Green Therapy

If I had a drum to bang, it would be this: in an age when society is so permanently wired up to technology and virtual worlds, there is no better therapeutic antidote than to put the smartphone/tablet/laptop away and step outside into a green space where real things live and breath, wind blows, birds sing, and clouds skud across skies. There need be no more interaction than what you choose. No-one is speaking to you, no-one is telling you what to do or how to behave. It's just you and the landscape that surrounds you. This may be your garden, a park or the wilds of Exmoor. The point is that it doesn't matter as long as you are somewhere that envelops you in nature, where colours, scents and sounds change with the seasons and where you can be at peace with yourself.

The Peak District was once known as The Green Lung of England. In those days it represented an oxygen-filled, fresh-aired escape from the industrial smog and particle packed air of the cities, towns and mills of Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Derby and their satellite towns. While the mills are long gone and the city air has been cleaned up, it now provides respite of a different kind: technological detox. It allows city folk to feel mud and grass under their feet rather than man-made concrete or tarmac; it allows eyes to take in new sweeping horizons and perspectives; it allows lungs to take time to breathe. Yet none of this is any good unless the technology has been switched off.

It is not possible for Man, once so in touch with his instincts, to continue in the direction he is going without some kind of balance being re-introduced. If society is to continue on a civilised upward curve (which currently seems increasingly unlikely), we urgently need to reconnect with the natural world around us (before we destroy it completely) and to re-awaken our innate intuitive powers. Our ancestors were born out of the earth and we should always maintain that connection, that humility, if we are to remain a civilised, functional society. We are a tiny fragment of an infinitely larger picture - one that our scientists and astro-physicists are continually trying to explore and understand.

At the most simplistic, achievable level, gardening can help with this. It can literally bring us down to earth. It allows us time to think and ponder instead of continually rushing headlong. It re-connects us with the matter out of which we developed. 

Anyone who has picked up a spade, fork or trowel and tilled the soil will understand what I'm trying to get at. Anyone who has raked damp, musty leaves (or dry crackly ones) will understand. Anyone who has planted the seeds of new life will understand; anyone who has pruned an old plant to encourage new growth will understand. It is the very joy of being 'in the moment', of cultivating and nurturing, putting in and getting out, that is food for the soul. And if the soul is happy, the mind is happy; if the mind is happy the body is happy. It is a virtuous circle better than any business plan or economic utopia. 

It is no surprise to me that we are seeing more instances of cancer. We live lives these days that create triggers for ill-health. And all it takes is one trigger. If we are permanently wired and connected, then we can never truly rest. If we can never truly rest, we are not allowing our bodies the time they need to recover. The human body has a remarkable ability to self-heal but our modern lives seem intent on preventing this happening. All you have to do is put a hyphen in the word disease: Dis-Ease is what you get.

So many of our modern diseases are examples of a body out of kilter - from cancer through to the many auto-immune diseases which abound these days. Too many of these are triggered by stress - which is the state of permanent 'readiness' for fight or flight which our bodies remain in when we are stressed. An overly stressed body is an overly tired body and an overly tired body is at greater risk of malfunction. At a mental and emotional level, depression appears to be on the rise - or maybe the taboo is being finally lifted and, as more people suffer, more people talk about it and acknowledge its presence in 21st century lives.

No surprise, then, to see the rise of Mindfulness in recent years - so much so that it is virtually becoming an epidemic in itself (yet another example of how our modern society has lost the ability to balance - everything is boom or bust, done to excess as we increasingly lose our ability to moderate). Twenty minutes a day of intricate colouring is certainly restful for an overworked brain, but how much better is the smell and touch of the earth, the sound of sea or birdsong, the rain on your face? Only then do you get a true sense of your place in the universe, of your ultimate insignificance and yet your timely importance. Being in touch with the natural world is being in touch with your essential self. How much better this than the version of yourself you too often choose to present to society in our increasingly virtual existence?

Each generation is moving civilisation forward - such is the nature of progress. But we should all remember that such progress needs to be positive, not negative. Gardening should no longer be sneered at or assumed to be merely for the retired and redundant. It is therapeutic at all levels - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. If we all had a bit more of it in our lives - or at least spent more time in green spaces, parks, fields, woods, rivers, seas and mountains - we may well be healthier, happier and better able to contribute positively to the development of humankind. It is arguably a perfect example of how the micro can benefit the macro, and how the individual can benefit society as a whole.