Nature

Nature, harmony and well-being: from traditional cultures to ecotherapy

POSTED OCT 30, 2019

Humankind has revered and celebrated nature for millennia.  

Native Americans recognize Nature as something we live within and are part of. For them, nature is the location of spiritual reality for individual beings and in the more general sense of the sacred.  Its spiritual value calls for reverence, respect, and humility in our relationship with nature. Also strong in their belief system is their sense of stewardship, most famously expressed by Chief Seattle "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."

Dating back to the ancient Shinto, the relationship of Japanese culture to nature is also one of harmony and respect.  They feel a spiritual bond with nature and this is evident through various practices. For example, Japanese gardening, such as rock gardens, express their belief in living harmoniously with nature. Such appreciative origins date back to the beliefs of ancient Shinto, a widely practiced religion in Japan. Their appreciation for the simplicity of nature is apparent in the structure and design of rock gardens. 

The Japanese celebrate nature and they have two beautiful words indicative of their appreciation: "komorebi" (refers to the sunlight shining through the leaves of trees, creating a sort of dance between the light and the leaves) and "shinrin-yoku" (walking through the forest and soaking in all the green light).  Shinrin-yoku translates roughly to "forest-bathing," which sums up the activity fairly well. It's getting outdoors to de-stress, relax, and promote well-being. 

The Norwegian version of shinrin-yoku is "friluftsliv", which translates as “free air life.” Henrik Ibsen coined the term in a poem in 1859, although similar phrases had existed for decades, like the phrase "frilufts-painting" used by some artists of Europe's Romantic era. Although friluftsliv stresses activities such as hiking and camping, it’s more complex than that.  It covers everything from walking and dancing outdoors to sleeping under the stars, and it is in some profound way about communing with nature.

Friluftsliv is also informed by the old Norwegian concept allemannsretten, which literally means "all men's right" but is also translated as "freedom to roam." It lets anyone explore undeveloped private property as long as they obey certain rules, an ancient tradition encoded into Norwegian law.  By allowing so much rambling while also mandating good behavior, allemannsretten may have helped sow two key seeds of friluftsliv: curiosity and composure.

In Western Europe, the natural world has been seen as a source of respite from the discontents of modern life since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  Celebrating nature as well as the senses and emotions and individual freedom, Romanticism became a dominant intellectual movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, influencing painting, philosophy, aesthetics, and literature.  The Romanticists celebrated Nature - often with a sense of awe and transcendence.  Sometimes, as in the case of German painter Caspar David Friedrich and English poet William Blake, their works evoked the spiritual, the mystical, and the "sublime."  The Romanticists saw the sublime as a special kind of beauty, a "realm of experience beyond the measurable" that arises from awe-inspiring (and sometimes terrifying) natural phenomena. 

The United States with its amazing natural beauty has a long wilderness tradition, beginning with a form of the romantic movement known as American transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were perhaps the two most famous leaders of the movement.

"Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 'Nature', a seminal text for transcendentalism, explores the importance of solitude, the beauty of nature and the significance for both of these for understanding God. Emerson’s influence on Henry David Thoreau, and his long relationship with him, plants the roots of the American wilderness preservation movement firmly in transcendentalism...

"Thoreau is the first major figure and intellectual of the American wilderness tradition.  In 'Walden', he is concerned with the degrading influence of too much society, commerce and industry and with the salutary effects of nature’s company...Both Walden and his travel writings argue for the existence of deeper meanings and higher uses in nature than as mere material for the human economy. He found the aesthetic value of nature to be spiritually and morally important, and woefully underappreciated. But he also spoke of a broader point view, which sees the weeds as food for the birds and the squirrels as planters of the forest." (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 

John Muir, the co-founder of the Sierra Club and one of the main driving forces for the creation of the US National Park System, is another prominent figure in the American wilderness tradition. 

[Muir] often focused on the potential of wilderness and of nature study for personal and spiritual transformation. His prescription for overworked and materialistic America was a conversion, a baptism in mountain beauty and reconciliation to wild nature. Muir found nature to be not only sublime and beautiful but earnestly benevolent. Even what appears harsh and destructive in nature, such as glaciation (a process on which he became a significant expert), should be seen as part of the ongoing, loving, creative process.  (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 

As these traditions attest, being in/communing with nature clearly brings mental, physical and spiritual benefits.  We are part of the natural world and nourished by it.  Researchers today are confirming these insights. 

A study, conducted in 2015 by a Stanford-led team, found "that people who walked for 90 minutes in a natural area, as opposed to participants who walked in a high-traffic urban setting, showed decreased activity in a region of the brain associated with a key factor in depression.  “These results suggest that accessible natural areas may be vital for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world,” said study co-author Gretchen Daily. “Our findings can help inform the growing movement worldwide to make cities more livable, and to make nature more accessible to all who live in them.”

Discussing the study and others like it, a Harvard Medical School article notes that "research in a growing scientific field called ecotherapy has shown a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.  And discuss how we can apply this to our daily lives:

How much time with nature is enough? "Anything from 20 to 30 minutes, three days a week, to regular three-day weekends in the woods is helpful," says Dr. Strauss. "The point is to make your interactions a part of your normal lifestyle.  Your time with nature could be something as simple as a daily walk in a park or a Saturday afternoon on a local trail. "You can even try to combine your nature outings with your regular exercise by power walking or cycling outdoors," says Dr. Strauss.  The type of nature setting doesn't matter, either. "Focus on places you find the most pleasing," says Dr. Strauss. "The goal is to get away from stimulating urban settings and surround yourself with a natural environment."

The Psych Central website summarizes the findings of the continuing research in its article "10 Ways Nature Helps Your Well-Being".  These are listed in condensed form in the sidebar.  For more detail, follow the above link to the article.

Below: "The Monk by the Sea" by Caspar David Friedrich (1808-1810) - Friedrich's most famous painting and an example of the Romanticist notion of the "sublime"