In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
ARISTOTLE
OUR GENES PREDISPOSE US to prefer the sights, smells, sounds, and sensations of the wide-open savanna, amid the chirping of birds, the feel of rain, and the scent of vegetation. Indeed, our ancestors lived an earthy and sensual existence, seamlessly part of the natural world in ways that elude us now. Imagine what it must have been like to be surrounded by animal calls, noting the movement patterns in a river, perceiving the subtle clues or smells that arise while on the lookout for lurking predators. What thoughts must have run through our ancestors’ minds while staring at the star-filled night sky? We’ve abandoned an essential source of our humanity and neglected a vital instinct that holds more sway over our wellbeing than we might think.
However transcendental a force we claim human intelligence is, we are still beings of the wild. True, our species developed a unique and powerful ability to manipulate the natural world. But to deny or dismiss nature’s place in our otherwise high-tech lives is naïve and perilous to our psychological and physical health. As ecopsychiatrist Anthony Stevens suggests, wilderness is more than just an external “place.” Nature is that genetic aspect of ourselves that spatially occupies every body and every cell.1
We often fail to understand or foster this attachment. With the perpetual march of technological progress and deepening isolation of urbanization, nature is more remote than ever in our lives. Yet another example of what once was abundant now is scarce. When we build our lives so withdrawn from the wild and consider our status so remote from its animal inhabitants, it can be difficult to perceive our innate belonging in the natural world.
Yet, the nagging bit of our evolutionary selves remains—those stubborn vestiges of past millennia, original instincts operating from the age-old hunter-gatherer framework. Human ingenuity knows no bounds. Human genes, however, do. We still exist enmeshed in the natural world both physiologically and psychologically. However fulfilled or unfulfilled these expectations are for us, our biological selves were designed to participate within the natural world. In rediscovering the wild, we emancipate our own true nature.
What characterizes our mindset in nature, that involuntary bottom-up attention that has the power to reset us mentally? The key is in the senses. You may notice as you spend more time in nature that your involuntary awareness takes over, and your senses become heightened. Sounds are quieter but more subtly layered. Your sight is more expansive. Your sense of touch, finer. Your sense of smell, more acute. Surrounded by nature, your perception reorients to its default setting. Instinctively, you know this and have likely experienced it. Whenever you step outside your commotion-filled asphalt environment and truly inhabit a wild space, you’re more relaxed but sharply aware.
Think of the textures and sensations you might encounter while clearing brush for a campsite or hopping along boulders to reach a water source. What sort of biofeedback might you encounter from the environment? Rough, prickly, sharp, slick, porous? A lot more interesting, don’t you think, than walking on cement in your clunky shoes from the parking lot to the elevator, then sitting at a desk amidst entirely artificial objects that are so smoothed out and shaped that your tactile faculties begin to atrophy?
“Our ability to hear predators and interpret the auditory cues of our environment was perhaps the most crucial to our ancestors’ survival.”
Of all our senses, one of the most complex and fundamental is our sense of hearing. Turns out we’re intended to be an aurally oriented species. Our ability to hear predators and interpret the auditory cues of our environment was perhaps the most crucial to our ancestors’ survival. Today, instead of encountering the original sound track of our evolutionary roots—low-decibel, natural sounds such as birds chirping, distant animal cries, running water, the rustle of leaves in the wind, and so forth—we’re faced with an orgy of noise consisting of traffic, sirens, ringtones, honking horns, jet planes, police helicopters, lawn mowers and, worst of the lot—leaf blowers! Yet for the amount of noise we take in, we are, according to some experts, aurally deficient. We’re starved for those subtle layers of natural sounds our brains evolved to perceive and process. As George Prochnik, author of Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, explains, it’s like we stuff ourselves with junk-food noise but still hunger for the sound that truly nourishes us.
It gets worse: a 2012 study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, revealed that sounds stimulate the amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions.2 It turns out that our perception of unpleasant sounds like electric drills and the squeal of braking tires (or most anything in the frequency range of 2,000 to 5,000 Hz) is heightened compared to soothing sounds such as bubbling water or invigorating sounds like the clapping of hands. Though natural sounds are less affecting on our emotions than unpleasant ones, they do have a strong influence on our wellbeing, countering stress and urban noise, making us more relaxed and aware, and, according to one study, helping to manage acute illness and pain.3
As for our sense of smell, few synthetic scents, intense as they can be, are capable of synchronizing with our other senses quite the way natural aromas do. Think of the delicate scents you encounter during a walk, let’s say after a rainfall (ozone), or through a deciduous forest (musty), or on the beach and you experience a gust of sea breeze (briny). Perhaps in the moment you recall a long-ago memory. Or you create a new one. This would be no accident: the olfactory nerve in the brain is separated by only three synapses from the hippocampus and two synapses from the amygdala, which are respectively responsible for processing long-term and emotional memory.
So, does it make sense that as we pay attention to the more subtle nuances from our environment, we simultaneously expand our intelligence? Darn right, it does! “Our brains are able to make use of subtler and subtler stimuli, to be inventive and create new connections, possibilities, and solutions,” writes psychologist and brain-based healing expert Anat Baniel in Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality. “This ability to feel finer and finer differences is at the heart of what we call intuition.”
Our primal brains are hardwired to process every last bit of disruptive sensory input that we face, ready to alarm us to either fight or flee. Resolving to ignore billboards, Zen out on your subway ride, or filter out honking horns cannot completely override this genetic coding. Even if you love the excitement that the big city has to offer, you simply cannot change the fact that the overstimulation it provides taxes the brain’s inhibitory attention far beyond what it has evolved to withstand. You may argue that you truly love the din of the city or the frenzied crowd at the ball game or rock concert. But when you are continually stressed in such a manner, you lose your ability to focus on a given task for any prolonged period of time.
Known as directed attention fatigue, this neurological disorder is a wholly modern affliction. The good news is that exposure to nature reverses its effects. Your perception—that is, your involuntary attention—amid natural surroundings creates a calm mental picture, partly because sounds in nature typically carry at lower decibels and are more predictable than the random, jolting stimuli you are forced to deal with in most urban environments. Compare the sounds of breaking waves to honking horns, for example. The same holds true with vision. Your sight is more expansive as you alternately focus on close and distant objects. Contrast this with staring at the two dimensions of a computer screen thirty inches from your face all day!
Nature indeed produces therapeutic effects on us. Since the 1960s, environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan have become well known for their attention restoration theory , which states that if we are to flourish as humans—and preserve the mental and physical health that the hustle and bustle of civilized life jeopardizes—we require frequent exposure to tranquil, natural settings.
Among the most compelling research that supports this theory is that of “forest therapy,” currently practiced in Japan. Studies there show that time in a wooded setting unleashes a powerful cascade of hormonal and cellular responses. Salivary cortisol, a marker for stress, for example, dropped an average of 13.4 percent when subjects simply looked at a forest setting for twenty minutes.4 Pulse rate, blood pressure, and activity on the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system decreased as well. Even more remarkable is the significant— and lasting—impact on so-called “natural killer” cells (NK cells), powerful lymphocytes known to fight off infection and attack cancer growth. A longer three-day trip in the forest with daily walks resulted in a 50 percent rise in NK activity as well as an increase in the number of NK cells! What’s perhaps most surprising is this: subjects who participated in this series of forest-bathing trips showed immune NK benefits that lasted more than a month.5 As a result of these studies, government entities in Japan are partnering with the medical industry to hold free health checkups at park areas and to create designations for “official” forest therapy sites. Finally, more companies are opting to include forest therapy in health care plans.
Water restores your brain and body, too. Consider this passage from a 2011 article in Outside magazine featuring Michael Merzenich, a neuroscience professor at University of California, San Francisco and one of the foremost authorities on neuro-plasticity.
Our attraction to the ocean may derive from its lack of physical markers. On land, we are constantly mapping our environment in our minds so we can pick out dangers (snake!) amid landmarks (tree, bush, rock). Looking over a calm sea is akin to closing our eyes. And when something does emerge on the surface, it captivates us.6
Indeed, there’s nothing more relaxing as looking at or being in a body of water. Whether it’s an ocean, a lake, a small river, we’re quite simply transfixed. We easily let go of whatever ails or distracts us.
If you actually enter the water, things get even better. The mere act of floating produces a calming feeling by activating the parasympathetic nervous system (PSN), which is responsible for stimulating rest and digestion when the body is at rest. When you fl oat, you reduce your body weight by nearly 90 percent, providing therapeutic benefits to your joints and muscles. Submerge yourself under the water, and you become totally present in the moment and enter a deeper dimension of sensory fascination. (An effect surely intensified by not having any air to breathe!) Even the high-intensity sport of surfing provides relaxation to the mind and body that transcends the sport into everyday life. Philippe Goldin, a clinical psychologist and a neuroscientist at Stanford University, notes that surfers, thanks to their proximity to the water, are able to experience reflective, meditation-like downtime between wave sets, helping them balance the fight-or-flight reaction to approaching swells.7 The US Marine Corps has also recognized these benefits, using “surf therapy” as a therapeutic intervention for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course, the negative ions that result from the crashing waves likely have a profound effect as well.
Negative ions (good stuff, as we’ll learn shortly) generally appear in natural settings in greater numbers than positive ions (bad stuff, despite their name). But what exactly are ions? They are atoms or molecules in which the number of electrons is different from the number of protons. If an ion is negatively charged, it has more electrons than protons. If it is positively charged, it has more protons than electrons.
We find an abundance of negative ions wherever air molecules are split by solar radiation, wind, and water. That’s great news for us! These tiny, highly reactive, molecular fragments energize your body at the cellular level. They help increase the flow of oxygen to the brain, resulting in higher alertness, decreased drowsiness, and more mental energy.
Think of the times you’ve experienced their effects: near breaking ocean waves, a waterfall, or a sunny, windy, mountain area. These represent the ultimate in negative ion experiences—we’re talking about inhaling air enriched with tens of thousands of negative ions per cubic centimeter.
By comparison, fresh air in the countryside might rate 4,000 per cubic centimeter, a high-traffic urban area might contain less than a hundred per cubic centimeter, and a stagnant home or office might measure in the dozens or even zero! And while not as impressive as getting misted on the observation deck at Niagara Falls, your shower is another handy way to get an energizing dose of negative ions. Plants also produce negative ions, especially when exposed to intense light during photosynthesis.
Now for the rub: positive ions collect in pollution and soot, recirculated indoor air, or any enclosed space such as a car, train, office, or home. Positive ions have an adverse effect on your body. They trap and neutralize negative ions, robbing the air of its vitality and promoting fatigue and assorted health problems. Electrical appliances such as computers and televisions also generate positive ions, as do high-voltage power lines.
Studies with NASA astronauts suggest that ion imbalance can promote fatigue, bone loss, compromised sleep cycles, and overactive adrenal glands, which leads to burnout and compromised immune function.8 Other studies suggest excess positive ions and insufficient negative ions can result in anxiety, depression, electrolyte imbalances, systemic inflammation, emotional disturbances, and diminished cardiovascular and brain function.9
Since ions are electrical, the effects of natural and artificial ionization are identical. This is good news for your home and office, because you can purchase a negative ion generator for as little as fifty dollars at a good office supply or home electronics store. I recommend a combination deionizer/HEPA machine that will remove both particulate matter (pollen, dust, mold) and noxious gases (smoke, toxic auto, and industry emissions).
Next time you have a free hour, head outdoors. Find a park bench, a quiet place in your yard, a drive out to a local water source, the beach, a lake, or a pond. Quiet your mind, engage your senses, and be fully aware of your surroundings. Allow your eyes to soak in the scenery. Take notice of the colors and movements around you. Listen for subtleties: Do you hear birds chirping? Water running? Maybe the wind passing through the leaves? Pick up a leaf, feel its contoured details, and open up to textures you’ve not noticed before. Employ your sense of smell. Can you identify anything interesting in the air, maybe a distinct foliage, humidity, or animal life? After a few minutes of processing, think about the contrast between what you have just experienced and the in-your-face stimulation of a phone, computer, television, or busy office. Here’s a list of some other easy options that can help you exercise your senses and reconnect with nature.
Grab a handful of soil. Smell it and crumble it between your fingers.
Watch the clouds for five minutes.
Create a small sandbox. Put your feet in and wiggle your toes.
Go barefoot outdoors. Every day, and yes, even in winter.
Set up a bird feeder outside your window. Enjoy the sense of community.
Find a stream. Ditch the shoes and socks and step in.
Go outside. Find something different every day to smell.
Drop absolutely everything. Go outside and listen.
Bring your book outside. Do a little reading amidst nature.
Stop to appreciate the moon. Full or otherwise.
Pick a favorite tree. It can be in your yard, your neighborhood, or near your work site. Notice how it changes with the seasons.
Be in full contact with the earth. Lie on the grass. Roll down a hill. Jump off a berm.
Handle the vegetation. Feel the leaves and bark of every tree in your yard, the flowers in your pots, a patch of wild grasses.