How nature can benefit our emotional well-being
Let’s think about nature for a moment. What comes to mind for you?
We’re learning more about nature’s positive impacts on our emotional well-being and mental health. But how do you access its benefits in your everyday life?
We’ve rounded up some things to read, do, watch and experience so that you can both learn about nature and live in alignment with it.
Read through articles about what happens to our bodies and brains when we walk in nature, try a ‘Going Outside Challenge’, watch an unexpectedly funny talk on foraging, or get to dinner on a beach with a hundred strangers. You’ll learn some of the ways nature can positively impact your emotional well-being and mental health.
Just explore where your curiosity takes you as you find ways to wander through the natural world.
To read:
Just two hours of nature a week offers benefits to our health and well-being
The unique benefits of walking in nature
Are you guilty of ‘plant blindness’? What plants are saying about us
How activism can help with climate anxiety
How buying that fleece could save our National Parks
A stunning new green lung in Hong Kong
What we’re learning from leafing through seed catalogues
Water… as a blueprint for health and well-being
To do:
Although we’re now in March, there’s value in starting this at any time: The Go Outside Challenge
How can you begin to notice the nature that is around you
We made it. Look for signs of spring
Try therapy outdoors
Discover a wild sauna
Develop carbon literacy
To watch:
To discover:
Bronx River Foodway (New York, US)
Oko Farms (New York, US)
Flora Grubb Gardens (San Francisco Bay Area, US)
How can we broaden out what nature can be for us: the micro gestures that have us listening for bird songs to the bigger-ask ones that have us hiking up mountains?
How do you see nature as something that affects your emotional well-being and mental health?
Let us know how you navigate this aspect of your everyday life.
