Three Gifts: how spending time in nature impacts our well-being

So many voices that enter my world these days are expressing the same basic sentiment: spending time in the natural world has a positive impact on our lives and well-being. I experience this myself, whether I’m sitting on my porch listening to birds, walking around the block looking for signs of spring, or hiking in the mountains inhaling the scent of the balsam trees. Being outside calms me, helps me to sort through my thoughts, and just generally brings on feelings of happiness and contentment.

I’m curious about why this happens. I’ve read dozens of articles and books on this topic. If you want to delve into the research, just Google Benefits of Nature on Well-being and you’ll have all the details you desire. I’m trying to focus this blog on sharing my personal thoughts and take-aways, and for me, spending time in nature changes brings me back to myself through three primary paths:

Gift #1: Opening our Senses

According to statistics, the average American spends 41% of their waking hours in front of a screen each day. I am no stranger to this, and I know that when I’m at home or at work (for me they are the same place), or staring down at my phone in the myriad of other places I frequent, I’m primarily taking in information visually. And boy there is a never-ending stream of information. Everything seems to be in split second bytes, scrolling through social media posts, clicking from link to link, or reading one document after another to try to get “all the facts.” No wonder my eyes feel tired in the evening.

If I put my phone in my pocket and walk outside, the way I take in information instantly changes. While I can move my eyes or my body to change my perspective, the landscape in front of me remains the same. The beings within that landscape move, and I have the choice to follow them, but when I turn back the trees and the sky are still there. This object permanence slows down my heart rate and nervous system. I’m not in a frenzy to try to absorb it all, and I’m not trying to remember the dozen links I clicked through to follow one particular thread or topic. I look up from the flower I’m observing, I turn my head, and I realize I’m on the home page. 

At the same time, my other senses wake up when I walk outside. The feeling of being able to close my eyes and listen to bird song, smell the lilac bush in bloom, and feel the slight breeze on my arm or the warmth of sunshine on my cheek pulls me back into myself. When I’m in the natural world, I’m living my life in 5-D, with each of my senses adding a new dimension.

Gift #2: Increased Agency

In front of a screen, so much of my time is spent responding to outside demands, both real and imagined. A text comes in from my kid, asking what’s for dinner; an email comes from a client, asking for a report or a follow-up on a meeting; an ad on Facebook tells me that in order to really be happy I need to look younger or be smarter, and of course their miracle pill will help. I feel at the mercy of others. With the never ending to-do list and stream of demands, I often feel like I’m never enough.

In nature, I just am. And it is enough. I come to a junction on the path that I am on in the woods. The choice is mine to make. There is no right answer. If I take the longer route I know that I have to be prepared with enough food and water. If a storm blows in and I am without a rain jacket I will probably get wet. But these choices and their consequences are my responsibility. Regardless of which decision I make I will learn something from them, even if it’s just to remember to bring a rain jacket on my next adventure. In the natural world, I learn how to respond to my needs and take ownership of my choices. I can choose what to attend to and what to let go of.

Gift #3: Deep Connection

I believe that connection is one of our most basic needs as humans. Connection helps us to find our meaning and purpose within the larger world. 

“In the era of the jet and the internet, the world is in many ways more connected than it ever has been. But there is another meaning of connection that our networks don’t capture, what we refer to when we say that we “have a connection with someone.” The philosopher Max Scheler has called this intimate quality “fellow feeling” – a sense of deep, mutual understanding. He argued that this type of connection requires us to recognize that the minds of other people have “a reality equal to our own.” This recognition in turn allows us to extend beyond the confines of our individual minds to more bonded, collective ways of thinking. “It is precisely in the act of fellow feeling,” Scheler wrote, “that self-love, self-centered choice, solipsism, and egoism are first wholly overcome.”

– Robert Moor, On Trails

In the natural world, our perspective is drawn outward from ourselves. This sense of fellow feeling extends not just to fellow humans, but to life. The insects that we see, the birds that we hear, the trees that shade us, are all sentient beings to some degree or another. In observing them, and being immersed in their world, we are drawn out of our ego and realize that we have a place in something that is so much more than just us. Through connection, we return to ourselves.

Awareness, agency, connection. These qualities soften the often deafening roar of our culture. Being in nature both draws us out and grounds us within ourselves.

If you are able, the next time you are feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, and not enough, turn off your screen and walk outside. Whether it’s 10 steps or 10 thousand, you can turn your face skyward and reconnect to a world that is unbounded by time, which welcomes you exactly as you are.