I live in the middle of the city, and while our neighborhoods are usually pretty quiet, my environment still has that frenetic energy that exists in all urban areas. Sometimes I don’t realize how busy, bright, and loud my daily life is until I go somewhere very far away—hiking on the wild north shore of Lake Superior or in a cabin where the night sky is really dark and the loudest thing is the birdsong.
But even here in my city, I’m lucky enough to have easy access to lots of green space. Three lakes are within walking distance, as well as parks, miles of walking and biking trails, and even a bird sanctuary. It’s an embarrassing fortune that I’m grateful for daily.
Every time I go outside—to the nearest park, my backyard garden, or even a small green strip between buildings—something changes. My shoulders drop and my breathing deepens. What was running through my head a moment ago seems a little less relevant. Not gone, but quieter. This shift is rarely drastic, but rather a gentle signal that you can slow down and let your defense down.
Nothing in my external circumstances has changed. Everything in my life and the world is still a mess restlessness– to produce. I still have little lumps of grief, resentment, responsibilities and worries in the dusty corners of my mind and heart. Being human continues.
However, I know that what I feel when I go outside is not just a nice feeling. Something subtle but real is happening in my brain and my body. And while the mind/body/heart divide is always somewhat artificial—after all, we’re always whole beings having all these varied physical and emotional experiences—a growing body of research suggests that what happens in these natural spaces is worth it paying attention to.
What happens in your body
When we talk about nature being soothing, we’re not just talking poetically. When we take time to walk or sit in the natural world, it actually lowers our stress hormones in real time.
In 2019 research published in Frontiers in psychologyresearchers followed city dwellers for eight weeks and found that nature contributed 21.3% per hour a drop in cortisol levels, with the most concentrated benefits occurring between 20 and 30 minutes outside. 2025 year meta-analysis 78 studies have confirmed the pattern: being in green spaces reduces salivary cortisol by 21% and salivary amylase by 28%, which is a fancy way of saying that even our saliva shows a significant reduction in the body’s stress response.
Getting outside for half an hour can be one of the most underrated preparations for meditation.
Salivary amylase is a marker of sympathetic nervous system activation – the same fight or flight system that goes into overdrive when we’re anxious, overwhelmed, fearful of doom (I know it’s not just me, right?) or just living in the modern world.
As it falls, the body shifts to a sense of safety and rest. He settles into the very state that meditators often spend years learning to access.
What if going outside for half an hour is one of the most underrated preparations for meditation?
What is happening in your heart
There’s something else nature does that’s a little more difficult to quantify, but no less real: It stops us in our tracks. It makes us feel small, but in the biggest sense.
Researchers (both poets and mystics) call it “awe” and the natural environment is one of its most reliable triggers. In one fascinating researchstudents who spent just one minute looking at the tall eucalyptus trees showed significant increases in awe and significantly more generous, helpful behavior than those who looked at the building. Imagine the consequences if sixty seconds with looking at the trees makes us kinder and more compassionate towards others.
Awe is a profoundly enlivening way of feeling small, because part of awe is also the feeling of being held and connected by something bigger, more beautiful, and more common.
As a rule, we don’t like to feel small, and our current unceasing agitation comes in large part from our defense against the fear and defensiveness that arises in us when we feel pressed by larger, more aggressive forces that seem to I want to make us feel worthless.
Awe is a way of feeling small that is also deeply enlivening, because part of awe is also the feeling of being held and connected to something bigger, more beautiful, and shared. A group of cosmonauts talked about it often and openly during the recent Artemis II mission, and their shared sense of wonder magnetically attracted millions of followers. They offered living proof that there was more to it than this moment of contention. That sense of connection they described—the truth of our interdependence that I think deep down we all want to feel and believe again—is quieter and more real than the harsh commentary on social media that constantly screams at us about how separate and hopelessly broken we all are.
The sterility and atomization of modern life tends to rob us of these essential human experiences of awe and wonder, and the natural world tends to replenish them.
The paradox of awe, surrender, and the beginner’s mind
Research reveals what contemplatives have long pointed to: a weakening of the ego, a softening of that feeling that we need to be the center of everything in order to feel good. In meditation, letting go of the need to feel special and smart is a quality we sometimes call “beginner’s mind.” It’s a place where we can admit that we don’t know a whole bunch of things, maybe most things, and it’s also okay that we don’t.
Yes, sometimes life is serious, but often not in the way we imagine. Meditation is, in part, a way to gently remind ourselves that we don’t need to accept myself so serious all the time.
As a poet Mary Oliver wrote, watching the gathering of goldfinches:
...this is serious business
just being alive
on this fresh morning
in a broken world.
I’m asking you
don’t pass by
without pause
attend this…
The great irony, of course, is that in that moment of surrender, we actually open up a new set of possibilities that our confidence and desperate need to feel great tend to shut us out of. “I don’t know” becomes a door to wisdom, and “I shouldn’t be special by the world’s standards” becomes a way to access a sense of true, unconditional belonging and love, even in our imperfections.
Meditation can help unlock these states of expansive, ecstatic surrender. It turns out that treetops, a wide open field, or the special glint of late afternoon light through the leaves can lead us there, too.
Meditation can help unlock these states of expansive, ecstatic surrender. It turns out that treetops, a wide open field, or the special glint of late afternoon light through the leaves can lead us there, too.
What’s going on in your mind
If you’ve ever tried to meditate after a long day at the computer and felt like your mind was spinning, there’s a reason—and spending some time in the green can help with that, too.
Attention recovery theory suggests that mental fatigue and concentration can be improved by spending time in green spaces or even just looking at them. This suggests that the natural environment favors a lighter the brain features that allow you to focus on rest and replenishment. Our focused attention, which we use to meet deadlines, manage our inbox, and have difficult conversations, is a finite resource. It is exhausting. And ordinary urban environments, with their constant demands and stimuli, continue to draw from this well.
The natural environment causes what researchers call “soft delight.“Isn’t that a wonderful phrase? It’s a light, gentle form of attention, similar to mind wandering, but still directed outward. It allows our focused attention to rest while the mind quietly recovers. Think about how your whole being feels when you watch a cloud drift by, or notice the wind swaying a field of wild grass, or what you listen to when you just sit and listen to the sound of rain falling seeps into the lake. These things do not require us to do anything, they simply invite us to be present—which, of course, is the point.
A delicate invitation to green spaces
The research is compelling, but I know you don’t need research to tell you what you probably already felt. Nature brings us back to something. It slows us down, opens us up, and reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than the ever-shuffling contents of our minds.
Whether it’s a 20-minute walk before your morning sit-down, a lunch break in the park, or just stopping to catch a glimpse of the sky, time outside is time well spent. It offers a balm for your nervous system, nurtures your sense of wonder, and encourages the quiet, open awareness that lies at the heart of our practice.
