The busiest little beaver needs to rest from time to time. Recreational activities are essential to our wellbeing. Relaxing and recovering from stresses helps us feel better, but recreation goes way beyond that. Recreation does more for us than just erasing the health problems caused by stress.
I was a linguist in college, so I learned to pay careful attention to words. The word “recreational” comes from “re-create”. That’s what we do. We recreate ourselves. For sure recreation is a process of recovery and relaxation. We need that. It is also a re-making of ourselves, reconstructing our physical, mental and emotional selves. Recreation creates a renewed and better version of us.
Maybe there is something even beyond those physical, mental and emotional components. Some people label the “something more” as religious or spiritual. I don’t know. What I do know, what is 100% clear to me, is that there is much we do not know. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to know the details, what something is for, how it works, or even if it exists, for it to help us. Vitamin D was good for us, even before anyone made up the word “vitamin”. Before we get it all figured out, we can be healed in ignorance.
Another way of considering this “otherness” is to keep it just that simple. “Other” than us is the principle. The outside environment, the natural world, heals us.
We are creatures of this planet. It sustains and nourishes us. That fact is 100% scientific reality.
The Japanese have a practice called “Shinrin-yoku”, which means “taking in the atmosphere of the forest”, or “forest bathing”. Studies show that just fifteen minutes of walking through a forest leads to lower blood pressure, lower stress hormones, heightened immunity and increased feelings of calmness and wellbeing.
It is more than a little bit odd that we have to turn to science to prove fundamental wisdom to ourselves. I guess the collective “we”, our culture itself, becomes forgetful and needs reminders of truths that humans have always known.
Being out in nature reduce the rate and severity of many physical illnesses, as well as psychiatric ones. We know that spending time out of doors, looking off into the distance, literally shapes our eyes. Children who spend more time outside develop better eyesight. It is not just a stereotype that sitting inside, reading hour after hour, cripples our ability to see.
Even a little bit of nature makes us healthier and happier. Just having a plant on your desk at work or having a window looking out on greenery improves job performance and job satisfaction.
The falconry video is an example of one of the countless ways I bring myself into nature. I do it for entirely selfish reasons. It makes me feel good. Even if there was no scientific proof that it made me healthier, I wouldn’t care. I’d still do it because I can sense that the impressions, the perceptions, the whole experience of being in the natural world, transform me. I hope you can find your own special experiences, ones that are right for you, outside in the natural world.