Your Brain On Nature by Eva M. Selhub MD & Alan C. Logan

Author:Eva M. Selhub, MD & Alan C. Logan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2012-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Exercising Mindfulness

In 1941, Yale professor, psychiatrist, and one-time president of the American Psychiatric Association Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles initiated a nature therapy program for mental health at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. The initiative combined therapeutic walking with a conscious direction of thoughts to the natural world.

A study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 2011 validates Ruggles's outside-the-box thinking, showing that the benefits of outdoor exercise can be enhanced by active cognitive consideration of the natural environment. Specifically, participants in one group were asked to be mindful of the environment, to make visualizations and inferences related to the natural world, to be aware of sounds, to actively seek out beauty, and to think about what they might change in the outdoor environment as they walked through it. The second group walked outdoors for the same allotted times; however, they were not instructed to be mindful of their surroundings. After two weeks, the psychological benefits of the outdoor exercise plus cognitive engagement were significantly higher versus walking without mindful instruction and certainly higher than no outdoor exercise at all—as with the third, control group.

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