Think of your last memorable moment in nature. Did you spot a bird you’ve never seen before? Dip your toes in a river? Maybe climb a tree?

New research from the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, recently published in the , examined whether children’s interactions with nature that are embodied, rather than just visual, are associated with being in the moment and feeling connected to something beyond the self.

Researchers coded responses from 127 Girl Scouts, ages 8-11, about a recent meaningful nature experience. A questionnaire then assessed the degree to which participants experienced presence in nature, the study’s term for being in the moment. Exploratory analyses found that participants who had embodied interactions reported a greater sense of presence in nature than those who reported only visual interactions.��

, co-author of the study and doctoral student of psychology at the UW, talked with UW News about the study.

Can you explain the difference between embodied and visual interactions with nature?

Carly Gray: We think of embodied nature interactions as engaging senses other than just vision. One’s whole body is often involved. Whether you’re moving or being still, you’re experiencing nature through more than just your eyes. A visual nature interaction is one that just uses the sense of vision — maybe watching a bird through a window or looking at the textures in a leaf.

To identify visual and embodied interactions in the study, we applied what we call an interaction pattern approach, which is a way of characterizing the how humans interact with nature. A relatively abstract interaction pattern could be something like “listening to animals.” That interaction pattern could encompass more specific interactions ranging from “hearing your neighbor’s dog bark” to “hearing birdsong in a forest.”

That leads us to the idea of presence. How do you use that term in the context of this study, and how does it tie in with the other ideas you were discussing?��

CG: We think of presence as a meaningful experience with optimal awareness and some sense of connection beyond the self — whether that’s the natural environment that one is in, some higher power, other people you’re with, or something else. It’s frankly difficult to put into words, which I think speaks to some of the power of what these experiences can feel like. In this study, we were looking specifically at presence in nature.

How did you then quantify this information?

CG: We developed questions based on existing measures and created some questions of our own. We used these questions to ask the Girl Scouts about their experience of presence in nature during the experiences they had just written about.

We asked the Girl Scouts to write about a meaningful nature experience and tell us where they were, what they were doing and why the experience was meaningful. We combed through these written narratives to identify interaction patterns and developed a coding manual to describe how to do this in a standardized way. After reading through half of these nature experiences, we looked at the interaction patterns and noticed that a lot of them were relying on vision. Primarily, we noticed a lot of verbs like seeing, watching, looking, staring. For example, a visual nature interaction would be “looking at a tall tree.”

We wanted to know what might be different between the Girl Scouts who reported solely visual experiences versus more embodied nature experiences. The Girl Scouts who engaged in nature using more action-oriented verbs — talking, listening, smelling, feeling — engaged in embodied nature interactions. For example, “building a snowman” and “hiking on a trail” came up in a few participants’ narratives. We considered these embodied nature interactions. Some of my other favorite examples were “talking to chickens,” “jumping in puddles,” and “throwing snowballs.”

Based on their interaction patterns, some Girl Scouts were categorized as having only had visual experiences. If a Girl Scout wrote about at least one interaction that used a non-visual verb, they were categorized as having had an embodied experience. We compared these two groups, embodied and only visual, based on their numeric scores on our measure of presence in nature and found that the Girl Scouts who reported embodied nature interactions also reported a stronger sense of presence in nature.

What are some potential practical implications of this research?

CG: I think this is a promising first step into understanding what it might mean to have a meaningful experience in nature, especially among young children. In this paper, we wrote specifically about applications to environmental education. For example, children can be encouraged to smell nature by finding nature items that smell good to them, like pinecones or flowers, and bringing those back to the classroom for an age-appropriate ecology lesson. A writing lesson could begin with students listening to nature with their eyes closed and then writing a creative short story about what they imagined they heard. We expect these embodied educational activities might foster a greater connection to nature and a sense of meaning through experiences of presence in nature.

We conducted this study with 8-to-11-year-old Girl Scouts, but I think it could have implications for educating young people of all ages. In my teaching, I’m a big fan of getting whole bodies involved in the learning process. So, I think this idea of embodied versus visual interactions with nature could be applied all the way from preschoolers to through college students.

Embodied nature interactions don’t need to be limited to educational settings, either. This idea of embodied versus visual nature interactions can be a helpful framework for parents and families to think about meaningful ways to spend time interacting with nature with their children. This Earth Day, consider how you can go beyond looking at spring flowers to engage with nature in more fully embodied ways.

Other co-authors were , UW professor of psychology and of environmental and forest sciences; , UW professor of environmental and forest sciences; , associate professor of pediatrics in the UW School of Medicine; , UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences; , lead public health research scientist at ICF, who earned her doctorate in environmental and forest sciences at the UW; and of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington.

The study was funded by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

For more information, contact Carly Gray at cgray19@uw.edu.

The documentary film is brief but its message is powerful: We humans are losing our connection to the natural world, at our great peril.

“In some sense, we think we are the most advanced culture — we take such pride in technology and advancement,” says , ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý professor in the Department of Psychology and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

“But in some other ways, we are more distant from the natural world than any culture has been. Potentially also more distant from the human spirit.”

Kahn’s words are featured in “,” a new short documentary by British-based filmmaker that will begin streaming for free on March 17.

The film, production notes say, is “an urgent call to examine the effects of technology on our experiences, and the way wild nature is being squeezed out of our lives.”

Harrison creates documentaries, campaign films and events coverage; he has traveled to Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Tasmania working on projects about rainforest conservation, education inequity, tribal rights and more.

He visited Seattle and interviewed Kahn extensively for a planned feature-length documentary project, but then the COVID virus hit, delaying the project. Now Harrison has completed and is releasing a five-minute version of the film.

Among the concerns Kahn discusses in the film is what he terms “environmental generational amnesia,” where each new generation inherits a more depleted natural world, with less understanding of what is being lost.

These are topics Kahn knows well, as director of the at the UW, or HINTS.

“Our older generations have a vital perspective,” he said. “They grew up in a time before much of the damage to the natural world that has happened in recent decades. They are also the last generations ever who will have lived in a world without social media and smart phones, often having more experiences in wild nature.”

Kahn’s book, “ was published in 2011. Harrison and Kahn are asking viewers to join a conversation about remembering nature — to offer memories of wildlife, or how nature has changed over the years — with #RememberingNature.

Read a about the film. For more information, contact Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu or Harrison at ross@r-harrison.com.

As studies have shown — and personal experiences can attest — spending time in nature helps reduce anxiety, improve mental health and well-being, and bolster physical health.

In light of stay-at-home orders, ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý researchers share that studies also show there is much to be gained from nature close to home, whether in a yard, on neighborhood walks or even indoors.

“Studies have proven that even the smallest bit of nature — a single tree, a small patch of flowers, a house plant — can generate health benefits,” said , a UW research social scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “Look closely in your neighborhood, and the bit of nature you may have taken for granted up until now may become the focus of your attention and help you feel better.”

Thousands of studies have shown nature’s positive impact on health and well-being, even in urban areas and for people living in more confined areas. One study found that a 20-minute “dose” of nature in cities . Another showed that more tree cover helped among residents of nursing homes. A study in Sweden found that access to a garden significantly . Access to gardens or views of nature can even .

Residents who have backyards or balconies can replicate these benefits at home by tending a garden or potted plants, sitting in the grass under a tree, walking barefoot, listening to birds sing or even studying a single flower or leaf and contemplating its every curve and feature.

For people who can’t go outside, studies have shown that gazing out a window or looking at nature photos or videos — including virtual tours — are also effective in promoting positive mental health.

A key aspect of accessing these benefits is to bring a level of attention and mindfulness to the activity, something we might not normally do when looking out a window, scrolling through photos or walking down the street.

“It’s important to be mindful, commit to the activity and think about your observations while looking at these materials or elements of nature,” Wolf explained. “That means not merely scrolling through on your computer, but looking at photos or video streams with more intention. It’s essentially nature-oriented meditation.”

To help with this attuned focus, Wolf recommends journaling or sketching nature you see each day, or forming an online discussion group with friends or family to share nature experiences. It can also be helpful to think back to a specific place or experience in nature where you felt calm, relaxed and rejuvenated. Try to conjure up those memories and share them as stories with others.

The relational, social aspect of this process is also extremely important, Wolf said.

“Even though we are physically distancing, it’s really important to our health to maintain our social connections. There is evidence that people who are lonely or who are socially isolated can be prone to poorer health,” Wolf explained. “Nature might be a means, either by being outside a safe distance from others or by sharing stories with each other, of staying socially connected.”

Experiences with nature can slow the mind’s natural process of rumination, in which we fret about the past and worry about the future in potentially destructive ways, explained psychologist , a UW professor of psychology and of environmental and forest sciences.

“In these times, I think our minds can be a little out of control. Part of the effect of nature is that it can soften negative conditioned mental patterns,” Kahn explained. “If you can find nature, engage with it and get your heart rate down, then your mind begins to settle. When your mind isn’t ruminating, it can then open to a wider world, where there’s great beauty and healing.”

For those who are able to get outside and move — while keeping the recommended minimum distance of 6 feet between people — physical activity will continue to play an important role in maintaining health, especially in reducing the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, said , a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at UW School of Medicine.

“Social distancing is essential and critical, and we have to follow the public health recommendations out there and play our part in supporting our community’s capacity in caring for everyone who is sick or might become sick,” Tandon said during a recent UW webinar about nature and health.��“That being said, I think being outdoors and being active can play an important role in promoting our health and preventing disease for when we do emerge from this.”

Tandon encourages healthy people who can practice social distancing to aim for about 60 minutes of physical activity each day for children and 30 minutes each day for adults.

The program at the UW is keeping a of ways to engage with nature, including everything from responsible outdoor activities to “zoo cams” and virtual national park tours.

As metropolises balloon with growth and sprawl widens the footprint of cities around the world, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find.

If you’re lucky, a pocket park might be installed next to a new condominium complex on your block, or perhaps a green roof tops the building where you work downtown. But it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild — even though our evolutionary history suggests we need interactions with wild nature to thrive.

A new study led by the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý has found that not all forms of nature are created equal when considering benefits to people’s well-being. Experiencing wildness, specifically, is particularly important for physical and mental health, according to the published Jan. 29 in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but this is the first study to show that wildness in urban areas is profoundly important for human well-being.

“It was clear from our results that different kinds of nature can have different effects on people,” said lead author Elizabeth Lev, a graduate student in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “The wilder areas in an urban park seem to be affording more benefits to people — and their most meaningful interactions depended on those relatively wild features.”

While these findings likely hold true in most major cities, the research team focused on Discovery Park in Seattle, the city’s most expansive urban park, which encompasses about 500 acres. The park, less than a 20-minute drive from the downtown core, has faced development pressures common for parks in cities with burgeoning populations.

The park’s advisory board asked the UW researchers to look at what elements were most important to people who visit, with the goal of gaining usable information for decision-makers.

“We looked at Discovery Park, but this is about the entire planet,” said senior author , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences and psychology. “Everywhere, development is chipping away at wild areas. Humanity has caused so much destruction and there’s no stopping it — unless we stop. We’re trying to show that if you’re going to develop an area, you at least need to understand the human costs.”

The research team surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in Discovery Park. The researchers then pored over these submissions, coding experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 participant submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After coding all of the submissions, half a dozen categories — what the researchers call “interaction patterns” — were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, gazing out at a view and following an established trail.

Additionally, the researchers looked at whether the park’s relative wildness was important in each visitor’s most meaningful experiences in the park. They defined “relatively wild” as including Discovery Park’s varied and relatively unmanaged land, its high levels of biodiversity, its “big nature” like old growth trees, large open spaces, expansive vistas, and people’s experience of the park’s solitude and removal from civilization.

These wild features were important to people’s experiences, in nearly every case. For example, “spotting bald eagle” references a relatively wild bird, and “watching birds perched on an old growth tree,” denotes a wild habitat where that tree can thrive.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which is important for people to be able to recognize and take part in the activities that are most fulfilling and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be fulfilling for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain or water feature on their lunch break.

“We’re losing the language of interaction with nature and as we do, we also lose the cultural practice of these deep forms of interaction with nature, the wellsprings of human existence,” Kahn said. “We’re trying to generate a nature language that helps bring these human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it.”

The researchers hope this study — and future ones conducted in other cities — can be used as part of the decision-making process for development proposals in parks and urban natural areas. They compiled their analysis methods into a handbook that can be used to undertake similar studies in other cities around the world.

Co-authors are Hanzi Chen of Tongji University in China who completed the research as a visiting scholar at the UW and Garrett Esperum, a Seattle resident and member of the Discovery Park Advisory Council.

This research was funded by the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.

For more information, contact Lev at elev@uw.edu and Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu.

Think, for a moment, about the last time you were out in nature. Were you in a city park? At a campground? On the beach? In the mountains?

Now consider: What was this place like in your parents’ time? Your grandparents’? In many cases, the parks, beaches and campgrounds of today are surrounded by more development, or are themselves more developed, than they were decades ago.

But to you, they still feel like nature.

That’s what ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý psychology professor calls “environmental generational amnesia” — the idea that each generation perceives the environment into which it’s born, no matter how developed, urbanized or polluted, as the norm. And so what each generation comes to think of as “nature” is relative, based on what they’re exposed to. In a new , which Kahn co-authored with doctoral student , in the latest issue of , they argue that more frequent and meaningful interactions with nature can enhance our connection to — and definition of — the natural world.

“There’s a shifting baseline of what we consider the environment, and as that baseline becomes impoverished, we don’t even see it,” Kahn said. “If we just try to teach people the importance of nature, that’s not going to work. They have to interact with it.”

For years, Kahn has examined how people perceive and impact the environment. As cities grow and open spaces shrink, it is environmental generational amnesia, Kahn argues, that enables development to continue relentlessly. Each generation inherits a new baseline for what nature is, and what “normal” surroundings are.

During his early years in academia, Kahn studied children’s concepts of the environment in Houston, one of the largest and in the country. He found that, when children were asked about air pollution, most could explain it and point out other cities that were polluted — but not their own.

“With each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation tends to perceive that degraded condition as the nondegraded condition, as the normal experience,” Kahn and Weiss wrote in their paper.

has exposure to the outdoors with physical and mental health benefits, greater ability to focus and communicate with others and an overall improvement in quality of life. At the same time, health conditions connected to sedentary lifestyles, such as and , are on the rise.

One solution is to provide opportunities — for children and adults — for encounters with “big nature.” By big, Kahn means wild, in the most traditional sense: old-growth forests, unshackled rivers and untamed species like grizzly bears and native trout.

But “big nature,” he concedes, is also relative: To a child in a city, playing in a fountain is an experience with a natural element. Kahn said he tries to be realistic about how and where people live; interacting with nature can mean accessing what is available, while aspiring to what is not.

Interacting with nature makes a difference in how people view and move in the world, Kahn said. To gain perspective on what children learn from nature, the authors turned to a Seattle preschool, Fiddleheads Forest School, where director Kit Harrington has created a curriculum shaped by the outdoors. There, the authors observed children developing skills that adults might take for granted but that are only learned through the experience of being outside: mimicking bird calls, digging in the dirt and even protecting one’s body during a fall.

“Knowing how to do that is not a given,” Kahn said. “We have an entire generation that spends so much time in front of screens that, when they do go out into nature, they don’t know how to interact with it, or handle themselves.”

Meaningful interactions with nature not only can teach, but also help people rejuvenate, reflect and recognize the importance of the outdoors. If a bike path, playground or trailhead is the closest nature to you, then you should take advantage of it. Developing a “nature language” — encountering the environment in ways large and small that result in positive feelings — can begin to reverse environmental generational amnesia.

Here in Seattle, the city’s largest park can serve as a laboratory for how people interact with nature. To that end, Kahn and his research group are from Discovery Park visitors about their experience there. The effort is a way, Kahn said, to give voice to the perspectives and experiences of people who visit the park and to learn what nature means to them.

“A park of that size allows for interactions with nature that are almost impossible to have in the city. It’s not enough, but it’s better than not having it,” Kahn said. “A bigger park is better than a smaller park, and a smaller park is better than no park.

“You can’t take nature for granted anywhere. Even in Seattle.”

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For more information, contact Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu.

Q: Why is it so important for people in cities to connect more deeply with nature?

PK: As a species we came of age with nature, and still today need that connection to do well, physically and psychologically. Just look around — and we see a lot of dis-ease. For example, about a third of people in the U.S. are obese. About 10 percent of people take antidepressants. The research literature supports what I think we all know intuitively: we’re our more vibrant, healthy selves when we live in relation with the natural world.

Q: What are some of the ways people in cities can connect with nature?

PK: It depends on the size and density of the city, and how it has been designed. Places like Central Park in New York City afford hundreds of different forms of interaction, such as walking on paths, sitting on cool rocks on a hot summer’s day, lying by the edge of small lake. If there’s not a park nearby, just walk outside; move away from the desk and treadmill. There’s urban gardening. Smell flowers. Open your windows and let in the outside air. Listen to birdsong. Find a body of water — even a fountain — and take your shoes off and feel the flow of water over your feet. Run long and hard on connective paths within your city. This list could include 1,000 suggestions!

Q: In designing cities, you speak of a new approach: Interaction pattern design. What are interactions patterns?

PK: Think about meaningful ways that you interact with nature, and then characterize it in such a way that you could see the same thing happening with different forms of nature. That’s an interaction pattern. For example, it’s wonderful to walk along the edge of a lake or along a river. The pattern could be framed as walking along the edges of water.

Once you can name that as an important “pattern,” you now have a design principle that can help you build city infrastructure to engender the interaction.

Q: Why do you also emphasize wild nature?

PK: Domestic nature is important, for sure. It’s what most of us have close at hand, especially living in cities. But domestic nature is only half the story. The other half is wild nature. The need for wildness goes far back in our evolutionary history. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. If we don’t enact it in healthy ways, the need for wild interactions with nature gets perverted.

Q: What’s an example of that perversion?

PK: You’ve probably seen people at a zoo who tap on the glass cages to try to get the animal’s attention, or they throw pebbles or bits of food at them through the railings. These people are not trying to hurt the animal. They are trying to get the animal’s attention because they want to enact the interaction pattern of “being recognized by a wild animal.” But it’s a perversion of the interaction pattern because the wild animal is dulled down, caged, in a prison, dominated by humans.

Q: Is interaction with the wild at odds with domination?

PK: Very much so. That’s part of the reason why interacting with wild nature is so important. Perhaps the overarching problem of the world today is that we see ourselves as dominating over nature — and dominating over other people and cultures.

Q: Can we interact with wild nature in the city?

PK: Yes, absolutely. For example, go for a walk in a rainstorm and you encounter a nature that is big, untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed and self-organizing. That’s wildness. But also recognize that wildness exists along a continuum. Walking outside is more wild than walking on a treadmill. Sitting on the ground under a tree is more wild than sitting on a bench. Anywhere you are in the city, you can connect with nature a little wilder, a little more deeply.

Q: What of nature and the human spirit?

PK: Perhaps you’ve been around a campfire at night. The pace slows down. Conversation settles. There’s space between words. You can talk and there’s also space to listen. And then later the fire dies down; just embers now. And as that happens, the night sky takes hold. We exist within that space. It’s a beautiful feeling. Interacting with nature offers us a portal into a depth of human beingness.

Simply put, society is tuned to the pulse of the city — but at what cost?

That’s the question explored in a recent Science co-authored by ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý researcher . Its authors discuss the growing tension between an arguably necessary role urban areas play in society and the numbing, even debilitating, aspects of cities that disconnect humans from the natural world.

“Kids in large cities are growing up having never seen the stars. Can you imagine that — having never in your life walked under the vastness of the star-lit sky, and there’s that feeling of awe, restoration and imaginative spark?” said Kahn, a professor in the UW’s and .

“As we build bigger cities, we’re not aware how much and how fast we’re undermining our connection to nature, and more wild nature — the wellspring of our existence.”

Kahn, who directs the at the UW, and co-author at Uppsala University in Sweden, point to research that shows the emotional and mental strain cities can have on people. Mental illnesses and mood disorders are more common in urban areas, and while many factors share the blame, reduced access to nature is a contributing cause, Kahn said.

“There’s an enormous amount of disease largely tied to our removal from the natural environment,” he said.

City dwellers in increasingly dense urban areas may have little or no contact with the natural world in their daily lives. That void is producing “environmental generational amnesia,” a term Kahn coined and elaborates on in a that describes how each generation creates a new idea of what’s environmentally normal based on experiences in childhood.

If, for example, a child never crawls through the dirt looking for critters, or never cranes her neck to take in the upward expanse of an old Douglas fir tree, she may not see as an adult that forests are degraded or certain species need protection.

To take that a step further, the authors write:

“This helps to explain inaction on environmental problems; people do not feel the urgency or magnitude of problems because the experiential baseline has shifted.”

Packing people into cities, then, can have serious consequences for future generations, the authors argue. There may also be such a thing as too much urban density, if the goal is to achieve access to nature alongside the advantages cities can offer.

“I’m willing to say there’s a naturalness we can achieve in cities, but not at the scale we’re building or at the scale we’re headed with many cities,” Kahn said. “There’s nothing natural about a megacity.”

There are steps cities can take to introduce nature into the urban core, including requiring buildings to have windows that open to allow in fresh air and natural light; incorporating more rooftop gardens and urban agriculture; and creating spaces within and around buildings to touch, see and smell native plants.

But these remedies first require an appreciation for nature in urban centers, as well as the space, resources and collective will to make these changes.

Kahn argues that it’s more than just introducing nature into urban areas. People must be able to interact with these elements using more of their senses in order to experience physical and psychological benefits of nature, as well as to shift the collective baseline toward better understanding and appreciation of the natural world.

For example, looking at an office plant on the windowsill might be soothing, but having a place to sit in the grass on a lunch break and perhaps even sink one’s feet into the soil are sensory experiences that can deepen a person’s engagement with nature.

Thoughtfully designed cities with nature can offer both the stimulation and energy of an urban area and meaningful interaction with a psychologically restorative natural environment. The authors conclude:

“Thus, cities designed well, with nature in mind and at hand, can be understood as natural, supportive of both ecosystem integrity and public health.”

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For more information, contact Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu.