Why Direct Personal Contact with Nature is Naturally Beneficial

By Dr. Peter Martin.

In August 1856, Johann Fuhlrott, a school teacher and keen naturalist from Germany’s Neander valley, received a few old bones from a local quarryman. There is no record of what his students thought of these relics, but Fuhlrott recognised that they were human-like yet different from anything he had seen previously. The Neanderthal bones, as they became known, shook science to its core and unsettled the Western industrialised society that believed humans were immutable. However, these Neanderthal bones showed, in their imposing silence, that humans were animals too.

Today we know that humans are like all other species; that they evolve and adapt over time to suit their environment. But, there are two types of acclimatisation at play for humanity. The first is that evolution happens incredibly slowly over millennia, and the second is that adaptation to local circumstances is a rapid – and almost daily – occurrence.

Both evolution and adaptation play important roles in the relationships we have with the natural environment. Evolution has given us the hardwiring that makes us human, and there are both conscious and subconscious ways in which humans respond to natural settings. There has been substantial research on how natural settings impact upon humans. We know that the human brain is hardwired to respond in specific ways to elements in nature. When we hear the trickle of water, the gentle rustle of leaves, the songs of birds or other quiet sounds in nature we respond physiologically with a lowering of our heart rate and blood pressure. We feel calmer and more relaxed. These sorts of hardwired responses to nature are examples of biophilia, which is a word that was coined to describe our innate evolutionary affiliation to nature.

Biophilia gives us a propensity to respond positively to nature around us, but it’s a predisposition, not a motive. The other moderating force that shapes what we do in our everyday life is our adaptation to circumstances around us, and it is here that change is rapid. Industrialisation in the late 1800s signalled a shift from an agricultural society of small subsistence communities to a market economy made possible through specialisation, a centralised workforce, and daily life driven by the clock rather than the seasonal weather. In Australia today, over 80 per cent of us live in cities with a population of over 100,000 people. We tend to work indoors in largely sedentary roles where the vagaries of nature are fully controlled. There are great material benefits to this. However, quality of life should be measured not only by what we have gained, but also what we have traded for it. What we have traded, and largely forgone, are the benefits that biophilia provides for a direct personal contact with nature as part of daily living.

There is considerable contemporary research into the importance of natural environments in contributing to health and wellbeing for all segments of our population, but the benefits are especially important for young people. There are six important areas that direct personal contact with nature in play, recreation and education has been shown to promote.

Firstly, children who play outside with a dominance of natural elements demonstrate increased creativity and more expansive movement patterns compared to those who do not. The most glaring example of what is lost from experiences in controlled play spaces is seen when you watch children from urban backgrounds walk over rough ground. Quite simply, they struggle, and this is because they are accustomed to a footpath life. A horse bred in a paddock will be tentative, high-step and trip often when ridden on a bush track for the first time because such skills and perceptions must be learned. The human animal is no different. In unstructured outdoor settings the boundaries to play are fuzzy, the surfaces uneven and discontinuous, the elements are changing and changeable, the context and timing open-ended. Consequently, children need to shape their own parameters, invent their own toys, establish their own rules and limitations, and learn the ways of being in those environments. The natural world gives children freedom to move and constraints are imposed only by gravity and imagination. Obviously, the associated benefits of exercise are an important by-product of this increased range of movement and creativity in play.

Secondly, direct personal contact with nature improves mood states and wellbeing. Research into biophilia informs a variety of divergent practices in this area. For example, in hospitals, recovery wards hang pictures of natural scenery on the walls because patients recover more quickly in these spaces. Landscape gardeners employ water features as central elements because they are calm and inviting. Alternative therapies tap into this human nature connection when they produce relaxation recordings that compile sounds of nature. We know that direct personal contact with nature improves mood states and has been shown to reduce mental health disorder impacts. Direct nature contact helps kids think more clearly and positively impacts their performance in academic tasks.

Outdoor play also teaches children to conduct their own risk assessments. In decades past, kids learnt safety and risk assessment skills through the slow accumulation of knowledge associated with the knocks and bumps of everyday growing up. This process started when they were a toddler and continued through into childhood and then adolescence. Contemporary parenting tends to seek to eliminate risks, which in turn denies children the opportunity for this type of learning. Astute judgement is a learned skill that comes from assessing and balancing the risks of a setting with the competence of the performer, while weighing up the consequences of mishap. Through outdoor education this safety risk management process can be taught and learned quite deliberately in ways that enable students to improve and self-assess their knowledge and skills. In contrast, organised sports and games may hinder developing astute judgement. In Australian Rules football, for example, a player running backwards into a pack is applauded as courageous, rules enforced by referees sanction actions as safe or not, so judgements are deferred to others. In nature-based activities, such as rock climbing or canoeing, the rules are those that are imposed by nature. What is safe or unsafe must be learned and experienced through sequences over time. Such skills of astute judgement are context specific, but elements and processes do transfer and can inform everyday judgements young people make about the actions and consequences of their lives.

Furthermore, outdoor recreation activities are accessible to a wide population and demographic and can be maintained across the life span. Activity, such as walking outdoors, is reportedly the most popular form of exercise across the life span, so is more likely to continue past schooling than are most other sports or games, therefore providing an avenue to maintain health and wellbeing throughout our lives. In a country like Australia, the opportunities for outdoor recreation are limitless, be they on land or on water. We could do well to teach children (and adults) how to recreate outdoors safely and well. As our population becomes increasingly urban and includes a diversity of people born overseas, learning how to recreate outdoors in Australia is an important set of skills to develop.

Direct contact and positive experiences with nature in childhood will also shape the world we live in tomorrow. An abundance of experiences in nature as a child have been shown to be vital in laying a foundation for environmental stewardship into adulthood. It is well demonstrated that those who undertake pro-environmental behaviours as adults had experienced positive personal times in nature as children. Also important in shaping such pro-environmental behaviours is the presence of like-minded supportive adults, be they parents or teachers. Interestingly, research is suggesting that the motivation to act more environmentally is emotionally not cognitively driven. We will care and act to protect those aspects we have most connection to in a heart-felt way. It is hardly surprising therefore that concern for nature is highest in those who have a history of positive direct personal contact with the diversity of the natural world. However, it may be a surprise to also learn that environmental education that preferences knowledge, but contains no direct experience of nature, has been shown to actually reduce motivation to act in pro-environmental ways.

Finally, the direct personal contact we have with nature in our lives plays a part in helping shape a future Australian national identity. For Australia’s first inhabitants the relationship with land was central to their life and being, and it could become more so for all Australians today.  Aboriginal people speak of ‘Country’ as a proper noun, in a way similar to how they would speak of a person. People can speak to Country, sing to Country, visit, worry and long for Country. And, Country speaks to them – if you know how to listen. New inhabitants of Australia can’t grasp the ancestral knowing grown of 40,000 years of relatedness, but we can get a glimpse of this through developing a mind/body/nature connection that comes from spending time in and with nature. This isn’t hippie-like mysticism; rather, it’s a depth of knowing and feeling the integration of humanity and nature that comes from time spent outdoors open to natural rhythms, employing all our sensory capacities, not just those preferenced by a life looking at screens indoors.

There are six very important reasons to get active and get outdoors, and all of them stem from accepting what Fuhlrott recognised in that German school yard so long ago. We are a part of nature, not separate, and certainly not superior to it. Today, ill-health and loss of wellbeing associated with urbanisation is killing nature and humans alike. The answer lies in part through a mind, body and nature reconnection.

Dr. Peter Martin coordinates the graduate course in Outdoor Environmental Studies at the University of Ballarat. His research and teaching centres on the importance of developing close human-to-nature relationships, and how such connections can be fostered through adventure education. He is a passionate rock climber and enjoys the challenge of trying to live more simply and sustainably while immersed in his work.