At Brooks Healing Center, we are surrounded by luscious greenery and rolling lawns. Though this landscape offers a beautiful backdrop for our facilities, it also benefits the mental health of our patients by offering peaceful, serene areas for them to walk and reflect in.
Nature has been scientifically proven to reduce stress. Positive experiences in nature can improve things in the body like mood, immune, nervous, and endocrine systems. Unpleasant environments and high levels of stress can lead to feelings of anxiety, sadness, or helplessness. Muscle tension can occur, as well as elevated heart rate and blood pressure which puts strain on one’s immune system. A beautiful environment can help curb these negative effects.
How Nature Heals You
While someone is spending time in nature, negative feelings like anger, fear, and stress are reduced and replaced with more positive feelings. Nature can help your physical well-being by lowering your heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and relaxing muscle tension. Researchers even say that a simple plant inside of a room can help reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.
How Nature Calms You
We are genetically programmed to find trees, flowers, and other natural things captivating. This kind of captivation can help distract people from any physical, mental, or emotional pain they may be feeling. Recent studies have even shown that having plants in hospital rooms can help patients tolerate any pain they are experiencing and show fewer negative side effects from operations. Some patients even spent less time in the hospital than what was originally estimated!
Nature’s Effect on Cognition
Some people want to take a simple stroll in the park while others want to go on intense hiking excursions. Both have significant benefits!
Being outside can have cognitive benefits like better attention span. These kinds of results were shown in adults that were placed in public housing that was surrounded by more greenery. Other research shows that even hearing sounds from nature can recuperate and wake the brain. Adults that were asked to perform a mundane task showed an increase in attention when they performed the task outside, and those that listened to sounds of nature performed better on cognitive tests compared to those that listened to the hustle and bustle of a city.
The reason for these results is that people find nature inherently interesting, and it allows us to naturally focus on the things around us. This helps ease our overburdened minds and make us feel ready to tackle new tasks in the future.
