Ancient civilisations—Egyptian, Mayan, Mesopotamian, Celtic (take your pick!)—recognised and celebrated their connectedness with nature. After all, they depended on their natural environments for shelter, water, food, and commodities they needed to survive. Zipping forward a couple of millennia, the arrival of the Industrial Revolution witnessed a marked disruption in the relationship that we humans have with nature. The development of increasingly sophisticated ways of manufacturing and purchasing products has disconnected us from our environments; rather than venturing onto the savannah to hunt and gather, we fumble with our smartphones to order a grocery delivery. Today, we live farther away from nature than we ever have. Recent decades have seen a rapid redistribution of the global population away from the countryside into cities. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, more than two-thirds of the global population will live in urban settings. We are exiles from the environments we evolved to live in.
Reconnecting with nature
The move away from natural environments has been linked to rising rates of depression in high-income countries (Xu et al., 2023). A plethora of research has attested to the restorative effect that spending time in “green spaces” (parks and rural countryside) and “blue spaces” (coastal areas and lakes) can have on our mental health (White et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2021). The concept of biophilia that was popularised by the American biologist Edward O. Wilson (1984), and theories such as Stress Reduction Theory (Ulrich et al., 1991) and Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan & Kaplan. 1989), have been proposed to explain why connecting with nature can help promote good mental health. But a key question remains—how much exposure to nature is required to do the trick? Fortunately, there’s an easy-to-remember guide that can help address this question. It’s called the Nature Pyramid.
The “Nature Pyramid”
The Nature Pyramid was first developed in 2012 by Tim Beatley, a professor of Sustainable Communities at University of Virginia (Beatley, 2012). In this work, he was inspired by his colleague Tanya Denckla Cobb. Noting how helpful the Food Pyramid had been for improving understanding about how different food types should be consumed in different volumes, she thought that a Nature Pyramid could draw attention to different types and instensities of exposure to natural environments. Beatley designed the Nature Pyramid (see below) to have four horizontal tiers—each reflecting different distances of travel to access nature—including the “local” neighbourhood at the base of the pyramid, the “regional” at the next tier, then “national,” and finally “international” at the peak of the pyramid. For me, living in Northern Ireland, this could translate to time in my garden or a local park (neighbourhood), a trip to the Giants Causeway (regional), a visit to the Wicklow Mountains (national), and a camping trip to the Black Forest in Germany (international).
The varying width of the tiers in the Nature Pyramid (wide at the bottom vs. narrow at the top) corresponds to the recommended frequency and duration of exposure to these different types of location—daily at the neighbourhood level, weekly at the regional level, monthly at the national level, and annually at the international level. The expectation is that the intensity of the nature exposure—the size of the “dose”—increases as we travel further afield. Importantly, the Nature Pyramid doesn’t require us to make annual expeditions to far-flung ecosystems; rather, it draws attention to the fact that we might have to rely on more frequent exposures at the neighbourhood and regional levels to get an adequate dose of nature exposure.
Engaging our senses
Of course, it’s not merely the frequency of our interactions with nature that’s important; it’s how we are when we get there. We’ve all had the experience of our body being in one place and our mind being somewhere else. Rather than being distant or distracted, it’s about being present and curious. This allows us to explore nature’s so-called “soft fascinations”—sunlight dappled on a forest floor, or waves rhythmically rolling onto a pebbled shore—which attract our attention without exhausting it (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989). It’s also about engaging the breadth of our sensory experiences—the fresh touch of a spring breeze, the clean scent of pine trees, the mellow trill of a blackbird’s song, the mesmerising spectacle of an ocean sunset, the tart sweetness of a blackberry plucked from a hedgerow…. There’s a lot to experience, provided we’re willing to experience it.
Nature prescribed
In recognition of the benefits that it can bring, exposure to nature is now being prescribed by health professionals as a form of treatment. Combining programmes that increase patients’ exposure to nature (known as “nature-based prescribing” programmes) with evidence-based therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) has been shown to improve mental health outcomes (Menhas et al., 2024). Recently, researchers conducted a review of research studies investigating the effect that the length and frequency of nature exposure have on mental health difficulties. In apparent support of the Nature Pyramid, they concluded that shorter exposures (as little as 10 minutes) occurring at reasonable frequency can have superior effects to one-off exposures (Bettmann et al., 2024). Little and often can do the trick. As the ancient Egyptians were all too aware, pyramids need sturdy bases.
A version of this post also appears at 5 to Thrive.
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