America Indoors
About 1 in 4 Americans spend almost their entire days indoors without going outside.
Don't you think we deserve a chance at growing with the nature that helped create us in the first place?
Here's your weekly encouragement to get out and go play, walk, dance, run, bike, skip, jump, leap outside and enjoy the beautiful nourishment that comes by way of spending time with nature.
Forest Bathing
Yoga in the Park
Healthy Sun gazing
Grounding in the Soil
Long hikes in park trails
Adventures in “the woods” with the kids!
Everything counts, connecting us back to nature... connecting us back to ourselves.
Americans, on average, spend approximately 90 % of their time indoors.
Some estimates reach as high as 93%. It’s pretty crazy to think about spending most of your lived life being enclosed within synthetic structures, being exposed to artificial colors, industrial chemicals, stagnant air, and “purified bottled water.” Coming from the open plains Midwest United States, I have the privilege of getting outside every single day and I’m certainly thankful for it.
If there was anything that was my saving grace during the pandemic, it was simply getting outside and going for daily walks along with my regular writing habits and building things online.
For the last dozen years or so I’ve been a fan of nature and embracing every moment I have to get outside. When I was younger though, I stayed indoors pretty much all day everyday. And looking back, my perspective on life and living remained relatively stagnant compared to the dynamic and ever-changing beauty of the natural world I had yet to be exposed to that lived outdoors.
I firmly believe that nature can be used as therapy, should be used as therapy, and has a profound ability to restore our health despite that fact that we largely ignore our needs for nature until we are desperately starving for it.
With all of this in mind, I have found some phenomenal resources to share with you this week focused on the topic of getting outside in nature. Especially as we grow into our colder months here in the Midwest and naturally find ourselves a bit less inclined to go outside in the cold, it is still very important to make sure we expose ourselves to the powerful elements made possible by Mother Nature.
Spending Time in Nature
Spending time in nature can play such an impactful role in the life and mental wellbeing of kiddos too. One thing many teachers and educators have learned to understand in today’s progressively adapting education system is that children need to spend time outside… and honestly for some kiddos… the more time they can spend outside the better!
As you probably know by now, I care about kids’ mental health, from the topics familiar with family psychologists, school counselors, interests around ADHD, hyperactivity, healing trauma, healthy coping mechanisms, and other needs for certain kids. Well, nature needs to be part of all of those conversations too.
Here is a thoughtful share about how to integrate Nature Education into the classroom.
Nature-based activities improve student behavior.
Nature helps students focus, including ADHD students.
School grounds and nearby nature provide a low- to no-cost setting for effective teaching.
Nature enhances academic achievement.
Students are healthier and happier when they spend time outside.
You can also consider sharing this resource with any of your teaching friends or fellow educators. Most homeschooling communities and Co-ops already integrate many principles of nature-based play and education but there is still much that needs to be done to help adapt practical curriculum and common core expectations in Public Education.
Researchers from a 2019 European study found that adults who had low levels of natural outdoor environments in their childhood had significantly worse mental health than those who were exposed to nature.
The authors note that, “the availability of natural outdoor environments and the time that children spend in them have been associated with increased self-esteem, quality of life, respiratory health, physical activity, and lower body mass index.
“Our study showed that low levels of childhood natural outdoor environments exposure are associated with worse mental health in adulthood, which supports the call on policymakers to improve availability of natural outdoor environments for children.”
In another study from 2019, the Danish authors found that children who grew up with low levels of green space had up to a 55 percent higher risk of developing a psychiatric disorder later in life.
Spending time outside matters way more than what most people think.
From sunshine to soil, from air and temperature, from movement to microbes… getting time outside is something that we each could probably use a little bit more on each week to support the health of our families, and especially our kiddos.
Consider this graphic I found that details many of the integrated systems that communicate together when we spend time in nature, nourishing our minds, bodies, and spirits all at once.
NATURE 🌱
Especially as we transition into fall and the weather naturally pushes us indoors, it's important to be intentional to make sure we continue to spend the time we need out enjoying Mother Nature on a regular basis.
This supports our mental health, physical wellbeing, and emotional resilience just to name a few.
Additional Resources for you to explore:
Green Schoolyards of America + “Living School Grounds”
Tinkergarten - Outdoor learning activities for kids
BACK TO SCHOOL, FORWARD TO NATURE: Ten Ways Teachers Can Fortify Their Students With Vitamin N
"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless" - Mother Teresa
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