“One clue as to why we’re so mentally rejuvenated by nature may lie in the way it influences our attention. Contrast the feeling of standing on a packed street corner in Piccadilly with sitting on a blanket in Regent’s Park watching the sunlight filter through the tree canopy. Whereas busy cities with honking taxis tend to sap our energy, natural environments tend to require less, or rather different, attention. It makes sense that spending more time in nature tends to rest, renew, and restore us.
“That’s not a new idea in science — it was proposed by researchers more than thirty years ago — but the empirical evidence to support it has been growing since then. Rachel and Stephen Kaplan at the University of Michigan launched their influential attention restoration therapy (ART) based on the premise that natural spaces and scenes encourage effortless attention, which reboots the brain and gives us a feeling of well-being. ART contents that nature attracts our attention via ‘soft fascination,’ compared to the ‘hard,’ or directed, attention required to cope with the various demands of nonnatural places. The thinking is that a gentler, indirect focus — the kind used to take in a sunset, bird, or flower — clears our heads of worry and concern, helps us recover from mental fatigue by reducing internal noise, and encourages reflection and restoration.”
