You might ask, “What’s that thing you’re holding? Is it a fuzzy squirrel? Is this your sick, deranged way of reconnecting with nature?” No, it’s just my dead cat. Err...sorry, I mean my deadcat. The fuzzy exterior shields the microphone from the wind. Normally I’d try to keep the mic out of frame, but since I was filming solo out in the field, that was the lightest and easiest way to roll. Did that bug you? Let me know! I’m genuinely interested.
It’s funny, I seem to be sensitive to certain noise environments. If sound reverberates, I find it really bothersome. Others seem to not be much of an issue. But I’ll take a quiet desert any day of the week. 😊
You never see angry hippies. Having moved from a city to the coast I can 100% confirm that being out and about in nature has a calming effect on your state of mind. I'm not saying city industry should be demonised, but we need to find more ways of introducing plants into comcrete urban environments. Lets have plants growing up buildings and grass on roofs. Basically, plants and trees should be everywhere. Even in our homes.
We are natural beings. We wear clothes, learn behaviours, try to be civilized. But underneath on a very primal level we are Still animals. Animals should not cage themselves. We are clever animals, perhaps at times to clever for our own good. Plants heal. We are all natural beings, some just have a habit of forgetting!
I love nature because it scares me and excited me and humbles me which is really important because we need to remember as humans that we are not the sole important component of our planet and nature deserves our respect
I walk on average 50 miles a week. I live in Fl. There are many parks and nature preserves near me. Even though I visit the same parks often the trails offer something new each time. Walking in nature engages all my senses while freeing my mind free solve problems or at least explore my options. It is difficult to list all the benefits.
I agree with this 100%. I live in a small city and work downtown, but grew up in a beautiful countryside. There is not a single secluded park close by. The tiny parks we have are always filled with families with screaming children and their dogs sh**ting everywhere. The only way to get to a "real" park is to drive through stressful highways for an hour. I noticed my whole life has changed since living in the city - My anxiety worsened, I now have depression, and chronic stress. The only way I can escape is to watch nature videos online... 😔
Read somewhere about an experiment on astronauts where they were isolated on Earth for a long time together just to see how their brain behaves in such environment. So they got depressed and all that. But the the thing is, when they were introduced to gardening their health and relationships very much improved. Someone should find that study ... :)
"Gardening for Therapeutic People-Plant Interactions during Long-Duration Space Missions" Thanks. Now I've got an idea for my 1st science fiction novel.
Think about a city. Tall or short buildings, wide or narrow streets. All have sharp, crisp 90 degree corners - it's a human thing. The corners show off our efficiency and precision. The buildings stand fixed, not swaying in the breeze (hopefully). Lastly, most cityscapes are predominantly grey. Now think about a forest, stream, desert - any natural setting. Hardly any crisp straight lines or 90 degree angles. Nature works with other nature, like a tree arching over a meandering brook, or boulders bushing up through the slope of a hilltop. Grey is a desert color, almost a warning. We are the result of countless generations of humans living in a natural world. Sharp straight lines certainly occur in nature, like fractured rock formations, but they're the exception. I believe that deep inside, we are unnerved by cityscapes and crave the satisfaction of wavy tree limbs, ridge-lines, and the shores of a lake.
I just love the vibe of this video, so calming and southing, he speaks slowly and clearly, without any background music, it makes me feel safe and relax... This is such a great video.
I fantasize about being with nature. Having a good bond with it, stalking and hunting animals, and exploring every path. When I do that my mood goes up for days
Cool video. People like new and diverse things and nature like in the forest is all different and not uniform like buildings in the city. Nature is also less dense with humans versus a city, so people don’t have to track or interact as much which takes energy. An interesting sidenote my wife and I were in New York during the blizzard last year when they close the city down. We walked around in the middle of sixth Avenue, made snow angles, there was hardly anybody out it was really beautiful walking around looking at the different buildings and open areas. It became nature. Anyway. Thx cool video
Such a wonderful narrative, and the overall flow of the video. Thanks for creating this video and it will be helpful for my current research in ecotherapy.
I love our mother - the Nature, and I respect her laws. So in nature I always walk barefoot 👣. Only in this way can I be in direct contact with her ... and feel her sweet bioenergy ... and tell her that I love her ... and thank her ~ Namaste 🙏 !
One thing I absolutely recommend is buying a clean paint roller tray (the ones with a ramp/slope) and fill it with cold water and put it on top of a shed roof of somewhere high they can reach, they LOVE bathing in it when it's hot, i always see a small family of birds coming to it, make sure to clean and refill the tray, though!
Does the research suggesting spending time in nature control for SES? Like if you have time to spend in nature, that implies you have time to spend on things other than earning income to support one's self and one's family. If there is a lack of stress due to not having to worry about putting food on the table, then of course there will be lower incidence of mental illness.
Where I live, there is lots and lots of trees everywhere, it look like a forest, but it's not, I like going to the neighborhood block behind my house, it's very pretty, so many trees everywhere.
Actually, research has shown that the mere act of touching soil increases the amount of neurons firing in your brain. This supports the theory of biophilia. I researched this for a scholarship project in my Experiential learning Initiatives class.
One of the core principals of The Trailhead Homestead, a therapy farm in Alaska. One of their mandatory activities with the kids in their program is a nature walk.
..strange, i live in a small country town in Australia and born on a farm in Wales but lately i go swimming alone in the lake or walking and it makes me feel stressed, lonely depressed and lost. i rush home hopefully to feeling normal ..
I have a theory that one of the reasons it feels good to be outside is because it feels safer. Not because of the explanation in this video, but because open spaces spaces mean there's escape routes everywhere, and maybe you could see danger coming. Inside you don't know what's coming, and you're kind of trapped in way. Of course not that relevant in the modern world, but it could be a remnant of evolution.
Thank you for this researched commentary. You come across as a nature sceptic though, or was it just the quality of evidence that you are sceptical about? Do you know of any evidence comparing life quality of urban vs rural dwellers?
I don't like this use of the word "nature". It's similar to asking for food "without chemicals" (which would actually mean, no food at all). Humans are part of nature, and so by extension everything human-made is too. I am not sure what better word to use here... Maybe "outdoors", "wilderness"... or rephrasing and using an activity to describe it, "hiking" perhaps?
Hmmm, I can see your point, and I think that’s fair. When I think of nature, I think of everything that is not built/human-made. I would also then lump in certain human-made things like parks which are meant to resemble the natural world, incorporate natural resources, and welcome various life forms to use it as well.
Most of this seems entirely fanciful. Cities just contain stressors that nature doesn't. Most notably pulmonary, because cities are dense with carbon dioxide, and doubly so inside. Then incessant, inexplicable ambient noise. And a host of light issues from melatonin production to night pollution to focus distances. And all of these therapies seem to boil down to me time, away from stressors. Barring the effects of modest physical activity, I don't see their edge over, say, crocheting or any other hobby / vacation. The bootcamps seem an exception to this, but they are agressively removing the social context that encouraged the undesirable behaviour, and I think it's fair to credit the removal over the redbud.
Hey Diametheus! Thanks for your comment. Let me go through it and address your concerns. I think your points about the stressors of city life actually give credence to the Attention Restoration Theory! You're essentially saying that city life has unique stressors that are not present in nature. If that is your preferred theory for why nature is beneficial, then it makes sense that you'd see that as the beneficial part of ecotherapy. As for their "edge" over other hobbies, I don't understand why it has to be a competition. I certainly don't want it to come across that way. Although I dare you to try to find a meta-analysis on the mental benefits of crocheting! Lol. Hobbies are good for our mental health, too. But if just *being* in nature makes you feel better, and research backs it up, then...it works. I recommend you take a look at the research if you're still not convinced. There are a bunch of sources in the description. In any case, I'm not sure most of this is fanciful at all! (Side note, I tried to look up the saying "X over the redbud" because I thought it sounded like a fun adage, but could not find anything. Is this a common saying or did you create it?)
@@neurotransmissions I can maybe grant you that, say, a 22dB hum consumes directed attention, but it feels a stretch to apply that to breathing too much CO2 in your unventilated bedroom or walking under streetlights. And how ART seems to have the same structure as ego depletion makes me squeamish. Whether nature makes people happy seems an issue of dosage: before the romantics, nature mostly conjured dread of hunger, exposure, predation, infection, drowning, and just having an accident alone. Urbanites do feel better visiting, but it sure'd be nice to know what the edge is, if any. Both because as a treatment it's rather expensive due to transport and opportunity costs so functional alternatives matter, and because any answer would have city planning or environmental implications. Despite the criminal dearth of crocheting research, a lot of the questions in your linked measures seem rephraseable to "do you enjoy not working?" and "Is exercise good?" due to sample specifics. I would like to see whether results hold with populations of urban outdoor workers like builders and mailmen, and with rural workers like tobacco pickers and beekeepers before I feel it's universal enough to be commonly prescribed or even encouraged via public policy. Redbud was just the most assonant tree I could come up with, which may explain why my rapping career never took off.