Healing & Wholeness

I just came from a multi-day backpacking and climbing trip in Idaho. There is something about spending a few days or even hours, moving in nature that allows the body and the senses to become fully integrated. Something beyond simply unplugging. Stepping up and down on uneven surface; on rocks, sand, mud, moss. Filling my eyes with endless shades of green, and blue. Listening to water and wind flow over rocks and through trees. Sensing the air on my skin. The smell of loam and wood warming on the forest floor. Throughout the trip, I became increasingly grateful for every bit of my body that allowed me to hike, swim, climb and carry myself into and through the amazing wilderness of the Sawtooth Mountains. I felt stronger, more surefooted, vibrant and peaceful with each passing day.

Neuroscientists have argued, that the reason this feels so good is that, moving in nature is exactly what our brains and bodies have been perfecting for hundreds of thousands of years – that the huge and highly evolved sensory and motor areas of our brains have been encoded by a billion years of experience surviving in the natural world. As the great neurologist and author Oliver Sacks once said: “Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.” A team of Japanese researchers led by Yoshifumi Miyazaki at Chiba University has shown that as little as fifteen minutes of walking in the woods produces measurable changes in physiology; notably lowering cortisol levels, heart rate and blood pressure. Numerous studies have verified such results, many showing that the more time spent in nature, the better the physiological response. Our greatest philosophers, poets, naturalist and scientists have proclaimed this intuitive truth for many hundreds of years, and now we’re beginning to understand why.

 “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, – no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.

So in today’s highly sedentary, reason and communication based world, it is good to remember that our bodies and our brains are uniquely connected and dependent upon one other. Our ability to move and perceive in nature has built the neural hardware which allows us to think and feel. Movement solidifies some of the most basic and inherent neural connections between our bodies and minds. Nature allows a soft focus for us to relax and rejuvenate.

This month, I inspire you to move in nature. Walk, swim, hike, climb, surf, do yoga, play barefoot on uneven ground, and let your senses feast on the beauty that your entire being has evolved to know. In the words of our great philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau: “Me thinks that the minute my legs begin to move my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper.”

Me thinks indeed!

If you’d like a more in depth article about nature and the brain, read This is Your Brain on Nature.

For more on the evolutionary neurology of movement, check out Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert’s Ted Talk

And if you can’t get outside, this Words of Wilderness video is a close second.

I hope to see you soon!  Enjoy!