Nature and your well-being

Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies. What you are seeing, hearing or experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how your nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working.

Previous scientific studies have shown that exposure to nature can both increase self-control and also improve our valuations of the future. With much of the world's population now living in urban environments access to natural environments is out of reach for many.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-nature-affects-decisions.html#jCp

Previous scientific studies have shown that exposure to nature can both increase self-control and also improve our valuations of the future. With much of the world's population now living in urban environments access to natural environments is out of reach for many.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-11-nature-affects-decisions.html#jCp

The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing environment reverses that.

“Nature deprivation,” a lack of time in the natural world, largely due to hours spent in front of TV or computer screens, has been associated, unsurprisingly, with depression. More unexpected are studies by Weinstein and others that associate screen time with loss of empathy and lack of altruism.

Scientific studies have shown that exposure to nature can both increase self-control and also improve our evaluations of the future. But with much of the world's population now living in urban environments, access to natural environments is out of reach for many. 

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical well-being, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. It may even reduce mortality.

Nature restores mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore bodies. The business of everyday life -- dodging traffic, making decisions and judgement calls, interacting with strangers -- is depleting, and what man-made environments take away from us, nature gives back.

Natural environments promote calmness and well-being in part because they expose people to low levels of stress. These stressful experiences are tame in comparison with the trials and tribulations that most of us associate with stress -- workplace drama, traffic jams, and wailing children on international plane trips. Humans thrive with some stimulation, but we're incapable of coping with extreme stressors, which push us from the comfortable realm of eustress (good stress) to the danger zone of distress (bad stress).

Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens in Roodepoort, Gauteng, South Africa.

But not all is hopeless! Get out of your apartment or house as often as you can and visit parks and nature reserves, the beach or your local Botanical Gardens. Nature is sometimes only as far as a short walk or short drive.

Take your dog for a walk, even if it's just down the road you live in. If you're close to the beach, make the effort, your dog will love you for it!

Hug a tree, your dog always does! and

talk to any plants you may pass (albeit softly, or passers-by might think you're a bit looney!) and pick some flowers or a stalk of grass, feel the texture, inhale its aroma.

Take note of the birds and the bees - there's a whole community of small life going on around you! Take your camera with you when you go walking and capture some special moments.

Start a collection of 'natural' items - stones, pebbles, rocks, crystals, pieces of bark, shells. Touch them often and feel the energy revitalise you.

Surround yourself with nature inside your home - pick or buy fresh flowers and have them in every room

Get out into the garden more. If you do not have the space for a garden, buy a pot plant or two and keep them in the room where you spend most of your time. Seeing them often will remind you to tend to them and reconnect with nature.

Take up a hobby that gets you outdoors as much as possible - maybe a garden club or bird watching. Not only will it help you to reconnect with nature, but you'll also be meeting some great like-minded people!

There are many more ways for you to reconnect with nature, but my favourite is taking off my shoes and socks and sinking my bare feet into the grass or soft ground. One of my favourite quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us to slow down and notice nature, “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

The next time you walk out your front door, feel your feet connecting with the earth, step by step.

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