Editorial

Humankind is hard-wired for nature connection

In the 1970s Roger Ulrich found that patients whose hospital window looked out on green space needed shorter post-op recovery times: they were less anxious and took fewer painkillers. Since then, studies abound exploring how nature-connectedness reduces stress, anxiety and depression and boosts self-esteem. Summers and Vivian (2018) review this research. To pick only a few studies: people dealing with a life-threat often have difficulty concentrating, but women with breast cancer who walked in a park, watched birds, or tended flowers, achieved better focus after surgery; having sight of nature improved self-discipline in inner city girls; children living in rural areas were less stressed by adversity than urban children; viewing natural scenes reduced college examination stress; nurses taking breaks outside in natural settings returned to work more refreshed, relaxed, and energised.

Researchers confirm what common sense tells us: getting outdoors does good things for mental wellbeing –in one survey almost everyone asked to remember a positive childhood experience came up with a moment outside (Dr William Bird, personal communication). But more remarkable is its impact on the body. People forest bathing in Japan and South Korea have decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, lower pulse rate and blood pressure, and heart rate variability that indicates rest and recovery (Song et al, 2016). Even when adjusted for other health inequalities, people with good access to urban green spaces have better physical health outcomes: reduced cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, obesity and risk of type 2 diabetes, and improved pregnancy outcomes (WHO, 2016).

For five million or so years our human form and physiology evolved close to wild nature. In the embodied operating system that runs our physiology, ‘memories’ of this evolutionary past, encoded in our DNA, run in the background. When we make a nature connection this ecological self triggers cellular messages of belonging and safety. We are not well-adapted to the unrelenting confined urban/industrial environment. It is not our ecological niche, so when thrust into the artificial space and pace of modern life we run too hot. Nature connectedness reboots us out of this low-level stressed state and back to our evolutionary default mode. In short, we human beings seek connection with nature and other forms of life because it calms us down.

The biologist Edward O Wilson calls this innate urge biophilia, and the physiology of biophilia might explain why nature-connectedness can enhance healing. We

David Peters

Editor-in-Chief

should be full of gratitude and respect for these gifts, but paradoxically industrialisation, while raising billions of people out of poverty (and therefore good for human wellbeing), has achieved this at an environmental cost that’s more than our planet can afford. In its everincreasing hunger for food, energy, water, wood and ores, our species is plundering Earth and making it a dumping ground for waste. Humankind has ushered in the Anthropocene age whose feverish global industrial-consumer culture is overheating the planet and unravelling the web of life.

If our biophilic connection with all of life can boost mental health and healing, we ought not to be surprised if, on the other hand, nature deprivation were harmful. Joanna Macy proposes that because of our biophilic interdependence, the life-world’s suffering is mirrored in the human unconscious. Our young people, whose mental wellbeing is on the decline, may be the canaries in the coalmine. If so, their recent rebellion could be the start of a healthy push back, for depression thrives on learned helplessness. And though denial is an under standable defence against unbearable feelings, let’s hope youth’s immune response to ecocide is contagious; otherwise, overwhelmed by the enormity of what we are witnessing, the older generation will be too numbed and paralysed to rebel for life.

The changes in human attitudes and behaviours being demanded by the ecological crisis require a compassionate shift in our relationship to the other than human world. For we are wired to protect what we love. If that is too much to expect of a species so caught up in flight or fight, then at least a utilitarian approach still has merit. For we protect what we value, especially if it pays us back many times over. Nature connection is good for us, and if allowed to, Gaia will continue to clean our air and water, regulate climate, and co-create sustainable food and shelter. It would be disastrous to take for granted these incalculably valuable natural services, and ignore the ancient bonds that tie us into the other than human world.

In this bumper issue of JHH we explore communion with the natural world and its impact on body, mind and spirit. The images and poetry woven through this issue celebrate the art as well as the science of nature connectedness.

References

Song C, Ikei H, Miyazaki Y (2016) Physiological effects of nature therapy: a review of the research in Japan. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 13 (8), 781. Summers JK, Vivian DN (2018) Ecotherapy – a forgotten ecosystem service: a review. Front Psychol. 3 (9), 1389. WHO (2016) Urban green spaces and health. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.