How nature benefits mental health: Explained everything

From cognitive benefits to balance our mental disorder, all are associated with how we are dealing with our life’s circumstances and how we are leading our lives. Can you count the hours you are spending on screen daily? Yes, we cannot avoid technology; it has become a prominent part of our life, but don’t you feel that we should restrain ourselves from this screen-staring life and have some time off just to restore ourselves? We all know the benefits of the natural environment and its positive impact on us. But very few can spare their time to bring those unreplaceable benefits onto us!

Nature And Mental Health

Cognitive Benefits

Interacting with nature gives ease to our busy brain. Both correlational and experimental research shows that green spaces near school progress children’s cognitive development, and also greenery views near children’s home promote self-control behaviours. University of Chicago psychologist Marc Berman, PhD, and his student Kathryn Schertz reported it in a 2019 review. Experiments also found that being exposed to nature improves working memory, attentional functions, and cognitive flexibility, while exposure to the urban environment is linked to our attention deficit. So, why so many benefits and not exposed for a single day in nature? Give yourself some hours or even some minutes to bring the cognitive benefit in you.

Getting Rid of Stress, Anxiety, And Depression

Research in Ecotherapy, a growing scientific field, suggests a strong connection between your time spent in nature and the drop of your stress, depression and anxiety. Though it is yet to be cleared why the natural environment has so much positive impact on our mental health, in a 2015 study, researchers compared the healthy people’s brain who walks outdoors for 90 minutes daily in a natural setting and urban areas. They found that those who did walk in nature had lower activity in the Prefrontal Cortex. Prefrontal Cortex is a brain region which is active during rumination – it is defined as repetitive thoughts responsible for our negative emotion. This portion of our brain malfunctions when we go through a high level of stress or are depressed. So, by lowering your prefrontal cortex activity, nature reduces your anxiety, depression and stress. Spending time in nature also treats other psychosomatic illnesses such as insomnia, irritability, indigestion, tension headaches etc. The research found that green spaces considerably decrease your stress hormone called cortisol.

Other Mental Wellbeing

If you are stuck at work and find yourself less productive, go outside in nature. It will improve your creative thinking aptitude. Green space restores your attention and concentration capacity. Feeling trouble sleeping? The outside walk will give you a night of quality sleep and help to minimise sleep problems. Restrain yourself from artificial light while sleeping and awake with natural light. It will help you have a better and refreshing day after a whole night of good sleep. Being present in nature helps us cope with grief and unhappiness by increasing our self-awareness and self –concept. And if you can feel positive, you can treat others well, which helps you maintain a good relationship with others. Being exposed to nature, people become more caring and positive towards others. Nature helps you improve your mood and emotional well-being.

Your Concern

Maybe you are already concerned about what to do and how to spend time outside in nature. The thing is, you do not need to be worried much about this. Even you can give yourself a short time being exposed to nature to decide on what your outside activities can be! Following some simple things, you can increase your nature exposure in your daily life. For example:

• Start your walking outside of an infrastructural area, go to your nearest parks or places with trees and greenery.
• Do your workout outdoors. Find a place where you can experience natural serenity, birds’ chirping and an open sky over your head.
• Try forest bathing to send your exposure to the next level and get the most out of your nature contact.
• Engage yourself to maximise the benefits of being outside in nature. Breathe deep and smell essence. Studies showed the scent of fresh pine lower anxiety and stress.
• Go for a camping trip. Spending a more extended period in nature helps restore ourselves, and it is the best way to absorb the maximum benefit from the natural atmosphere.

Nature heals, nature soothes, and nature restores! Ready for your nature dose? You should. Give yourself a favour minimising your screen-based time, and explore your very best of yourself being exposed to our gifted therapeutic nature!