Research: happy people are more often in nature

Research that was published in Scientific Reports showed that happy people are more often in nature. This goes hand in hand with a good health and a feeling of happiness. Two hours a week should do already to create this result: at home or doornig holidays!

Research nature & happiness

Holidays that have nature as a key ingredient, are upcoming. This doesn't surprise us: nature is a helping hand in the growing need of a healthy lifestyle and peace of mind in a life where many aim to get the best out of themselves. These researchers especially looked into the relation between the hours that people spend in nature and their experience of health and happiness.

Nature creates happiness

British researchers questioned almost 20.000 fellow Brits how much time they spent in nature in a recent period of time. This could be time in forests or parks, rivers, beaches or a rural areas. Private gardens were excluded from this research.

Two hours is sufficient

The researches concluded that at least two hours a week of spending timing in nature, is related to a better health and wellbeing. People who spent at least 120 minutes in nature per week, reported that their health was good to very good and that they were satisfied with their lifes. It did not matter if this was a single visit of two hours, or several shorter visits.

Bodywork important, but not essential

The feelings of health and happiness that people experienced outdoors, could be related to their activities like hiking, biking and swimming. Body work is good for health and wellbeing. However, the researches found the same relation in the outcomes of the people who did not meet the standard for bodywork: spending time in nature makes people happy and healthy.

More nature during holidays?

The research shows that spending time in nature is good for human kind. Purpose Lab sees that people want to achieve this same happiness as well during holidays by continuing their healthy lifestyle or even giving this a kickstart. So called fitcations and spiritual trips in nature are popular.

Newspaper NRC wrote an extensive article on this research dat was published before in Scientific Reports. This blog is a summary, the original article can be found here.

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