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Nature along with mindfulness; the evidence base for combining them to promote better concentration and improved stress management.

Summer has arrived, the days are long, and we’re all commenting on how the sunshine brings a smile to people’s faces.
Even the dogs in the park seem joyous now that the winter blues have faded into our memories.
This time of year, often gets us out in nature because we don’t have to go out pre-armed with boots, hats, scarves, and gloves. We can just go as we are, it’s so much easier.

Nature exposure
There are many studies below which provide evidence that attention and working memory are critical coping resources for stress. They can be dramatically improved through nature exposure.
Mindfulness
We also know that mindfulness is a resource for coping, because mindful attention can facilitate effective appraisal and cognitive flexibility for coping. Mindfulness practices also lower cortisol levels, reduce distress across various samples including veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (1) cancer patients (2), and children (3)
Prolonged mindfulness practice is associated with increased ability to self-regulate automatic or habitual responses to stressors.

So, can you imagine how utterly mind-blowing and life-changing practicing mindfulness while outdoors in nature could be for you?

Nature exposure
Being in nature is positively associated with emotional and psychological wellbeing (4). That is, a feeling of judging life positively and feeling good.
Even indirect exposure to nature, such as looking out a window onto a park, is positively associated with wellbeing. (5). How often do you check out the view the first time you enter your hotel room?
Being in nature promotes our personal wellbeing through two pathways which you may find yourself becoming aware of next time you’re in nature.
Firstly, directed attention which means that we’re focusing on purpose on the nature around us. Like with meditation, it takes effort, and we can become fatigued until we’re more practiced at this. Secondly, involuntary attention which involves intrinsic easy-going interest in the environment, and which requires little effort at all.
Here’s the great thing: by spending time having this easy-going intrinsic interest, it actually improves our ability to have the focused attention (8)
Not only that, but it also improves our working memory (9), executive functioning (10), and self-regulation (11).

I don’t know about you. But when I’m having a full-on day at work in the hospital, I need focused attention, good memory, high functioning and self-regulation all running at full throttle.

Mindfulness
We already know that mindfulness is associated with wellbeing in so many ways: reduced stress, more positive state of mind, tolerance of pain, better quality sleep, reduction in depressive symptoms. (6)

John Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment non-judgmentally.”
What this means is that we actively focus on the present moment, without straying into the past or the future. We see our emotions with curious eyes without judging them as right or wrong, or as anything in fact. Just feeling them and accepting that they are present.

Mindfulness and connection with nature each, separately, have been shown to cultivate good attention and to restore attention which has waned, which is essential for us to manage daily activities and our work effectively. (7)

Stress management in the veterinary industry is something I get asked a lot about. Many of us are under an enormous amount of stress and we see it as a normal part of the job. Sometimes we like stress as a driver of performance; like healthy stress with the pleasant adrenaline high which comes with an urgent case or a large caseload. When stress becomes an unhealthy way of being it’s because it’s depleting our personal resources at a rate greater than which we can replenish those resources.
Heathy coping with stress or adrenaline highs is called coping and it involves the appraisal of stressors using our internal non-judgmental attributes and often external resources such as going outside for a walk, a run, a breather.
Being in nature has a stress-buffering effect on personal wellbeing and is a very valuable external coping resource (12)
On top of that, being outdoors in nature improves our ability to concentrate and also our working memory (13), which are, in turn, vitally important for effective appraisal and development of our coping mechanisms and strategies.
Do you see the circle?

Berman et al (14) ran an interesting study comparing the people who had been on an urban walk with people who had been on a nature walk after a recent stressor. Those who had been on the nature walk significantly improved in working memory and were better able to reflect on the stressor and cope healthily with it compared to their urban walking counterparts.

Another really interesting study (15) found that public housing residents with a window view of green trees and green areas were better able to manage life’s regular stressors compared with those who had a view over more urban areas or ‘barren’ view.

So, with all the evidence above and all these references below, we simply cannot afford to let the opportunity of sitting outdoors meditating for any length of time (even one minute) pass us by.
Take this practice into the Autumn and Winter months with a blanket and a mug of hot tea, and the proof is here that you will become more mentally well than you ever thought possible.

  1. (King et al., 2016),
  2. (Carlson, Ursuliak, Goodey, Angen, & Speca, 2001)
  3. (Mendelson et al., 2010).

.4. Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy, 2011; Windhorst & Williams, 2015

  1. (Kaplan, 2001)

6 (Morone, Lynch, Greco, Tindle, & Weiner, 2008)

  1. Kaplan, 1995
  2. Ohly et al., 2016)
  3. (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008),
  4. Schutte, Torquati, & Beattie, 2015),
  5. Kaplan & Berman, 2010).
  6. (Chawla, Keena, Pevec, & Stanley, 2014),
  7. Kaplan & Berman, 2010),
  8. Kaplan & Berman, 2010),
  9. Kuo (2001)