Quick tips
- Aim for about two hours of green time a week.
- Split am however suit you, long or short walks both dey count.
- Skip the headphones sometimes and just listen.
Think back to the last time wey you go for a walk somewhere green. A park, a trail, a path along some water. You probably no set out to fix anything. You just go. And somewhere for the middle of am, without deciding to, your shoulders come down and the tight knot of the day loosen small. You come home dey feel like a slightly different person than the one wey comot.
That shift real, and dem don measure am. Something dey about moving your body through a natural place wey dey calm the nervous system in a way wey staying indoors, even doing the same exercise, no quite match.
Wetin the green dey do to you
When you spend time around trees, water, and open sky, your body dey tend to ease off its stress settings. Studies don find lower levels of cortisol, the main stress hormone, along with a slower heart rate and a gentler blood pressure, after time spent walking in natural surroundings compared with time in a busy urban one. Your attention dey get a break too. The constant low-grade effort of city life, the traffic, the screens, the noise to filter, dey ask your brain to concentrate all day long. A natural setting dey let that tired part of your mind rest, because soft, undemanding things like birdsong and moving leaves dey hold your attention without draining am.
The walking matter as much as the scenery. Movement and nature each dey help on their own, but together dem seem to do more than either alone. You dey give your body the thing wey e was built to do, moving through the world, in the kind of place wey e was built to do it.
The number worth knowing
The encouraging part na how little e take. A large study wey dem publish in 2019, drawing on nearly twenty thousand people, find say those wey spend at least 120 minutes a week in nature dey significantly more likely to report good health and a sense of well-being than those wey get none. Below that two-hour mark, the benefit no really show up. Above am, e hold steady.
Na the kindest detail be this. E no matter how you got your two hours. One long Sunday ramble work just as well as several short walks scattered through the week. So you no need a free weekend or a national park. You need about seventeen minutes a day, or a couple of half-hour walks, in whatever green you fit reach.
How to make am ordinary
The goal na to weave this into the life wey you already get, no be to add one more ambitious project wey you go feel guilty about skipping. A few ways people dey make am stick:
- Attach am to something wey you already dey do. Take a work call while you dey walk a tree-lined block. Park at the far end of the lot and cut through the green strip. Walk the long way home.
- Let am dey slow. This no be a workout wey you have to push through. To stroll count. The point na to dey outside and moving, no be to hit a pace.
- Leave the headphones out sometimes. Part of wetin dey reset you na to hear the actual place, the wind, the birds, your own feet. Let the world be the soundtrack now and then.
- Lower the bar on wetin count. A scrubby city park, a row of street trees, a community garden, a path by a drainage canal with some weeds and ducks. E no have to be beautiful to help.
None of this dey ask much from you, wey na exactly why e dey work. You no have to dey fit. You no need gear. You just have to comot outside and put one foot in front of the other for a while.
A gentle note
A walk in the park good for almost everybody, and e dey pair well with the rest of taking care of yourself. E no be a treatment for depression or an anxiety disorder, though, and e no mean to be. If your low mood or worry heavy, sticking around for days, or making it hard to manage ordinary life, abeg reach out to a doctor or a therapist. Time outside fit sit alongside that care and make the hard stretches a little more bearable. E just no suppose have to carry the whole weight by itself. If you get a health condition wey affect your walking, check with your doctor about wetin comfortable for you, then go find some green and take am at your own pace.
Where we take am from
- Scientific Reports (Nature) / NIH PMC, Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing
- Harvard Health Publishing, Sour mood getting you down? Get back to nature
- American Psychological Association, Nurtured by nature