Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies. What you are seeing, hearing, experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood, but how you’re nervous, endocrine, and immune systems are working.

The stress of an unpleasant environment can cause you to feel anxious, or sad, or helpless. This in turn elevates your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension and suppresses your immune system. A pleasing environment reverses that.

Nature heals

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical wellbeing, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

Research done in hospitals, offices, and schools has found that even a simple plant in a room can have a significant impact on stress and anxiety.

Nature restores

One of the most intriguing areas of current research is the impact of nature on general wellbeing. Those interviewed said their mood improved after spending time outside, changing from depressed, stressed, and anxious to more calm and balanced. Too much time in front of screens is deadly “Nature deprivation,” a lack of time in the natural world, has been associated, unsurprisingly, with depression.

In another interesting area, Andrea Taylor’s research on children with ADHD shows that time spent in nature increases their attention span later.

Best wishes, David