Why Step into Nature

Stepping into health, the natural way

My Integrative Psychology

Looking back, viewing health as a process of integrating mind, brain, body, and social connections may have been inevitable. As the son of a neurologist and a teacher, I learned early on that while the physical brain was endlessly fascinating, the mind - the name for our capacity for conscious awareness, focused attention, intention, and choice - is where we “live” each day. Mind is what describes our self-conscious “I”. Without mind, there is only tissue. Mind is necessary to animate us and fully become who we are.

Graduate school taught me about how mind, brain, body, and social connections impact our day-to-day health. But it has been my day-to-day experiences in life, my interactions with thousands of clients over a 30-year career, my daily adventures, studies, and explorations, that ultimately led me to embed my understanding of mind, brain, body, and social connection outlook in nature.

Nature’s Healing Power

The connection between nature and health is not a new discovery. Hippocrates, who lived in ancient Greece 2,400 years ago, said, “Nature itself is the best medicine.” In the 24 centuries that have elapsed since then, we have learned much about how the nature-health connection works. While healers in ancient Greece believed illness was inflicted on the person by the gods for various reasons, Hippocrates observed links between illness and the weather. This entailed early speculation about how nature and our health interact. He also strongly believed that diet and exercise are fundamental to easing most ailments, and how certain plants had strong medicinal powers that were useful when diet and exercise alone fell short. His work helped us move beyond superstition on the long road to more fully understanding nature’s healing power.

To the duo of a balanced diet, rich in basic ingredients that maintain and restore health, and regular exercise, since our body was designed for movement, I want to add nature’s rhythms as a third important factor. By this I mean that our health also depends on how we live in synchrony with the rhythms that regulate night and day and the yearly seasons. We evolved in and through nature’s rhythms: Sleep-wake cycles. Heart rate and brain wave rhythms. Energy cycles that align with solar and lunar cycles. When we are well-aligned with those rhythms, we tend to feel healthier and function better. When out of sync, various symptoms and illness conditions arise.

Sleep to Overcome Depression

Here is a common example for clarity: Different forms of depression afflict tens of millions of adults in the U.S. each year. Estimates are that at least 75% of them also show insomnia, while patterns of excessive sleep (hypersomnia) shows up in nearly 40% of younger adults with depressive difficulties. Our 24-hour, electricity-dependent lifestyles, and our constant connections to brain rhythm-disrupting phone and computer screens, may account for part of the problem accounting for increasing rates of mood disturbance. There is another explanation, however, that highlights why reconnecting to nature’s rhythms as part of a health restoring treatment plan makes sense.

Time in nature is time in a chrono-biological spa, where our biological time-sensitive rhythms can be restored. A two-hour walk in the woods has been shown to have a positive impact on stabilizing sleep disturbance. A week of camping, where sunrise determines when to get up, and sunset, moonrise, and starry nights determine bedtime, not only re-aligns our body’s circadian cycles, they can dramatically improve insomnia/hypersomnia patterns. Improving sleep patterns is a therapeutic fast track path for resolving many features of depression. In other words, sleep disturbance isn’t just a side effect of depression. Poor sleep patterns can be a primary cause of depression in the first place, and time spent in nature is a powerful way to re-synchronize sleep that propels people forward on the road to better health.

Stocking up on Nature’s Medicines

The evidence is piling up about the healing benefits of time in nature. Already, scientific researchers have established that even 120-minutes, just two hours, each week spent in nature were associated with:

• lower risk of cardiovascular disease

• better control of obesity

• improved control of diabetes

• fewer asthma-related hospitalizations

• reduced mental distress

• and even reduced mortality (fewer deaths!)

These are powerful benefits for a relatively small investment of time. The payoffs, over and above these physical health benefits, are immense. The restorative, rejuvenating, replenishing power of nature awaits you. In my work with clients, whether related to digestive distress, post-traumatic recovery, depression/anxiety patterns, or even the pain of relationship struggles, adopting an integrative and holistic perspective on healing that includes reconnecting with nature’s rhythms has continued to yield positive benefits. With that in mind, I invite you to re-visit Nature’s Medicine as often as you need or desire and take full advantage of the healing potential of your innate connection to nature’s rhythms.

To connect with me, contact me through www.drdavidalter.com.