Dear friends,
I just wanted to share with you some really interesting and exciting research…which reveals that our connection with nature depends on direct contact, emotion, compassion, meaning and beauty – more than on knowledge!
In essence, mindfulness of nature is more effective than (intellectual) knowledge about nature in connecting with the natural world! Directly experiencing nature is key to nature connection!
Although identifying species and understanding the natural world can be greatly fascinating and enriching, you don’t need to know anything at all to connect with nature. All you need is your body, an open mind and a touch of mindfulness!
Here is the link to the open access article and paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0177186
Citation: Lumber R, Richardson M, Sheffield D (2017) Beyond knowing nature: Contact, emotion, compassion, meaning, and beauty are pathways to nature connection. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0177186.
It’s great to see the science really starting to back this up!