Meet Elissa Epel, Author of The STRESS Prescription
It’s simple: by shifting our physical environment, we can shift our mental state. - Elissa Epel, from The STRESS Prescription
from Elissa
Most of us experience too much daily stress, and we don’t have to live that way. Living in this era of prolonged personal, pandemic, and global stress, we need stronger tools. We need to incorporate new stress management practices into the fabric of our daily lifestyle. After decades of studying stress, I am delighted to share the best ways—potent easy strategies proven to be effective—that the public should know. I have chosen 7 of these strategies to highlight, each requires around 10 minutes a day. My hope is that the book helps people live well with stress, and create more spacious room for joy, ease, purpose, and love. Since emotions are highly contagious, some of these strategies may also improve the positive emotional tone of your family! Below I am sharing some of the science behind nature immersion.
book excerpt from THE stress prescription
Let Nature Calibrate Your Nervous System
It’s simple: by shifting our physical environment, we can shift our mental state. We can change both the content of our thoughts and our thought processes. For many people, this shift is almost automatic when they place themselves into the natural world: the mind moves from conditioned thought patterns—rapid thoughts, negative self-talk, anticipating what’s next—to discursive thought, which is slower, calmer, creative, curious. Immersion in nature immediately reduces the amount of human-created sensory stimuli we are used to—from screens, information, urban sounds. It enforces a mental break. It’s a sanctuary environment that calms the mind and eases the body. Yes, we can train the brain to do this in our typical environment (through mindfulness practice, for example, as we discussed), but nature is a quick way to do it, and it comes with a whole host of other benefits for our mental state and nervous system.
The beneficial effects of forests have been well documented. Many studies have shown that regular immersion in forests improves a wide range of health problems. In some countries, it’s called forest bathing. Forest bathing is an established practice in Asia in particular—researchers in Korea and elsewhere have studied the effect of being immersed in the forest ecosystem for several hours, several times a week, while walking slowly, paying mindful attention to the environment, or sitting and viewing the landscape. In clinical trials it has been shown to reduce blood pressure, cortisol, and inflammation. In New Zealand, doctors will write a “green prescription”: You are recommended to spend two hours in nature, three times a week. It’s so effective, it’s been folded into mainstream medicine in many places.
One of the ways forest bathing has this incredible effect on the human nervous system is through our sensory channels: plant or tree odors like cedarwood may reduce biological stress, and in forests, the air is not only less polluted, but more ionized, especially when there are waterfalls or recent rain. Sound plays a big role too: wind in the trees, birdsong, and the sounds of water or ocean are all intrinsically calming and relaxing to humans. We aren’t sure exactly why, but one theory is that it taps into old evolutionary feelings of safety. Visually, the same effect may be happening when we are surrounded by shades of green—we may be evolutionarily conditioned to feel calm and safe in this environment. On the flip side of that coin, a more urban landscape can be overstimulating to humans, because instead of natural shapes and horizons, we see and hear too many unnatural shapes and sounds. The urban landscape, for many, doesn’t trigger safety—it triggers vigilance and alertness.
This dramatic shift is called the attentional restoration effect: we have relieved attentional overload, we have opened up space in our mind, we feel better. Studies have examined brain waves or brain activity while people looked at pictures of either nature or urban landscapes. They find that when compared with nature scenes, urban landscapes immediately demand more attention and cognitive processing, and activate stress-related areas like the amygdala. Dr. Pooja Sahni, a researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, found that when watching a nature video, our brains show greater alpha and theta waves (neural states that create relaxation) and enhanced cognitive ability to overcome distractions. Interestingly, waterfalls and rivers seem to be the most potent nature stimuli.
1 Michele Antonelli, Davide Donelli, Lucrezia Carlone, Valentina Maggini, Fabio Firenzuoli, and Emanuela Bedeschi, “Effects of Forest Bathing (Shinrin-yoku) on Individual Well-Being: An Umbrella Review,” International Journal of Environmental Health Research (April 28, 2021): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/09603123.2021.1919293; and Yuki Ideno, Kunihiko Hayashi, Yukina Abe, Kayo Ueda, Hiroyasu Iso, Mitsuhiko Noda, Jung-Su Lee, and Shosuke Suzuki,. “Blood Pressure-Lowering Effect of Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing): A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 17, no. 1 (August 16, 2017): 409, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-017-1912-z.
2 E. R. Jayaratne, X. Ling, and L. Morawska, “Role of Vegetation in Enhancing Radon Concentration and Ion Production in the Atmosphere,” Environmental Science & Technology 45, no. 15 (August 1, 2011): 6350–55, https://doi.org/10.1021/es201152g.
3 Tae-Hoon Kim, Gwang-Woo Jeong, Han-Su Baek, Gwang-Won Kim, Thirunavukkarasu Sundaram, Heoung-Keun Kang, Seung-Won Lee, Hyung-Joong Kim, Jin-Kyu Song, “Human Brain Activation in Response to Visual Stimulation with Rural and Urban Scenery Pictures: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Science of the Total Environment 408, no. 12 (May 15, 2010): 2600–607, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2010.02.025; and Simone Grassini, Antti Revonsuo, Serena Castellotti, Irene Petrizzo, Viola Benedetti, and Mika Koivisto, “Processing of Natural Scenery Is Associated with Lower Attentional and Cognitive Load Compared with Urban Ones,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 62 (April 2019): 1–11, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.01.007.