Shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing,”is a traditional Japanese practice of immersing通过有意识地使用所有五种感官，使自己处于自然之中。But you don’t have to lose yourselfin a forest to reap thehealth benefits of being innature. Something as simpleas a walk through a park orby a lake can pay offfor yourwell-being, says FrancesKuo,PhD, founder and director ofthe Landscape and HumanHealth Lab at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Even just looking at arooftopgardenfor 40 secondshelps you sustain attentionduring mentally fatiguingtasks,” she says, citing a 2015study. Here are more reasonsto embrace the outdoors.

1. More positive outlook.Participants in a small study who took a90-minute nature walk, compared with those who walked through an urbanenvironment, reported lower levels of ruminating (repetitive negativethoughts), a known risk for depression and other psychological conditions.They also showed reduced activity in an area of the brain linked to sadnessand withdrawal.
2. Better sleep.An Australian study of 259,319 people found that peopleliving in neighborhoods with more greenspace were more likely to geteight hours of sleep nightly than those living in neighborhoods with lessgreen space.
3. Less pain.A landmark study published in the journalSciencefound thathospitalized patientswhose windows looked onto a garden setting healedfaster from surgery and required less pain medication than patients whoseview was a brick wall.
4. Sharper memory.When people took an hour stroll in a nature setting,their short-term memory improved by 20 percent, a study inPsychologicalSciencefound. Even looking at pictures of nature helped memory.
5. 健康的心脏。People whose homes have easier access to woods andparks had lower levels of blood-vessel-damaging adrenaline and higherlevels of circulating angiogenic cells (CACs), which repair blood vesseldamage, according to a study of cardiology patients.

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