By Matthew Mausner
The global wellness industry is estimated to be in the range of 4 trillion dollars. WOW!
Loosely defined, wellness includes all manner of health services, including preventative health programs, corporate wellness programs including retreats, proactive massage and yoga, much of the fitness industry, spas, resorts, and related tourism, and city green spaces for exercise and workouts.
How Does the Environment Relate to Wellness?
Wellness is generally understood to be preventative or holistic approaches to health, including a healthy and balanced diet, and regular exercise. A growing set of understandings recognizes the crucial role that the quality of our local environment and nature plays in our wellness.
In general, the more green spaces that are nearby to where a person lives, and the more regular time they spend in nature, the healthier they are, on average, given equal other factors like reliable health care and nutrition.
Specific ways of incorporating nature into proactive health practice are becoming known as ‘environmental wellness’. While holistic concepts like general environmental wellness practice are difficult to measure, there is increasing evidence that aspects of it are indeed beneficial to human health.
Forest Baths and Environmental Wellness
One of the most striking examples of an environmental wellness practice is the Japanese shinrin-yoku. Translated as ‘forest bathing‘ or ‘taking in the forest atmosphere’, it’s a refined and intentional way of immersing oneself in nature.
Almost all cultures worldwide have some level of positive enjoyment of nature, of course, but the Japanese made this ‘ecotherapy’ explicit, starting in the 1980s, as a specific treatment for burnout, and also as a way to encourage the Japanese to reconnect to forests and to conservation efforts.
Other countries and cultures with similarly explicit forest-immersion practices or techniques include Hawaii, Kenya, and New Zealand.
Grounding or Earthing and Environmental Wellness
Another significant environmental wellness practice is known as ‘earthing’ or ‘grounding’.
Putting your body physically in direct contact with the earth- laying on the ground- has surprisingly provable benefits. It facilitates a kind of electrical connectivity or alignment with the soil’s magnetism, and has a salutary benefit similar to antioxidants.
This resonates with the concept, common in the regions near the Andes of South America among groups like the Quechua, that ‘Pachamama’ (mother earth) likes to feel the caresses of our bare feet on her flesh.
Environmental Wellness from Being in Nature
An aspect of environmental wellness is to simply spend more time in nature. Studies have supported the idea that spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature, even in a small park, has significant benefits in terms of lowering stress, improving mood and mental health, and feeling more connected to the world.
As a result, municipalities, universities, and corporations have all taken steps to encourage and incentivize their residents, students, or employees to embrace this benefit.
Environmental Wellness Begins with Your Awareness
Benefitting from the therapeutic qualities of the environment starts with simply becoming aware of the actual environment around you, whatever your starting point. Your room or apartment, your office or desk, your yard, the street you live in or your work place.
Environmental Wellness Outdoors
If you’re outdoors, how is the air quality? Many phone apps like Plume and AirVisual empower people to keep track of the air quality in their city, and to take appropriate precautions on days (which unfortunately happen fairly frequently all over the planet) when air pollution is high enough to indicate the need to wear masks or stay in doors. The National Institute of Health (NIH) maintains a page as a public resource with environmental wellness recommendations and updates.
Will you be near highways or going through tunnels? Do you live in a city which ‘traps’ air in its valley, like Los Angeles, Mexico City, Medellin, or Chongqing? How many people are near you? How many food markets, bakeries, coffee shops, and their associated smells? How far would you need to travel from where you work or live to get to a park big enough in order to be surrounded by nature with no other humans?
You should pay attention to all of these factors. Once you have become aware, you can make more conscious decisions about your environmental wellness.
Environmental Wellness Indoors
If you’re indoors, is there good air circulation? Are there windows letting in fresh air or sunlight? Are there plants or domestic animals giving life to your space? Are there any significant chemicals or gases in your indoor space, especially if it has industrial machinery or processes, or even household cleaning chemicals or older insulation or paint on the walls? Become aware of your indoor environments both at home and at work.
What Can YOU Do to Increase YOUR Environmental Wellness?
Beyond the specific techniques mentioned above, there are more general principles one can follow or aspire to, in order to put yourself, your family, your community, your company, or your city on the path to environmental wellness. Many small changes in daily habits of your lifestyle can add up to large benefits in your well-being.
Can you cultivate plants in your home or workplace? Do you have a garden in your yard or a planter on the balcony? Does your neighborhood have parks, or a community garden that you can contribute to and spend time in? Are there local environmental organizations where you can volunteer? Frequently, small parks, trails, and other small-scale nature destinations are maintained and improved by volunteers.
Environmental Wellness is Living in Harmony
As Rabbis Yonatan Neril and Leo Dee write in Eco Bible, “The litany of ecological problems we face – from air and water pollution to species extinction and urban sprawl – testify to our disconnect from the natural environment which God gave us. Yet we can regain a sense of the grandeur of God’s world and of our responsibility to live in balance with it.”
Making Changes to Improve YOUR Environmental Wellness
Respect for nature and all species is a core principle of an environmental wellness life. It encourages us to become more attuned to our environment both local and global, and to take active and even therapeutic steps to connect to that.
Whether you spend time in a national park, a retreat, a wellness spa, or in your local community garden, living in harmony with the earth has more benefits than you can imagine for your health and wellness.
* Featured image source
Learn more about enviornmental ethics at this link.
