Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
—RACHEL CARSON, SILENT SPRING
There’s a reason most people feel happier when they’re walking near trees and plants, or sitting on a beach. It’s no accident that people escape to the countryside or seaside for restorative time or vacations. Simply being outside in nature offers tremendous physical, mental, and emotional benefits. This chapter is dedicated to partnering with the most powerful healing force of all: nature.
RESTORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS ARE HEALING
Restorative environments are natural places that allow the renewal of personal adaptive resources to meet the demands of everyday life.
Consider:
• Exposure to nature scenes, more so than urban environments, improves stress levels and mood, and enhances positive emotions, improves cognition, and sharpens focus.1 Just looking at nature can improve attention.2
• Children playing in natural school playgrounds (on grass versus concrete or rubber surfaces) showed fewer attention and concentration problems, and improved cognitive and physical functioning than children playing in less natural school playgrounds.3
• Children perform better on tests when exposed to green spaces,4 and schools with more green space have higher test scores.5
• Several studies show that natural settings might have restorative effects that include increased performance on tasks requiring attention and cognitive processing. Time in green space also improved working memory and reduced inattentiveness, even for kids with ADD.6,7,8
• One study showed that spending time in the forest can reduce repetitive negative thoughts and rumination, risk factors for depression.9 And note, for teachers and parents, nature even makes us more cooperative.10
FOREST BATHING
The concept of shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, has become an integral aspect of preventive medicine in Japan over the last 30 years. There, doctors recommend deriving healing from spending time walking, meditating, and doing activities in the forest as part of a preventive care plan.11 The practice has been well studied, with measurable improvements in health that include:12,13,14
• Stress: reduced “fight or flight” activation of the sympathetic nervous system, lowered adrenal stress hormones, lowered blood pressure
• Immunity: increased natural killer cells and anticancer proteins, decreased inflammatory markers
• Sleep: better sleep and better energy
• Cognition: improved focus (even in children with ADHD)
• Mood: happier and increased sense of well-being
• Resilience: faster recovery from illness or surgery
The forest can offer tremendous balance to children and help them to focus and function, optimally to be happier and healthier, and to be more resilient. Nothing man-made, pharmaceutical, or otherwise, comes even close to offering this array of benefits . . . for free!
Take Away: Parks, schoolyards, green spaces, and most important, wilderness are not simply optional places for leisure and sport; they facilitate physical, mental, and social health in profound and fundamental ways that cannot be imitated or replaced.
Take a walk or a hike in nature each day.
Help your kids plan and build a fort, pitch a tent, or construct a teepee outside.
Build a temporary labyrinth with sand outside, and walk it with your child.
Do homework sitting on a rock, under a tree, or in a fort, tent, or tree house.
Go for a scooter or bike ride in a park before or after dinner.
Give your kids a patch of land to grow whatever they want to grow: a food garden, a butterfly garden, or a rare plant garden.
Speak up for wilderness and green space in your community.
Soil Microbes Make Us Happy, Healthy, and Smart
Our relationship with bacteria-rich soil can improve our mood. When cancer patients were treated with a microbe found in soil, they reported improved quality of life and happier mood.15 A subsequent study showed it improved survival in those with melanoma.16 This soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, boosted serotonin levels in mice as effectively as antidepressant drugs did.17 The mice learned more quickly and were more alert and better focused as well.18 Encourage your kids to make mud pies—or better yet, make them together. Doctor’s orders!
EARTHING, AKA GET YOURSELF IN THE DIRT
Throughout history, humans mostly walked barefoot or wore footwear made of animal skins and slept on the ground or on skins. The ground’s abundant free electrons were able to enter our bodies, and every part of the body could equilibrate with the electrical potential of Earth. This stabilized the electrical environment of all organs, tissues, and cells. Earthing (or grounding) refers to the benefits—including better sleep and reduced pain—we derive from being connected to these conductive systems that transfer Earth’s electrons from the ground into our body.
Earthing helps to set our biological clocks by regulating our body rhythms, which impact sleep quality and cortisol secretion.19 Earth’s electrons can also reduce pain and balance our sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (calming) nervous systems.20
In short, running barefoot outside, lying in the grass watching clouds or reading, or sitting on a rock are actually fantastic for your health and well-being.
LET THE SUN SHINE
Slathering kids in sunscreen has become a part of everyone’s summer routine. Science tells us, however, that we may not be doing them a favor. As with our fear of dirt, germs, and outdoors, we’ve developed a fear of sunshine. Yet a 2014 study at the Karolinska Institute that followed 30,000 women over 20 years found that the women who assiduously avoided sun exposure were significantly more likely to die than those who didn’t.21 That’s right. More sun exposure meant they were less likely to die.
Most of us know of the benefits of vitamin D, a steroid hormone that modulates more than three thousand genes and proteins, including absorption and transport of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium for bone mineralization and growth; cell growth and healing; and critically, immune function. It supports sleep and mood by promoting serotonin and melatonin production. Vitamin D decreases inflammation and may modulate autoimmune diseases. One randomized study of more than one thousand women showed a 77 percent reduced risk of cancer throughout four years in those being supplemented with vitamin D and calcium over those only getting calcium.22
University students who had sun exposure were happier than those who avoided sun.23 Yet scientists felt that benefit could not be fully attributed to vitamin D levels. Cells throughout the body, including the skin and eyes, are sensitive to blue light from the sun, which in turn regulates hormones, appetite, stress, sleep cycle, and other important elements of hypothalamic function. It stimulates melatonin release, which helps us fall asleep, acts as a powerful antioxidant, increases gut motility (which can help reflux), and even mitigates depression. The hypothalamus and the pituitary gland influence the adrenal glands, which control cortisol production. These important effects on brain activity, which increase alertness, improve cognition, and boost mood and vitality, are independent of vitamin D production. We’ve quantified just some of what the sun offers. Getting outside in the sun benefits us on many levels.
What about the dreaded UV rays? Ultraviolet light in excessively high doses can cause DNA damage and increase risk of certain skin cancers, which is why it’s critical to avoid sunburns. But some daily sun is not necessarily bad: Workers who spent more time in the sun had lower risk of melanoma than those who were outside intermittently.24 Chronic sun exposure may offer protection from melanoma,25 as well as psoriasis and multiple sclerosis. And phytochemicals in botanicals, applied topically and taken orally, help protect us from the damaging elements of UV rays—just as they do in plants themselves—while allowing us to benefit: from sesame and coconut oils,26pycnogenol (pine extract),27 red clover sprouts or tea,28 green or black tea,29 and others.
Protect children from sunburns by staying covered or in the shade during the strongest hours of sun—that’s a great time to explore forests or play in forts. When necessary, use a sunshirt with UV protection or apply natural sunscreen. Check out the Environmental Working Group’s ratings for the safest sunscreen options. Balance a healthy respect for the power of the sun, with partaking of its benefits.
The Real Dirt on Artificial Turf: Why Use Toxic Turf When Grass Is Great?
Many parents and educators argue that children spend considerable time outdoors participating in sports. While exercise and time outdoors both have considerable positive impacts on children’s health, many children spend their outdoor time on synthetic turf—another example of industry finding a lucrative way to dispose of toxic waste.
1. Tire scraps are toxic and may make kids sick. Most synthetic turf fields use crumb rubber from recycled tires as “infill” or cushioning material. Crumb rubber contains myriad toxic chemicals, such as the carcinogen called carbon black. Every synthetic turf field contains forty thousand ground-up rubber tires; this expands the surface area that can release toxic chemicals inhaled or absorbed in skin, especially open wounds. Human exposure routes include inhalation, skin, and accidental ingestion, all of which occur during normal play.
Synthetic turf fields can contain high levels of lead in its green pigment. As aging fields deteriorate, the plastic material becomes powder, releasing lead in more absorbable form. Lead, a potent neurotoxin, alters the developing brain even in tiny amounts.30 Further, more and more cases of leukemia and lymphoma are being reported in students who have played on synthetic turf fields.31
2. Temperatures on synthetic turf fields can rise to unsafe levels. The surface temperature of synthetic turf fields on sunny days can reach 160 degrees or higher. High-powered water cannons with lots of water are required to cool surface temperatures to safe levels. On hot days, this must be done repeatedly to reduce risk of serious heat-related illness in athletes. Further, turf contributes to climate change. Synthetic turf fields, like tar roofs, contribute to the “heat island” effect. Finally, these fields, made from petroleum by-products, do not convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and store carbon in their biomass as their grass-field counterparts do.
3. Synthetic turf requires the use of disinfecting chemicals. A synthetic athletic field must be disinfected regularly to remove body fluid as well as bacteria that otherwise would be removed by rainfall and the natural processes of soil. The disinfecting chemicals are registered pesticides that present their own health risks.
4. Synthetic turf blocks the benefits of earthing. The electron transfer of earthing discussed above cannot penetrate the tire crumb that makes up turf. Kids who play on turf are not benefiting from this regulating effect of being outdoors.
Take away: Dispose of these materials and put down wood mulch or ground cover. Do not play on synthetic turf fields that contain ground-up rubber tire infill. If there is no other option, shower immediately after leaving the field and change clothing, including socks and shoes, where tiny rubber crumbs can hide.
YOUR NATURE PRESCRIPTION
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALDEN
LEVEL 1
• Grow herbs in planters or outdoors
• Join a community garden
• Spend 15 minutes outside: climb a tree, roll down hills, lie in the grass
• Use essential oils and smudges in the home
• Shop at the farmer’s market
Start Small
Get a pot and soil, and grow herbs from seed indoors, or bury a ginger-root and watch it sprout. Your kids will love watching the plants grow; it creates relationship with nature through the act of caring for and harvesting the plants.
Building Community Through Collective Gardens
If you feel overwhelmed by growing food alone, start by seeking out a community that has a collective approach. Contribute time to caring for a garden with others in exchange for some of the harvest. This can be an opportunity to grow food, learn, find your tribe, and build community, and not shoulder the entire burden alone.
Together, you can write a letter about your project and ask people to donate surplus seeds, plants, tools, soil, and money. There are free plants all over the place wherever you live. Train your eye to see them. Some garden nurseries get new stock every week and will allow a regular pickup of donations throughout the growing season. Most seed companies only send out donations once a year, in fall or winter. Organize an annual seed swap and include giveaway tables of donated seed packets from organic seed companies. Check out the organization Foods Not Lawns.
Nature’s Aromas
Scent is a powerful way to connect with nature. Volatile aromatic compounds from plants enter directly into our primitive nervous system—bypassing any neurological processing—which links us to memories and past experiences. The aroma of rosemary has been shown to enhance memory and focus.32 We even have scent receptors covering our skin that promote wound healing when we come into contact with certain plant-based volatile compounds.33 Our healing relationship with plants is complex.
Houseplants or cut flowers, grasses, or boughs of evergreens: There’s a reason we send flowers and plants to people when they are sick, experience a loss, or celebrate. Plants smell wonderful and make us feel good. Keep plants—houseplants, branches of ever-greens, wildflowers—in frequented rooms in your home in all seasons.
Smudging: Traditional cultures burned bundles of sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and other aromatics as medicine for lungs, nervous system, and skin.34 They used smudging to bring plants and nature into their homes and to “clear the air.” Research shows that beyond simply inviting good feelings, it literally disinfects the air—lowering levels of diverse organisms in the air by 94 percent within an hour and lasting for up to a month afterward.35 Smudge sticks are easy to buy from local herbalists or online, or better yet, to make with your children. Light them, blow them out so they smolder, and allow the scent to permeate your home. (Don’t forget to put them out safely afterward.)
Essential oils: These can bolster our immune systems, brain function, emotion, sleep, and more. They have excellent antimicrobial properties as well, especially in combination.36 Sample different options and see which ones make you feel great. Then add a few drops to the bath, an ultrasonic humidifier or diffuser, or to some coconut oil to massage into your body, and enjoy. Someone once gave me a cotton ball with a few drops of peppermint essential oil in an empty baby food jar for my severe nausea when pregnant—it really helped! I’ve also used two to three drops of peppermint oil in a cup of ice water, then doused a compress to apply to the forehead of kids with a headache or fever. Three to four eucalyptus drops in the shower or bath are wonderful to clear congestion. I love a couple of drops of lavender on a pillow for relaxation, and Thieves Blend (cinnamon, clove, lemon, tea tree) to help fight infection. In fact, my sixth-grade son’s science fair experiment compared bacterial growth after applying Thieves Blend, soap or hand sanitizer from his hands on a petri dish. Thieves (an antimicrobial) won by a landslide. That’s my go-to “hand sanitizer.”
Inspire Kids about Food and Nature Through Reading
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long
LEVEL 2
• Plant your own garden, berry bushes, or a small orchard
• Start a compost heap
• Visit a farm
• Read a book about permaculture gardening
• Order heirloom seeds
• Spend time walking and exploring forests
• Go camping
One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener’s own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.
—WENDELL BERRY
Gardening 101
Gardening is one of the best ways to reap the benefits of being in nature. You’re exposed to elements that nourish your body and your children’s—growing things helps interest kids in digging in the dirt—plus you get the freshest food. It can be as easy or involved as you desire. Some people imagine that the only way to cultivate a garden means tremendous effort and expense: tilling, planting rows of tomatoes and peppers and strawberries, seedlings, watering and fertilizing and weeding regularly, then harvesting. That’s just one way to do it.
A much more realistic—and beneficial—alternative is to practice permaculture, an approach to growing that imitates natural systems and takes advantage of nature’s incredible ability to sustain itself. Rather than trying to control nature, we piggyback on nature’s boundless energy and foster a relationship. In this model, we are merely facilitators, becoming part of a web of soil, sun, rain, and diverse plants, microbes, insects, and critters. This relatively self-sustaining system is also called a “food forest,” which will produce many perennials as well as some annuals. It means there are two clients: the people who live there and the land itself.
Companion planting means planting certain crops next to others to discourage pests and weeds, and to encourage healthy soil.
Plant-feeding Hedges or Trees
Feeding hedges (called “fedges”) provide fruits with few duties on your part. We planted a hedge of raspberries, serviceberries, gooseberries, blueberries, and elderberries with little subsequent effort beyond pruning and harvesting. Fedges planted in a curved pattern can protect crops from critters, deflecting them from snacking on the plants inside the circle.
Feeding trees can provide fruit or nuts, pollen for bees, seasonal shade, privacy, windbreak, and—critically—leaves that eventually turn into mulch to build soil. In dry areas, orchardists plant trees in small depressions in soil, connected by a net pattern of shallow trenches, to collect rain and soil runoff. Dwarf trees are available in most varieties and are easier to maintain for those of us who prefer to remain earthbound.
Composting 101
Compost plays many roles: it recycles waste, preserves soil nutrients, creates fertile humus, boosts microbial life, and offers opportunity for exercise because occasionally we must turn it, and eventually, spread it. Wait until you have three feet’s worth of material to compost so the microbes are able to raise it to the minimum necessary heat to break it down: It should include layers of 50 percent green (grass clippings, fresh plant trimmings, kitchen waste, and—yes, I know it is technically brown but it falls into the green category for our purposes—manure), and 50 percent brown (dried leaves, hay, straw, wood shavings). Some people will add a little fishmeal or blood meal for extra nitrogen if they are worried that they don’t have enough “green.” The heap (which most prefer to keep in a container of sorts to avoid attracting rodents) should be moist like a wrung-out sponge. Some people who are more fanatical will add small amounts of soil from wilder areas to inoculate the compost heap with more microbial biodiversity. I even visited one small-scale permaculture farmer who used composting toilets and a year later had rich compost from “humanure” for their family’s crops (though personally I recommend applying humanure to nonedible plants, as it can concentrate our bodies’ waste toxins). In the end, the beauty of compost is that you have transformed waste into something fantastically valuable . . . for free!
Building Soil, AKA the Real “Black Gold”
You don’t have to grow your own food to care about building soil fertility. After all, in the same way our entire skin is considered one organ, so is Earth’s skin one organ. All soil is connected. Soil is an amazing entity—a fertile, alive place filled with possibility. One teaspoon of pasture soil might contain a billion bacteria, a million fungi, and ten thousand amoebae. Soil is where the dead are brought back to life. Decomposing organic debris and minerals weathered from stones feed vibrant living plants and organisms, which process dead particles in the soil and recast them as living matter. Fertility of the soil comes from the richness of this cycle and not from a bag of synthetic fertilizer.
The life in soil builds upon itself. Soil that is rich with nutrients and microbes means more plants, and more kinds of plants. The diverse plants attract diverse insects, which provide food to more species of birds and other creatures that feed upon them. Microbes are attracted to the living and dead matter that results. Diversity begets diversity. And diversity is abundance for all, including those at the top of the food chain.
Nature builds soil from two directions: the top down, and the bottom up. From the top, leaves fall from above to become part of the earth. We can mulch over that organic matter, to build mature soil filled with organic matter, microbes, and critters, ready to nurture healthy plants. From the bottom up, plant roots build soil by pulling nutrients from deep in the earth and siphoning them to the surface for other plants to use. When we harvest plants, we remove some of those nutrients from the soil, which ideally we return through compost, mulch, or natural fertilizer.
Don’t Waste Time Raking Leaves
Yep, you heard me. Fallen leaves are free food and microbiome for your soil, food and habitat for the critters—salamanders, chipmunks, earthworms, snakes, others—necessary for healthy soil. Certain butterfly species pass the winter as pupae within those leaves, and birds feed on bugs and worms there in spring. Dead leaves suppress weeds, break down into compost that enriches soil, and keep roots safe and warm throughout winter. If you must clear the leaves, don’t use loud, polluting leaf blowers and don’t send the leaves to the landfill in plastic bags—instead rake the leaves (don’t forget to jump in them) and compost them for use around trees, shrubs, and other plants. Feed your soil!
LEVEL 3
• Keep chickens (or other livestock)
• Work to start an edible schoolyard or an outdoor classroom
• Plant a green roof or vertical garden
• Take a class on foraging and preparing wild plants with your child
• Send your soil to be tested and feed it accordingly
• Learn about biodynamic growing
• Build a tree house or outdoor fort
Chickens 101
Keeping chickens for eggs is quite simple, and it is far easier than caring for many other pets. To have a steady supply of delicious eggs—and yes, they do taste better than store-bought—you need only a few things to get started:
• Investigate local laws and ordinances. New York City, for example, allows unlimited chickens (within limits of health, hygiene, and animal protection), but no roosters (whose crowing can be a nuisance).
• Build or procure a henhouse, with space calculated to the number of chickens you intend to keep, protected from the elements (hot sun, cold winds, rain, and snow). It can be as simple or decked out as you desire.
• Obtain organic, non-GMO feed and nontoxic bedding, like pine shavings or straw.
• Obtain chicks or chickens.
Keeping a Family Goat or Sheep
Keeping cows, sheep, or goats is not just for farmers. Dwarf or small-breed Jersey cows require little more than half an acre of land (and can be rotated between neighbors). They provide maximum two to three gallons of milk a day, which can be shared. Goats graze in just about any kind of rocky or hilly terrain, and they are solar-powered lawn mowers, offering free fertilizer and milk to boot. They are hardy, adapt well to heat and cold, require little space, and are inexpensive to keep. A goat averages three quarts of milk a day for ten months a year. Sheep offer similar benefits, plus wool.
Nature Education and Edible Schoolyards
Nature is the ultimate teacher for us all and provides a superior classroom to anything money can buy. Every school should offer a food- and nature-based curriculum to equip children with the knowledge that every human who walks this planet should have—how to be custodians of land and wildlife: building soil, identifying trees and plants, planting, growing and harvesting sustainably, and preparing food. Such an education complements and can integrate science, math, literature, and art.
Now that we know the health and cognitive benefits of being in nature, imagine children who sit for hours at desks staring at smartboards instead moving around outside, learning by doing, in contact with trees, plants, sunshine, and fresh air. How would nature awaken their focus, creativity, curiosity, and passion? How could it improve their executive function, stress levels, and mood?
Many projects like this are already in practice. Since 2005, chef Alice Waters’s Edible Schoolyard Project has been teaching children about foods they can grow, pick, and prepare themselves. Using the garden as a classroom, children create healthy, filling meals from soil to seed to plant to plate. The program has been so successful that it’s branched out to more than 3,500 locations worldwide. Wellness in the Schools also offers similar opportunities in New York City. Investigate to see if there are similar programs in your area, or start one. Your children will thank you!
Taking Action
We cannot raise another generation of consumers. The word “consume” means to destroy (as in a consuming fire) or to waste. Our children instead must become a movement of creators who know how to work with, rather than against, the elements of the natural world. We can create a very different future for ourselves, our communities, and the Earth by the way we buy, grow and eat and by how we educate our children.
TAKE HOME
1. Eat dirt! Eat food that grew in rich organic, biodynamic soil. Eat freshly picked veggies that aren’t power-washed. Prepare and cook foods with peels on if they are edible.
2. Grow food in dirt! Spend time feeding soil with compost and mulch. Don’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides—allow plant diversity in your lawn. Use leaves and bits of cut grass and compost to build healthy soil ecosystems that create rich soil and abundant plant and wildlife. Use ground cover that gives back nutrients to the dirt and doesn’t need mowing.
3. Bathe in dirt! Spend as much time as possible outside. Kick your kids outside (without their sunscreens). Encourage them to play in the dirt. Join them if you are so moved! Make mud pies, and don’t be afraid to take a bite or two. Spend hours a day in forests and parks, on mountains, and play sports on fields instead of turf.
4. Protect dirt! Let your community and legislators know that you value the quality of air and water and that you want to preserve our soil, trees, and nature. This doesn’t make you an environmentalist per se, just a smart human being. Legislators and leaders experience political and financial pressure all the time from industry; they must hear the voices of their community often. And as the Dalai Lama says: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” Let’s keep our principals, doctors, communities, legislators and leaders awake!
We need the tonic of wildness. . . . At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.