DESTRESS WITH the TREES
What is your relationship with nature like?
This past weekend, I drove from NYC to North Carolina to appear on the TEDx stage at Pembroke UNC. It was a long drive—12 hours with stops and breaks on Route 95. Many asked me why I would drive instead of flying, and in hindsight, I’m still happy I drove.
Every stop for rest and stretch and fill up on water, tea, coffee, food, and gas (in that order), I met people I could say hi to, and it made for a lovely trip. I made the trip of just over 550 miles on 1 1/2 tank of gas.
Why does that matter? The flight flew, whether I was on it or not, but my car only drove because I was in it. I would have saved gas if I had flown, but driving was more eco-sustainable than flying in this context. The experience was also far more enjoyable.
These are some of the daily decisions we make, whether we think about it or not. Every decision we make impacts the world around us, and the world around us has an impact on us. We are in a constantly evolving relationship. The question is if we care or not, what we care about, and what we do about it.
This week was Earth Day, but this article will not be about how the climate crisis is our fault and how we are doomed if we don’t wake up. You hear that enough, I’m sure.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE TREES
I would rather talk about our relationship with nature and how we need each other more than we realize.
On my “little” road trip, I noticed how few trees were around me as I drove along and how different it felt when they were there. It made me happier. I saw the trees, the light coming through the trees, and I found myself smiling and saying out loud (yes, I talk to myself). Wow, this is so nice, how beautiful.
Okay, I’m a nature lover, but I also love cities. I love architecture, I love the street vibe of people, and I love seeing communities thrive. However, nature feels like home. Home because my nervous system can calm down. When I get out of being on constant alert, my awareness changes from paying attention to everyone else, and I get to focus on how I feel.
I grew up in nature, so that might be why; however, studies of human performance continuously show that being on 24/7 is not how we perform at our best, and even small pauses and reconnection with nature help us shift out of survival mode.
Tree-bathing has become all the rage in Japan. It involves lying down on the ground and staring up at the trees. It’s also called Forest Medicine or Shinrin-yoku. Below, you will find a link that gives you even more insight into the health benefits, but here are a few that might make you pause and breathe in some tree power.
Lowers stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline to help decrease mental stress and manage overall stress and well-being. It lowers blood pressure and has a preventive effect on hypertension and heart disease.
It improves the overall immune system and increases human natural killer (NK) activity, which has a preventive effect on cancer.
It improves sleep and mood, decreases anxiety and depression, fatigue, and confusion, improves the ability to deal with anger, and stabilizes the balance of the autonomic nervous system.
Earth Day is essentially every day, just like Stress Awareness Month is every month, just like Mental Health Month matters every day. Just like any identity group, we celebrate at special times, matters all the time. It's not just for those days or months that we need to bring awareness to how we think, feel, and behave. To change our relationship with what matters, we must start by bringing attention and awareness, intentional decisions, and conscious actions into our way of being.
And yes, you guessed it. That means we must learn to pause more. Power-Pausing is not just about taking breaks to go lie down under the trees; it’s about understanding the interconnected nature of being human and the earth we live with, not just on.
