We often consider compassion from the individual perspective, but what about a community? Is it possible for a community to become, each day, a more compassionate place? Compassion is heart-centered, with a strong desire to alleviate suffering whenever, wherever, and however it presents. We want to introduce Roanoke, Virginia to the concept of the Compassionate City.
Read moreThe Mind’s “Between” with Nature
By Ted Edlich, MIRV Board Member
After consulting a group of diverse scientists, Dan Siegel, psychiatrist, neuroscientist and author of Mind, obtained a group consensus that the human mind is a self-regulating component of a complex system that receives and modifies information and energy. In addition, the mind is not only located in the skull, but embodied, and “between” in terms of relationships. As such, Siegel suggests that the “between” of the mind is so important that it is not just “the icing on the cake,” but the main course and dessert of life as well.
At first, I was so transfixed by the idea that the mind could extend beyond the human body that I did not ask, “What besides relationships might that ‘between’ involve?” That was before I read The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, and More Creative by Florence Williams, who suggests that the mind’s “between” also has to make room for the natural world.
Williams’ two-year report, detailing the efforts in Asia, Europe, and North America to scientifically document the impact of nature on human health and mental functioning, comes at a time when more people on this planet live in urban rather than rural settings. It also comes at a time when there has been a 24% drop in American visits to our national parks while other nations have experienced a rise of their people seeking more direct contact with the natural world.
From Forest Bathing in Japan and Healing Forest projects in Korea to research efforts in Finland, Sweden, Scotland, England, and North America, the science (largely documented in the first three chapters and summarized on pages 143 and 144) suggests that exposure to nature at a variety of levels of intensity….
· Lowers blood pressure and heart rate;
· Lowers the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, in the blood;
· Could subsequently diminish the onset of heart disease, metabolic disease, dementia, and depression;
· Lowers the activity of the sympathetic nervous system;
· Improves the immune system by the increased production of “killer cells” that target breast cancer and other diseases;
· Increases creativity and productivity in work; and
· Assists in physical and mental rehabilitation (See chapters 10 and 11).
In addition, there is emerging evidence that connecting with nature:
· Can contribute to less loneliness and stronger feelings of social engagement (p.111; p.166));
· May help to offset the impact on health and wellbeing of economic inequality for those with the least resources (pp. 154-155); and
· May significantly decrease levels of depression and anxiety), addiction to technology (p.78), and crime and violence (pp.109-110).[1]
The explanation for nature’s impact on human physical wellbeing is explained by E. O. Wilson’s notion of “biophilia,” our human intimate kinship and birth bond with nature. Humans evolved in the natural world and are soothed and comforted by the “energy and information” that we receive—through the fragrant scent of plants; fractal visual patterns of trees, clouds, and plants; the sounds of birds, wind, and water—that are all too often missing in our urban environment. When these are displaced by the visuals of sharp-angled building edges, concrete and asphalt, engine noise, and fossil fuel carbons and pollution, humans find themselves out of our natural context, adding to the stress of social and communal life in a rapidly changing world.
I grew up amid the concrete mountains and valleys of Manhattan in New York City. The most memorable times of childhood were going to camp each summer in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains or summers spent cruising the Long Island Sound in a small outboard motor boat just off Glen Cove.
As an adult, I have known the restorative power of sailing my 25-foot sloop on Smith Mountain Lake, feeling the sun warm my skin, noting the sun’s reflection on each wave turning the water into a sea of diamonds, feeling the breeze on my face, the power of the wind as I pulled at the lines holding the swelling sails, the deep resistance of the water felt by my hand on the boat’s tiller, and listening to the sounds of wind, water, and geese. Likewise, mountain adventures on the Appalachian trial, the Moab Mountains of Southern Utah, and descending into the Grand Canyon have brought me home to life in a new way.
For many years, I used to take a two-week camping vacation at Huntington State Park in South Carolina. Each year I had the same experience—during the first week I rested, and at the start of the second week my mind suddenly came alive. I would then plan, without effort, what I wanted to accomplish duing the coming year. Without fail, I would return to work energized and excited.
The Nature Fix s explanation, under the heading of Attention Restoration Theory, is that during the first week, as I tended to the mundane tasks of camping and allowed my default mind of senses to be filled with the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes of the natural world, my prefrontal cortex was able to take a rest from the continued assault of urban daily living in our time increased by the demands of technology. Just the activity of deciding what not to respond to is itself a constant drain of energy. When the second week rolled around, that “top down” mind was now fully refreshed and had the power to do the work of planning for the year ahead.
One of the Moab scientists quoted in The Nature Fix summed it up this way: “After days of wandering in a place like this, resting the executive branch and watching clouds drift across the sky, good shit happens to your brain.” However you explain the power of nature on human experience, there is no doubt of the results.
The stories of the healing power of nature are endless. Williams mentions many, including one of William James, the first person to offer a psychology course in the US, who owed a debt to the woodlands for curing him of a serious bout of depression.
My favorite story is of Horace Kephart, the Director of the distinguished Merchantile Library in Saint Louis in 1890, having previously been the head librarian at Yale University. The strain of his very public position, personnel conflicts, accommodating to the expectations of St. Louis commercial culture, administrative duties, long work hours and caring for a family of eight led to a mental breakdown complete with psychotic episodes. He resigned his position, left the care of family life to his wife, and sought seclusion in one of the most remote areas of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
After three years, Kephart returned to the civilized world, wrote books on the skills and crafts of early pioneers who made their homes in the American forests, and became the most important national leader in persuading the U.S. government to set aside the Smokey Mountain National Park, the place of his healing, as a natural reserve for following American generations. The authors of his biography, The Back of the Beyond, conclude that the core message of his writings is “the recuperative power of the natural world.”
In the epilogue to The Nature Fix, Williams appropriates UVA professor Tim Beatley’s use of a nature pyramid, similar to the food pyramid which categorizes dietary essentials for good health. The very base of the pyramid would be daily doses of deliberately connecting with nature through the trees, fountains, plants, birds, and pets in our surroundings.
Instead of testing how quickly I can complete my two-mile morning walk through my neighborhood, I have started to connect with the amazing trees and plants that fill each front yard and listen to the symphony of birds I had never stopped to listen to.
It is also amazing what you can find in local parks. Recently, I discovered behind a new Roanoke County library near my home a raised wooden walkway, specifically built to allow one to meander through acres of wetland with its profusion of plants, that I would never have guessed was there.
Moving up the pyramid, once a week one should plan a several-hour outing to a local, state, or national park or waterway where the “sounds and hassles” of urban life are diminished. Farther up the pyramid are monthly excursions of a full day or more to forests and natural areas which could, according to Korean research, positively impact your immune system. At the top of the nature pyramid are major vacations or trips of multi-day exposure to great national parks and wilderness areas that allow for even greater restoration of body, mind, and soul.
The message of The Nature Fix is that on this planet we have what we need to cure us of the traumas of overwork, intolerable stress, growing levels of depression and suicide, and physical and mental trauma. The natural world is an essential element in the “between” of our minds and souls—an element that we do without at our own peril. That being true, there are some things we would do well to consider. If the natural world is vital to our wellbeing and creativity, then we need to love this planet as our mother and stop destroying her through global warming.
It also calls for rethinking how we build cities and encouraging city planners to make the investment that world city leader Shanghai has made in blending the natural world into the buildings and landscapes of our urban areas. There are implications for the architecture of schools, hospitals, nursing homes and prisons. I have spent many hours leading mindfulness meditation groups in a local regional jail. This modern facility holds over a thousand prisoners with no windows to the rich mountain greenery outside its white walls that are unendingly illuminated by glaring florescent lighting. In the last year I was told by the Sheriffs of two major jails in our area that the number one inmate problem is mental health! From The Nature Fix’s perspective handing out more pills to residents will not be the real solution to this crisis.
It further calls for rethinking the recent commercial exploitation of wilderness areas in the USA, and the steady erosion of the great forests of this planet like those in Brazil.
It suggests that a strong national healthcare policy must include a minimum annual wage for all citizens and an annual leave policy that allows every citizen to have the ability to maintain a vital connection with the natural world. We may not match Finland’s policy of five weeks for every citizen, but two weeks would be a healthy start.
Finally, it is ironic, and much to the point of this blog, that Dan Siegel and his fellow scientists had faced a series of impasses in coming up with a definition of the mind that all could agree on until he took a long walk on a beach beside the breaking waves of the ocean. It was only then that his mind came up with its solution.
[1] This volume would be well served by an index that is lacking in the paperback version.