Health and vitality depend on direct contact with nature: it’s the biophilia effect
Many IT workers I’ve met have revealed to me that their dream would be to work with the land or in any case do something that makes them spend time in close contact with nature. Spending many hours indoors, in front of the monitor, studying codes leads them to exasperation: in rural life they see their rebirth, the possibility of a more balanced, fulfilling and happy existence. Erich Fromm – celebrated psychotherapist and philosopher who lived in the mid-twentieth century – called “biophilia” man’s irresistible and indispensable attraction towards nature. Something similar also happens to astronauts in space who spend the few free moments they have during the day staring at Earth due to the natural attraction that the blue planet exercises over them. Their perception, called The Overview Effect, is that of staring at a ball full of life.
The “cow in the barn” effect
The Japanese were the first to use biophilia for therapeutic purposes: by practising Shinrin-yoku, translated as “forest bathing” or “deriving benefit from the forest atmosphere”, the degree of anxiety and depression is strongly reduced. Masanobu Fukuoka said that “disease comes when people move away from nature. The severity of disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation. If a sick person returns to a healthy environment often the disease disappears”.
We can all experience first-hand how being shut indoors or in the office for a long time, increasingly often for hours in front of a monitor, makes us sad, dull and flat. On the contrary when we find ourselves in close contact with nature we immediately feel more active and vital. Our batteries recharge quickly and, in addition to having more energy for what we desire, contact with nature strengthens our immune system with the result that we get ill less.
Despite this awareness, we often suffer from the “cow in the barn” effect. Everyone knows that cows at pasture are much healthier and happier than their sisters who spend their lives indoors. When in November the cows at pasture are brought back to the barn for winter they resist, they would like to remain in the open air. After a few days however they get used to the warmth, to being fed with high-energy foods and so, when spring returns and it’s time to return to pasture, they are not at all enthusiastic about it.
The healing power of nature
The same thing also happens to us when we become lazy inside the house, unaware of the fact that we are lowering our vitality, our immune defences and our happiness. The sum of these factors will make us ill and so – instead of solving the problem by changing lifestyle and taking a walk in the woods – we will go to a doctor who will prescribe a medicine with side effects (none exist without them): and here we’ve entered the vicious circle of home/medicines from which it will be very difficult to exit. Fortunately there are beginning to be a few enlightened doctors who have understood these only apparently obvious things and are beginning to prescribe fewer medicines and more Shinrin-yoku, namely nature bathing. This is the case of doctors in the Shetland Islands who since 19 October 2018 are authorised to issue “nature prescriptions” to their patients for chronic and debilitating diseases. In the ten public clinics of the Scottish archipelago doctors can therefore prescribe excursions and walks on the beach and naturalistic activities such as birdwatching, to help treat chronic and debilitating diseases, such as anxiety, stress, depression, diabetes and hypertension. The programme is managed by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), an organisation dedicated to nature conservation.
The heartbeat of the forest: a course on biophilia at Autosufficienza Farm
Scientific evidence and this important step by Scotland should push all doctors and health workers to inform themselves and to include Nature in their prescriptions. National parks and green areas would become not only places of sporting and naturalistic activity, but also real places of health. And this is what Autosufficienza Farm wants to promote together with the Casentino Forests National Park and the European Charter for Responsible Tourism with the course “The healing power of the woods”.
https://autosufficienza.dartmoon.dev/wp/event/il-potere-curativo-del-bosco/
I could survive the disappearance of all the cathedrals in the world, I could never survive the disappearance of the woods that I see every morning from my window – Ermanno Olmi
Francesco Rosso
