Pathfinding Peace—How much time outside to boost mental health?
With more people living in urban areas than not, the positive impact that taking a moment to go outside and ‘smell the roses’ has on mental health is often forgotten.
The link between spending time in the outdoors, and the positive headspace it creates has been recognised for a long time, but what research proves that?
A particular piece of advice from my dad, consistently came during those moments of big life changes.
“This is the end of a chapter, and the start of a new one” comes the voice from beneath bushy brows.
It’s given me a bit of an appreciation for the changing patterns of life. The departure of a previous way of life, and arrival of the new.
Despite the broader appreciation for an overarching life-story, more often then not, these changes require processing.
Very rarely do I charge into a new phase without taking some time to process the events of the past and think of that next chapter (and when I do, I will quickly realise what is missing).
Ideally, most of this reflection time is done outside, I’ve always loved the outdoors and getting active.
Subconsciously at first, it became a coping mechanism for stress or processing difficulties. When I was a teenager, I used to go mountain biking so often that my dad once asked me if I was going to meet up with a girl.
“Uh, no. I just like my new bike.”
More recently, going for a walk has been my go-to activity for processing time. If I’m in a city, I will hunt down a park, but really, what I truly love are forests, lakes and mountains.
But achieving a positive mental health is not just about climbing mountains. It can be done with small, seemingly insignificant efforts. A bit like micro-dosing nature in an effort to improve your mental health.
A study looking at 20,000 people in the UK, found that mental and overall health was massively improved with only two hours per week spent outside. Those who spent time outside, showed the same health improvements seen when comparing those living in poor and wealthy areas.
A Stanford University research project performed brain scans on two groups of walkers. One group walked through a grassy, tree filled area, and the second walked along a busy road in an urban area. The results of the scans for those in the nature group showed a significant decrease in unhealthy, brooding-like thinking or rumination when compared to those who walked through a busy urban area, the kind that is commonly seen in pre-depressive patients.
If you are feeling down from a recent life change, maybe things are a bit rough at home or in your personal life. A great way to improve your mood is to make small efforts to be outside, it doesn’t take much!
The magic amount is 2 hours, with diminishing returns after that and no benefit in doing more than 5 hours. Frankly though, if you did a 5+ hour hike every week, you would probably feel you deserved a good Netflix binge after that!
Maintaining a positive attitude is more than just telling yourself to stay positive, it requires action, these can be small efforts, and each small effort really adds us.
Just like working on your physical strength and resilience, there are many things you can do to improve your mental strength. And each one of us is different, we all require a different formula of downtime to achieve the best possible headspace and in many cases it will take some time to figure out a long term plan.
If you are looking for somewhere to start, try getting out for a short walk a few times each week, maybe during work break or in your own time in the morning or evening, it only takes a couple of hours each week to drastically improve your mental health!
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Thanks for reading, hope you have a great day.
