Why Nature Is Essential to Human Flourishing
Part Two: Bringing Nature into Everyday Life
This is the second article in a three-part series on why nature is essential to human flourishing. In Part One, I explored how nature can effectively reset our mental wellbeing by restoring attention and helping us see ourselves and our problems from a different perspective. But recognizing these benefits raises the practical question of how we can experience nature more intentionally in our everyday lives. In this second instalment, I will explore practical ways of doing this, and how simple experiences can become meaningful when we approach them with curiosity and attention.
Experiencing nature
Pretty (2004) describes three broad ways of engaging with nature. The first involves passively viewing it in a photograph, on a screen, or through a window. The second involves spending time in natural surroundings, like walking through a park, or having a picnic. And the third involves active participation through activities such as gardening, camping, or hiking. Each form of engagement can be beneficial, making nature (and its benefits) accessible to people with different interests, abilities, resources, and amounts of free time.
More active and interactive experiences can combine nature’s restorative qualities with physical movement and, in some cases, social connection, supporting both physical and mental wellbeing. Yet even brief or indirect encounters can influence how we feel, with images of greenery in our homes, workplaces, and health-care settings being associated with increased concentration, more positive emotional states and wellbeing satisfaction, and cognitive functioning (Pretty, 2004).
The human experience behind the evidence
Personal stories that have come up in the news recently help bring this research to life. In The Guardian, readers described nature as a source of peace, recovery, and reconnection. Some credited gardens, walking, birdwatching, outdoor swimming, and wildlife observation with helping them through burnout, anxiety, poor sleep, and periods of serious illness. Others described outdoor experiences as sources of independence, childhood wonder, gratitude, and perspective. One recurring theme was that being outside allowed people to feel more fully themselves (van der Zee, 2026).
These experiences reflect several pathways identified in the scientific literature with nature providing a temporary escape from stress, invite physical movement, facilitate social connection, stimulate the senses, and create opportunities for reflection. Wilderness experiences may offer tranquillity and distance from urban pressures while fostering hope, emotional renewal, and a stronger sense of identity. (Pretty, 2004).
Birdwatching and the attentive brain
One activity that brings many of these benefits together is birdwatching. It requires people to slow down, listen carefully, scan their surroundings, distinguish subtle visual and auditory details, and remember what they have encountered. In doing so, it turns an ordinary walk or a few minutes beside a window into a sustained practice of attention and learning (McDonald, 2026).
Research reported by the CBC compared 29 expert birdwatchers with 29 beginners of similar ages. Using brain imaging and bird-identification tasks, researchers found that the experts had more structurally complex tissue in regions associated with perception, attention, visual recognition, and memory. These structural differences were connected to greater accuracy in identifying birds (McDonald, 2026).
The same brain networks became particularly active when expert birders were asked to identify less familiar, non-local species. The researchers also found preliminary evidence that some expertise-related structural differences persisted across the adult lifespan, raising the possibility that acquiring and maintaining detailed knowledge may help build cognitive reserve in the brain regions used for that expertise (McDonald, 2026).
While these findings do not mean that birdwatching is a cure for cognitive decline, it may nevertheless be valuable because it combines several potentially beneficial activities. It encourages time outdoors, gentle movement, curiosity, sensory awareness, learning, and sometimes social connection through walks, clubs, and citizen-science projects (McDonald, 2026).
Connecting with intention
The most restorative encounters with nature are not necessarily the longest or most adventurous. A 2025 meta-analysis of 78 experimental studies found that spending as little as 15 minutes in urban nature can make a meaningful difference. Although outings of 45 minutes or more produced the largest gains in stress reduction and vitality, shorter experiences still reduced negative emotions and supported more positive restorative states (Haupt, 2026).
However, the intention behind that time outdoors also matters a great deal. Attention restoration theory argues that natural surroundings interrupt the mental loops that keep us fixated on sources of stress and draw us back into the present. Deliberately noticing sights and sounds may make a short attentive experience more restorative than a longer outing dominated by phone use or other distractions (Haupt, 2026).
Still, the responsibility for being able to access nature should not rest entirely with individuals. In the third and final instalment next month, I will look at how cities can bring nature into places where daily life already happens, and why parks, trees, gardens, and wildlife habitat should be treated as essential infrastructure for healthier and more resilient communities.
Bibliography
Haupt, A. (2026). Nature and mental health boost. TIME. https://time.com/article/2026/06/03/nature-mental-health-boost/
McDonald, B. (2026, February 27). Bird watching may build better brains, study says. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/bird-watching-brain-9.7108469
Pretty, J. (2004). How nature contributes to mental and physical health. Spirituality and Health International, 5(2), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1002/shi.220
van der Zee, B. (2026). ‘It’s a great healer’: Why being outdoors in nature means so much to us. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/31/why-being-outdoors-in-nature-means-so-much-to-us