Are You Feeling Burnt Out? This Will Help
Credit: Declan Buswel
You know how after a long winter, when the sun finally comes out and you go outside and hang out, you instantly feel better again?
And you think to yourself - maybe I wasn’t so sad after all. Maybe I just needed to lay in the grass in the sun? Well take that feeling and times it by a hundred and that’s exactly what a couple of days staying in an Unyoked off grid cabin in the middle of the bush will do. Particularly if you are burnt out, stressed and running a million miles an hour. Sound like anyone you know?
As someone who grew up in the country, then the coast, when I moved to the big, bad city of Sydney, the busyness of my environment seemed to exacerbate the busyness of my mind. When I try to explain it to my city-loving friends who thrive in the chaos, I like to call it the horizon theory. The negative impact on a person’s mental health from not being able to see the horizon. Add in a bit of stress from working in a tumultuous media landscape, some loneliness of being surrounded by lots of people but none that I know, the perfectionist high-performer tendencies within me and you’ve got someone who really needs to go touch grass. And with our hyper-connectedness and hustle culture I know I am not alone in this feeling.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Duh, of course going out in nature is going to help, but for many of us, especially those living in the city where we can access just about whatever we want, it’s easy to forget how powerful being out in nature can be. We’re more likely to seek professional help (still valuable obviously), book a sauna, download Headspace and work through those cognitive behaviour strategies our therapist taught us when we’re feeling overwhelmed before booking a cabin in the woods. This is why Unyoked and Alltrails, two leading nature companies, wanted to run a study on the impact of time spent in nature on mental well-being with their Global Nature Study.
Over the course of six months, 407 individual participants were tasked to stay in an Unyoked cabin and enjoy a hike guided by AllTrails, with the impact of nature immersion tested against three key principles - wellbeing, burnout and connectedness to nature. Using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental wellbeingScale (SWEMWBS), participants reported a 12.7% improvement in mental well-being which according to the study is 37% more effective than Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Importantly, those who reported ‘lower initial well-being experienced the most significant benefits,’ which is a noteworthy statistic for those suffering with mental health problems like depression and anxiety looking for an acute treatment. While it might seem like an obvious and ancient remedy, these numbers are why more and more psychologists are prescribing time in nature, coined ‘ecotherapy,’ over traditional intervention treatments.
‘More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas. From a psychological perspective, urban lifestyles impose increasing demands on our cognitive resources,’ explains a study on Attention Restoration Theory which suggests that mental fatigue and concentration can be improved by time spent in, or looking at nature. And it makes a lot of sense. When I stayed at my Unyoked cabin it had everything I could need, but nothing more. Step one in decluttering that busy brain.
What’s more, all of Unyoked’s cabins are solar-powered and use rainwater, steadfast in their sustainability commitments, creating a two-way nurturing of human and nature. 10.4% of participants in the Global Nature Study reported an improvement in the connectedness to nature which is extremely valuable in fostering environmental awareness, a key tool in fighting against climate change.
As Cam Grant, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Unyoked explains ‘We want people to consider time in nature the same way they might consider going to the gym or checking in with a friend, it should be a daily priority for their wellness and something they allocate time for within their busy schedules. What impact could making time to get outside more regularly have on your mental health?’
While I understand my job and childfree lifestyle aren’t exactly the picture of stress, something I learnt from my experience in therapy is that dismissing my own situation in comparison to others is a bit like telling someone who is happy that someone else is happier. I have long struggled with mental health and a mind that never ever seems to stop. By taking a couple of days off to stay in an Unyoked cabin, to let myself sleep in, finish a book and watch a fire instead of a screen I felt an immediate improvement. In this day and age where we feel pressure to monetise our passions and be as productive as possible at all times, it is so easy for us as humans to simply let ourselves be bored. To rest. To just listen to the birds and feel the sun on our face. To touch grass. Life can be so hard but it can also be so wonderful - sometimes we just need the horizon to be able to appreciate where we are standing.