Meditation via Nature

The benefits of meditation make it well worth learning the basics. Practiced regularly, it can help lower stress, reduce blood pressure, slow a racing heart, increase blood flow, and promote relaxation.

The good news is that you may be able to put yourself in that enviable space with a simple walk in the park, according to a new study from the U.K. Researchers from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh found that the brain enters a meditative state when you’re in “green space.”

Rigging healthy adults up with mobile electroencephalography devices that tracked their emotions, the investigators directed the volunteers to take 25-minute walks through a busy, city shopping street, through a green space, and along a street in a busy business area. During these walks, the mobile electroencephalography tracked the volunteers’ emotions, which ranged from frustrated to meditative, short-term and long-term excitement, and engagement.

The device showed that meditative-like brainwaves were the most frequent when the volunteers were walking through the green space, and that during this walk they exhibited less frustration. The study was published online on March 6, 2013 by the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Although it was a small study (only 12 volunteers participated), it seems to support what we’ve been learning about the positive effects of spending time in nature.

Japanese researchers who are studying ‘forest therapy’ have found that spending time in natural surroundings can lower levels of cortisol, the hormone that rises when we’re under stress.

It is so soothing to see a tree sway, to watch a sunrise or a sunset, a green patch of grass, to admire flowers on a plant, and all this happens naturally because you get connected to nature.

Dr. Ajay Sati.