Nature.. The secret To Healing Your Mind and Soul.

Being that the weather has been absolutely amazing where i live, i luckily had the opportunity to spend all of it outdoors and it was honestly the best decision i ever made. A few years ago i never really thought about how important nature was, you would have never seen me at a park unless there was a family gathering or an event that required my presence. I always thought being outdoors was something that happened when everyone else was doing it. It wasn't until the last year or so that i would go to the park to sit and think about life and overall just enjoy being in the sun and feel my feet in the grass. Whats sad is i think very few people appreciate nature and actually want to be in it, some of the reason is because people think you should only be in nature when others are but its mostly because no one really understands the benefits of nature and why we all need to spend a little time in it, we live in a time where we don't have much time to think. We all need to be somewhere at a certain time, things always need to be done, people need to be taken care. So much is happening that we have little time to actually sit and listen to our thoughts.

Humans are always looking for the root to happiness and although i don't think everyone has the same root to happiness i know that making time to listen to your thoughts helps you to discover it. I've been in many situations where i was stuck, absolutely lost. The old me would of just reacted with using the first thought that appeared in my mind, the new me will go and sit somewhere and tell the situation to myself as if i were speaking to someone else about it, i will look outside the box and think about all the solutions i could come up with before i actually react, which is absolutely amazing, not only do i think my thoughts through but later on i wont say "wow that was a stupid choice, i should have done this instead" which is what a lot of us find ourselves doing. Besides my personal experience with nature, i decided to do some research and find what professionals are saying about spending time in nature, i found that they agreed with me.

One thing that was mentioned that i came cross countless times was ART, also known as

Attention Restoration Theory:

This theory states that a natural environment can restore your directed attention, Directed attention is the conscious attention you need to cognitive tasks, a lot of times our conscious attention is fatigued because of my first theory mentioned earlier, we live hectic lifestyles which results in little time to heal our minds. Nature allows for us to use undirected attention which basically means we are charging or minds.

Something else i came across which i had absolutely no idea about was the fact that there is bacterium in nature that makes us happy?!?

Myobaterium Vaccae:

This bacterium in nature offers a resistance to stress and in the brains of mice and most likely in humans this bacterium can lead to a higher release of serotonin, and serotonin is what helps to keep us in a positive mood and make us less likely to experience depression, how amazing is that?!

Also in nature there are hallucinogenic substances, which occur within all the plants of the world,these substances when taken can help people experience their deepest thoughts and feel better connected to those around them. And whats amazing is even if you don't want to take these hallucinogenic substances you can always just sit in nature and clear your mind, this is essentially what meditation which can do wonders for the mind and spirit.

Overall, nature has the real medicine to healing people in so many different ways, This is why its so important to get out there and get as much of it as you can, its also important that we step up and encourage our children to do so too. Not only do we want to be happy and healthy, we also want our future to be happy and healthy :)

Photos by Me: Chenango State Park, NY