Physical and Emotional Balance...another healthy reason to hold on to our natural spaces.
“Nature itself is the best physician.”
It is a well researched and long understood belief that spending time in nature has great beneficial effects on our health and well being.
As Dr Nooshin Razani (pediatrician, researcher and advocate of the healing power of nature) says,“Nature has the power to heal because it is where we are from, it is where we belong and it belongs to us as an essential part of our health and our survival.”
Even when people are unable to actually be in natural environments, visual and audible recordings of nature have proved to be powerful- recent research has identified significant positive effects on the recovery of patients in hospitals, when they have access to images or sounds of nature.
Physical exercise undertaken in natural environments has come to be known as “green exercise,” combining the well known health benefits of physical exercise with the evidence that suggests that viewing, being and interacting with nature can reduce stress, mental tiredness and can increase cognitive function and improve concentration.
But what about the Arts? The therapeutic advantage of spending creative time in natural surroundings seems obvious, but can artistic process help further the connection that we have generally lost and need in order to value it?
Claire Cansick finds the added activity of painting helps focus her experience of being immersed in nature and recommends the process as a way of finding pause in the busyness of life.
Read her account of how her artistic practice unlocks a sense of feeling for the natural world….
Beyond silence - Claire Cansick 2020
The pandemic has had one good impact on each of us, it has highlighted the need for us to connect with nature for our wellbeing. The need. Some days I would have felt quite unwell mentally if I hadn’t got myself out for a walk and taken in the landscape around where I live.
Green spaces do more than beautify; they offer a refuge, a pause, a grounding, something intangible which affects our nervous system. I am not sure how it does that but it works its magic, switching us from head to body, making us feel more and think less.
I am extremely lucky to have incredibly beautiful areas of nature around me as I live in the middle of the unique landscape of the Norfolk Broads; there are bodies of water, trees and fields all around me.
Painting it takes me away from my head and draws me into its magic as art, like nature, isn’t just there to beautify. It communicates feeling and if you take it in it might just give you the pause you were looking for.
Claire Cansick
