Unplug, Recharge, & Reconnect with Blue and Green Spaces

Rita Mercer Author

Feeling drained? Lacking motivation? Discover how blue & green spaces can help you recharge, find peace, & reconnect with yourself & the world.

Finding Time to Rest

Do you remember dial up internet? Waiting for your computer to slowly, ewww so painfully slowly connect to the internet? I definitely don’t miss any of that, but I do think of fond memories of playing outside for hours and hours until the street lights came on. I remember feeling so free, having so much fun. Then adulthood hits. Real life of schedules, deadlines, noise, noise, and more noise. Pressures to achieve and reach for the next bar in the corporate world, but still not feeling fulfilled. Geez, adulthood can be so hard sometimes. What’s missing from the days of freedom of being a kid? All work and very little time, money, and energy to play. Well what your mind, body, and spirit is craving is time in nature.

But what if the rest you crave could be as simple as spending time in nature? Whether it’s a local park or a nearby lake, nature provides the reset we all need.

Ideas to Unplug & Recharge:

• Take a staycation at a nearby park
• Go camping or glamping
• Explore your local state or national parks

What Are Blue and Green Spaces?

Today, we’re going to take a look at ways to recharge without having to go on vacation.

When you think of the color green, what comes to mind?

What about blue, what comes to mind?

Pause and take a moment to notice all the things, places, and ideas that you associate with the colors blue and green.  I want you to get a picture and a thought in your mind. Take a few more moments. 

Alright, with that picture in mind, I want you to mentally visualize visiting a green or blue space and spending 15-30 without distractions of external sounds like music, podcasts, or a book. Allow yourself to just be, just be present. Present in the fullness of nature. A few ideas for green spaces can include a local forest, park, open grass field. A few ideas for blue spaces can include any body of water like an ocean, lake, river, or even a creek.

When you think of the being in one of these blue or green spaces, what thought, feeling or need comes to mind?

While being in nature can feel like a whole body experience, with all our senses being activated, being near blue spaces can activate a calm, mindful, and meditative experience. And the color green can bring up feelings of freedom, abundance, peace, and security - emotional and physical. Noticing the variety of colors allows our brain to pause and notice the differences. This focused attention on our surroundings helps our brain to reduce the focus on other things. Research shows that exposure to green can help to reduce stress, depressive and anxious moods, and improve focus, impulse control and creativity. Exposure to blue spaces can help to feel calmer and more relaxed, as well as more peaceful, tranquil, secure, and in control.

Examples of Blue & Green Spaces:

• Green Spaces: Forests, parks, open fields
• Blue Spaces: Oceans, lakes, rivers, creeks

How to Identify Deficits & Find Balance

Do you notice how when life gets busy, our mood and our emotional bandwidth gets low? Then, our stress levels increase, followed by waves of feeling overwhelmed, chronic pain, and negative self-talk start to settle into our mind, body, and spirit. Oftentimes, this can also lead to rumination, which shows up as worries and anxieties. Not to mention, the physical affects on our bodies when we’re exposed to prolonged worries and stress that shows up as a rise in our blood pressure and our heart rates increases. And constant rumination and overthinking leads to an imbalance in our body’s neurotransmitters, also known as happiness hormones such as serotonin, dopamine, which can impact things such as our thoughts, feelings, motivation, and memory.

Life is full of notifications, endless background noise, distractions, and just the sheer busyness of it all. When life gets busy and when we feel overstimulated by the sights and sounds of life, it can drown out your your passion, your focus, inner voice, your peace, and your connection to those you love most. We’re just so easily distracted. Jumping from one thing to another, many will try to multitask with hopes of increasing efficiency. But unfortunately, that can’t be further from the truth. Multitasking is just simply switching attention from one thing to another. Our brain, like a massive computer, has to slow down to focus on the new task and then switch back to the previous task. So instead of multitasking, research says that what we’re actually doing is “task switching”, which just increases the cognitive load, leading to a decrease in memory and focus.

Signs You Need a Break:

• Feeling overwhelmed or anxious
• Constant overthinking and rumination
• Physical signs of stress, such as high blood pressure

Next Steps: Unplug, Recharge, & Reconnect

So now, we’ve gotten the deficits, the bad news out of the way, let’s shift gears to the good news of how we can unplug, recharge, and reconnect with green and blue spaces.

Spending time in blue and green spaces can greatly boost our mood and our attention. Research calls the concept, perceptual fluency. It’s simply the beauty of the natural environments ability to ground us with our senses with repeated patterns, shapes, colors, and sounds. This makes it easy for us to feel calmer and more in control, because our brain can make sense of what’s going on.

According to the Attention Restoration Theory, spending time outdoors helps us to engage in nature’s green and blue spaces with soft fascination all with very little mental brain power, while decreasing the mental load on our prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) located at the front part of the brain, the frontal lobe, and it plays a key role in complex cognitive functions. These include decision-making, problem-solving, goal setting, self-control, and regulating emotions. It also helps with attention, focus, and understanding social behavior.

While issues with focus, problem solving, and attention are true features of ADHD, which is a true clinical condition, I invite you to consider some holistic ways to best approach wellness by increasing more mindful time out in green and blue spaces. So to get the best benefit, you want to minimize distractions such as not using your phone and just be present in nature. Spending time in nature helps our brain to reset and find balance so that we can regain our focus and attention. So if you’re feeling lost, disconnected, and need more clarity and more calm, try spending time in blue or green spaces. Answer the call, to tune back into nature. 

If you curious about ways to become more mindful, please check the link for the 6 week, Mindfully You Wellness Program starting soon. You can find out more information at www.DaringWell.com/wellness. I would love to support you on your wellness journey.

Lastly, I challenge you to tap into what your mind, body, and spirit needs in the moment. Are you seeking more freedom, more clarity, more fun, or just simply some relaxation time. Tune into that and give yourself permission and add it to your daily or weekly routine. And before you say that you don’t have time, let me just gently remind you that we all have 24 hours within a day we all make time for what’s important to us? So if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way and you’ll find time to spend in blue and green spaces to unplug, recharge and reconnect.

How to Incorporate Nature:

• Minimize distractions and be present in nature
• Go for mindful walks in parks or by the water
• Spend time journaling outdoors
• Enjoy open views with calming sounds

Closing

Remember, tune in to the colors of blue and green spaces, the sounds, and patterns of nature. When life gets busy and you feel overwhelmed, lean into the stillness of nature and take time to recharge in blue and green spaces.

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Categories: : Calm, Forest Bathing, Grounding, Mindfulness, Nature