Green exercise refers to
physical exercise undertaken in
natural environment
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses ...
s.
Physical exercise is well known to provide
physical and psychological health benefits. There is also good evidence that viewing, being in, and interacting with natural environments has positive effects, reducing stress and increasing the ability to cope with stress, reducing mental fatigue and improving concentration and cognitive function. The concept of Green exercise has therefore grown out of well-established areas such as the
attention restoration theory within
environmental psychology
Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental Psychol ...
which have tended to focus on the psychological and physical effects of viewing nature (e.g., see the work of Kaplan and Ulrich) and well-recognised work about the psychological
benefits of physical exercise.
![2008-04-12 Crowd touring Durham](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/2008-04-12_Crowd_touring_Durham.jpg)
The potential role of green exercise in physical and mental
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...
(e.g., due to
nature-deficit disorder) attracted increasing attention from the early twenty-first century, particularly through the research work of Jules Pretty and Jo Barton at the
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
.
and several funded programs (see examples
Example may refer to:
* '' exempli gratia'' (e.g.), usually read out in English as "for example"
* .example, reserved as a domain name that may not be installed as a top-level domain of the Internet
** example.com, example.net, example.org, e ...
). Research has involved participants from many different cohorts including adults, young people and vulnerable groups such as those with mental illness (see research
Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
).
Theory
Green exercise can be usefully considered from a number of theoretical perspectives including:
* Exercise psychology
* biophilia and evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...
* Environmental psychology
Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the external world. It examines the way in which the natural environment and our built environments shape us as individuals. Environmental Psychol ...
theories, such as attention restoration theory
Research
Adults
Research examining the impact of Green Exercise in adults has demonstrated significant benefits for self-esteem and mood.[ The largest study of green exercise in adults involved ]meta-analytic
A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple Randomized controlled trial, scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each ...
methodologies to analyse the results of 10 studies based on 1252 green exercise participants.[ Results indicated that "the overall ]effect size
In statistics, an effect size is a value measuring the strength of the relationship between two variables in a population, or a sample-based estimate of that quantity. It can refer to the value of a statistic calculated from a sample of data, the ...
for improved self-esteem was ''d'' = 0.46 (CI 0.34−0.59, ''p'' < 0.00001) and for mood ''d'' = 0.54 (CI 0.38−0.69, ''p'' < 0.00001). Dose responses for both intensity and duration showed large benefits from short engagements in green exercise, and then diminishing but still positive returns. The study also revealed that all types of green environment improved self-esteem and mood, however the greatest improvements were experienced from environments where water was present. Similarly all cohorts of participants experienced improvements in self-esteem and mood, however those suffering from mental illness experienced the greatest increases in self-esteem.
Vulnerable groups
The outcomes of the meta-analysis by Barton and Pretty[ indicated that green exercise may have therapeutic applications. This has led to the idea of Green Care. Green Care comprises all types of therapeutic green exercise activities including social and therapeutic horticulture, animal assisted interventions, ecoptherapy, facilitated green exercise, ]wilderness therapy
Wilderness therapy, also known as outdoor behavioral healthcare, is a treatment option for behavioral disorders, substance abuse, and mental health issues in adolescents. Patients spend time living outdoors with peers. Reports of abuse, death ...
and care farming. There has been extensive research into the benefits of these green care interventions. Care farming in particular has been demonstrated to improve self-esteem and mood in those suffering from a variety of mental illnesses, whilst wilderness therapy has been demonstrated to improve self-esteem and psychological health outcomes in youth at risk.
Children
In comparison to research in adults, research in children and young people has indicated that there is no additional benefit of taking part in green exercise for self-esteem or mood. These findings can be related to nature deficit disorder
Nature-deficit disorder is the idea that human beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors than they have in the past, and the belief that this change results in a wide range of behavioral problems. This disorder is not recognize ...
whereby children are spending less time outdoors interacting with natural environments. To receive benefits from having contact with nature an individual needs to be connected and feel some emotion towards it, thus it is possible that children are not benefiting from green exercise in the same way as adults because they are not connected to the natural environment in the same way that adults are.
Examples
Instances of green exercise are numerous and diverse. Some examples include:
#Natural England
Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England's natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, ...
is funding eight demonstration green exercise projects through local regional partnerships. The main aim is to increase levels of physical activity and people's connections to their local green spaces.
# ''Green Exercise Partnership'' between NHS Health Scotland
NHS Health Scotland was the Scottish national health education and promotion agency. A Special Health Board of NHS Scotland, its goal was to improve the health of the nation, via research, planning, programme implementation and evaluation.
NHS H ...
, FCS and Scottish Natural Heritage
NatureScot ( gd, NàdarAlba), which was formerly known as Scottish Natural Heritage, is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government responsible for the country's natural heritage, especially its natural, genetic and s ...
(SNH). In partnership with SNH and NHS Health Scotland, the Scottish Government is providing £3 million funding to the Paths for All Partnership between 2007 and 2010 to develop its Paths to Health Initiative, which currently supports over 20,000 people to take part in health walks each week. SNH and Government funding is also being provided to BTCV to extend their ''green gym'' project.
#Green Gym The Conservation Volunteers' Green Gym programme aims to provide people with a way to enhance their fitness and health while taking action to improve the outdoor environment. It can be seen as enabling people to get fit who would not normally atten ...
programs are a type of green exercise. These generally involve organised groups which engage in volunteer environmental restoration work, but which are also specifically designed to provide physical exercise and physical conditioning in the context of experiencing natural environments. An example of such a green gym program are those conducted through the Australian Conservation Foundation
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) is Australia's national environmental organisation, launched in 1965 in response to a proposal by the World Wide Fund for Nature for a more co-ordinated approach to sustainability.
One high-profil ...
which are based on similar programs conducted by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers.
# Barefoot running is an example of a type of physical exercise (running) which is conducted so as to include a greater degree of contact with the surrounding environment (by going barefoot).
#Walk and Talk groups meet regularly for walks in green routes through the countryside, towns and cities following Psychology in the Real World principles as elucidated by Guy Holmes, mental health service user activist Nicki Evans and others.
See also
* Ecopsychology
Ecopsychology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinarity field that focuses on the synthesis of ecology and psychology and the promotion of sustainability. It is distinguished from conventional psychology as it focuses on studying the emotion ...
* Green Gym The Conservation Volunteers' Green Gym programme aims to provide people with a way to enhance their fitness and health while taking action to improve the outdoor environment. It can be seen as enabling people to get fit who would not normally atten ...
* Green prescription
* Horticultural therapy
Horticultural therapy (also known as garden therapy or social and therapeutic horticulture or STH) is defined by the American Horticultural Therapy Association (AHTA) as the engagement of a person in gardening and plant-based activities, facilita ...
* Care farming
* Forest bathing
References
External links
Ecotherapy: The green agenda for mental health
(Mind, 2007)
Green exercise
(greenexercise.org)
16 July 2009 by Amy Taylor-Kabbaz
Green exercise: Introduction
(Walking for Health, Natural England)
Green exercise and green care: Evidence, cohorts, lifestyles and health Outcomes
(Barton, Hine and Pretty, 2009, University of Essex)
Green exercise: The benefits of activities in green exercise
(Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006)
Green exercise research by Jules Pretty
(University of Essex)
Green exercise: The psychological effects of exercising in nature
by James Neill (University of Canberra)
Healthy parks, healthy people
(2nd edition March 2008 School of Health and Social Development Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences, Deakin University Burwood, Melbourne)
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