I really enjoyed talking to the group from the Bruce Trail Conservancy last week in Toronto. They were such an attentive and interested audience and they had very perceptive questions. I could have stayed all night talking to them. I couldn't imagine a better group to appreciate some of my lab's findings related to the restorative effects of exposure to nature. We have one nice article out already, and another one just sent off to reviewers. The short version of our story so far is that we can make people feel really good by placing them in simulations of natural settings, which means that we have a tool to help us figure out why exposure to nature is so good for us psychologically. It's certainly one of the most interesting things going on in my lab these days, but I wish we could start moving in the direction of combining my architectural interests with this work. It would be great to leverage our findings to contribute to biophilic design in buildings and cities. I'm impatient for these findings to have a greater impact.
The organization sent me home with a Bruce Trail Reference Guide, and this has re-kindled an interest that I've had for quite some time in exploring both this trail and perhaps the Appalachian Trail as well. I'm starting to feel a little strange that I'm giving lots of talks telling people how important it is for them to get themselves into the wild, yet I'm not spending enough time in wild places myself.
The paper is really interesting; I'm wondering if virtual reality settings like the one you describe could test findings like these http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5146C920090205 - that suggest time spent outdoors is found to protect kids against nearsightedness. Is it the light? the visibility of the horizon? variety of focal distances?
Posted by: Nora Streed | June 01, 2010 at 12:04 PM