I’ll be honest with you.

I struggled with this one.

More than any other topic in health and performance, being in nature speaks to something so deeply routed in me that to present evidence of its importance just feels, well, dull, and kind of obvious.

There’s something so intuitive about how good it feels to be in nature. We relax, think more clearly, everything around us seems to slow down. There’s an alignment humans have with the natural world that, just, resonates.

Practically speaking, however, if urban areas didn’t hold appeal and opportunity through convenience and connection, they wouldn’t exist. So how, with our modern lives and primal needs, do we have our cake and eat it?

Today I’ll buzz you through the five strategies research and experience indicate offer the biggest nature-based bang for your buck.

The squad;

Getting grounded

Fractal foraging

Horizon hunting

Book-ending light

Before we get into the tools, one thing across the spectrum of research is very clear.

We do better in nature.

Not only that, but we do worse in the absence of nature. These might sound like they mean the same thing.

They don’t.

For example, in their 2019 review, University of Chicago psychologist Marc Berman, PhD, and student Kathryn Schertz, reported that green spaces near schools promote cognitive development in children and green views near children’s homes promote self-control behaviors.

Similarly, adults assigned to public housing in neighborhoods with more green space showed better attentional functioning than those assigned to homes with less access to nature.

Findings also showed that being exposed to natural environments improves working memory, cognitive flexibility and attentional control.

On the flip side…

A massive study by researchers in Denmark examined data from more than 900,000 residents born between 1985 and 2003. They found that children who lived in neighborhoods with more green space had a reduced risk of many psychiatric disorders later in life, including depression, mood disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and substance use disorder.

For those with the lowest levels of green space exposure during childhood, the risk of developing mental illness was 55% higher than for those who grew up surrounded by nature. 55%!!!

Nature adds to mental health and performance, AND, an absence of it makes us much worse off. Most of us intuit this pretty well, but knowledge is only powerful when it’s applicable.

So what can you do?

Let’s dive in.

3. Hunt the horizon

There’s a phenomenon we experience when put under pressure. One of the first things that happens, we get tunnel visioned.

Super focused.

Dialed in.

Our vision becomes a laser, pointed straight at source.

Useful in some cases. Catching dinner, evading predators, kicking a field goal, hitting a baseline forehand.

All quick, short term actions.

When they’re over, as we talked about a few weeks back, every system in our bodies and minds benefits from us being able to revert back to “rest and digest”, the parasympathetic nervous system, for the vast majority.

To do that, and to induce a calm, relaxed state, allowing your vision to expand to the limits of its periphery reduces the heart rate and disengages the stress response. The knock-on effects include improved executive functioning, decision making and creativity.

We live in a world of right angles. Supermarket aisles, house lined streets, high-rise grid cities. Blinkers everywhere. One of the big reason’s the mind and body calm when we’re near the ocean is we escape those constraints. The eyes adjust and expand to a broader purview, and eeeverything comes into focus.

4. Morning Sunlight

The natural world is a system of cycles, and we’re no different. Across the ages of our evolution, our biology lined up with the daily rise and fall of the sun.

Professor or neurobiology and ophthalmology from Stanford University and host of the Hubermanlab Podcast, Dr. Andrew Huberman has talked at length about the immense benefits of (safely) viewing morning sunlight and evening dusk.

Morning sunlight exposure produces a 50% increase in cortisol, epinephrine and dopamine, which contribute to increased energy, immune function and mood, priming you to hit the ground running to start your day.

You’ve likely heard of cortisol as the body’s stress hormone, something that needs reducing, not elevating. While this is true later in the day, higher morning cortisol is part of the natural, healthy hormonal rhythm our bodies go through everyday. Exposing ourselves to natural light in the morning regulates and manages those rhythms, perfectly, bringing them down 12–14 hours later as we prep for sleep.

If you’re an early riser like me, live in a part of the world with shorter days, or it’s winter time, “SAD lamps” (10,000 lux intensity) can be an effective way of mimicking natural light until the sun comes up. Huberman suggests between 10 (brighter conditions) and 30 (duller conditions) minutes of morning light to reap the health and performance benefits of the body’s natural charging station.

There’s a fantasy that exists for many, of living off the land, immersed in nature. “The way things used to be.”

With the way things are going with remote work and ever improving connectivity, that may be more reality than fantasy for many.

While I think I’ll always hold faith that “nature knows best”, that doesn’t mean vibrant health and performance can’t be accessible to people who choose not to fully immerse themselves in it.

In the modern world, with real modern stresses, the most important thing remains the intention we set for how we choose to live our lives. The method matters less than the meaning, and anything that gets in the way of just, doing the thing, is a distraction. So find ways to try the above given the context of your day to day, and focus on what small shifts you can make to connect with the genius of your natural human systems.

In love and health,

Alex