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There is much to measure, and even more to explain, in nature-brain communication


Continued from page 1 “We don’t experience natural environ-


ments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel,” she observes. “Nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other. “I realized that if I was going to explore what nature offers our brains, I also had to acknowledge what its absence means. What was it about nature that people seem to need?”


In a recent two-year period she would criss-cross much of the planet more than once, talking to researchers, scientists and countless volunteers – with whom she would often participate in blood-pressure, heart-beat, pre-frontal-cortex surveys and more, to measure the green, natural world’s effect on people in matters like mood, health and cognitive ability. She would also interview some of the key the- oreticians and investigators of modern- day, nature-brain bonding In Japan, her first stop, Florence found the population had a hybrid approach to nature that stretched back through time, enjoying it for its recreational offerings and embracing it as a component of their everyday lives. Japanese researchers, in turn, gave her an early insight into the scope of investigations underway there into nature’s potential offerings to hu- man-kind. “They wanted to measure na- ture’s effects,” she reports, document it, chart it and deliver the evidence to policy makers and the medical community. But there is much to measure, and even


more to explain, in the nature-brain com- munication that the earnest writer was learning about. Some facts seem to be widely accepted in the specialized com- munity of workers she met – such as the fact that immersion in the natural world clearly affected an individual’s mood, blood pressure, heart activity, cognitive abilities. More, the benefits were seen to


endure for varying, often considerable pe- riods after an encounter ended. Streams of volunteers were coming forward to be tested regarding those benefits. The prominent, retired neuroscientist. Harvard’s Edward Wilson, would later declare the human life principles she ex- posed are “now supported by evidence in biology, psychology and medicine.” What the Japanese didn’t really know, Florence would add, was why nature seemed to be helpful in relieving so many things that ail us.


It was in Japan that the writer has her


first contact with forest bathing (shinrin yoku), a government-backed promotion of immersion in the wonders of a treed landscape. The practice is new, springing from Japan’s wellness science, and calls on people to employ such immersions to let nature into their bodies through all five senses. Our author was attached to a group on a hike through Chicchibu TamaKai National Park; there, in the taste por- tion of this endeavour, they were served mountain grown wasabi root and bark- flavoured tea. At the end of the hike, all five senses having had their workout, the mellow-feeling group would undergo a second series of tests to measure their al- tered physical condition.


Japan’s Forestry Agency had funded $4 million in forest bathing research in its 48 nationally owned parks since 2003, and planned to double the number in the fol- lowing 10 years.


In Korea, later, we encounter Korean Forest Agency healing instructor Park Hyun-Soo, in one of that country’s offi- cial healing forests. Diagnosed at age 34 with leukemia, Park had sought recovery in the forests; returning to good health, he decided to orient his work to cypress trees.


Today, Park heads the forest agency’s adventurous project to medicalize nature.


Shinrin yoku: enjoying a forest bath.


It has 2,000 to 3,000 patients coming monthly for some kind of treatment, be it cancer, allergies or prenatal care. Jang- seong Healing Forest, with its 2.5 mil- lion trees, is composed mainly of hinoki cypress, which put out a subtle mist with antibacterial properties. Exposure to these aerosols, says Park, reduces stress by 53 per cent, and lowers blood pressure by five to seven per cent. The soil below pro- motes other healing, being both anti-viral and a cancer fighter. Another 34 official forests were sched- uled to appear above South Korean turf in the two years following our author’s visit. And now, one final introduction: to David Strayer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah. Recognized as


an expert on autos, he realized he gets his best ideas in the wilderness. He decided to shift his research into nature's methods and find out why. When Florence met him, he had brought six influential neuroscientists to the scruffy Utah town of Moab. With Florence on hand to listen and learn, the scientists would work at framing ques- tions that would help researchers “deter- mine the effect of something as beauti- ful and complex as nature on something as beautiful and complex as the human brain.”


We aren’t privy to the group’s thoughts.


But Davie Strayer has told us that his goal is to find within 10 years some answers to the key nature-brain bonding questions being asked today.


As for Florence, who had produced multi questions of her own during her two year odyssey, she had her own goals: “I was in search of the best science that is turning up – in the hope,” she says, “that it can be drawn on to achieve greater physical, mental and social well-being for human kind.”


We can, at least, share her accompany- ing hope: that our ever-more-urbanized, technology-driven world will team up with nature to reap the benefits.


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