There is always something nice about getting back home after you’ve been away on a trip. It’s refreshing, much like a hike in the woods or a cold water swim in the sea. It’s often these experiences that wake up our senses and help us reconnect with nature and our natural state of being.
There have never been more distractions interrupting our equilibrium than nowadays. Whether these are the ongoing sounds of daily traffic and the sirens we hear rushing off to the next emergency crisis, or the lack of nature surrounding us in the cities where most people reside, it’s impacting our health and well-being!
Singer-songwriter Joe Walsh expressed his dismay with cities back in 1979 when he wrote: “In the City.”
I know there must be something better
But there’s nowhere else in sight
It’s survival in the city
When you live from day to day
City streets don’t have much pity
When you’re down, that’s where you’ll stay
It’s encouraging to know that there is more and more evidence pointing towards the many benefits of connecting with nature and escaping the daily grind of life “in the city.”
I sense that many people dream of escaping city life and long for simplicity, peace and solitude, but few find it. What if we were more aware of the linkages between our built and natural environments, and the real value of connecting to nature?
Perhaps we need to go as far as prescribing nature, after all, it is Earth Month.
In a recent Psychology Today feature titled “The Value of Connecting to Nature in Our Technological World”, Patricia H. Hasbach suggests there is a robust body of evidence that connectedness to nature is good for our physical and psychological health. Research demonstrates that nature connectedness lessens stress, lowers our blood pressure, reduces ruminations associated with depression, and lessens anxiety, while increasing our happiness, fostering creativity, and impacting pro-environmental behaviours, she writes.
Did you know that there is an incredible resource available to help anyone make the links between design, planning and health?
It’s called the Healthy Built Environment Linkages Toolkit, and I’ve been using it in my practice since 2018. It states that natural environments sustain the essential elements that we need to live. While I think we all know how critical this is to our very existence, I’m not convinced that we all know how to go about improving our built environment and making those linkages. That’s the beauty of this toolkit: it shows us.
Finally, this is an invitation to connect and never look at the environment the same way again, wrote Timothy D. Crowe. If you’re a health professional, community planner or architect living nearby (Vancouver or Vancouver Island), why not rejuvenate yourself?
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