Many people have a good feeling when they get the opportunity to spend time in nature. It gives one the possibility to escape every day stress and move around in a bigger space than usual. Furthermore, many are moved when seeing the beauty and greatness of nature. A lot of people feel that nature is a place where they belong.
Visiting natural environments also has a lot of positive health effects. Research confirms what many persons have guessed: nature can help us relax and deal with stress. It has also been shown that being in the countryside or beautiful natural sceneries can help us relieve our pains and even speed up the recovery of patients. Nature offers therefore care for healthy people and patients. Several studies show that adults and children alike can improve their concentration abilities by staying in nature. Another finding is that open sceneries with water, green areas and scattered trees have the most positive effect on our health.
There are several theories that try to explain why nature has such positive effects on our health. One of the theories claims that we really do belong in nature, and that we have built in biological systems that make us feel well when we are in the countryside. Another theory looks more at how we are living in today’s societies. When we are at work, school, driving, shopping, watching TV (and a lot of other things) we focus our attention to observe, plan, make decisions, keeping things in our memory, keeping track of time and so on. These things take a lot of energy. But when we are in the countryside we register information without any effort. It has for instance been shown that the number of alpha waves in the brain increases when the subject watches pictures of an open scenery. An increased occurrence of alpha waves indicates that the brain is awake but also relaxed, in other words that it is taking rest while being awake.
The principles of Qigong also come from nature. In Qigong we often use peaceful exercises and try to get more harmony. Qigong-practitioners who often stay in the countryside often compare the harmonic state of mind they can get from Qigong with the feeling they get from being in nature.