What is nature awareness?
Nature awareness is the ability to open your heart and open your mind to notice all the wonderful things around you – and to be one with the wonderful world around you. It gives you space to breathe, find your calm, discover your inner balance and walk with peace and serenity.
Have you ever been on the road somewhere, or waiting around at a bus stop, and you suddenly realise – the time has simply disappeared and you have no idea how many things you have passed – or how many things have passed you? Imagine how much you could have missed – birdsong, wild flowers, sunbeams, rainbows or butterflies…
Because you were lost inside yourself. Your awareness was directed inside of you. Instead of travelling with awareness, you were decidedly unaware of the world living and growing around you.
Why walking with awareness matters
Now, imagine you could walk through the world with your awareness open to the world. By mastering nature awareness, this whole magical world could be yours. The dancing butterflies, the sun-dappled leaves, the scents of wild roses and honeysuckle, the warm, gentle breeze.
Instead of life passing you by, you would be a part of life – beautiful, vibrant and alive. With a smile on your lips and a skip in your step. By walking with awareness, you turn everything around. Now, you become a part of the landscape you are traveling through.
You become a part of Nature. By walking with awareness, you lift the walk from a mere walk into a magical experience. A walk accompanied by birdsong, brightened by butterflies and flowers, touched by sunbeams and raindrops.
Wouldn’t this nature walk experience be so much more enjoyable and rewarding? This is the joy of nature awareness. Are you ready to try it?
Nature for health
We have all been told that spending time outdoors is good for us and spending time in nature is even better. In fact, research has shown that even spending as little as 20 minutes a day or 2 hours a week in nature can have a huge impact on our physical, mental and emotional well being – benefits that even trickle down to our social and community well being.
In some countries, medical doctors have even started giving their patients ‘nature prescriptions’ in an effort to increase motivation and empower health benefits from spending time outdoors.
But have you ever stopped to wonder what ‘being in nature’ means? Is simply being ‘outdoors’ or in a ‘greenspace’ good enough to qualify as being in nature? The answer is both yes and no.
Participants in the studies mentioned above did achieve positive benefits simply from being outdoors and in a greenspace. But, just ‘being’ in nature is not enough. To truely benefit from being in nature, we need to actually ‘be’ in Nature. That is fully aware of, in tune with, interacting with and connected to her.
Nature for relaxation
So, we know that being in nature has physical, mental and emotional benefits. It is refreshing, relaxing, rejuvinating and calming. But, why?
Well, being in nature helps to soothe and calm us activating or supressing the hormones that control our nervous systems. It lowers our heart rate, blood pressure and stress responses, which in turn, helps to reduce anxiety, control depression, boost self-esteem and induce feelings of positivity and joy.
Because, being in Nature helps to reduce the stress hormone, cortisol (which is responsible for inducing our stressed, tensed and anxious fight or flight response) and induces secretion of the relaxation hormone, parasympathetic hormone (or PSH, which effectively counteracts our cortisol response by reducing heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate).
In addition, PSH helps in regulating our bodies’ inflammatory and immune reponses, thus enhancing immunity and improving healing. In fact, studies have shown that even having access to images or scenes of nature can improve healing time in patients following surgery.
Not only that, but walking among trees (and the reason forest bathing is so popular) is because the oils and hormones secreted by tree leaves actively promote the release of PSH, increasing its benefit even more.
(It is important to note that this effect can only come into play when we feel safe enough to breathe and allow ourselves to relax and enjoy being surrounded by nature. Otherwise, your fight or flight reponse will overwhelm any attempts at relaxation. So always try to find somewhere where you can feel safe and secure enough to stand still and be peaceful without worrying about your safety or potential dangers around you.)
Nature for knowledge
Okay. So, we have explored some of the pathophysiology underlying the benefits of being surrounded by nature. But, what about the other benefits of being in nature? Specifically, how does being in Nature with mindful awareness help?
Aside from its health benefits, spending time in nature with awareness helps in other ways too. For those interested in growing their knowledge and deepening their nature connection, awareness provides a fantastic tool to achieve this.
Because, as soon as you start spending time regularly connecting to and aware of the nature in an area, you will begin to recognise and identify individual species, their quirks, their changes and their personalities… and even individuals. This encourages you to get hands-on and interact with them on a much deeper level.
As you pay attention, you begin noticing how they change over time too and grow and mature throughout the year, helping you to understand and identify them throughout the changing seasons.
Nature for connection
Imagine, you always see a fuzzy red flower, which is surrounded by bumble bees. They seem to love it! Then one day, you decide to bend down and take a closer look. You bring it to your nose to smell it and turn it over in your fingers. It is made up of lots of little flowers! And, its leaves are all in bunches of three.
Not only this, but now whenever you encounter a similar flower, you will know in the back of your mind that it resembles the red clover you met before, which will help speed up the identification process. And, by knowing that it is related to the red clover, you will already have an idea of any potential culinary or medicinal benefits – and its value to local wildlife.
What do you think?
So, what do you think? How important is nature awareness in your life and how does it help you? In what ways do you practice nature connection in your day to day life? Drop me a comment below and share your thoughts – I would love to hear from you. And remember, to subscribe to My Nature Nook below for notification about new blog posts, tutorials, quizzes and products x
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What next?
If you enjoyed this article, why not check out these related posts and pages:
- Engaging your senses in nature
- Why being in nature will not help you de-stress
- How actively noticing nature helps promote nature connectedness (external link)
- 5 Ways to wellbeing in nature (external link)
