By Dr. Puja Shah
Would you believe me if I told you the healing you need isn’t in your medicine cabinet – but outside your door, amongst the trees, the grass, and the wind?
Ancient Ayurvedic principles show that the elements in nature (air, fire, water, earth, and space) are also present within us.
And so when we connect with nature, we’re nurturing not just a deeper connection with the world around us – but with the essence of who we really are.
This is why nature plays such a pivotal role in healing and holistic wellness.
Ayurveda teaches us that the weather and the shifting seasons can impact how we feel and show up. It also shows us how to modify our diet of natural food to fulfill our true needs, and to honor the changes happening inside us and around us.
And when you know where and how to look, the simple act of reconnecting with nature can help you correct any imbalances within.
Instead of working against nature, Ayurveda has proven that you can and should draw from it to find the remedies and solutions you need.
According to research printed in the Oxford Journal by Australian epidemiologist Anita Pryor, nature can have a massive positive impact on human health and wellbeing.
Parks and nature reserves play a significant role in this by providing access to nature even in busy cities.
She suggests that contact with nature provides an effective population-wide strategy in prevention of ill mental health with potential application for sub-populations, communities and individuals at higher risk of ill health.
She cites Charles Lewis, author of Green Nature/Human Nature: The Meaning of Plants in Our Lives, who says that the healing effects of a natural view are increasingly being understood in stressful environments such as hospitals, nursing homes, remote military sites, spaceships, and space stations.
In these environments particularly, as well as for people who work in windowless offices, studies show that seeing nature is important to people and is an effective means of relieving stress and improving wellbeing and energy.
Have you noticed mini gardens in your local hospital?
Studies now show these are not simply for decor, but are instead essential to the healing process.
Psychologist Roger Ulrich was the first to use the standards of modern medical research to demonstrate that gazing at a garden can sometimes speed healing from surgery, infections, and other ailments.
He even found that the benefits of seeing and being in nature are so powerful, that even pictures of landscapes can soothe the soul.
In 1993, Ulrich and his colleagues at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden randomly assigned 160 heart surgery patients in the intensive care unit to one of six rooms.
Patients were placed in rooms with either simulated window views of a large photograph of a tree-lined stream or a shadowy forest, one of two abstract paintings, a white panel, or a blank wall.
Surveys afterward confirmed that patients assigned to the water and tree scene were less anxious and needed fewer doses of strong pain medicine than those who looked at the darker forest photograph, abstract art, or no pictures at all.
Science is just warming up to the healing power of nature - but ancient civilizations have known it all along!
Native Americans, for instance, have a reputation of listening to the winds. George Cornell, an Ojibwe professor at Michigan State University, supports this view of the Indian perception of the environment:
He says in his faculty review, “The relationship of Native peoples to the earth, their Mother, is a sacred bond with the creation… Native peoples viewed many of the products of the natural environment as gifts from the Creator… Man, in the Native American conception of the world, was not created to “lord” over other beings, but rather to cooperate and share the bounty of the earth with the other elements of the creation.”
And so today, before you immerse yourself in a world of computer and television screens, artificial lights, and closed quarters, try and step outside. Look up to the sky. Touch the earth. Smell the flowers.
And as you breathe, allow yourself to just be in Mother Nature for a moment. You may just be surprised by how this simple conscious decision makes you feel.