Florence Williams shares the scientific research behind the benefit to our mood and our health when we spend time in nature as part of our daily lives. Her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative is full of practical, intuitive wisdom that can be applied regardless of your lifestyle or circumstances. To that point, you'll be surprised at how little time it takes to have a significant impact on things like depression, anxiety, and stress as well as things like blood pressure and cortisol levels. You may have noticed feeling better after a walk in the woods; this episode will explain why by way of some fascinating research. This week we talk to Florence Williams Florence Williams is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, and numerous other publications. She is also the writer and host of the new Audible Original series, Breasts Unbound. She is fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University, her work focuses on the environment, health and science. Her first book, BREASTS: A Natural and Unnatural History received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science and technology. Her latest book is called: The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. In This Interview, Florence Williams and I Discuss... The Wolf Parable Her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. The research that supports the fact that when we spend time in nature it can boost our mood That 15 minutes in a forest environment can reduce our cortisol levels Natural Killer Cells (T-cells) The roll of Cypress aerosols Taking in nature as a whole as the benefit That the benefit of nature as a whole being greater than the sum of its parts Nature Deficit Disorder and trying to fill it with other more modern-day things Nature being a better option for some people than meditation Paying attention to our surroundings Achieving a more relaxed, restorative state The effect of the sound of birds The benefits of walking alone in nature The benefits of walking with others in nature Attention Restoration Theory The effects of spending time in nature on different parts of the brain The amount of time we should spend in nature Biophilia Please Support The Show with a Donation
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We don't spend that much time in nature. We are
sort of epically disconnected from it. And because of that, well,
we don't know how it makes us feel welcome to
the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
(00:23):
garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
(00:45):
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
(01:12):
Our guest on this episode is Florence Williams, a contributing
editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for The
New York Times, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The
New York Review of Books, and numerous other publications. Florence
is also the writer and host of the Audible original
series Breasts Abound. She's a fellow at the Center for
(01:33):
Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University.
Her work focuses on the environment, health, and science. Florence's
first book, Breasts, A Natural and Unnatural History, received the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology. Her
latest book is called The Nature Fix, Why Nature makes
Us happier, healthier, and more creative. If you're getting value
(01:57):
out of this show, please go to one you feed
dot Net slash Support and make a donation. This will
ensure that all episodes that are in the archive will
remain free and that the show is here for other
people who need it. Some other ways that you can
support us is if you're interested in the book that
we're discussing on today's episode, go to one you feed
(02:18):
dot net and find the episode that we're talking about.
There will be links to all of the author's books,
and if you buy them through there, it's the same
price to you, but we get a small amount. Also,
you can go to one you feed dot net slash
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shirts mugs and other things. And finally one you feed
(02:39):
dot net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group
is and you can interact with other listeners of the
show and get support in feeding your good Wolf. Thanks
again for listening, and here's the interview with Florence Williams.
Hi Florence, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, Thanks so
much for having me. Your book is called The Nature Fix,
(03:00):
Why Nature makes Us happier, healthier, and more creative, which
is something that I'm very excited talking about because I
think I've learned that over the last number of years
about myself, and it's not something I would have thought
was true. But we'll get into all the science of
that in a minute, but let's start like we always do,
with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
(03:22):
us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
(03:46):
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do. I think my reaction to
that parable is a little bit contrarian. I guess I
would say it seems just too simple to dismiss one
wolf as the bad wolf and one wolf as the
good wolf. And I guess maybe because I'm a writer
(04:08):
and I like to sort of plumb the complexities and
depths of people's psyches, you know, I kind of like
knowing that both of those wolves can offer us something,
you know, and it's it's sort of too simple, I think,
to identify one as as being one we should starve
and one that we should feed. I guess I feel
(04:28):
like sometimes being friends, you know, with the dark wolf,
you know, and sometimes you can learn something from that
darker place. So I guess that's just something I've been
thinking about lately. Absolutely, Yeah, I agree, I agree. So
let's talk a little bit about the book. The title
is The Nature Fix, Why Nature makes us happier, healthier,
(04:49):
and more creative. So let's just start with happier and
what ways does nature make us happier. There have been
a lot of studies actually over the at last I
would say ten twenty years, showing that when we spend
time in pleasant natural environments and even sometimes unpleasant natural environments,
it can really boost our mood. Uh And and this
(05:12):
is something environmental psychologists, you know, noticed, I would say
in the seventies, especially with people who were depressed, you know,
after they spent you know a certain amount of time
outside or in a garden or in a forest, they
just reported feeling happier, feeling less frustration, less anger, less aggression.
And I would say in more recent years that psychology
(05:34):
has been really confirmed with neuroscience, with bio markers. So,
for example, there has been researched coming out of Japan
that shows that cortisol levels or stress hormones decrease even
after just fifteen minutes of being in a sort of
peaceful forest environment, and then your blood pressure drops and
your heart rate variability shifts in ways that are sort
(05:56):
of more resilient to stress. And I think some of
us would think, well, that's kind of obvious, you know,
we know we feel good after a walk in the park,
But I think what was less expected was sort of
the level to which our our nervous system and our
physiology really reflects that. Yeah, the happier goes hand in
hand with healthier. And in the book you you cite
studies that talk about blood pressure and cortisol levels, and
(06:19):
you even cite something called NK cells and natural killer cells.
What are those? Natural killer cells are part of our
immune system, uh and they are for example, natural killer
T cells, which can fight cancer and other diseases. And
again this research out of Japan, it seems sort of controversial,
UM is showing that our natural killer cells seemed to
(06:43):
increase after you know, just these short walks uh in
in natural areas. And then and then also even um,
these natural killer cells, if you put them in a
petri dish, they seem to increase and count and cell
count um after exposure to certain aerosols from cypress trees,
(07:03):
which is kind of fascinating and in a way if
you think about it, I mean, these aerosols from from
trees are designed to protect the tree UM. So you know,
trees will admit these in order to reward off pesticides.
For example. You know, it could be that there's really
something about our human immune system that can converse with
these aerosols as well. It's really fascinating. Yeah, you talk
(07:25):
about a Roman therapy in the book a little bit,
and you talk about the smells, and what I thought
was interesting, and it's sort of a theme that runs
through the book is that you're, on one hand, you're
deconstructing why being in nature makes us feel better, and
there's lots of different theories, whether it's smell or sight
or hearing, and so you go through the science of
each of those, and that you're also referencing a lot
(07:48):
of classical figures, a lot of poets, different people who
are sort of not deconstructing it and saying take it
sort of as a whole thing. And I just thought
that was interesting the way you kind of bounced back
and forth between that in the book. Yeah. I mean,
I think the science writer in me was really drawn,
you know, to the research, to the sort of latest evidence,
and of course we live in an evidence based society,
(08:08):
and so I wanted to make the case kind of
based on what they were telling us. Uh, you know,
and each scientist kind of lives in a silo, right,
so so the physicist was convinced that the reason we
feel good in nature is because of the fractal patterns,
you know that somehow, um, you know, converse with the
perceptual systems in our brain, you know, and the and
the psychologists were convinced, you know, that it had to
(08:29):
do with our stress reduction levels. There are other people
who had, you know, felt like it, oh, it has
to do with the color green, or the color blue,
or the smell. And yet I am a humanist also,
and I think part of me was resistant to the
idea of, you know, so compartmentalizing this really kind of
magical spiritual relationship that we have with the natural world.
(08:51):
And maybe it's not just because of you know, one
particular kind of sensory system. And I think that, you know,
it's the poets, really in the philosophers who kind of
take us back to this more kind of full immersary,
full sensory kind of engagement with nature that also appealed
to me. There's lots of great quotes in the book
from various writers, but one that I loved was Walt
(09:13):
Whitman's when he warned of the city's pestiferous little gratifications.
And I thought that was such a great description for
how sometimes I feel when I'm just in the city
or just sort of doing city like things. Over while,
it just starts to feel like whatever the gratifications are,
they just become I would never use a word like pestiferous,
(09:35):
but I probably should. I love the word pestiferous, and
I think it is so appropriate, you know, and especially now,
and we do have these little gratifications that are so
tied to our technology, you know, which of course really
didn't exist in Walt Whitman's time. But but isn't that
just a perfect description for you know, what we feel
when we get, you know, a text message coming in
(09:55):
or um, you know, when someone responds to our likes
a Twitter post. I mean, it's it's this little gratification
that that also just like naws at our soul, and
on some level we know it's really bad for us,
even though it kind of tickles our dopamine system. YEP.
The idea of seeing this as a holistic thing versus
(10:17):
the reductionist science piece reminds me of when I started
getting into eating whole foods, because there was this idea
that when you deconstruct each of these like an apple well,
here's the nutrient that's got this nutrient in that nutrient,
but there's really an idea that there's something else that
the the interplay of all those different things makes an
(10:38):
apple greater than the sum of its parts. And I
think that's very similar to what you're saying here with nature. Yeah, exactly.
I mean I felt like I had to sort of
draw apart the evidence and explain it, you know, but ultimately,
you know, whether we believe it or not comes down
to how we feel when we're outside, and that depends
on paying attention to how we feel when we're outside.
(10:58):
And I think, you know, you said it so well
at the beginning of the show when you said, you know,
I didn't really realize how happy I was going out
into nature. I think that's kind of where a lot
of us find ourselves that we don't really pay attention.
We're on our phones, maybe when we're walking outside, we
have our earbuds in, we're mulling over, you know, our
to do list, we're you know how we're all multitasking
(11:21):
so much and we're not really tuning in to how
we feel. And I think, you know, if there's one
kind of lesson I would love people to take away
from this book. It's just to you know, go outside
and also just pay attention to what makes you feel good.
You say in the book that some of us don't
even realize how nature can make us feel better. We're
so distanced from it as a culture at this point,
(11:42):
and I, myself, I don't think had any sense of that.
It was really when I met a gentleman named lud
Wine who I love to bring up. He's now passed away,
but he ran a little retreat center in Ohio called
Niches and he was the first person I really got
that idea of nature deficit disorder. For um, that there's
something in us that is really lacking if we don't
(12:04):
have some degree of exposure to nature. Yeah, that's right.
I think it's kind of a vicious cycle. As you mentioned,
you know, we we don't spend that much time in nature.
We are sort of ethically disconnected from it. And because
of that, you know, we don't we don't know how
it makes us feel, and so we undervalue it. You know,
we tend to think other things will make us feel good,
like shopping or you know, binging on Netflix or ice cream,
(12:26):
and as things do make us feel good, but we
don't really give nature a sort of a fair shot,
you know, in that competition. And of course when we
when we go outside in nature, really the side effects
are mostly positive. I mean we also get exercise. We
also sort of clear our heads, and you know, our
our cognition can improve. Um, you know, we may sleep
(12:46):
better because we're you know, kind of sinking our cycles
to the sun. You know, the benefits are just sort
of on and on, and yet you know we'd rather
just take a pill or eat some ice cream. Yeah.
You mentioned in the book how a lot of the
science about being in nature is coming out of Japan
and South Korea, and you were talking about how they
(13:08):
sort of look at this a little bit differently than
Americans do. What made me think of that was when
you said, you know, take a pill, and you you
sort of made a joke like, well, if Americans, if
we get the benefit of nature in a pill, that's
how we do it. Yeah, I mean, we definitely want
the quick fix. I think there's no question that, you know,
Eastern and Western philosophies about nature are really divergent. I mean,
(13:29):
here we consider ourselves really apart from nature. We're separate
from it. We think of it as something other. And
I think, you know, in a lot of Eastern spiritual
traditions and just in daily life even today, nature is
just more integrated into daily life. It's not necessarily pristine
nature or wilderness, UM, but you know, the emphasis on
blossoms and on you know, flower arrangements, on you know,
(13:53):
zen gardens. There's just this notion that that we can
integrate nature into our daily lives, and I just don't
think we do that as much here. And then I
also think the questions that the two cultures are pursuing
are really different and sort of fascinating. I felt like
UM in many parts of UM, Japan and South Korea,
and even in Europe too, I think more of the
(14:13):
research is focused on uh, sort of emotional states like psychology,
How do we feel better? How do we help prevent depression?
You know, maybe part of that is because those cultures
really care about prevention and preventative health, their state funded um,
you know, healthcare, for example. The research in this country
is sometimes more focused on how can time and nature
(14:34):
actually make us work harder? How can we be more productive?
How can we drain more blood you know from office
workers by maybe providing a break in nature or a
roof garden, you know, like the one found on Facebook.
The Facebook campus has this beautiful roof garden. But you know,
let's not kid ourselves. It's really still designed towards productive workforce. Right.
(14:56):
That leads me to another topic I wanted to mention,
and which was meditation. And meditation has gone through a
very similar thing. Right. There's meditation for the spiritual benefits,
and there's meditation for you know, being happier or healthier,
but then there's also meditation for being more productive. You know,
you've got the Army doing a lot in meditation. And
(15:18):
I thought that was an interesting parallel to nature. But
also to tie it back in, you talked about how
one of the scientists was saying that nature might be
a better option for a lot of us than meditation
because meditation so many of us give up on. Yeah,
I thought that was really interesting. This was from a
psychologist at Pennsylvania State, and he said, we can get
(15:38):
a lot of great benefits from meditation. I mean, this
has been well proven. You know, there's a tot of
neuroscience on this um. The problem is really the stick
tutive nous um. The adherence and and and meditation is
also something you have to learn, and not everyone gets there,
you know. I I find meditation to be challenging. I
feel like my you know, my brain is always turning
(15:58):
a million miles a minute. And yet when I just
go for a walk, you know, eventually, maybe maybe not
right away, but after twenty or thirty minutes, seven or
eight days straight. That's my mind, I guess. But but
I also I've discovered that there are shortcuts, So of
course I like that too. I like the shortcuts. Um,
(16:20):
there are ways that we can engage our our minds,
you know, when we're walking outside, Um, that can that
can sort of help us get into that zone, you
know a little more quickly. And because now I live
in a big city, I live in Washington, d c. Um,
I feel like I have to sort of maximize, you know,
my strategies for getting the most out of the nature
that I can find here. So what are some of
(16:41):
those strategies. Some of those strategies involve, for example, trying
to pay attention to my surroundings. I mean, that's kind
of the overarching theme. So yeah, so I really do
take my earbuds out like I don't. I'm not one
of these people who will listen to a podcast, you know,
while I'm on a hike. Um, don't listen to her.
People keep listening to this show. Just ignore that last piece.
(17:05):
If you're on a hike right now, put the show
on pause and come back to it later. Yeah, I mean,
it's um, it's too bad. I mean I would love
to be able to multitask as much as I can.
You know, I'm a working mom. I've got two kids,
I have a long to do list. It would be great,
but but I also know that I will get the
most benefit from actually trying to hear the birds, trying
(17:27):
to you know, pay attention to which birds are nesting
right now. I've kind of made friends with this nesting
pair of hawks, you know that hang out along the
river where I walk most days. I will you know,
try to, um, look at the fish that are jumping,
you know, in the canal or in the river. I
will look at the sky and notice what the clouds
are doing. Um. I often walk in the evening because
(17:49):
I have a dog and she's got to go out
before bed, and um, you know, I'll sort of check
in with what the moon is doing, like they're just
little little elements of nature that I can kind of
queue into that I find just kind of put me
in this more relaxed, restorative state. You know. Pretty quickly
(18:36):
you talk about bird song and how effective that is
or how useful that is for a lot of people,
And there are studies showing that it's one of the
best sounds we can listen to. It's true, although what
I also learned was it depends on the birds. More melodic,
you know, and sort of chirpy and happy the bird um,
the more relaxed and alert we will feel. But there
(18:58):
are some birds that are really great, you know, the
j kind of call, or the magpie um, and that
turns out does not have quite the same restorative effect. Yeah,
and ever since I learned how smart crows are and
that they can remember faces and keep grudges, their sounds
have been a little bit more. Are they kind of evil?
Chris is saying they're evil? I don't know if they're evil.
(19:19):
What they are is wicked smart. So now I hear
their cause a little differently, and they are. It reminds
me of that old joke, what does the crow say
when he sees a friend crossing the road. I'll leave
it to Chris whether he wants to edit that out. So, yeah,
I thought the studies on birdsong were very interesting. You know,
(19:40):
businesses and institutions are starting to use this research in
some interesting ways. So for example, British Petroleum UM petrol
stations and in the UK are now piping birdsong apparently
into the restrooms you know, of these gas stations because
they think that it will it will leave people with
an impression of unliness and freshness and the moment spent
(20:02):
more money in the mini mart. Interesting. Well, I wish
they would. I wish the places were doing it would
pump bird song into where you're getting your gas instead
of a TV show or a news or all the
other racket that comes out a lot of those gas pumps.
These days, my gas station plays classical music and it's
actually quite wonderful. That is nice. Most of my gas
(20:23):
stations don't play anything, but there's a couple where it's
like a you know, the news playing or a special
show trying to get you to go in and buy
different things inside. Yeah, that's definitely not relaxing. No. One
of the interesting things you mentioned was that walking in
nature versus walking in the city. You're likely to have
(20:43):
less negative thoughts when you're walking in nature. There was
a really interesting study that came out of Stanford UM
a couple of years ago, and UM, the psychologists they're
actually imaged people's brains. So he scanned people's brains to
find out, you know, which parts of their brains were
lighting up in different environments. And so he sent a
group of volunteers to walk along, um a city street,
(21:06):
like a pretty busy city street for ninety minutes UM.
And then another group to walk UM in a city
park but by no means a wilderness area, you know,
just like a nice city party gets the Standford dish,
you know, outside of Palo Alto. And what he found
was that in the nature walkers, but not in the
city walkers, a part of the brain the activation became reduced.
(21:27):
There was less activation in this part of the prefrontal
cortex called the sub general prefrontal cortex. And it's actually
a part of the brain that is associated with um
ruminative thought or negative thinking. And then we know that
that part of the brain is kind of um the
worry box. It's the part of the brain associated with
depression actually, and so I thought it was so interesting
that it was after walking in nature that that part
(21:49):
of the brain really calmed down. But of course, I
think the fascinating question, and we don't really know the
answer to this yet, is well, if there's less activation
in that part of the brain, where is that activation
going instead. And the theories to that are, well, maybe
it's going to parts of the brain um that are
more associated with things like UM, long term thinking, UM, empathy,
(22:11):
compassion um, you know, self concept, the things that we
kind of when we really can space out for long
periods of time away from technology, you know, we start
thinking about our our goals and our dreams and who
we are. You know, those are the kinds of big
questions that I think so few of us really have
the time to kind of tackle anymore. Yeah, it was interesting.
(22:31):
Some of the studies in the book talk about, you know,
the benefits of walking with others. And then there's lots
of quotes in the book you're again referencing lots of
great thinkers, Plato and Nietsche and lots of other people
about how walking alone is where they get so many
of their ideas, And so you kind of talk about
the benefits of doing each of those things. Yes, exactly.
(22:53):
I mean, we know that when we're outdoors with other people,
we can really um strengthen those bonds, the social bond,
the bonds of friendship. I know. We know when my
family is outside, my kids get along with each other better.
I think, you know, we all have this shared experience. Um.
You know, it can be a really beautiful thing to
actually be outside with friends or family. But at the
(23:14):
same time, I know for myself there are times when
I really just crave the solitude and I really need
it because I'm working out you know, issues with my
work or issues with my personal life. Um, I need
the time to kind of zone out and not have
an agenda. Uh. And and I think some really really
powerful things can happen when we allow ourselves to have
(23:36):
that time. And in fact, in part of the book,
I talk about wilderness, um, you know, and and time
and wilderness. And of course there's a long tradition right
of rights of passage, um, people having vision quests so
low fastening. I mean, those a long, long spiritual tradition
of this, and I think we'd be smart to kind
of reconsider that, you know, in this kind of frenetic,
(23:58):
crazy life that we all live. Yeah, my son recently
went on a couple of weeks outdoor trip and part
of it was a solo thing. So I think it
was definitely very interesting and useful for him. What did
he get out of it, That's a great question. Maybe
we should call him and ask him, because I can't remember,
but it made an impression on him. It made an impression.
(24:20):
I think what he was struck by was how much
harder it was than he thought it was going to be.
Not necessarily to being alone, it was I think it
was being in the woods for that long. They got
rained on an awful lot, and so I think that
was a somewhat sobering experience. No, I thought he really
liked it. He loves to be outdoors. So and you know,
I think we just don't turn off our phones anymore
(24:40):
and and their tremendous benefits from that. So I think,
you know, one of the questions when we look at
the benefits of nature, how much of it is really
attributed to nature itself, and how much of it is
attributed to of being away, you know, from the things
that kind of stress us out. And I'm not sure,
the answer to that is is necessarily important. Um, But
but I do think it's an interesting question. Yeah, it's
(25:00):
probably some of both. I think people way before we
had cell phones and all that, have been talking about
the beneficial effects of nature. You know, a lot of
the people you're quoting in the book we're you know,
writing hundreds of years ago in some cases, and and
we're getting the benefits of nature. So it's probably some
of both. I think that's right. There were a couple
of different theories that you mentioned about how nature might
(25:22):
help us, but one of them that I was really
intrigued by was attention restoration theory, the general idea that
you can correct me if I'm wrong. And then add
on to it was that a lot of our sense
of mental unease comes from the fact that we've kind
of worn out our frontal cortex or are our executive thinking,
(25:44):
and that's what makes us feel bad, and that by
going into nature, it gives that part of the brain
arrest and that's one of the reasons why it feels
so good to us. Yeah, I think that that theory
really has a lot of traction, and it was developed
by a couple Rachel and Stephen Kaplan at the University
of Michigan in the nineties seventies. So again, long before
(26:05):
there were cell phones, long before there was an internet. Uh,
you know, there was still a sense that our daily
modern lives are fast paced and frenetic and um, you know,
our to do list are very long. We're constantly working
on tasks, were constantly responding, you know, to external stimuli.
We have a lot of information coming at us, and
(26:26):
when we do that, it makes us tired. It fatigues
our frontal cortex and we get a little bit grumpy.
Even if we don't realize it. We're just on some
level kind of overtaxed. And when we go outside, the
theory is that our attention is drawn kind of involuntarily,
just towards things that are beautiful. Um, we may notice
(26:47):
a butterfly, or we may notice the sunset. Um. So
so our attention is gathered away. But but if it's
not a demanding kind of attention, it's just this kind
of slower paced um fascination. We have this sort of fascination,
and when that happens, our frontal cortex actually relaxes. It's
sort of um, it deactivates, and this has been shown
(27:09):
in some of these brain scans as well. Our frontal
cortex deactivates, and so when we go back to the
office or when we go back to work, um, we
actually feel refreshed. It's kind of this reset button. Yeah,
that theory makes a lot of sense to me too,
because as we were talking about, you know, I talk
all the time about like when I check my phone
a lot every day. I can't really explain what it is,
(27:31):
but I feel like it has some negative effect on
me that I can't quite put my finger on exactly
what it is, but it I think fatigue is a
good word for it. Mental fatigue kind of feels like
what that is. Yeah, I think there's just this certain
amount of um, you know, just kind of strain, you
know that, Oh God, here we go again. Somebody wants
something for me, or I have to respond to something
(27:53):
that your time isn't totally your own, and your mind
isn't allowed to kind of wander on its natural path,
I know. I mean, my kids go off to summer
camp and they're teenagers, so they leave their phones behind
and this really causes a lot of anxiety at first,
you know, t like not have their phones, but I
asked them how they felt about it when they got
(28:13):
back and then they were gone for weeks, and um,
especially my son said, oh my god, it was so
great not to have my phone. Like I just didn't
feel like I had to be beholden to it, you know,
in a way that that we all are. Yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree. I'm going on a silent retreat here
in the not too distant future, and I'm looking greatly
(28:33):
forward to not having the phone or frankly any kind
of stimulation. Although about halfway through, I'm sure I will
be singing a different tune and like, give me anything
a fortune cookie to read, I'll take a fortune cookie
right the graffiti on the wall something truly. I mean,
I remember when I did one of these before. I'd
stand there by the message board you're reading them. You're
(28:56):
just so used to having something that we put in
our brain, and when you take everything away, boy, it's
it's uh, it's an interesting experience. It's true. We're we're
just not used to that level of kind of um
low stimulation, I think a little great. Yeah, but when
you're in nature, See, that's not what happens when your
nature there actually is a lot of stimulation. There's a
(29:17):
lot to draw our interest. Like, it's coming at us
at a sort of more human pace, right, it's the
it's the pace of walking, or it's the pace of
you know, lying in the grass and looking up up
at the sky. It's it's really the pace that our
brains evolved to travel in. So there are some recommendations
that come out from this about the amount of time
we should spend in nature. Obviously more is better, but
(29:38):
what did you learn about how often we should aim for? Yeah,
I'm so fascinated by that dose question, and I think
a lot of people have it, especially in the Western world.
It's like, okay, so so what's my prescription? You know,
how much time do I need to spend? Um And
And there have been some really interesting um studies in
that area, and it looks like there is kind of
a dose curve. So there are effects, actually positive of
(30:00):
benefits from just looking out your window for ten seconds
or two seconds at a at a green patch of
you know, grass or a tree. Um, if we take
a micro break by looking at greenery, we can actually
have a slightly better working memory, slightly better attentional focus.
When we go back to what we're doing. But um,
of course, the greater emotional benefits and psychological benefits really
(30:22):
come from from a deeper immersion. And I was so
interested to talk to researchers into Finland because in Finland
suicide rates are up, depression is up, alcoholism is up,
and so they're very interested in trying to prevent some
of those things. And they have come up with a
very specific recommendation, which is that to prevent depression, people
need a minimum of five hours a month in the woods.
(30:46):
Of course, that that's what they have. They have woods
all over Finland. It's not necessarily a place where you
learn a lot about canyons or deserts. That ends up
being about thirty or forty minutes twice a week. And
they say, you know, if you can do ten hours
a month, it's better, but if you can do five
five hours a month or those forty minutes twice a week,
you'll actually go a long way towards preventing depression. So
that was so specific. I thought that was kind of interesting.
(31:46):
I work by a place that has like a pond
um one of those almost corporate ponds, right, but it's
got beautiful trees and it's a nice pond and there's birds,
Like does this count? You know, there's a road next
to it, but I know that it it. You know,
for me, it does count because I definitely can tell
the benefit of you know, making myself go out there
for fifteen or twenty minutes. It's way better than nothing,
which is kind of what we always talk about on
(32:07):
this show that a little bit of something is better
than a lot of nothing. So if you're not going
to do five hours to five minutes, but anything helps, well,
it's true. In the from the Japan stories, we know
that even fifteen minutes, you know, will reduce your blood
pressure and improve your mood. So you know, that's huge.
Fifteen minutes actually can can kind of reset your your
mood for the whole day. But I think, you know,
(32:27):
when you say for you, you know what makes you
feel good, I think that that's the key to sort
of acknowledge that there's going to be a lot of
individual variation. And I think that there are times in
our lives or times in our week when we're more
stressed out and we need a bigger dose of it.
So so again, I think it just comes back to
sort of paying attention to your own kind of mental state,
in your emotional state and how you feel. You know,
(32:49):
you may know that, oh man, you really need to
go look at the ocean. You know that's what's gonna
make you feel good. Whereas for someone else, you know,
the ocean might kind of make them feel anxious. You know,
they don't. They don't like all that open space. So no,
know what you like, you know where your emotional state is,
and then you know, trying to make it happen because
the rewards will be worth it. As Chris sits here
(33:10):
and pets his dog while we talk, it makes me
wonder how animals fit into the nature piece. I mean,
we know they make us feel better, but I just
was kind of struck me. We were talking about the
natural world, and yeah, absolutely I'm with them on that.
You know, Ed Wilson, the Harvard biologist Entomologists talks a
lot about biophilia, and I talked about that quite a
bit in my book, that you know, our brains evolved
(33:32):
in nature, that we have this innate affiliation with other
living creatures, other living plants, for example, and wildlife. Certainly
we do have this kind of compulsion I think to
have a connection to other living creatures, and the dogs
certainly can release oxytocin in us when we make eye
(33:54):
contact with a dog. We know that petting a dog
releases happy hormones can also lower our blood Sure, so absolutely,
my dog's absolutely a therapy dog, and I I am
so fortunate and grateful I have her. I cannot imagine
what a basket case Chris would be without these dogs.
Meet me too. Actually, well, thank you so much for
(34:16):
taking the time to come on the show. I like you.
I loved being able to put some of the science
two things I already know. I love when science what
we're learning now matches kind of what we either intuitively
know or what we've learned from poets or spiritual teachers.
When all that comes together, I always it makes me
feel doubly sure about the value. I agree. Thanks so
(34:37):
much for having me. Okay, take care, Thank you, bye bye.
(34:58):
If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
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Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support
We don't spend that much time in nature. We are
sort of epically disconnected from it. And because of that, well,
we don't know how it makes us feel welcome to
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(01:12):
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(01:33):
Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University.
Her work focuses on the environment, health, and science. Florence's
first book, Breasts, A Natural and Unnatural History, received the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology. Her
latest book is called The Nature Fix, Why Nature makes
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(01:57):
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again for listening, and here's the interview with Florence Williams.
Hi Florence, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, Thanks so
much for having me. Your book is called The Nature Fix,
(03:00):
Why Nature makes Us happier, healthier, and more creative, which
is something that I'm very excited talking about because I
think I've learned that over the last number of years
about myself, and it's not something I would have thought
was true. But we'll get into all the science of
that in a minute, but let's start like we always do,
with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
(03:22):
us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
(03:46):
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do. I think my reaction to
that parable is a little bit contrarian. I guess I
would say it seems just too simple to dismiss one
wolf as the bad wolf and one wolf as the
good wolf. And I guess maybe because I'm a writer
(04:08):
and I like to sort of plumb the complexities and
depths of people's psyches, you know, I kind of like
knowing that both of those wolves can offer us something,
you know, and it's it's sort of too simple, I think,
to identify one as as being one we should starve
and one that we should feed. I guess I feel
(04:28):
like sometimes being friends, you know, with the dark wolf,
you know, and sometimes you can learn something from that
darker place. So I guess that's just something I've been
thinking about lately. Absolutely, Yeah, I agree, I agree. So
let's talk a little bit about the book. The title
is The Nature Fix, Why Nature makes us happier, healthier,
(04:49):
and more creative. So let's just start with happier and
what ways does nature make us happier. There have been
a lot of studies actually over the at last I
would say ten twenty years, showing that when we spend
time in pleasant natural environments and even sometimes unpleasant natural environments,
it can really boost our mood. Uh And and this
(05:12):
is something environmental psychologists, you know, noticed, I would say
in the seventies, especially with people who were depressed, you know,
after they spent you know a certain amount of time
outside or in a garden or in a forest, they
just reported feeling happier, feeling less frustration, less anger, less aggression.
And I would say in more recent years that psychology
(05:34):
has been really confirmed with neuroscience, with bio markers. So,
for example, there has been researched coming out of Japan
that shows that cortisol levels or stress hormones decrease even
after just fifteen minutes of being in a sort of
peaceful forest environment, and then your blood pressure drops and
your heart rate variability shifts in ways that are sort
(05:56):
of more resilient to stress. And I think some of
us would think, well, that's kind of obvious, you know,
we know we feel good after a walk in the park,
But I think what was less expected was sort of
the level to which our our nervous system and our
physiology really reflects that. Yeah, the happier goes hand in
hand with healthier. And in the book you you cite
studies that talk about blood pressure and cortisol levels, and
(06:19):
you even cite something called NK cells and natural killer cells.
What are those? Natural killer cells are part of our
immune system, uh and they are for example, natural killer
T cells, which can fight cancer and other diseases. And
again this research out of Japan, it seems sort of controversial,
UM is showing that our natural killer cells seemed to
(06:43):
increase after you know, just these short walks uh in
in natural areas. And then and then also even um,
these natural killer cells, if you put them in a
petri dish, they seem to increase and count and cell
count um after exposure to certain aerosols from cypress trees,
(07:03):
which is kind of fascinating and in a way if
you think about it, I mean, these aerosols from from
trees are designed to protect the tree UM. So you know,
trees will admit these in order to reward off pesticides.
For example. You know, it could be that there's really
something about our human immune system that can converse with
these aerosols as well. It's really fascinating. Yeah, you talk
(07:25):
about a Roman therapy in the book a little bit,
and you talk about the smells, and what I thought
was interesting, and it's sort of a theme that runs
through the book is that you're, on one hand, you're
deconstructing why being in nature makes us feel better, and
there's lots of different theories, whether it's smell or sight
or hearing, and so you go through the science of
each of those, and that you're also referencing a lot
(07:48):
of classical figures, a lot of poets, different people who
are sort of not deconstructing it and saying take it
sort of as a whole thing. And I just thought
that was interesting the way you kind of bounced back
and forth between that in the book. Yeah. I mean,
I think the science writer in me was really drawn,
you know, to the research, to the sort of latest evidence,
and of course we live in an evidence based society,
(08:08):
and so I wanted to make the case kind of
based on what they were telling us. Uh, you know,
and each scientist kind of lives in a silo, right,
so so the physicist was convinced that the reason we
feel good in nature is because of the fractal patterns,
you know that somehow, um, you know, converse with the
perceptual systems in our brain, you know, and the and
the psychologists were convinced, you know, that it had to
(08:29):
do with our stress reduction levels. There are other people
who had, you know, felt like it, oh, it has
to do with the color green, or the color blue,
or the smell. And yet I am a humanist also,
and I think part of me was resistant to the
idea of, you know, so compartmentalizing this really kind of
magical spiritual relationship that we have with the natural world.
(08:51):
And maybe it's not just because of you know, one
particular kind of sensory system. And I think that, you know,
it's the poets, really in the philosophers who kind of
take us back to this more kind of full immersary,
full sensory kind of engagement with nature that also appealed
to me. There's lots of great quotes in the book
from various writers, but one that I loved was Walt
(09:13):
Whitman's when he warned of the city's pestiferous little gratifications.
And I thought that was such a great description for
how sometimes I feel when I'm just in the city
or just sort of doing city like things. Over while,
it just starts to feel like whatever the gratifications are,
they just become I would never use a word like pestiferous,
(09:35):
but I probably should. I love the word pestiferous, and
I think it is so appropriate, you know, and especially now,
and we do have these little gratifications that are so
tied to our technology, you know, which of course really
didn't exist in Walt Whitman's time. But but isn't that
just a perfect description for you know, what we feel
when we get, you know, a text message coming in
(09:55):
or um, you know, when someone responds to our likes
a Twitter post. I mean, it's it's this little gratification
that that also just like naws at our soul, and
on some level we know it's really bad for us,
even though it kind of tickles our dopamine system. YEP.
The idea of seeing this as a holistic thing versus
(10:17):
the reductionist science piece reminds me of when I started
getting into eating whole foods, because there was this idea
that when you deconstruct each of these like an apple well,
here's the nutrient that's got this nutrient in that nutrient,
but there's really an idea that there's something else that
the the interplay of all those different things makes an
(10:38):
apple greater than the sum of its parts. And I
think that's very similar to what you're saying here with nature. Yeah, exactly.
I mean I felt like I had to sort of
draw apart the evidence and explain it, you know, but ultimately,
you know, whether we believe it or not comes down
to how we feel when we're outside, and that depends
on paying attention to how we feel when we're outside.
(10:58):
And I think, you know, you said it so well
at the beginning of the show when you said, you know,
I didn't really realize how happy I was going out
into nature. I think that's kind of where a lot
of us find ourselves that we don't really pay attention.
We're on our phones, maybe when we're walking outside, we
have our earbuds in, we're mulling over, you know, our
to do list, we're you know how we're all multitasking
(11:21):
so much and we're not really tuning in to how
we feel. And I think, you know, if there's one
kind of lesson I would love people to take away
from this book. It's just to you know, go outside
and also just pay attention to what makes you feel good.
You say in the book that some of us don't
even realize how nature can make us feel better. We're
so distanced from it as a culture at this point,
(11:42):
and I, myself, I don't think had any sense of that.
It was really when I met a gentleman named lud
Wine who I love to bring up. He's now passed away,
but he ran a little retreat center in Ohio called
Niches and he was the first person I really got
that idea of nature deficit disorder. For um, that there's
something in us that is really lacking if we don't
(12:04):
have some degree of exposure to nature. Yeah, that's right.
I think it's kind of a vicious cycle. As you mentioned,
you know, we we don't spend that much time in nature.
We are sort of ethically disconnected from it. And because
of that, you know, we don't we don't know how
it makes us feel, and so we undervalue it. You know,
we tend to think other things will make us feel good,
like shopping or you know, binging on Netflix or ice cream,
(12:26):
and as things do make us feel good, but we
don't really give nature a sort of a fair shot,
you know, in that competition. And of course when we
when we go outside in nature, really the side effects
are mostly positive. I mean we also get exercise. We
also sort of clear our heads, and you know, our
our cognition can improve. Um, you know, we may sleep
(12:46):
better because we're you know, kind of sinking our cycles
to the sun. You know, the benefits are just sort
of on and on, and yet you know we'd rather
just take a pill or eat some ice cream. Yeah.
You mentioned in the book how a lot of the
science about being in nature is coming out of Japan
and South Korea, and you were talking about how they
(13:08):
sort of look at this a little bit differently than
Americans do. What made me think of that was when
you said, you know, take a pill, and you you
sort of made a joke like, well, if Americans, if
we get the benefit of nature in a pill, that's
how we do it. Yeah, I mean, we definitely want
the quick fix. I think there's no question that, you know,
Eastern and Western philosophies about nature are really divergent. I mean,
(13:29):
here we consider ourselves really apart from nature. We're separate
from it. We think of it as something other. And
I think, you know, in a lot of Eastern spiritual
traditions and just in daily life even today, nature is
just more integrated into daily life. It's not necessarily pristine
nature or wilderness, UM, but you know, the emphasis on
blossoms and on you know, flower arrangements, on you know,
(13:53):
zen gardens. There's just this notion that that we can
integrate nature into our daily lives, and I just don't
think we do that as much here. And then I
also think the questions that the two cultures are pursuing
are really different and sort of fascinating. I felt like
UM in many parts of UM, Japan and South Korea,
and even in Europe too, I think more of the
(14:13):
research is focused on uh, sort of emotional states like psychology,
How do we feel better? How do we help prevent depression?
You know, maybe part of that is because those cultures
really care about prevention and preventative health, their state funded um,
you know, healthcare, for example. The research in this country
is sometimes more focused on how can time and nature
(14:34):
actually make us work harder? How can we be more productive?
How can we drain more blood you know from office
workers by maybe providing a break in nature or a
roof garden, you know, like the one found on Facebook.
The Facebook campus has this beautiful roof garden. But you know,
let's not kid ourselves. It's really still designed towards productive workforce. Right.
(14:56):
That leads me to another topic I wanted to mention,
and which was meditation. And meditation has gone through a
very similar thing. Right. There's meditation for the spiritual benefits,
and there's meditation for you know, being happier or healthier,
but then there's also meditation for being more productive. You know,
you've got the Army doing a lot in meditation. And
(15:18):
I thought that was an interesting parallel to nature. But
also to tie it back in, you talked about how
one of the scientists was saying that nature might be
a better option for a lot of us than meditation
because meditation so many of us give up on. Yeah,
I thought that was really interesting. This was from a
psychologist at Pennsylvania State, and he said, we can get
(15:38):
a lot of great benefits from meditation. I mean, this
has been well proven. You know, there's a tot of
neuroscience on this um. The problem is really the stick
tutive nous um. The adherence and and and meditation is
also something you have to learn, and not everyone gets there,
you know. I I find meditation to be challenging. I
feel like my you know, my brain is always turning
(15:58):
a million miles a minute. And yet when I just
go for a walk, you know, eventually, maybe maybe not
right away, but after twenty or thirty minutes, seven or
eight days straight. That's my mind, I guess. But but
I also I've discovered that there are shortcuts, So of
course I like that too. I like the shortcuts. Um,
(16:20):
there are ways that we can engage our our minds,
you know, when we're walking outside, Um, that can that
can sort of help us get into that zone, you
know a little more quickly. And because now I live
in a big city, I live in Washington, d c. Um,
I feel like I have to sort of maximize, you know,
my strategies for getting the most out of the nature
that I can find here. So what are some of
(16:41):
those strategies. Some of those strategies involve, for example, trying
to pay attention to my surroundings. I mean, that's kind
of the overarching theme. So yeah, so I really do
take my earbuds out like I don't. I'm not one
of these people who will listen to a podcast, you know,
while I'm on a hike. Um, don't listen to her.
People keep listening to this show. Just ignore that last piece.
(17:05):
If you're on a hike right now, put the show
on pause and come back to it later. Yeah, I mean,
it's um, it's too bad. I mean I would love
to be able to multitask as much as I can.
You know, I'm a working mom. I've got two kids,
I have a long to do list. It would be great,
but but I also know that I will get the
most benefit from actually trying to hear the birds, trying
(17:27):
to you know, pay attention to which birds are nesting
right now. I've kind of made friends with this nesting
pair of hawks, you know that hang out along the
river where I walk most days. I will you know,
try to, um, look at the fish that are jumping,
you know, in the canal or in the river. I
will look at the sky and notice what the clouds
are doing. Um. I often walk in the evening because
(17:49):
I have a dog and she's got to go out
before bed, and um, you know, I'll sort of check
in with what the moon is doing, like they're just
little little elements of nature that I can kind of
queue into that I find just kind of put me
in this more relaxed, restorative state. You know. Pretty quickly
(18:36):
you talk about bird song and how effective that is
or how useful that is for a lot of people,
And there are studies showing that it's one of the
best sounds we can listen to. It's true, although what
I also learned was it depends on the birds. More melodic,
you know, and sort of chirpy and happy the bird um,
the more relaxed and alert we will feel. But there
(18:58):
are some birds that are really great, you know, the
j kind of call, or the magpie um, and that
turns out does not have quite the same restorative effect. Yeah,
and ever since I learned how smart crows are and
that they can remember faces and keep grudges, their sounds
have been a little bit more. Are they kind of evil?
Chris is saying they're evil? I don't know if they're evil.
(19:19):
What they are is wicked smart. So now I hear
their cause a little differently, and they are. It reminds
me of that old joke, what does the crow say
when he sees a friend crossing the road. I'll leave
it to Chris whether he wants to edit that out. So, yeah,
I thought the studies on birdsong were very interesting. You know,
(19:40):
businesses and institutions are starting to use this research in
some interesting ways. So for example, British Petroleum UM petrol
stations and in the UK are now piping birdsong apparently
into the restrooms you know, of these gas stations because
they think that it will it will leave people with
an impression of unliness and freshness and the moment spent
(20:02):
more money in the mini mart. Interesting. Well, I wish
they would. I wish the places were doing it would
pump bird song into where you're getting your gas instead
of a TV show or a news or all the
other racket that comes out a lot of those gas pumps.
These days, my gas station plays classical music and it's
actually quite wonderful. That is nice. Most of my gas
(20:23):
stations don't play anything, but there's a couple where it's
like a you know, the news playing or a special
show trying to get you to go in and buy
different things inside. Yeah, that's definitely not relaxing. No. One
of the interesting things you mentioned was that walking in
nature versus walking in the city. You're likely to have
(20:43):
less negative thoughts when you're walking in nature. There was
a really interesting study that came out of Stanford UM
a couple of years ago, and UM, the psychologists they're
actually imaged people's brains. So he scanned people's brains to
find out, you know, which parts of their brains were
lighting up in different environments. And so he sent a
group of volunteers to walk along, um a city street,
(21:06):
like a pretty busy city street for ninety minutes UM.
And then another group to walk UM in a city
park but by no means a wilderness area, you know,
just like a nice city party gets the Standford dish,
you know, outside of Palo Alto. And what he found
was that in the nature walkers, but not in the
city walkers, a part of the brain the activation became reduced.
(21:27):
There was less activation in this part of the prefrontal
cortex called the sub general prefrontal cortex. And it's actually
a part of the brain that is associated with um
ruminative thought or negative thinking. And then we know that
that part of the brain is kind of um the
worry box. It's the part of the brain associated with
depression actually, and so I thought it was so interesting
that it was after walking in nature that that part
(21:49):
of the brain really calmed down. But of course, I
think the fascinating question, and we don't really know the
answer to this yet, is well, if there's less activation
in that part of the brain, where is that activation
going instead. And the theories to that are, well, maybe
it's going to parts of the brain um that are
more associated with things like UM, long term thinking, UM, empathy,
(22:11):
compassion um, you know, self concept, the things that we
kind of when we really can space out for long
periods of time away from technology, you know, we start
thinking about our our goals and our dreams and who
we are. You know, those are the kinds of big
questions that I think so few of us really have
the time to kind of tackle anymore. Yeah, it was interesting.
(22:31):
Some of the studies in the book talk about, you know,
the benefits of walking with others. And then there's lots
of quotes in the book you're again referencing lots of
great thinkers, Plato and Nietsche and lots of other people
about how walking alone is where they get so many
of their ideas, And so you kind of talk about
the benefits of doing each of those things. Yes, exactly.
(22:53):
I mean, we know that when we're outdoors with other people,
we can really um strengthen those bonds, the social bond,
the bonds of friendship. I know. We know when my
family is outside, my kids get along with each other better.
I think, you know, we all have this shared experience. Um.
You know, it can be a really beautiful thing to
actually be outside with friends or family. But at the
(23:14):
same time, I know for myself there are times when
I really just crave the solitude and I really need
it because I'm working out you know, issues with my
work or issues with my personal life. Um, I need
the time to kind of zone out and not have
an agenda. Uh. And and I think some really really
powerful things can happen when we allow ourselves to have
(23:36):
that time. And in fact, in part of the book,
I talk about wilderness, um, you know, and and time
and wilderness. And of course there's a long tradition right
of rights of passage, um, people having vision quests so
low fastening. I mean, those a long, long spiritual tradition
of this, and I think we'd be smart to kind
of reconsider that, you know, in this kind of frenetic,
(23:58):
crazy life that we all live. Yeah, my son recently
went on a couple of weeks outdoor trip and part
of it was a solo thing. So I think it
was definitely very interesting and useful for him. What did
he get out of it, That's a great question. Maybe
we should call him and ask him, because I can't remember,
but it made an impression on him. It made an impression.
(24:20):
I think what he was struck by was how much
harder it was than he thought it was going to be.
Not necessarily to being alone, it was I think it
was being in the woods for that long. They got
rained on an awful lot, and so I think that
was a somewhat sobering experience. No, I thought he really
liked it. He loves to be outdoors. So and you know,
I think we just don't turn off our phones anymore
(24:40):
and and their tremendous benefits from that. So I think,
you know, one of the questions when we look at
the benefits of nature, how much of it is really
attributed to nature itself, and how much of it is
attributed to of being away, you know, from the things
that kind of stress us out. And I'm not sure,
the answer to that is is necessarily important. Um, But
but I do think it's an interesting question. Yeah, it's
(25:00):
probably some of both. I think people way before we
had cell phones and all that, have been talking about
the beneficial effects of nature. You know, a lot of
the people you're quoting in the book we're you know,
writing hundreds of years ago in some cases, and and
we're getting the benefits of nature. So it's probably some
of both. I think that's right. There were a couple
of different theories that you mentioned about how nature might
(25:22):
help us, but one of them that I was really
intrigued by was attention restoration theory, the general idea that
you can correct me if I'm wrong. And then add
on to it was that a lot of our sense
of mental unease comes from the fact that we've kind
of worn out our frontal cortex or are our executive thinking,
(25:44):
and that's what makes us feel bad, and that by
going into nature, it gives that part of the brain
arrest and that's one of the reasons why it feels
so good to us. Yeah, I think that that theory
really has a lot of traction, and it was developed
by a couple Rachel and Stephen Kaplan at the University
of Michigan in the nineties seventies. So again, long before
(26:05):
there were cell phones, long before there was an internet. Uh,
you know, there was still a sense that our daily
modern lives are fast paced and frenetic and um, you know,
our to do list are very long. We're constantly working
on tasks, were constantly responding, you know, to external stimuli.
We have a lot of information coming at us, and
(26:26):
when we do that, it makes us tired. It fatigues
our frontal cortex and we get a little bit grumpy.
Even if we don't realize it. We're just on some
level kind of overtaxed. And when we go outside, the
theory is that our attention is drawn kind of involuntarily,
just towards things that are beautiful. Um, we may notice
(26:47):
a butterfly, or we may notice the sunset. Um. So
so our attention is gathered away. But but if it's
not a demanding kind of attention, it's just this kind
of slower paced um fascination. We have this sort of fascination,
and when that happens, our frontal cortex actually relaxes. It's
sort of um, it deactivates, and this has been shown
(27:09):
in some of these brain scans as well. Our frontal
cortex deactivates, and so when we go back to the
office or when we go back to work, um, we
actually feel refreshed. It's kind of this reset button. Yeah,
that theory makes a lot of sense to me too,
because as we were talking about, you know, I talk
all the time about like when I check my phone
a lot every day. I can't really explain what it is,
(27:31):
but I feel like it has some negative effect on
me that I can't quite put my finger on exactly
what it is, but it I think fatigue is a
good word for it. Mental fatigue kind of feels like
what that is. Yeah, I think there's just this certain
amount of um, you know, just kind of strain, you
know that, Oh God, here we go again. Somebody wants
something for me, or I have to respond to something
(27:53):
that your time isn't totally your own, and your mind
isn't allowed to kind of wander on its natural path,
I know. I mean, my kids go off to summer
camp and they're teenagers, so they leave their phones behind
and this really causes a lot of anxiety at first,
you know, t like not have their phones, but I
asked them how they felt about it when they got
(28:13):
back and then they were gone for weeks, and um,
especially my son said, oh my god, it was so
great not to have my phone. Like I just didn't
feel like I had to be beholden to it, you know,
in a way that that we all are. Yeah, yeah,
I definitely agree. I'm going on a silent retreat here
in the not too distant future, and I'm looking greatly
(28:33):
forward to not having the phone or frankly any kind
of stimulation. Although about halfway through, I'm sure I will
be singing a different tune and like, give me anything
a fortune cookie to read, I'll take a fortune cookie
right the graffiti on the wall something truly. I mean,
I remember when I did one of these before. I'd
stand there by the message board you're reading them. You're
(28:56):
just so used to having something that we put in
our brain, and when you take everything away, boy, it's
it's uh, it's an interesting experience. It's true. We're we're
just not used to that level of kind of um
low stimulation, I think a little great. Yeah, but when
you're in nature, See, that's not what happens when your
nature there actually is a lot of stimulation. There's a
(29:17):
lot to draw our interest. Like, it's coming at us
at a sort of more human pace, right, it's the
it's the pace of walking, or it's the pace of
you know, lying in the grass and looking up up
at the sky. It's it's really the pace that our
brains evolved to travel in. So there are some recommendations
that come out from this about the amount of time
we should spend in nature. Obviously more is better, but
(29:38):
what did you learn about how often we should aim for? Yeah,
I'm so fascinated by that dose question, and I think
a lot of people have it, especially in the Western world.
It's like, okay, so so what's my prescription? You know,
how much time do I need to spend? Um And
And there have been some really interesting um studies in
that area, and it looks like there is kind of
a dose curve. So there are effects, actually positive of
(30:00):
benefits from just looking out your window for ten seconds
or two seconds at a at a green patch of
you know, grass or a tree. Um, if we take
a micro break by looking at greenery, we can actually
have a slightly better working memory, slightly better attentional focus.
When we go back to what we're doing. But um,
of course, the greater emotional benefits and psychological benefits really
(30:22):
come from from a deeper immersion. And I was so
interested to talk to researchers into Finland because in Finland
suicide rates are up, depression is up, alcoholism is up,
and so they're very interested in trying to prevent some
of those things. And they have come up with a
very specific recommendation, which is that to prevent depression, people
need a minimum of five hours a month in the woods.
(30:46):
Of course, that that's what they have. They have woods
all over Finland. It's not necessarily a place where you
learn a lot about canyons or deserts. That ends up
being about thirty or forty minutes twice a week. And
they say, you know, if you can do ten hours
a month, it's better, but if you can do five
five hours a month or those forty minutes twice a week,
you'll actually go a long way towards preventing depression. So
that was so specific. I thought that was kind of interesting.
(31:46):
I work by a place that has like a pond
um one of those almost corporate ponds, right, but it's
got beautiful trees and it's a nice pond and there's birds,
Like does this count? You know, there's a road next
to it, but I know that it it. You know,
for me, it does count because I definitely can tell
the benefit of you know, making myself go out there
for fifteen or twenty minutes. It's way better than nothing,
which is kind of what we always talk about on
(32:07):
this show that a little bit of something is better
than a lot of nothing. So if you're not going
to do five hours to five minutes, but anything helps, well,
it's true. In the from the Japan stories, we know
that even fifteen minutes, you know, will reduce your blood
pressure and improve your mood. So you know, that's huge.
Fifteen minutes actually can can kind of reset your your
mood for the whole day. But I think, you know,
(32:27):
when you say for you, you know what makes you
feel good, I think that that's the key to sort
of acknowledge that there's going to be a lot of
individual variation. And I think that there are times in
our lives or times in our week when we're more
stressed out and we need a bigger dose of it.
So so again, I think it just comes back to
sort of paying attention to your own kind of mental state,
in your emotional state and how you feel. You know,
(32:49):
you may know that, oh man, you really need to
go look at the ocean. You know that's what's gonna
make you feel good. Whereas for someone else, you know,
the ocean might kind of make them feel anxious. You know,
they don't. They don't like all that open space. So no,
know what you like, you know where your emotional state is,
and then you know, trying to make it happen because
the rewards will be worth it. As Chris sits here
(33:10):
and pets his dog while we talk, it makes me
wonder how animals fit into the nature piece. I mean,
we know they make us feel better, but I just
was kind of struck me. We were talking about the
natural world, and yeah, absolutely I'm with them on that.
You know, Ed Wilson, the Harvard biologist Entomologists talks a
lot about biophilia, and I talked about that quite a
bit in my book, that you know, our brains evolved
(33:32):
in nature, that we have this innate affiliation with other
living creatures, other living plants, for example, and wildlife. Certainly
we do have this kind of compulsion I think to
have a connection to other living creatures, and the dogs
certainly can release oxytocin in us when we make eye
(33:54):
contact with a dog. We know that petting a dog
releases happy hormones can also lower our blood Sure, so absolutely,
my dog's absolutely a therapy dog, and I I am
so fortunate and grateful I have her. I cannot imagine
what a basket case Chris would be without these dogs.
Meet me too. Actually, well, thank you so much for
(34:16):
taking the time to come on the show. I like you.
I loved being able to put some of the science
two things I already know. I love when science what
we're learning now matches kind of what we either intuitively
know or what we've learned from poets or spiritual teachers.
When all that comes together, I always it makes me
feel doubly sure about the value. I agree. Thanks so
(34:37):
much for having me. Okay, take care, Thank you, bye bye.
(34:58):
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Host
Eric Zimmer
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