“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.”
How much Nature?
This section will seek to answer the question of nature dosage: how much nature do you need and how often? The answers to these questions really depend on the psychological and physical benefits you hope to receive from a particular experience. Since the benefits you’ll receive depends on the type of experience, there are no general hard and fast recommendations. Therefore, instead of listing general recommendations, the necessary frequency and length will be given for each type of nature experience.
The benefits of short-term nature connection in built environments
How much: As indicated previously, simply owning house plants and having nature visible through windows is linked to several cognitive and physical benefits. These benefits include less emotional distress, better pain management, and higher emotional well-being.
How often: Since you don’t have to leave home to enjoy the benefits of indoor nature, you get to enjoy them whenever you aren’t somewhere else. Anywhere from an hour a week to an hour a day works great for this type of interaction.
The benefits of short-term nature connection in natural environments
How often: Short-term nature benefits are likely to wear off fairly quickly, and as such, taking time every day or at least several times a week to go out and spend just a little bit of time relaxing in nature is recommended.
How much: The recommended dose for short-term nature connection is twenty minutes. Short term nature connection can be a walk to a local park, a half hour spent in a garden, or a bike ride around the neighborhood. These simple acts are tied to increased vitality and life satisfaction, better cognitive performance, more positive emotions, and a better ability to reflect on life problems.
The benefits of long-term nature connection in natural environments
How often: About once or twice a month. Nature exposure should consist of more than just daily interactions with the natural world around your home, it should also contain relatively frequent outings to natural ecosystems near your home such as local mountain ranges, lakes, wetlands, and deserts. In order to reap the physiological benefits of spending time in nature, including decreased stress and increased natural killer cells (which help protect against long-term diseases like cancer), you must spend more significant chunks of time out in nature. These outings, however, can be less frequent than your daily or weekly trips to the park. Instead they can be larger trips that you perhaps invite friends and family to join you on.
How much: At least several hours of uninterrupted time in nature per month.
The benefits of complete nature immersion
How often: Once or twice a year. The benefits of complete nature immersion are somewhat unknown at this point as further research needs to separate whether the cognitive, emotional, and physical benefits that results from complete nature immersion are a result of nature itself or other contributing factors such as social connections, decreased connectivity to stressful stimuli such as work, physical exercise, or feelings of awe resulting from experiencing nature’s beauty. However, regardless of the ultimate cause of the positive benefits, becoming fully immersed in nature for days at a time is correlated with better immune functioning, decreased stress, feelings of vitality and purpose, and better cognitive functioning.