Nature: The Medicine We All Need

When we are hurt, lost or confused we can often find ourselves on the beach, by a river, maybe amongst the trees. 

The romantic poets during the industrial revolution also knew that nature was a source of solace and inspiration. Take Jane Austen's heroines, always marching away into the fields or woods when upset or needing to clear their thoughts.

We are wired to be outdoors. 

Science is demonstrating what we already feel: Nature makes us happy.

The universal dislocation from the outdoors has slowly been increasing over several decades. 

We're even seeing a huge shift in the next generation. Majority of us when younger, would come home from school and straight away meet up with the neighbourhood kids, free exploratory play to either run around or jump on the bikes for a few hours before dinner.

Kids now are scheduled. It's common that most of their outdoor play time is supervised by adults, usually through organised sports. I find myself smiling when I see a group of kids on their bikes, climbing trees or taking up the entire street to play cricket. You just don't see it that often anymore.

Our brains are like a bustling city of electrical excitement. This is because the cells in our brains, called neurons, use electricity to communicate to one another. When one group of neurons sends another group of neurons a message, we call this a brainwave.

We have 5 basic types of brainwaves that range from really slow to very fast. And today we are focusing on a wave somewhere in the middle:

The Alpha Wave.

In the centre of the brainwave spectrum, the brain produces alpha waves when in an alert yet calm state. When not particularly focused on anything, whatever we are doing when we release alpha waves we are generally calm and relaxed.

If our alpha waves are suppressed it can cause anxiety, depression, high stress and even insomnia. When it is optimal it leads to a mediative at-ease state. 

We cannot see brainwaves but we can certainly measure them, we do this through a computer generated machine called an EEG. Neuroscientists are taking portable EEG's so they can look at how people's brains are responding to different environments. 

They are clearly seeing, that when a person is walking through a noisy busy city their brain is doing something vastly different compared to when walking through a tree-filled park. 

The frontal lobe, a part of the brain that can be dominant and overly engaged in modern life, seems to deactivate when we go outdoors. Psychologists often speak of  tapping into the "flow-state", this is when a lot of alpha wave activity is present. Buddhist monks and devoted meditators experience a lot of alpha wave engagement. 

So today's medicine my friends: get outside (rug up fellow Melbourne mates)

It's that simple. We don't need to be disciplined Buddhist monks meditating for hours on end, we seriously just need to get outdoors. Florence Williams, author of 'The Nature Fix: Why Nature makes us Happier, Healthier and More Creative'' says that just like other medicines nature follows a dose curve. Meaning, a little bit of nature is helpful, then a little bit more nature is even more helpful. So a great start is to implement a little nature daily, maybe some house plants and a walk in the park. Then if we continue to follow the dose curve, we can make concerted efforts to increase our 'Mother Nature Medicine' by maybe once a month heading to a National Park, a camping trip or hikes in the hills. 

Our sensory system evolved in the natural world and when we’re in those spaces, our brains become relaxed because these are things that we were designed to look at, hear and smell.

In Finland, health officials are now recommending getting at minimum 5 hours per month in the woods to stave off depression.

In Japan, 'forest bathing' is considered such a health benefit that they now have 48 therapy specific trails in the forest.  Through dedicated research, they are discovering phenomenal impacts on blood pressure, hormones and even our immune cells, or “natural killer cells,” which fight cancer, which increase in forests. 

So the next time you're outside;

Close your eyes.

Lean back slightly with your face pointing to the sky.

Take a deep inhale.

And a looooooong exhale.

Repeat as many times as you need.

Amy xo

ps - photograph is of Charlie at 3 years old on one of our many lockdown hikes together in 2020 at the Blue Lake at Plenty Gorge