Mental Benefits of doing Yoga Outdoors

People always ask me why I enjoy practicing yoga outside. Isn’t it distracting having the sun, wind, and bugs on you during your practice? It depends on how you look at it. For some, the added distractions are too much for their already distracted mind. However, studies have shown that forest bathing, also known as the Japanese practice shinrin-yoku, is effective in treating depression, anxiety, stress and anger in both clinical and non-clinical trials, especially in the case of anxiety. So, combine the mental health benefits of yoga with the mental health benefits of nature and you’ve got the power duo!

Let’s break down the reasons why nature is beneficial for mental health according to scientific research, as well as dive into examples of how to easily incorporate yoga into your forest bathing practice to increase the benefits of both practices!

The 5 Senses

There are many reasons why forest bathing could be beneficial to mental health. First is the fact that urbanization is a fairly new phenomena, where the amount of people living in cities has drastically increased over the past two hundred years. What this means is that the human brain isn’t really built for the endless mind distraction of cities, it is built for the sense immersion of nature. So, by forest bathing, or more specifically tuning into what you can see, smell, hear, taste and feel in nature around you, you can help bring your brain back to the baseline state of what it evolved to be in.

If we look at the fifth limb of yoga, Pratyahara means to withdraw the senses, but in order to withdraw the senses you first need to become aware of them. Often we operate on auto-pilot, too focused on the chaos of the mind to notice what our five senses are picking up in our surroundings. Nature is one of the few places where all 5 senses are used, so by practicing yoga outside and bringing awareness to the five senses, it then becomes easier to practice pratyahara and experience the mental benefits of deepening your yoga and meditation practice.

Pranayama

You can also combine your forest bathing with your pranayama, or breathing exercises. Studies have shown that breathing in polluted air can cause symptoms of depression in some populations. So by doing your pranayama while forest bathing, you can use the clean element of Air to improve your mental health and fight depression on top of the benefits seen in pranayama alone.

The Parasympathetic Nervous System

Another key role nature has in your mental state is it helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and digest response. This is because in nature, we are not the focus, everything is simply happening around us so we are able to let go and relax. This is in contrast to cities, which activates the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight response, by constantly requiring our attention to the tasks around us. By simply having your senses surrounded by nature you can relax your mind, and adding a yoga practice to your forest bathing can only increase the benefits. Adding a yin or restorative practice could help relax the mind and body together. But alternatively, you can add a vinyasa style practice to help increase the flow state experienced in nature.

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout.

The Flow State

The flow state which we discussed in the state of flow is a state where you are fully engaged in a task with low-levels of self-referential thinking. You can enter a state of flow in many ways, however let’s look at the examples of vinyasa yoga and nature. Vinyasa yoga is characterized as moving the body in sync with the breath, which fully engages your focus onto the breath and the body and allows your thoughts to drift away. Similarly, spending time in nature can fully engage your focus on your senses, taking in your new surroundings and letting go of your thoughts.

Attention Restoration Theory

Another factor in nature’s mental health benefits could be the attention restoration theory proposed by Kaplan, which states that attention and concentration can be improved by allowing the mind a chance to soft focus on what the senses are experiencing in nature instead of hard focusing on the thoughts in the mind. Essentially being in nature can be considered a brain break, and brain breaks are essential in order for the brain to function optimally. Another form of brain break can be found in your meditation practice, when you let go of your thoughts and focus on the breath. By combining meditation with forest bathing, you can potentially boost your brain’s restoration and in turn, boost your brain’s attention.

While yoga alone has many mental benefits, there are many benefits to taking your practice outdoors!