Green prescriptions: The secret therapy of trees

by Tom Gunning 

In the spring of 2017 I was experiencing the later stages of chronic fatigue and burnout. In self-care we have a saying, ‘if you don’t listen to the whispers of your body, you’ll eventually hear the screams.’ I had been too busy building the Parable Garden Education Project in Co. Wexford to hear the whispers of chronic stress but I wasn’t too busy to hear the whispers of the woods beside our walled gardens. Many days I would arrive at the site and it felt like my frontal lobes were about to fizzle up and fry or simply explode. Yet something strange happened every time I went to work in the woods. When I returned from my time with the trees I always felt mentally restored and physically renewed. That summer I spent more time than ever digging, sowing, and planting because I had found the thing that fixed me: soil.

The writer Jospeh Campbell (1991) wrote, “where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Through a lack of self-care I had stumbled but when I fell, I landed on the earth. I found my treasure. I spent the following year researching how nature is good for us and I turned our woods into a ‘Healing Forest’ so that others could come and experience the therapy of the trees. Like many others, I had badly damaged my own nervous system which had been on alert for far too long and that’s where the story of the healing effects of nature begins.

As a species, we have spent the vast majority of our time living out in nature. If we go back a couple of million years, our ancestors roamed savannahs and woodlands foraging for food and water. Our genus was about five foot tall and all we carried were some sticks and stone tools. This was our home but it was a threatening and perilous environment and we shared our habitat with giant lions and leopards, sabre-toothed cats and even huge eagles. We survived because we were creative and adaptive, but more importantly, we worked together. We couldn’t hunt on our own or cut up a large animal alone so we wandered around in groups of between 15 25. At night we lit fires to keep the wild animals away and all this time our fight or flight survival mechanisms were been honed and perfected. It is said it takes about ten thousand years for humans to complete an evolutionary change and as we are only half way through the current cycle, we still operate out of the same nervous system responses as our ancient ancestors.

Our survival instincts still programme us to respond to threats. There are no more sabre-toothed cats but our fight or flight responses have now identified a whole new range of threats to our survival. Our cityscapes are filled with a plethora of visual and aural threats and our contemporary lifestyles are providing far more sources of stress for our bodies and brains than there were for our primitive ancestors. Our central nervous system is unable to cope with the sheer weight and pace of incoming data. An ancestor on the savannah might have had one or two stressors or close calls a day, but it is estimated that we can now experience up to 50 stressors in any given day.

Commutes, long working hours and the data from social media platforms are providing us with a pandora’s box of modern-day stressors but the real problem is that we have insufficient time to de-stress. This is the fascinating finding that is coming out of recent research into the healing benefits of nature; it is nature that tells our systems to de-stress, yet never before in the history of humanity have we had so little access to it. It was the sounds and sights of nature that triggered the brain to switch off the stress chemicals and release the rest and recover hormones and neurotransmitters. So, after our ancient uncle successfully escaped the claws of the tiger, he then rested up a tree or on a rocky ledge. The shades and patterns of the blues and greens along with the sounds of birds chirping and water softly flowing were the signals to his system to become calm again. The World Health Organisation (2011) now calls stress the epidemic of the 21st century.

Research shows that in urban settings more blood flows to the amygdala, while in natural surroundings blood flows away from it (Shuda et al, 2020). This suggests that the primitive part of our brains is in a heightened state of alert when we are in cities or towns. The reason for this is that the features and stimuli in the city are as far away from the open plains of the savannahs as one could possibly get. Green therapy provides us with the research that shows us exactly why nature is good for us and at its core is the fact that when we are in nature we are actually at home. Our forebears had access to nature to help them to restore their systems to the relaxed state but unfortunately that is limited for us. The crucial point to remember is that our bodies are designed to be in the rest and digest state more often than the fight or flight state. When we continuously throw ourselves off balance, we find ourselves suffering from the multiple effects of chronic or ongoing stress. This is one reason why the study and practice of green therapy is significant because it helps us to mend and heal our bodies from the harmful effects of stressful lifestyles.

It was Rodger Ulrich, architect and professor, who first presented research showing how green therapy actually works (1984). He demonstrated how the sights and sounds of nature activate the healing, balancing and restorative effects of the parasympathetic nervous system. Ulrich is one of the pioneer researchers in this area and his work began back in the early ‘80s when, as an architect and environmental psychologist, he discovered that patients in hospitals who have a room with a view onto greenery healed quicker and needed less painkillers. Ulrich’s first study, titled “View through a window may influence recovery from surgery,” studied patients in a hospital in Pennsylvania who were recovering from gall-bladder surgery (Ulrich, 1984). He studied two different groups of patients. One group looked out onto deciduous trees, while the other looked out onto a brick wall. Those who looked out onto the trees had lower levels of stress, had a more positive outlook and were discharged slightly earlier. In his research, nature scenes, images and paintings drew out psychological feelings of affection, friendliness and even playfulness. Nature scenes tended to decrease feelings of anger and aggression while urban scenes tented to increase them. Urban scenes also increased levels of loneliness and sadness - ironic, considering that we are surrounded by fellow humans in cityscapes.

We can partly associate our mental states with what is going on inside the brain, so Ulrich began to delve deeper into the mechanisms and activity inside our neurology. In particular he began to examine brain waves. When we are at work or really focused on an activity, the dominant brain wave pattern is beta waves. Beta waves are very quick and can operate up to thirty cycles per second. What this means is that if you were to look at the speed of information passing around the brain, along with its own processing, neutrons are firing up and connecting very quickly. Think about how your head felt the last time you were really busy, and that’s what beta waves feel like. We’re answering phone calls, thinking about emails and generally multitasking at a very busy pace. Beta waves are also linked with higher levels of stress. When we are rested and relaxed however an EEG or, electroencephalograph apparatus, which measures brain waves, would show up predominantly alpha wave patterns. Alpha waves can be as slow as four cycles per second and we experience them just before we go to sleep. If we are experiencing slower alpha waves, then most likely, we are not in a stressed state (Selhub et al, 2014).

Ulrich’s research showed that people who were immersed in nature settings had a higher rate of alpha brain waves. These are the brain waves that meditators experience and are associated with feelings of calmness and serenity. Serotonin levels also raise when we experience alpha waves and this neurotransmitter is associated with feeling happy. Elderly patients in residential care homes also reported the same effects when shown nature scenes and their stress levels decreased as their alpha brain levels increased. A variety of scenes can stimulate alpha waves, from forests and orchards to rivers, streams and farmland settings. When participants were shown pictures of nature there was a noted preference for scenes that featured water in the form of lakes, rivers or streams. People preferred pictures that had between 33 and 66 percent of water in the composition. Selhub et al, 2014).

In recent years psychotherapists and psychiatrists have begun to embrace the possibilities offered by moving their sessions with patients and clients outdoors. A study published in Psychiatry Investigation in 2009, showed how researchers in America studied the effects of moving therapy sessions outdoors to an arboretum with a group of 63 patients. The group was split and some continued their therapy in the hospital setting while others were immersed in the forest setting of an arboretum. The results showed the most significant reduction in depressive symptoms for the forest group. The odds of a complete remission were also raised by about thirty percent in the outdoors group. This group also showed lower levels of cortisol and a higher heart rate variability, which is a marker for activity in the parasympathetic nervous system. Therapy entails a level of cognitive engagement on the part of the patient but we find it hard to direct our attention to processing information and questions if we are in a stressed state. The fight or flight system doesn’t have time for therapy sessions as it’s trying to escape from a predator so one possibility is that the arboretum allowed the patients to relax more thus enabling the cognitive processes that therapy entails.

Nature also allows the mind to get out of the cognitive loops caused by anxiety, stress and depression. It induces whole brain activity which allows the patient to become creative and solution orientated. The fight or flight response is solution focused but in a very myopic way, literally trying to figure out whether to run up a tree or jump across a stream. To get ourselves out of depressive or anxious states, the brain has to operate differently and ultimately it has to become creative as we attempt to build a new relationship with the world around us. The safety of the natural world allows the stressed or fear-based brain to relinquish its hold on narrow survival mechanisms in order to engage with new thought patterns.

In 2006 a Dutch health scientist, Dr Peter P. Groenewegen, applied the term “vitamin G” to the medicinal use of green space (Groenewegen et al, 2006). Doctors and therapists are now beginning to actively write prescriptions for vitamin G which directs you to go to a forest, park or seashore instead of a pharmacy. These prescriptions detail specified amounts of exercise and time to spend in nature, along with mindfulness exercises to facilitate a better engagement with plants, animals and trees. Research continually shows that those who are most stressed have the most to gain from being in nature (Jiang et al, 2014) but they are also the group that find it hardest to get time outdoors, hence the need to be actually given a written prescription from a doctor. The best prescriptions for vitamin G include a range of different but specific activities so that the patient will know that they have ‘taken their medication.’

Nature is a therapist and like all good healers, she has many things to teach us. In many Native American creation myths, it is the trees, foxes, otters and ravens that are created first. They are the elders. Then we are created and our first teachers were the birds, beavers, spiders and beetles. We learned how to make hooks from the burdock thistle and learned how to dive from the kingfisher. We fashioned nets to catch fish after we watched spiders weave silken webs. We learned how to collect water from the beetles and lizards and how to store food from the squirrel. The corncrakes tutored us in resilience and the sparrows, gold finches and blue jays taught us about parenting and fidelity.

In my own journey back from chronic fatigue and burnout I learnt self-care but my best tutors have always been the rooted and unrooted ones in our woods and wild flower meadows. Trees can outlive us by many hundreds of years and one of the reasons for their longevity is their long hibernation during winter months. Trees operate according to cycles of activity and rest, and even though they rest for a long time, they still produce a summer harvest and everything gets done. We too need to embrace rest during our activity-filled days to allow our systems to restore and renew. Rest is not the same as relaxation. Rest means doing nothing. Yet nature helps us to rest because her movements are slow and we naturally slow down when we bathe ourselves in her sights and smells. It takes a tree 8 hours to take in breath and an out breath and we too can learn self-care from this more natural pacing.

Some theories suggest that part of the therapeutic properties of nature lies in what it is not (Williams, 2018). Our survival mechanisms fear isolation because our ancestors had to be part of a group to hunt and eat. Yet social media platforms stimulate us to compare ourselves with our peers every time we see their posts. I am aware of the good parts and the bad parts of my life but we only post our successes and achievements. This can lead to continuous self judgement which always acts as a stressor. Now compare screen time to green time. When we look at trees, some are straight, some are crooked, depending on their source of light. Yet we never rebuke or judge them for that. It seems that in nature, we leave our judgement minds behind and instead we just accept the natural world the way is. Nature invites us into a different space where we only have to do the small things, like looking and listening and wondering. And, in doing this, nature bequeaths to us the lesson that we are enough, just the way we are, and that nothing more is needed. Nature offers us the wild untouched spaces as a metaphor for how we can view ourselves. She offers us the wildness and the weeds and the wilderness as a metaphor for our own self-understanding and as a dispensation from the need to be anything more than we already are. In short, she offers us a break from the judging mind.

Our woodlands in Wexford are also the grand metaphor for healing. Between the walled gardens and the beach in Curracloe we have some acres of Nordic Spruce. These evergreens are highly productive but were densely planted. These woods are dark and the sunlight rarely reaches the ground. Yet for safety reasons a stretch of the pines had to be felled beside the old walls some years back. And it was then that I began to witness the secret therapy of trees for the first time.

A halo of light opened up in the evergreen canopy and where there was darkness now there was light. The green shoots of new life sprouted everywhere along the light filled forest floor. For the first time birdsong could be heard where the healing balm of light drenched the soil. Biodiversity blossomed amidst a wild new growth. Therapists are healers and nature is a healer and we are involved in the same activity, daily mirroring of each other in cycles of light and darkness, healing and renewal. Ultimately it is the mind, body and soul that will heal itself but therapists too are privileged to be able to open up a halo of light over the dark ground of human desolation, depression or despair. The first man was called Adam or in Hebrew Adamah, meaning red soil. So, if we want to understand ourselves, we need to understand soil and, like clay, we too have the endless potential to heal, renew and repair ourselves and in our forests, we have a secret therapist, prescribing stillness and rest, pine scent and birdsong.

Tom Gunning is a writer and teacher. His books include Nature's Way: A Guide to Green Therapy and is also co-author of the Best Self series of books all published by Beehive Publications. He is the co-founder of the Parable Garden Education Project in Co. Wexford.

References
Campbell, J., & Osbon, D. K. (1991). Reflections on the art of living: A Joseph Campbell companion. HarperCollins.

Groenewegen, P. P., Van den Berg, A. E., De Vries, S., & Verheij, R. A. (2006). Vitamin G: effects of green space on health, well-being, and social safety. BMC public health, 6(1), 1-9. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16759375/

Jiang, B., Chang, C. Y., & Sullivan, W. C. (2014). A dose of nature: Tree cover, stress reduction, and gender differences. Landscape and Urban Planning, 132, 26-36.

Selhub, E.M, Logan, A.C. (2014) Your Brain On Nature. HarperCollins.

Shuda, Q., Bougoulias, M. E., & Kass, R. (2020). Effect of nature exposure on perceived and physiologic stress: A systematic review. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 53, 102514.

Ulrich, R. S. (1977) "Visual landscape preference: a model and application." Man-Environment Systems 7: 279-293.

Ulrich, R. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224(4647), 420–421. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.6143402https://doi.org/10.1126/science.6143402

Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 11(3), 201–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-4944(05)80184-7

Williams, F. The Nature Fix, New York: W.W. Norton, 2018.

World Health Organization. (2011). Burden of disease from environmental noise: Quantification of healthy life years lost in Europe. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/326424/9789289002295- eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

IAHIP 2023 - INSIDE OUT 99 - Spring 2023