Being outdoors can be good for us; it increases our Vitamin D levels (climate and location allowing), and is well known for reducing our stress levels, but if we’re an indoor-dwelling types of personality, where – and how – do we get in touch with nature?
In today’s post, we suggest 2 ways in which you can get in touch with nature.
1. Involve your senses
The ‘5-4-3-2-1 technique’ is well-known in psychology, counselling and mindfulness circles. This technique deliberately gets the person to slow down and take in their environment and is often very effective at grounding even the most anxious person.
The process starts by first observing the environment and taking in the surroundings. Next, the person identifies:
- 5 things they can see in as much detail as possible.
- 4 things they can touch, whether it’s a tree, grass, sand or even concrete. It doesn’t matter; the key thing is to really notice the texture, temperature and anything else that you can discern with your fingertips.
- 3 things they can hear, such as wind, rain, birds, or cars driving by. Next, have listen to how near or far these sounds seem and the direction they appear to be coming from.
- 2 things they can smell, whether it’s freshly cut grass, a bonfire, flowers, or the waft of food cooking.
- 1 thing they can taste, although not always easy to find, there is usually something in our environment which we can at least imagine tasting. Traditionally, it’s often thought as being better if the person can actually taste something for real. However, as hypnotherapists, we know that imagining the taste and wondering about how something tastes has the same effect on the brain and should yield the same results.
2. Understand that it’s not all about being outdoors
Sometimes it not possible or practical to actually go outside into nature, but there are still things you can do to immerse yourself in nature inside your own home.
- Watch a TV programme that is set outdoors and really soak up all that you can see and hear.
- Bring plants and nature into your home and place them in areas where you typically slow down enough to notice them. If plants aren’t your thing (or you’re a serial plant-killer like me), bring in other objects like sea-shells, feathers and similar.
- Look at some photographs of the ‘great outdoors’. As we’ve said before, hypnotherapists, know that imagining doing something has the same effect on the brain as actually carrying out that action. Therefore, imagining being outdoors on a Caribbean beach has the same effect on the brain as actually going to a Caribbean beach…and hey, you don’t have to worry about paying for sunbeds either!
So, how do you bring nature into your home? It’s actually much easier than you think. If you have a dog, you could take them for a walk, or you could set up a bird feeder outside a window, or watch for squirrels in the back garden, if you’re lucky enough to live in a more rural environment.
Nature, in any form, can help us achieve and maintain good mental health and we hope we’ve shown that it doesn’t need to be time-consuming, difficult or expensive. If you give any of these a go, we’d love to hear what you’ve done and about your experiences.
And if you still need any help to achieve positive mental health, contact us and ask how we can help you. We’re often more affordble than you think.
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We do our best to provide suggestions based on our experience as hypnotherapists and using nationally recognised good quality health education material, such as that provided by the NHS (UK). Information contained on our site does not constitute medical advice and is not intended to replace medical advice. You should speak to your doctor about any health concerns that you have and before making any radical changes to your lifestyle and health and fitness goals, including your quest to reach those goals.
