Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

[Geoff-Allen]

Hope you are all well!

Here's a site I recommend - this article is all about being in nature -

In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.

Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

Cheers!

 

[LiveBetterLife]

Among other things, I blame people's addictive engagement in recent technological advances to be a reason for the recent (last 15-20 years) spike in mental health issues.

Devices disconnect people from what we've been conditioned to respond well to.

Disconnection causes people to feel ill at ease.

What you've described offered a welcomed remedy to this.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Hope you are all well!

Here's a site I recommend - this article is all about being in nature -

In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.

Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

Cheers!

Maybe if you have plenty of calamine lotion, predator spray, venom kit, and mosquito/insect repellent, you would be all right.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Hope you are all well!

Here's a site I recommend - this article is all about being in nature -

In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.

Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

Cheers!

Nice post! I heartily agree.

I held a baby hummingbird today...he had apparently just left the nest -- the mother was nearby -- but at the feeder for the first time, he (she?) was immediately attacked by another hummingbird, they're very territorial you know, and it fell in the water most below the feeder. It was so scared, and had messed up it's right wing. It made it to a branch of a rose bush, where it stayed for a long time! Over an hour.

After a while, my wife and I tried, and found we could go right up to it! So we were worried! Thought he could end up being food for the Hawks and crows that are around. But it wouldn't move off the branch. We cut the branch w/ scissors, holding it steady, & were able to branch with him on it, inside. His Mama was just flying all around. We then got some homemade nectar, and used a leaf to hold the nectar and funnel it to his beak. He started to liven up, flapping his little wings so fast, while we were holding the little branch!! That was awesome! He drank quite a bit. But would leave the branch. So we took him back outside, and I was able to get two fingers underneath him, and he got on one! Stayed there for about 4 minutes...his Mama flew right up to him and hovered, almost touching my hand, with me looking down on both of them!

Then, after getting another drink, he flew to the trees!

It was a mind- blowing experience we will never forget!!

I kept thinking about Isaiah 11:6-9!

We named him / her "squeaky". Just one tone, a barely-audible high-pitched chirp it constantly made.

 

[PureX]

It's a good question. I'd be curious to know the answers.

 

[Eddi]

I have a long-standing fantasy of going out in the wilderness with only drinking water and vitamin tablets (to stop my teeth falling out) and then fasting out there for 40 days like Jesus did, in the wilderness

I could do to lose a but of weight

Maybe I would even hallucinate Satan trying to tempt me!

Sadly, I have no idea where my nearest wilderness is

 

[Audie]

Nice post! I heartily agree.

I held a baby hummingbird today...he had apparently just left the nest -- the mother was nearby -- but at the feeder for the first time, he (she?) was immediately attacked by another hummingbird, they're very territorial you know, and it fell in the water most below the feeder. It was so scared, and had messed up it's right wing. It made it to a branch of a rose bush, where it stayed for a long time! Over an hour.

After a while, my wife and I tried, and found we could go right up to it! So we were worried! Thought he could end up being food for the Hawks and crows that are around. But it wouldn't move off the branch. We cut the branch w/ scissors, holding it steady, & were able to branch with him on it, inside. His Mama was just flying all around. We then got some homemade nectar, and used a leaf to hold the nectar and funnel it to his beak. He started to liven up, flapping his little wings so fast, while we were holding the little branch!! That was awesome! He drank quite a bit. But would leave the branch. So we took him back outside, and I was able to get two fingers underneath him, and he got on one! Stayed there for about 4 minutes...his Mama flew right up to him and hovered, almost touching my hand, with me looking down on both of them!

Then, after getting another drink, he flew to the trees!

It was a mind- blowing experience we will never forget!!

I kept thinking about Isaiah 11:6-9!

We named him / her "squeaky". Just one tone, a barely-audible high-pitched chirp it constantly made.

I was walking on a nature trail in Sai Kung, and
decided to stop and rest by a little shrine.
After a time, I realized I was sitting right beside
a big brown cobra!
It had coiled itself in a little patch of morning sunlight,
making this amazing blue green irridescence.

I looked at it, Mr Cobra looked at me, every now and
then flickering its little black tongue. It was not afraid
at all. Mom taught me to respect snakes but not to
fear them so we were so at peace with eachother!

I never had seen one up so close before, it was really
a treat.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Hope you are all well!

Here's a site I recommend - this article is all about being in nature -

In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.

Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

Cheers!

It's where we came from and where we belong.

 

[Audie]

It's where we came from and where we belong.

I like nature but not, you know, au naturale.

 

[metis]

Hope you are all well!

Here's a site I recommend - this article is all about being in nature -

In recent years, a number of wilderness therapy programs have cropped up to help people who suffer from mental health challenges. These trips often involve physically and emotionally engaging experiences—like backpacking or rock-climbing in remote areas—combined with therapeutic work from caring professionals. Something about being engaged in nature seems to help hard-to-treat patients open up, find new confidence, and focus their lives in more positive directions.

Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

Cheers!

Since we evolved in natural settings, it should be of no wonder that it's good for our mental health. I walk outside for 2-3 miles 6 days a week, and if I miss an additional day I can feel it negatively, and not just physically. Matter of fact, i'm leaving for my walk in about 15 minutes.

 

[Sand Dancer]

I like nature but not, you know, au naturale.

No one needs a sunburned bum.

 

[Audie]

No one needs a sunburned bum.

Asians hate getting any suntan

 

[Mock Turtle]

Can being a caveman cure anxiety?

Not sure if my 'caveman' activities could be seen as therapy, but I've written about the many challenges often posed by cave environments, and which have to be overcome if one is to have a successful caving career, such as - and either one loves it or hates it - having to overcome numerous fears - of the dark, of claustrophobia, of being cold and/or wet, of being lost, trapped or buried alive, of falling rocks, of heights and falling, of water and drowning, of being injured and the potential for a difficult rescue, and lastly, of being dirty, uncomfortable, and physically exhausted - and all this possibly experienced in the same cave - what’s not to love about caving?

I've been up mountains, down caves, and sailed the seas in a yacht. In all cases I was aware that nothing would be different if I had been absent, so I was a guest if you like. And I was also aware that these environments had been around for so long that they were true connections to the past. In nature, one is never competing with nature, and of course one can't win - other than in the survival sense. Nature will still be there tomorrow - will I be? Rarely have I ever come back from a trip cursing nature.

That is why I love nature and all that tries to exist within it.