Pathways to Healing with Nature Therapy: Life’s Reset Button

Rita Mercer Author

Nature therapy, also known as ecotherapy or forest bathing, is about mindfully engaging with the natural environment to boost your mood.

Are you feeling disconnected or overwhelmed? Today, we're exploring how nature therapy can help you heal, reset, and restore balance in your life. Imagine being able to hit a reset button for your mind, emotions, and nervous system. Nature offers us this powerful opportunity to realign and find peace.

What Is Nature Therapy?

Do you feel disconnected? By living simply and more mindfully, we can reconnect with our mind, body and spirit through nature.

Do you remember being a kid and just playing outside for hours? Catching lightening bugs. Playing hide and seek. I remember those good ole days of rolling around in the grass, hanging out with my brother and friends, and yes —— as a true Kentucky girl, I loved walking around barefoot. Somewhere between teenage years and adulthood, we loose that spark of creativity, fun, and simply feeing so carefree. Well, my dear, I hope today you walk away with new ways to reset and recharge. When life gets hectic, go back to the basics. Nature. Pause. Take a moment to just slow down. I know you’re overwhelmed, but when your mind, body, and spirit is craving more balance. Tune into that. Many times we will feel the disconnect in our body long before we can cognitively process what we’re feeling or thinking. Nature has a powerful way of healing.

So, what exactly is nature therapy? In its simplest form, nature therapy involves mindfully connecting and engaging with the natural environment to boost your physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Nature therapy is also referred to as ecotherapy, green care, green exercise, green therapy, horticulture therapy, grounding, and forest bathing to name a few.

It’s not just about going for a hike or sitting in a park—which are actually some good ideas to do—but it’s more about mindfully engaging with nature. At the end of today’s episode, I’ll share some ideas to help you connect with nature so you can restore balance and health in your everyday life.

The Deficits of Disconnection from Nature

Now, let’s talk about the flip side—the deficits, what happens when we don’t engage in nature therapy as part of a wellness practice. Be honest with yourself, how many hours a day do you get caught up scrolling social media or YouTube? Does 10 minutes quickly evolve into 1 hour, 2 hours? Then, before you know it, you’ve binged hours of content just to feel more empty and drained than before you started.

In our modern world full of non-stop news, social media, and even instant access to people from across the street to people on the other side of the world. We’re so connected with our devices from cell phones, tablets, video games, and computers. Don’t get me wrong, I love my technology. It definitely makes my life more streamlined and more efficient. Lord knows, I don’t miss using a typewriter and correction tape. But the honest truth is, for many of us we’re so overwhelmed, disconnected, and living without any passion or deep sense of purpose. We’ve lost our way in the busyness of it all and gotten disconnected from nature because we spend the majority of our time indoors, surrounded by technology. Ahhh, the gift of technology is truly a first world problem. But sometimes it helps to just pause to reflect on how did we get here — how did we get to the point of feeling so disconnected from our minds, our bodies, and our spirits.

This disconnection can lead to what some researchers call "nature deficit disorder," a term used to describe the negative consequences of being cut off from the natural world. Examples of nature deficits can include a feeling of increased stress, anxiety, depression, negative thinking, poor interpersonal relationships, and even physical health problems. Without a weekly routine to connect and to tune into nature, we will find ourselves feeling easily irritable, fatigued, more overwhelmed, less creative, and just flat out, disconnected and out of sync with ourselves and our relationships.

By increasing your awareness around nature deficits, you can learn how to sense physical and mental cues when you feel a lack of balance. Here are some simple signs you can be more mindful of when you might need to reconnect with nature:

Signs You Need Nature Therapy:

• Increased stress and anxiety
• Mental fatigue and lack of creativity
• Emotional instability and mood swings
• Physical tension or headaches
• Feeling disconnected from yourself and others]

The Benefits of Nature Therapy

Engaging with nature offers endless benefits:

• Physical: Lowers blood pressure and stress hormones, boosts immune function.
• Mental: Reduces rumination, improves mood, enhances focus, and creativity.
• Spiritual: Fosters a deep sense of connection, purpose, and peace.
• Social: Strengthens relationships and reduces feelings of loneliness.

The benefits for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being are both simple and quite biologically complex.

Here are some of the top benefits:

Physical Benefits

The calming effect of nature helps to activate our parasympathetic nervous system and relax our body. Physically, spending time in nature has been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rates, as well as reduce levels of the stress related hormones - cortisol and adrenaline.

Exposure to the smells of nature by way of phytoncides, which are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or “essential oils” given off by trees and plants. These chemicals have natural healing antibacterial and antifungal properties that help to boost our immune system. When we breathe in these natural chemicals, research shows that our bodies begin to increase a type of white blood cell called natural killer cells (NK)

~ Breathe in the calming notes of nature and find wholeness and healing.

Many forms of nature therapy, such as gardening, hiking, biking, or just taking a walk in the park are a few activities to help to increase your strength, boost your fitness levels, and improve your overall physical health.

Mental Benefits

Mentally, the natural environment with its kaleidoscope of colors, layers of textures and sounds provides a soothing backdrop that can help boost our mood.

Spending time in nature can decrease amygdala activation, that feeling of triggered and driven by strong impulses and strong thoughts and feelings. Nature therapy helps to increase a positive mood and promote feelings of calm, clarity, and hope by increasing levels of the happiness hormones serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins.

It also helps to reduces rumination. Rumination shows up as negative emotions and thoughts that kind of stay on repeat in our thoughts. These repetitive thought loops if not interrupted will eventually lead to an increase of negative self worth, stress, anxiety, depression, and other mood symptoms.

Nature has a restorative effect on attention. The concept of “Attention Restoration Theory” suggests that nature allows the brain to recover from mental fatigue, improving concentration and focus.

Spending time outdoors with the natural environment can reduces mental clutter and negative rumination and help to stimulate your creative juices and increase problem solving.

Cognitive Development in Children

Nature provides a healthy outlet for energy and curiosity for children. Spending time in nature can boost cognitive functioning in children by helping to promote healthy brain development through exploratory learning, creativity, problem-solving, attention.

Children also gain behavioral benefits from regular time in nature and find more opportunities to learn how to practice patience, cooperation, and social skills.

Spiritual Well-Being

This spiritual aspect of nature can bring about a deep sense of peace, purpose, connection, and inner fulfillment. Nature has a way of making us feel a sense of gratitude and offers a way of feeling grounded, helping us reconnect with our true selves and reminding us of the simple, yet profound beauty of life. The natural environment offers a space for reflection and introspection, leading to greater emotional balance and a more positive outlook on life. Nature therapy can deepen our connection to our local and global environment and invite us to consider something greater than ourself.

Enhanced Social Connections

I love spending time in nature with friends and family. Engaging in nature-based activities with loved ones can strengthen social bonds. Whether it’s a group hike, a community garden project, or a simple walk with a friend, nature therapy often encourages social interaction and fosters deeper connections.

We’re not that far removed from COVID and the isolation that came with that season of lives when it felt like time stood still. Nature therapy can provide opportunities for community engagement and shared experiences in natural settings to help reduce feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

Enhanced Environmental Awareness

I’m not saying you should go out and become a tree hugger or anything. But I will say that spending more time in nature leads to a greater appreciation and gratitude for the environment. This can show up as taking more personal responsibility for our trash and finding new ways to protect and preserve natural spaces for us humans and for all of natures little critters. 

Improved Sleep Quality

Last, but not least, is improving our quality of sleep. I won’t spend too much time on this one, because I have a whole episode where I go much deeper, so feel free to check out episode # 19 & 20 for more sleep wellness tips and insights.

Nature helps us to regulate our sleep. Exposure to natural light during the day helps regulate circadian rhythms, which in turn helps our body know when to start the production of melatonin to help us to go to sleep and stay asleep. Time in nature, especially during the early hours of morning and early afternoon, can help reset the body’s internal clock and promote more restful sleep.

There’s so many healing benefits to spending time in nature. Nature therapy is a holistic approach to well-being, that addresses the mind, body, and spirit in so many ways.

Next Steps: How to Incorporate Nature Therapy

Are you feeling information overload yet? Well, I just have few quick ideas to share with you so can start to incorporate nature therapy into your life and weekly routine?

Start small. Set aside time each week to connect with nature—whether it's a walk in the park, grounding (walking barefoot), or simply sitting outside observing your surroundings.

One research study of participants in England showed that spending 120 minutes per week in nature will yield optimal results for healing and overall wellbeing. That same research study also showed that effects peaked around 200-300 minutes per week, yielding no additional benefits.

Ideas:

• Practice deep breathing in nature
• Go for mindful walks
• Try forest bathing or guided nature tours

Recap & Closing

Nature therapy is a simple yet powerful way to heal, reconnect, and restore balance in your life. By mindfully engaging with the natural world, you can reduce stress, boost your health, and find a deeper sense of peace.

Take a moment today to step outside and let nature help you reset. Remember, sometimes healing is just a walk in the park away.

Free Gift: Don't forget to download our Free Wellness Guide for more practical tips and resources to help you navigate through loss and embrace resilience.

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Categories: : Forest Bathing, Grounding, Mindfulness, Nature