The naturalness of the residential environment has been associated with a lower prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress (Cox et al., 2017). Furthermore, people who have access to green spaces in their neighborhood, use these areas more and tend to be physically more active (Pietilä et al., 2015). Finally, people with a strong connection with [...]
This text I wrote originally appeared on March 29th, 2018 on Healing Forest, an amazing initiative that aims to connect people and forests for both of their health. This text is edited by my dear friend and colleague Nitin Das, the man behind the well-loved film, India´s Healing Forests. What can nature teach us about [...]
This weekend my friends and I treated ourselves to a weekend at the sea at an ocean front apartment. Oostende was recuperating from a northwestern storm called Dieter that made some big waves and caused the gusts of wind to be mighty powerful. These gusts also brought ashore a bunch of seabirds that would normally not make [...]
Growing up in Finland in a small town, we had a wonderful little forest close to and a big yard around our apartment building. There were varied terrains: stones and rocks, little hills and slopes, bushes, and trees to climb into. By spending hours and hours on that yard waiting for friends to come out [...]
Finland is one of those countries, where the forest school movement has been rising in popularity in the recent years. In the last 10 years, some 30 forest schools have been established. Most of these are pre-schools that cater for 5-6-year-olds, who spend most days of the week or the most hours of the day [...]
Quite unexpectedly, I heard about a forest school in Belgium. Someone who had the same trajectory as the kids in their reflecting vests heading toward a big park in Gent mentioned it to me. Apparently there had even been a piece in the newspaper about them. Why did I not know about this? My guess [...]
