We may not always consider the benefits of nature in our daily lives, but there are many. Some benefits include lower stress levels and lower blood pressure. We also see improvements in behavior and overall well-being.
It’s natural for our bodies to move outdoors. For instance, when we feel stressed or fatigued in the office, we head outside for a quick walk to clear our minds.
On the first nice spring day, we see walkers, bikers, and runners crowded on the trails. We gravitate outdoors because it makes us feel good. There’s also that benefit of getting our dose of vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin.”
We’ll talk about these benefits in more detail and what we’ve personally gained from being in nature later.
Table of Contents
Experience Benefits of Nature By Building Relationships With It
There are simple ways we can build a relationship with nature to start reaping the benefits. It is through emotion, beauty, contact, meaning and compassion.
Emotion: Being in nature produces feelings of wonder and awe. It evokes statements like, ‘being outdoors makes me happy.’
Beauty: When we find beauty in nature, it helps us feel more connected to it. This in turn impacts our overall well-being.
Contact and Meaning: Find ways to have positive experiences in nature. In the future, you will find it more important to continue spending time outdoors.
Compassion: Immerse yourself in nature. This increases your respect for nature, often leading to having a pro-environment stance.
Benefits of Nature Include Becoming A Happier Person
Do you wake up in the morning and say, “I wish I was unhappy?” Crossing my fingers you are shaking your head back and forth, not up and down.
The Department of Psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada found people who were more connected to nature to be happier people. Regardless of gender and age there was no significant difference in happiness levels.
The study goes further to say, “Beyond its ability to improve emotional functioning, exposure to natural environments has also been shown to alleviate cognitive fatigue, improve attention, and increase feelings of vitality.”
Don’t we all want to feel good? Yes!
How We Discovered The Benefits Of Nature At A Wellness Resort
We haven’t always appreciated what nature has to offer us.
Once upon a time ago, we lived in Toronto. During the first brutal winter there, I did not leave the house or see the sun for an entire week (easy since I worked from home). An entire week! This is so embarrassing to admit I lived like a hermit.
It’s no wonder I felt the winter blues!
Fast forward five years and we now love the outdoors. It all started when we visited a wellness resort where we learned about the benefits of nature in all its glory. Game-changer!
Are you thinking, “What is a wellness resort?”
A wellness resort is similar to any getaway or vacation destination. It’s a place that allows you to unplug, remove yourself from the hustle and bustle of life to unwind.
Usually they’re alcohol-free. Probably a bummer to some of you.
The main goal at these wellness resorts is to dig deep mentally and physically. Try and get to the root cause of any ailments or troubles we’re experiencing.
The Truth Behind Going To A Wellness Resort
Truthfully, we did not come here “to find ourselves” or “be one with nature.” We came to find a solution to my adult acne woes.
Bit of a tangent, but this story will make sense soon.
I was eating a healthy diet, exercising, and living a chemical-free lifestyle. Still, my skin continued to flare up and I had no idea why!
You can imagine my frustration as someone approaching their mid-30s, right?
None of the natural creams, clay face masks, or oils worked for my skin.
One might ask why I wouldn’t just go see a dermatologist. While we believe in doctors and medication. We use medicine only when it’s absolutely necessary, and try to stick to natural products for every day routine stuff.
One day, while reading a magazine, I discovered Eupepsia in Bland, Virginia. This was my first introduction to any wellness place and wondered if going would help me figure out what was going on.
Eupepsia looked beautiful from their website. They call themselves a wellness sanctuary. They’re located in Virginia at the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Their mission is to help people reconnect with themselves at the body, energy, emotion, mind, and spirit levels.
We gave it a try.
Our Experiences From Finding Benefits Of Nature At A Wellness Resort
Our initial intention was to focus only on the body. Figure out how to manage my skin. Little did we know we would not solely focus on the body, but needed to look at energy, emotion, mind, and spirit all together.
Through conversations with their staff and owner, I realized to manage my skin I’d have to change a lot.
We learned about Ayurvedic doshas. Based on my dosha, I needed to remove caffeine, spicy foods, and raw veggies from my diet. All of these would be incredibly hard considering I loved the morning coffee ritual, eating kimchi with everything, and having raw lettuce wraps for lunch.
Not only would I need to alter my diet, I’d need to better manage stress and pressure from work and life. Don’t we all?
We received tools to internalize and walked away understanding nature, wellness, and mental health are all interconnected.
We’d never considered these relationships linked so closely.
Benefits of Nature Include Boosting Our Immune System
After being at Eupepsia for only a couple of days, we felt better. We watched cows grazing on the field. We listened to water trickling down a pond. There were beautiful gardens and trails to walk around and let your mind wander.
The views were incredible. Everywhere you looked, you were surrounded by nature and beauty.
Doesn’t it make you calm just by looking at the picture below of the resort?
In this environment, breathing in the freshest air reinvigorated us. We could feel it from our heads down to our toes. We felt so happy.
Science Behind Breathing In Fresh Air
Scientific studies from Japan show time spent in forests boosts our immune systems. Green space with trees in urban areas like parks count as forests as well. That’s good news for our city readers!
Let’s take a look at one of the awesome things that happen when we’re in the forest.
When we breathe in fresh air out in the forests, we take in phytoncides. They have antibacterial and antifungal properties. Plants & trees protect themselves from insects and germs by producing phytoncides to fight off disease.
Sitting out in the Appalachian Mountains at Eupepsia, we breathed in these phytoncides. This increased our Natural Killer or NK cells, a type of white blood cell, known to kill tumors. Isn’t that crazy cool?
Eupepsia is surrounded by 256 acres of farm and woodland in the Shenandoah Valley.
We were long overdue to unplug, get away from social media, screens, and appreciate our surroundings.
We were fortunate to have found this calming and relaxing oasis. It’s truly where our relationship with nature grew. It’s where we found a little bit of peace within.
This is all may be a bit deep for you, but we had such a positive experience. We hope you’ll find what we found in your own way too.
Go ahead and take a moment now and look at nature, the birds, animals, flowers, or trees outside. Don’t you feel better? We just gave the “cognitive portion of our brain a break, allowing us to focus better and renew our ability to be patient.”
Nature is the best, free, chill pill. Go out and get some for yourself.
Practicing Mindfulness Surrounded By Nature
We recognized it would not be realistic to be in nature 24/7. How did we bottle up all the good feelings discovered at Eupepsia and take it back home with us?
The first way was to incorporate yoga breathing practices into our routines. This article provides breathing instructions based on your Ayurvedic dosha. We do the breathing exercise for Vata Nadi Shodhana.
The second way was to include a yoga practice into our daily routine. Eupepsia gave us 14 different postures to do. They were all fairly easy to get. We’ve gotten better with practice.
Without even realizing what was happening, we found ourselves out in nature discovering Ayurveda and yoga as a healing meditation practice.
Our Daily Routine
On most days we do our poses at 6am. Our daughter is still asleep, so this is a good bit of quiet time. If she’s had a rough night or wakes up early, we push our yoga to the afternoon or evening time. You have to find what works for you.
Working out and doing mindful yoga poses in the morning are great ways to kickstart the day. We have enough energy to sustain us until evening.
It’s been 10 months since incorporating breathing and yoga into our lives. We feel refreshed and ready for the day ahead every morning.
It’s restorative, rejuvenating, and mind-healing.
In fact, it’s so energizing that we no longer depend on caffeine for that extra jolt of energy. Bye bye cups of Americano.
When we feel stressed or burnt out, we take time to breathe, let go, and we manage to carry on.
When we look at nature, birds, animals, flowers, trees, we give our “cognitive portion of our brain a break, allowing us to focus better and renew our ability to be patient.”
Benefits of Nature Found At Hidden Oaks Nature Center
Having had such a transformative experience, we wanted to share it with our daughter too.
One of our favorite ways to enjoy nature with her is to go outside and play with sticks, rocks, whatever we can find.
Our friend introduced us to Hidden Oaks Nature Center in Annandale, VA. You should go if you live in the DC area! You will not be disappointed.
Hidden Oaks has a pond, woodland trails, creeks, butterfly gardens, a rain garden, a playground, and an unstructured woodland play area. There’s so much more than this too.
During our visit we even saw frog eggs in the pond.
Discoveries Along The Trail
We then hiked along the Old Oak Trail. We saw animal tracks, trees with smooth gray bark (similar to an elephant’s leg), and yellow and brown leaves.
During our hike the kids had to crossover a couple creeks. It was fun to see how the oldest girl found the best path for herself with rocks trying not to get her feet wet. Already strategically thinking at a young age.
After our hike it was time for lunch. We chose to go sit at the Nature Playce. It’s a 1/3-acre, unstructured, woodland. There were lots of tree stumps to sit on here and enjoy.
Kids are free to make ground forts with wood blocks, mud pies, and look for creatures big and small hiding under the leaves and logs laying on the ground.
Build A Strong Relationship With Nature For Kids Early
We know so much about the benefits of nature now. We want to build a solid foundation and relationship with nature for our kids at an early age. The more time they spend in nature, the more they’ll appreciate it and want to preserve it.
Want another reason to take your kids outside? A study of close to 30,000 students aged 11-15 found that increased activity in nature was a good preventative strategy for poor mental health.
Green space supports memory, self-discipline, moderates stress, improves behaviors and symptoms with ADHD.
If you are outdoors as a child or teen, you are more likely to make it a priority to visit nature as an adult.
There are negative health consequences if we do not expose our children to nature.
Not to be alarmist, but some of these negative consequences include: “Depressive symptoms, anxiety, mood disorders, stress, cognitive and emotional functions.”
Let’s do what we can to raise healthy and happy children. Let them play outside!
Children’s Book Review: The Listening Walk
Want a new book that helps reinforce what we’ve talked about? The Listening Walk by Paul Showers introduces our kids to slowing down and using their ears to listen to their surroundings.
The book says it’s geared towards 4-8 year olds, but our two year old daughter loves this book. She almost has it memorized.
Page by page, you’re taken on a walk with a father, daughter, and their dog. There’s no talking on this walk.
The intention is to listen to our surroundings. Be mindful.
The daughter says, “I hear many different sounds when I do not talk.”
She hears her dog’s toenails scratching on the sidewalk. Her dad’s shoes clunk as they hit the pavement. Lawn mowers and sprinklers whiz around. As they enter the park, she hears noises of pigeons, ducks, bees, and wind in the leaves.
This is such a simple and pleasurable book to read. Your kids will love all the fun sounds you make together.
The next time you’re out in nature, you can have your kids share what they hear!
What Are Alpha Brain Waves?
We’re not listening for the sake of listening to sounds. When we use our senses to experience nature, the brain puts out more alpha waves, which make us more calm and alert. You also may feel more energized and enthusiastic, helping you complete various tasks.
Remember when we talked about going for walks during the workday? We’re relaxing our brain.
This article goes into different types of brain waves.
Your brain increases in alpha waves when you daydream or meditate.
Listening walks can increase alpha waves for us and our children.
“When your brain shifts gears to focus on a specific thought—in either a positive or negative way—alpha oscillations tend to disappear and higher frequency oscillations begin running the show.”
Most of the day, we have more beta waves to be alert and focused. These beta waves occur with cognitive tasks such as when we’re working and need to solve a problem or make decisions.
Final Thoughts
Let’s give our brains a break. Head outdoors into nature, take a deep breath in, and pump up those alpha waves.
Every week aim to spend two hours outside in nature looking at trees, birds, flowers, grass, or logs.
A study of 20,000 people found that 120 minutes of activity in nature resulted in better health and well-being. The 120 minutes could be experienced all at once or broken up into smaller chunks of time. Not too hard to do.
Help our children foster healthy relationships with nature. Get them out there. Climb a tree. Jump over a creek. Throw leaves up in the air like “You just don’t care.” Start an outdoor garden. Here are some more activities to do outdoors with kids.
Have you had an eye-opening experience with nature? How do you get your kids outdoors away from the screens? Comment below!
Loved this! Definitely planning a family nature walk this weekend!
They’re so much fun! And free! 🙂
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