Nature Therapy

Bring the benefits of the environment into your home and shower-with this growing beauty trend.

- Brian Underwood

There's a reason it's called the "great" outdoors and not the "good" outdoors or the "nice" outdoors. Cultures around the globe have long recognized the powerful mind-and-body boost you can get from communing with nature.

You've probably experienced these effects for yourself-think about the invigorating feeling of a hike through the woods or the energizing zip from a swim in a chilly lake. I know I have.

The French refer to this-the practice of deliberately immersing yourself in the natural environment as silvotherapy. The Japanese have named it shinrin-yoku. In the U.S., we use the term "forest bathing." Regardless of what you call it, time spent outdoors is time well spent. It's as close to a panacea as you can get, lowering blood pressure and heart rate to help prevent hypertension and heart disease; reducing stress, anxiety, depression; and even improving sleep quality, according to research.

In fact, the benefits are so well documented that some mental health professionals have dedicated their careers to the study of what's now known as nature-informed therapy.

"It can be particularly helpful for people struggling with stress and anxiety, because getting outdoors helps to regulate the nervous system," says psychotherapist Heidi Schreiber-Pan, PhD, author of The Outside Within: Stories of Nature's Role in Psychological WellBeing. "It's a sensory-oriented approach: The sounds and smells of the outside world force us to be more present. Anxious minds tend to ruminate-and anything that helps anchor them in the now can combat this."