How Connecting With Nature Changes Your Well-Being

I live in Squamish, British Columbia, which is arguably one of the most beautiful places on the planet.

And there are many extreme athletes here.

And whenever she said that, I thought about an old version of myself.

you know, the aspiring professional athlete doing my intervals, being overly concerned what other people think about me, even like an easy ride on Strava, which is a social media platform for cyclists or for athletes, like worrying about what my times meant, or even just going out into nature and on the trails and like enjoying the thrill of being on the trail, the thrill of good dirt, things like that.

So whenever I think about using nature, It comes across my mind as like we are going out into it and enjoying for fun, having fun with it, like having fun playing on the terrain or using it as a form of self-improvement.

If we use nature as an optimization tool or just a tool to machine our own self-improvement, it actually doesn't necessarily make us connect with nature.

It's just a location or a thing that we're using, like taking a supplement.

There are days where you do need to stay focused on your workouts and be outside, going on your hike, trying to get your heart rate to a certain point, or trying to do something in a certain period of time, or being competitive.

There is a time and a place for that.

But there's also a very important time and place to be doing though, be in nature, using your body, but doing it in a way that brings more connection, more consciousness, more reciprocal relationship where you're thinking about your impact and the energy that comes from being in the forest and from the trees and from what you're doing.

When we can view ourselves as something that's more embedded into an ecosystem instead of something that's using the ecosystem, we feel a lot better.

And I think that that's what that practitioner was talking about when she was saying being in a relationship with nature.

There's so much interesting nature out there.

There's so much interesting research out there on green space and nature and how it impacts our well being.

And we've had a podcast with Hollyann Passmore and Molly Peterson that we can put in the show notes about this.

But whenever we think about nature, there's different ways that we can be a part of it.

Like number one, it's about our exposure to nature.

And a lot of us have that.

It's how often we're outside, how many hours, how many days per week.

And the other thing is how connected we feel.

And there's actually, that's what the podcast I did with Holly and Passmore and Molly Peterson was about, was something called nature connectedness.

And that's our sense of relationship with nature, whether you experience yourself as part of a living world or just using it, being out in it.

And that's a different feeling.

There are several different pathways that research shows that we can connect with nature.

One is sensory contact.