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What’s your daily routine?
- You wake up, eat your breakfast in an air conditioned room, workout in a gym, leave and return from work in an air conditioned car to your air conditioned home and sleep in an air conditioned room. This is the pattern of your lifestyle.
- You wake up, eat breakfast in your living room with the windows open your morning walk is in a park surrounding you with trees and plants, direct sunlight, and depending on the weather-
– You ride to work in an air-conditioned car or with the windows rolled down.
– Your office is air conditioned, but you also have a provision for sunlight to seep through the windows and open the windows whenever possible.
– You sleep in air conditioning or with a fan with your windows open, weather permitting.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA) “Ecotherapy” or using nature-based inventions for therapeutic benefits, be it for mental or physical health is being widely recommended.
If you are spending less than two hours a week outdoors in fresh air, you need to read on to know the health benefits you reap with tweaking your lifestyle to include more open-air time in natural settings —
Want to reduce stress levels? Spend time in nature!
Walking outdoors in nature does relieve stress, improves your focus and instantly elevates your mood. It’s a natural phenomenon, nature does bring on a calm and reduce cortisol levels- ‘the stress hormone.’
Vitamin D can be free!
This vitamin helps your muscles, your nerves, and your immune system function. Apart from this it plays a role in the absorption of calcium, needed for bone density. Research shows that almost 50% of people are lacking in vitamin D. Instead of your capsule, get your daily dose of early morning sun by spending half an hour outdoors. Your body naturally makes vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, important to note that this does not happen through a window, you need to be outdoors under the rays of the sun. It works wonders.
P.S. Don’t skip the sunscreen, its does slow down the absorption of vitamin D but protects you from the UV rays that are skin cancer causing.
Where do you exercise?
The Gym concept for your daily dose of exercise has been around for 3000 years but gained popularity in the early 1980’s when it became a money-spinner through fees. A one-machine home gym ‘The Peloton bike’ is trending since the pandemic.
Let me tell you that though this may be convenient and a great exercise routine, there is no substitute for outdoor exercise to give you added health benefits. A walk in the park or on the beach, an outdoor game or cycling will prove to give you a higher level of concentration at work.
Have you become forgetful with age?
Do you feel a cognitive decline?
Cognitive decline is part of the ageing process, but you can help reduce the speed of the decline and the risks that come with it, by adding green space activities into your life from an early age. Studies definitely show that there is a correlation between green space access and cognitive decline.
It’s a protective benefit, its free, use the green around you.
Are your lungs working overtime?
With COVID-19 and its variants, for many, lungpower has been compromised. Construction all around does not help pollution levels, especially in the metropolitan cities. The only way to protect your lungs is your access to open air green areas. Make sure you leave the city for country life as often as you can, you will contribute naturally to better lung function. Stay around greenery, flora- like trees, lichen and shrubs naturally purify the air.
Any wonder why people living in agricultural land have little or no respiratory diseases and superior lung function.
Keep your blood pressure in check – always do that.
Now this is one condition nobody should take lightly, keeping your blood pressure at 120/80 is vital. A lot is attributed to your family history, genes and lifestyle. While medication is very important and should not be stopped or lowered without medical consultation, you can definitely practice natural treatments on the side.
One Japanese based practice is Shrinrin-yoku (forest bathing) entails spending time in forest areas, it does lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures. This of course would be a planned vacation. The in between vacation time can be a walk in the park as often as you can, maintaining healthy food habits of low-salt and keeping a check on your weight.
Sound Therapy
I was recently introduced to the concept of sound therapy to relax and rejuvenate your body. It was a room made of natural stone, filled with various instruments and the therapist plays on these instruments, producing sounds of nature. The sound of waves, birds chirping, thunder, rain, gongs and many more.
At the end of the session, I asked the therapist, if I could avail of this online.
Her response was, you don’t need me, just open your window early morning and listen to the birds chirping, the wind blowing, the trees rustling. Better still walk in the park or along the sea and you will have all the sounds in its purest form and automatically your body and mind will receive healing, your mood will be elevated, you will think clearly, your stress will be lowered and any pain will begin to subside. Yes sound heals.
In Conclusion —
Spending time outdoors is good for the body and soul.
A total of as little as two hours a week in nature will give you a better sense of well being and improved health.
All this leads to an overall satisfaction to life.
