
This Is Your Brain on Nature - kornish
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/call-to-wild-text
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truebosko
This is great. Particularly appreciate the "forest kindergarten". As I grew
up, I felt so much of my schooling missed out on applying the knowledge we
learned in the class room, and of course, the scope of what we learned in
class felt at times arbitrary and irrelevant.

My parents would takeus camping from a very young age every summer. We learned
how to fish, set up tents, and all the tools associated with those tasks. We
learned to respect the meat we'd catch, not be afraid of the water, be
innovative with the tools around us when we forgot something, and of course --
be adventurous.

I'm a large fan of the urban environment and I think raising children in
cities has clear social benefits. We must also respect, and embrace the nature
in and around our cities to foster that other side of the spectrum.

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0xcde4c3db
Articles like this frustrate me because they almost always conflate a bunch of
very different things (e.g. being near trees, being away from loud noises,
being in an environment that has no deliberate function, increased exposure to
sunlight) under the umbrella of "nature", which turns out to be a largely
inconsistent and culture-bound concept. There are clear hints of researchers
actually wanting to understand the underlying processes or play with other
manifestations of whatever "nature" might be giving us, but they're treated
like footnotes to the narrative of "Hooray, we knew all along that nature is
great, but now science proves it!".

And then there's this:

> “Imagine a therapy that had no known side effects, was readily available,
> and could improve your cognitive functioning at zero cost,” the researchers
> wrote in their paper. It exists, they continued, and it’s called
> “interacting with nature.”

I can't adequately explain how deeply I loathe this kind of claim (free, no
side effects, huge benefits; similar claims are often made about exercise,
optimism, or just about anything else that an author thinks is wholesome and
virtuous). Anything that has effects has side effects. Anyone who says
differently is selling something.

~~~
jarjoura
I can't tell if this comment is meant to be trolling or not, however, I can
speak to my own anecdotal experiences that exercise has had such a net-
positive in my life as whole, that even if you would consider sore muscles and
the occasional light injuries along the way as "side effects", the benefits
have far out-weighed them.

Also I find nature so full of different sensory experiences, for example the
smell of wild jasmine next to a stream, or the sound of running springs at the
same time the feeling of a cool breeze under a hot sunny day. Sure it's enough
to get boring after some period of time, but it's such a delightful reset from
the hectic city life I surround myself with daily that I always look forward
to revisiting "nature" when I can.

I think it's also telling that California (well most of the western United
States, to be honest) made so much of the land public parks. The federal
government even goes as far as to make areas safe for everyone of all ages and
fitness levels. How amazing is it that someone in a wheelchair can also
experience Half-dome in Yosemite?

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dluan
Hah! I know that smiling naked skinny-dipping couple. They certainly epitomize
the natural high of being out in nature.

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geebee
I'm not too surprised to read this. I get a little antsy if I haven't been on
a hike in a while. It's more than just exercise. Urban walks, including ones
with a lot of greenery like in Golden Gate Park, stave it off, but don't
completely take care of it [1]. Even a place like Muir Woods, which does have
beautiful trees and a creek but is so heavily travelled that people are
supposed to stay on a roped off path, doesn't quite do it. Fortunately (recent
tweets from a high profile investor notwithstanding), SF has a lot of this
available within a 90 minute radius.

Some researchers did find that natural walks have a stronger effect on blood
pressure and stress than "urban" walks (the link was here on HN, but
unfortunately I don't remember it right now). However, they took a walk down
el camino real in suburban sprawl as their "urban" experience. I have really
enjoyed taking very very long walks in places like Paris or New York, highly
urban areas, and depending on where you go, it's actually pretty fantastic. So
my guess, again this is just based on my own experience, is that highly
urbanized areas aren't necessarily lacking in whatever that element is that
brings a sense of calm and contentedness from long walks or hikes.

[1] I know, GGP has a reputation for having lots of addicted or mentally ill
people camping in the bushes. This isn't undeserved, unfortunately, but SF's
problems, while pretty bad, can still be overstated. It depends on where you
go in the park.

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milge
I started really getting into nature, hiking and camping this year. If you
aren't careful, it can quickly become an addiction. Although it's probably the
healthiest addiction you can have. Most of the time while I'm in my 9-5 box,
I'm yearning for the mountains and planning my next adventure.

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mbrock
There's a book called _The Spell of the Sensuous_ by David Abram, and a sequel
called _Becoming Animal_ , that I think are relevant. They aren't based on
neuroscience but philosophy (mostly Merleau-Ponty phenomenology, a little bit
of McLuhan, plus an interesting critique of alphabetic writing) and some field
anthropology. Basically he is defending the importance of embodied cognition
within non-man-made environments.

From the first book:

> _Today we participate almost exclusively with other humans and with our own
> human-made technologies. It is a precarious situation, given our age-old
> reciprocity with the many-voiced landscape. We still need that which is
> other than ourselves and our own creations. The simple premise of this book
> is that we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not
> human._

I bet there's also a bunch of articles written from a Heideggerian perspective
about being-in-the-world as a hiker. I'd expect the "three day effect" to work
very well when you are hiking from place to place, engaged in that kind of
simple and "primordial" activity.

There's a NASA report that I can't find that was about psychological
requirements for long-term living on space stations and one thing they
recommended was an explorable space with height differences creating a
shifting horizon, so you get that nice free feeling of walking in a landscape.

Which reminds me that _The Spell of the Sensuous_ has an interesting
discussion of Heidegger's use of the concept of a horizon, and how it relates
to the experience of time...

Oh yeah and I've heard lots of people say, and I concur, that meditation
retreats usually shift in character after around the third day, like it takes
about three days for the mind to really get into the new situation, fully
adjust to the rhythm. After that there's a different flow and meditation feels
deeper.

BTW, I love hiking and meditation, but I'm a little wary of romanticism and
religion. There's interesting critique of the concept "nature," for example
Timothy Morton's _Ecology Without Nature_. Yet there's obviously lots of
fascinating effects on mental health.

Then I'm also a little wary of "scientizing" or "psychiatrizing" both nature
and meditation. It has to do with what Heidegger thought of as the
technological mindset of treating the world as a big resource to use for
various purposes.

I think there is some kind of truth in the way many hikers and meditators want
to keep those things "sacred" in some way, regardless of what religious or
romantic theoretical framework they use to justify that. If you try to use
nature, or meditation, to alleviate the stress from your life, in an
instrumental way full of expectations, I can easily see it gradually losing
its efficacy, if it becomes yet another maintenance strategy and you lose the
sense of noninstrumentality, free exploration, suspension of ordinary
pursuits, etc.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
> I think there is some kind of truth in the way many hikers and meditators
> want to keep those things "sacred" in some way, regardless of what religious
> or romantic theoretical framework they use to justify that. If you try to
> use nature, or meditation, to alleviate the stress from your life, in an
> instrumental way full of expectations, I can easily see it gradually losing
> its efficacy, if it becomes yet another maintenance strategy and you lose
> the sense of noninstrumentality, free exploration, suspension of ordinary
> pursuits, etc.

There's a book by Chögyam Trungpa, _Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism_ ,
that has a lot to say on this theme. I have mixed feelings about the book
overall, but it's quite relevant to this concept.

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vitd
Fair warning - this page autoplays audio, at least on Safari in OS X 10.11 (El
Capitan).

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teddyh
_‘_ […] _You once lived on Earth. You remember what it was like.’_

 _‘I sort of remember. Still, it doesn’t seem to be easy to explain. Earth is
just there. It fits people and people fit it. People take Earth the way they
find it. Mars is different. It’s sort of raw and doesn’t fit people. People
got to make something out of it. They got to_ build _a world, and not take
what they find. Mars isn’t much yet, but we’re building, and when we’re
finished, we’re going to have just what we like. It’s sort of a great feeling
to know you’re building a world. Earth would be kind of unexciting after
that.’_

[…]

[Two humans who live on Mars, Rioz and Long, are out on a mission close to
Saturn and are at the moment relaxing by floating free in spacesuits outside
the ship.]

 _‘You know, I’ve read Earth books—’_

 _‘Grounder books, you mean.’ Rioz yawned and found it difficult under the
circumstances to use the expression with the proper amount of resentment._

 _‘—and sometimes I read descriptions of people lying on grass,’ continued
Long. ‘You know that green stuff like thin, long pieces of paper they have all
over the ground down there, and they look up at the blue sky with clouds in
it. Did you ever see any films of that?’_

 _‘Sure. It didn’t attract me. It looked cold.’_

 _‘I suppose it isn’t, though. After all, Earth is quite close to the Sun, and
they say their atmosphere is thick enough to hold the heat. I must admit that
personally I would hate to be caught under open sky with nothing on but
clothes. Still, I imagine they like it.’_

 _‘Grounders are nuts!’_

 _‘They talk about the trees, big brown stalks, and the winds, air movements,
you know.’_

 _‘You mean drafts. They can keep that, too.’_

 _‘It doesn’t matter. The point is they describe it beatutifully, almost
passionately. Many times I’ve wondered. “What’s it really like? Will I ever
feel it or is this something only Earth-men can possibly feel?” I’ve felt so
often that I was missing something vital. Now I know what it must be like.
It’s this. Complete peace in the middle of a beauty-drenched universe.’_

 _Rioz said, ‘They wouldn’t like it. The Grounders, I mean. They’re so used to
their own lousy little world they wouldn’t appreciate what it’s like to float
and look down on Saturn.’ He flipped his body mass slightly and began swaying
back and forth about his centre of mass, slowly, soothingly._

 _Long said, ‘Yes, I think so too. They’re slaves to their planet. Even if
they come to Mars, it will only be their children that are free. There’ll be
starships someday; great, huge things that can carry thousands of people and
maintain their self-contained equilibrium for decades, maybe centuries.
Mankind will spread through the whole Galaxy. But people will have to live
their lives out on shipboard until the new methods of inter-stellar travel are
developed, so it will be Martians, not planet-bound Earthmen, who will
colonize the Universe. That’s inevitable. It’s got to be. It’s the Martian
way.’_

— _The Martian Way_ , Isaac Asimov, 1952

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fish2000
Naturally, this articles’ photo of the mud-slaked Rubenesque woman was the
image on my screen when my new co-worker dropped in on me… calling this piece
NSFW feels a bit prudish but let my experience be your warning

~~~
awfullyjohn
It is NSFW.

Saw that picture and the one of the couple in the hot spring. Then I
remembered, Nat Geo was recently taken over by Fox.

Ah, I thought. Explains everything.

~~~
wcameron
As much as I mourn the Murdoch sale, National Geographic has long been famous
for its occasional bare skin.

~~~
awfullyjohn
Yes... When it made a point.

The bare skin in these photos have little to do with the content of the
article.

