested urban settings.
Such families had fewer instances of domestic violence, said of feeling less fatigued, and showed increased productivity at the professional front.
Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149777
The Relationship Between Nature And Human Health
A recent survey report launched by scholars out of Deakin University (Maller et al., 2009) demonstrated some practical points as to how human and nature are entwined with each other.
Although the study had other focal areas and did not concentrate on a massive global sample, the report that came out was used and shared widely by environmental psychologists and social scientists to explain the relationship we have with our physical habitat.
The major assertions of this report were:
Staying close to greeneries such as farms, parks and fields increase chances of related outdoor activities (walking, gardening, farming, playing, etc.). This improves mental health and physical fitness in adults and children who live there.
Nature-friendly urban settings can be useful in promoting social connections and interpersonal communication.
Contact with nature in any form enhances spiritual health and fills the mind with a deeper insight into life.
Children who are encouraged to spend more time outdoors are owners of good physical and mental health. They are less prone to problems like obesity, asthma, childhood anxiety, and depression, and are more focused on their lives than others.
Adolescents who had a close connection to nature were emotionally well-balanced and had better coping skills than other children of their age.
Aged people, who had access to green parks felt more positive and hopeful.
Five Proven Benefits of Being in Nature.
David Attenborough, one of the most popular nature enthusiasts the world has seen in a long time, had fairly quoted that:
“We must cherish the natural world because we’re a part of it and we depend on it.”
It is difficult to gauge the benefits we can derive from being close to nature. Be that on the mind, body, or the soul, it leaves a lasting positive impression on every single aspect of our existence.
Nature Provides
A day out in the sunshine can suffice us with vitamin D, a nutrient we don’t get from food as much we need it.
The right level of Vitamin D in the body immunes us against diseases like osteoporosis, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. Besides, it also ensures the smooth functioning of the immune system.
Studies have indicated that a large chunk of the population today is deficient of the ‘sunshine vitamin,’ which explains the massive increase in fatal diseases today, and rather than relying on human-made supplements, a close connection to nature can help in replenishing the deficit (Naeem, 2010).
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068797/
Nature Improves
Computer Vision Syndrome (CSV) is a condition that arises from staring at the screen for prolonged hours. Naturally, such exposures take a toll on our eyesight and develop problems like dry eyes, myopia, or chronic headaches.
Spending time outdoors, especially in the greeneries is the best natural solution to this. Looking at the green grass, the trees, the flowers, and all the other aspects of the environment improve focus and eyesight.
Interestingly, studies have shown that children who spend more than four hours a day in the outdoors are four times less likely to develop eyesight problems than children who spent less than one hour outdoors every day (Rose et al., 2008).
Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/420394
Nature Cleanses
The environment is a natural purifier. Spending some hours outdoors helps in releasing the toxins from our body and leave us all fresh and rejuvenated.
The amount of bad air that we breathe in because of the pollution, industrial fumes, and indoor pollutants, is potent enough to dysregulate our respiratory tract, giving birth to breathing troubles, bronchitis, and asthma.
And there is no other solution to this except for spending more time in the natural environment and getting some fresh air every day.
Nature Builds
Mostly, the time we spend outside involves physical activity in some form. It may be walking, jogging, cycling, diving, surfing, playing, or anything alike. Any exercise in the outdoors helps in burning fat and improves the metabolism rate in the body.
Research in this area has revealed that people who exercise outdoors enjoy their workout sessions more and are more likely to practice it regularly, than people who exercise indoors (Thompson Coon et al., 2011). Besides, outdoor activities are related to longer life span and fewer health problems.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21291246/
Nature Heals
Nature is undoubtedly the best healer. Spending time in nature awakens our senses and provides clarity.
Many studies have proved that people who have a close connection to the landscapes are happier from the inside – they indulge themselves in positive thinking and have better coping mechanisms than others.
A strong human-nature relationship means emotional balance, more focus, solution-oriented thinking, and an overall resilient approach to life.
theories as to what’s actually happening when we head outside.
Despite all of the studies, scientists and researchers continue to identify the reasons why nature has so many positive effects on our health and well-being. Here are just a few reasons that have come up and continue to be investigated.
Phytoncides
Phytoncides are airborne chemicals that plants give off to protect themselves from insects, and they have antibacterial and antifungal qualities which help plants fight disease. While we breathe in the fresh air, we breathe in phytoncides, and they are proving to have a positive impact on our health.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20074458/
Fractal Patterns
A fractal is a pattern that the laws of nature repeat at different scales. Examples are everywhere in the forest. Trees are natural fractals, patterns that repeat smaller and smaller copies of themselves to create the biodiversity of a forest. When in nature, we are exposed to these fractals at all times, whether we realize it or not, and they could be benefiting us.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124832/
Exposure to Soil Microbes
There are five different types of soil microbes: bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, protozoa and nematodes. Each of these microbe types has a different job to boost soil and plant health, but research is showing that exposure to it could also benefit human health. Don't be afraid to get dirty!
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6780873/
Listening to Birdsong
Birdsong doesn't necessarily need an explanation, just that the simplicity of listening to the birds while out in nature may have positive effects on our health.
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