Environmental Wellness
Gregory Bratman's group at Stanford sent 38 healthy volunteers on a 90-minute walk, half through grassland and scattered oaks near campus and half along El Camino Real, Palo Alto's busiest road. Afterward, the people who had walked in nature reported less rumination, the repetitive negative thinking linked to depression, and brain scans showed reduced activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, a region that is more active during rumination. The urban walkers showed neither change. The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.
What it covers
Environmental wellness is the feedback loop between you and your surroundings. Long before conscious thought, the nervous system asks whether it is safe where it is, and light, noise, clutter, and access to nature all shape the answer. It rests on four things.
Light
Daylight in the morning and dimmer light at night.
Space
Rooms that support your attention instead of draining it.
Nature
Regular time among trees, water, or open sky.
Air and sound
Clean air and noise you can live with.
Dillon Beach and a cluttered desk
I went to Dillon Beach, north of Point Reyes, on a foggy morning in the middle of several life changes. I sat on the sand with coffee and watched the tide come in. The longer I sat, the more my breathing slowed. Later that afternoon, walking among the redwoods in Muir Woods, the same calm returned. I spent my career studying the physiology and pharmacology of the body under stress, and I still had to be reminded that the setting was doing some of the work.
Back home in North Carolina, I started paying attention to my office. It was full of piles of papers and journals, tangled cables, and stale air. I cleared the desk, cleared the room, and cleaned up my computer desktop. Within minutes, the mental static dropped. It did not turn me into a minimalist, or at least not a complete one.
What the research measures
Kenneth Wright's sleep and chronobiology lab at the University of Colorado Boulder sent nine volunteers camping in Colorado for a July weekend, with sunlight, campfires, and flashlights but no other electric light. Compared with five people who spent a typical weekend at home, the campers' internal clocks and sleep shifted earlier. Two days outdoors produced about 69% of the circadian shift the lab had previously measured after a full week of camping. The weekend study appeared in Current Biology in 2017. Nine campers is a small sample.
Listen and read
The Well-IQ assessment is free and takes about 15 minutes. It scores Environmental alongside the other eight dimensions.
Educational content, not medical advice.