How can nature decrease stress and anxiety?
Hey, you, lovely reader, Emily here! I’m the newest member of AME’s team, being responsible for some of the blogs you’ve been reading as well as monitoring the trends around social media, so we can stay up to date! But that’s not really what’s important here.I am taking over the blog for a few pieces to focus on the new year, and nature’s impact on us as individuals. I will share a bit of my own experiences and musings from how travel and being in nature changed me, my stress levels and overall improved my mental health.
As I’ve come to realise the big impact nature and the great outdoors have on our minds and mental health, the following blogs are going to be a little bit different from what you have read until now. They are intertwined with personal stories of mine, which will give you a genuine and honest experience that I really want to share with you! It follows the topics of how being surrounded by nature can help decrease overwhelming pressure and stress. Or how I called it ‘Getting on my personal nature retreats.’
Sometimes you don’t realise how important something is for you, until you lose it. And this is what I realised recently when it comes to nature. But let me start from the beginning.
Life in the big city can make you feel trapped
Currently I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am doing my 6 months exchange here, and I’m already halfway through. Jakarta… if you think London is a busy city, think again. Yes, the big megapolitan city, with huge buildings, a lot of traffic, and no… sidewalks. That’s right you read it correctly. No sidewalks. They were sacrificed a long time ago so there can be more space for the roads. Because people here don’t walk on foot. They drive – either a motorbike or a car. Jakarta is not a home of many parks either… because of the humidity and the hot weather, people prefer to stay in malls or cafes. And so here, I am. An outdoor, adventurous hiking soul, trapped between the busy roads and the noisy buildings of the megapolis.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge. Being somewhere new and unknown was my main goal for this cultural exchange. As I said the main way of transportation is with a car or a motorbike (scooter), so just like an Uber, you can order a vehicle that can bring you from A to B. Pretty simple, right? However, be careful not to be on the road during rush hours, because then you can be stuck in traffic for hours. Ho-urs. I think you got the picture of the huge and packed city. I’m not going to lie; Jakarta is a great business settlement ‘This is where the money’s at’ is what the locals used to tell me. But even though it was a great opportunity to immerse myself into this new culture and acknowledge the fact that I changed continents, for a whole month since I got there, I felt… in a cage, without really realising why.
The Rat race can wear you out
I was trying to keep myself busy, going in and out, doing chores, mediate. But somehow, I felt unsatisfied with myself, overwhelmed and anxious. I stopped going out that much if I was alone because I didn’t want to go through the trouble of driving to a specific place. As well as putting the effort in figuring out where I want to go. A whole month like this has passed. A month of low energy, overthinking, stress and lack of motivation. And yet, there wasn’t any particular reason for my mental state. Seemingly. After a month like this, I decided that it was enough. I needed to get out – I needed a break from my surroundings, and this is when I booked my ticket for Thailand. I was going to backpack around the country for 3 weeks without a specific plan ahead, but the world is my oyster!
Best gateway I could have made
Although I have traveled a lot in Thailand for these three weeks from the big shiny city of Bangkok, through the beautiful mountains in Chiang Rai to the crystal-clear beach waters of Krabi and Phi Phi Islands, one thing was for sure – I again felt like I could breathe. But from all the places that I’ve been to, the one I felt most in place was in Khao Sok National Park. Initially, I was planning to stay only one night but I loved it so much that I extended my stay by two more days there. Why? Because that place gave me the peace that I had been craving for weeks. Since the National Park is humongous, you can drive around for hours and still not have reached halfway. The beauty of it is the fact that you can go hiking by yourself in the jungle or get a tour guide who can take you even deeper into the Park with a boat. And while I was on that boat, looking around me, breathing in this fresh air and saturating the breathtaking beauty of my surroundings I thought to myself ‘This is what life is supposed to be.’ To reconnect with yourself, your values, your inner thoughts and desires, and your feelings.
Realisation
What I came to realise is the fact that I love walking. I love going to parks with my headphones on and just stroll around. Or walk home rather than take the bus. When I came back from Thailand it hit me. I felt down all this time because this simple pleasure was taken away from me. The same as parks and nature. There is plenty of astonishing natural places to be in Indonesia, but Jakarta is the least place you will find it. I had to go to a different country to see this. I had to get out of my ‘city life’ box and do a retreat, reconnecting with nature and myself. It gave me such peace and such energy that I was ready for the new challenges and experiences destiny had for me.
And this is how the beginning of my personal nature retreats started. That was just an introduction to my personal stories about the challenges the big city has put me through mentally and how natural retreats can make all the stress disappear. In the upcoming blogs, we will dive deeper into how nature affects our mind and why it’s so important to go back to our roots (literally)!
If any of this resonates with you, Pre-register for AME’s 2025 retreats in nature to be the first to know the dates when announced. See you there :)
