Welcome to my favourite field, yes.. you heard that right. In this episode I'm talking about the suprising benefits of noticing a tree, field or bit of nature near to you.

Hi, I'm Leila Ainge, a psychologist, researcher, and someone who's been thinking a lot

lately about what really makes life feel good.

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Welcome back to Psychologically Speaking, a podcast all about human behaviour, bringing

together fascinating research, insights, and real life experiences.

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This season, we're exploring joy.

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Okay, so this is a very midlife confession, but here goes.

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I've got a favourite field and it turns out that this has been my secret coping strategy

for quite a few years.

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I just didn't know it.

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Bit of context, our house is on a hill.

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So when I tie up the laces on my trainers, there's two routes.

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I can go left out of the house, past the church, down the hill for a very short while.

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and take a little loop around a small nature trail or go up a really sharp gradient back

into the village.

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Alternatively, I can turn right out of the house and this is a less hilly hill, but still

a hill and up to the recreation ground.

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My favourite field is at the end of that first effort.

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It's the point at which my lungs have warmed up on cold mornings or it's the part

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at which my legs are feeling less achy if I'm on a recovery run.

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The field slopes gently down towards some lanes and I can also go into the woods if it's

not too muddy but most of the year certainly when I'm wanting to run through fields it's a

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little bit too sticky to go that way.

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So I really enjoy the moment of standing at the top of that hill in that field and looking

down and thinking I'm going to run all way down.

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I can metaphorically leave our messy house and all of the commitments behind and there's

only one path so I don't even have to make a choice and that is so good.

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The only thing to do is to really notice what crops being grown or harvested or has been

picked.

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Right now there's loads of corn remnants on the floor and I'm not quite sure what they're

going to put in next year but there's something different every year.

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At the bottom of the field you can see a little archway and it's like a tree and shrub

lined archway into another short field and then you go through a gate into another field

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before you hit a bit of tarmac and this lane then is long enough to run up and down if you

want to do some sprint work but it leads on to a main road but it's so quiet because it

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only serves a couple of farms.

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I'm a really slow runner, so downhill sections obviously bring me lots of joy.

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But this field is joyful for more than just running.

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So many of our memories as a family have been captured in my mind in this field.

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You know, the first time my little one was able to walk to that field and all the way

round the loop with us.

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Lots of snacks as bribery, of course.

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But also, this is the field where we've watched him hurtle and throw himself down on a

bike, fall off, get back up, and get quicker and more confident.

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We can't keep up with him anymore, so he often then waits for us right at the bottom while

we wander down behind him.

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Today on Psychologically Speaking, yes, we're talking about trees and fields and what

happens when we stop scrolling, striving and analysing stuff long enough to actually

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notice them.

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So I'm going to ask you to do one thing today and that is to find a tree, any tree.

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It could be even be a field or a bush.

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And it doesn't have to be the grandest tree, bush or field.

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It doesn't have to be photogenic, but maybe it's one that's really near.

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It's outside your window or you walk past it every day.

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Something maybe you don't usually register and

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You know, this is something that you're going to use to take a moment to notice.

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It's that act of noticing which we're going to talk about and think about today.

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And we're going to look at some research that suggests that perception is a secret

ingredient here and is the key to psychological wellbeing.

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So I live in the National Forest and there are lots of trees and loads of lovely roots and

cleaner air.

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I actually moved here from a more kind of urban area about five years ago because I've got

really bad asthma.

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So I know that the air quality is better because I don't have to take asthma medication

very often.

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I can literally breathe easier here.

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But from a wellbeing perspective, it turns out that just being simply surrounded by trees

and living in the National Forest isn't enough.

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And that's curious, isn't it?

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Because you think people who live in the countryside might have a better quality of life

and have might have better wellbeing because of that connectedness with nature.

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So researchers at the University of Derby, and I'm looking at work that Professor Miles

Richardson has done.

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has been studying something called nature connectedness.

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And it's this idea then, that it's not just how much nature we have around us, but how

deeply we notice and engage with it.

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And their work has spanned thousands of participants over multiple studies, but they've

looked more recently at urban residents, rural dwellers, students, ordinary people, so not

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seasoned outdoor people or people who meditate.

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And they asked people to record uh

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good things in nature every day for a week.

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So it could have been like a cloud formation or, you know, rain.

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And after just one week, people who'd noticed nature reported higher happiness, lower

anxiety and that last sense of connection.

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But the really interesting thing is the people who lived in, you know, the national forest

or surrounded by more trees.

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It wasn't necessarily the amount of nature they were around.

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It was what they noticed.

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It was their perception of that nature that was the thing that made the biggest impact.

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And so there's something here about perception and attention.

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And it's really humbling, isn't it?

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Because I can live here with my views out into the field, breathing cleaner air, and still

miss the psychological benefits if I'm not paying attention.

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And if I think back to...

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the Covid lockdown years, I know that that was a period of time where I often sat here and

thought in my study with my view out of the window, why can't I just sit and relax and

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enjoy this?

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And I wasn't necessarily taking time to notice the leaves and the movement.

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I was just looking and not really taking it in.

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And that was okay.

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I had a four year old, I was trying to homeschool, start a business, do a masters in

psychology.

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You know, there's lots of reasons why I was not going to turn my attention to looking at a

leaf fall from a tree during lockdown.

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But the Derby research starts to show us why this happens because, you know, we're

filtering stuff constantly and unless we choose to attend,

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pay attention to our natural world it just becomes background noise a bit like social

media and everything that we scroll on.

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You know it's this idea that maladaptive behaviour or behaviour that becomes problematic

isn't necessarily behaviour that's worse it's just stuff that we do more often or do in

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the wrong context.

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looking at something like your social media feed for a long time can be just as bad as

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you know, not paying attention when you go for a walk because you're not getting the

benefits of what you're doing.

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When we turn our perception inward, we start to notice things like colour and pattern and

texture.

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And this is when our neural networks, you know, come alive because we're activating

sensory, emotional and reward circuits.

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And these are all linked to things like calmness and joy.

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Denson-Eliott psychologically the science here is that nature's benefits aren't just you

know out there they have to be in our awareness.

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So it's not about visiting it it's realising we're part of it and that's something that uh

Miles says in his research and in his blogs.

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So this research that I read recently that's been

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published in the Nature Journal actually, reminded me of another study, a quite well-known

study, which also looked at this idea of perception.

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And this one was actually Nobel-winning research.

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And back in 2004, it was done by a couple of psychologists.

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You've got Alyssa Epple and a biologist, Elizabeth Blackburn.

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They studied mothers who were caring for chronically ill children.

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So the idea here that these people are people who experience chronic stress or high levels

of stress.

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And they found that the more stress these mothers felt, the shorter their telomeres.

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Now telomeres are these little caps that you find on the end of your chromosomes.

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And so they are protective caps for our DNA.

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What

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their research ultimately was able to show is that people who have shorter telomeres

probably age or have signs of aging, which are increased compared to people who've got

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longer telomeres.

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So basically you lose your protection, you age.

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And they thought the more stress that you're under, the quicker you will age, which would

mean you'd have shorter telomeres.

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But the really interesting thing was that it was the perception measure.

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that showed that correlation rather than just the level of stress.

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So these shorter telomeres mean faster kind of cellular aging, but it wasn't the hours

that were spent doing the caregiving or the severity of the illness.

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It was the perceived stress that predicted that biological effect.

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So it got me thinking then about this idea of it's not.

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how many trees that you're surrounded by, it's whether you notice the trees and the

perception of them.

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So our experiences of stress and this story we tell ourselves about what's happening

literally does shape ourselves.

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Two people, and this is how trauma becomes quite interesting, is two people can face

identical challenges or trauma.

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But people who are more resourced or feel more resourced, I should say, and connected

might have...

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different ways of coping, they might age more slowly because their biological aging is

protected or they might be protected from some of the challenges of trauma.

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It's really interesting, it?

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It's quite mind-bending because it means that perception, not necessarily circumstance,

can be the difference between what we think of as being burned out or worn out and this,

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you know, utopia of what kind of gets bounced around a lot called resilience.

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So when I join these two pieces of research together, you've got Eple and Blackburn's work

on perceived stress and you've got my Richardson's work on this nature connectedness, I

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start to see a similar pattern that what we're perceiving is determining how we respond

both biologically and emotionally.

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So you've got that nature stuff that's shifting our focus from something like a vigilance

to relationship.

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and stress perception does the same, know, it's taking something like stress which could

be seen as a threat and people who are able to see it as a challenge are going to be able

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to deal with that in a different way.

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But they're both about attention then, aren't they?

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So when I'm trail running through the woods, it's impossible not to feel that.

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You know, quite often my breath will then synchronise with the terrain that I'm on.

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narrow my focus because I'm having to look under my feet a lot so I don't trip over.

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There's something quite effortful and meditative about running that I feel certainly and

also if I think about another hobby that I've got which is gardening so that's something

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else where you know feeling the soil or watching you know or hearing the insects around me

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or seeing something grow from one day to another because I'm paying attention to it.

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These are all moments then aren't they, that are re-educating the nervous system or

helping the nervous system because they're reminding me that I need to participate and

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when I participate in nature or the stuff around me then it's not a passive thing.

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I'm not just in it and hoping that the effect will be good for me.

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So just living in the National Forest isn't going to be good for me per se.

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Yes, it's cleaner air, but how am I noticing?

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How am I taking and making the most of this experience that I have every day?

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So in this season we've been looking at joy and one of the things that we keep coming back

to is this idea of, you know, motivation and reward loops and dopamine.

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So let's look at that bit as well.

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Because when we expect something to be rewarding, a bit like going for a nice walk or

looking at a beautiful tree, we know that our brain is going to release dopamine in

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anticipation.

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We've talked about this in previous episodes.

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But...

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You know it's really simplified isn't it that dopamine because we think of it as a

pleasure chemical but really it's a signal you know something good's going to happen pay

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attention and that expectation can pull us towards the experience like a compass if you

like but it's not just dopamine you know expectancy engages different areas of our brain

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we've got the prefrontal cortex which we know is linked to things like focus and planning

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you've got a nucleus accumbens which is linked to motivation and you know other areas of

our brain which you know thinking about things like value and meaning.

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There aren't particular brain points that do particular things, it's more of a network our

brain and the way it works together but broadly you know you've got all these different

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areas which are going to be triggered by that anticipation.

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You've got other chemicals as well.

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So if you've got dopamine, we've probably got serotonin, which we know brings that kind of

regulatory steadiness.

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You've got oxytocin, you know, the love hormone.

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But really what that's doing is bringing that rush of warmth and safety.

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And the endorphins from all of this, you know, we know they can reduce that stress

response or soften it.

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So by asking you to find a tree, what I'm doing here is I'm asking you to look forward to

finding your tree or looking forward to noticing your tree or your field and we're getting

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your body and your mind ready to step into regulation before you even go outside.

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So this is why practices like meditation and therapy or rituals work, partly because we've

got the expectancy.

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When you think that something will help,

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you pre-activate your reward system which shapes what you actually feel.

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know some of Eppel's later studies showed that too because they looked at people who

reframe stress as a challenge and were able to show that that produced karma cortisol

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patterns.

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So this expectancy changes our physiology and our psychological outcomes.

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So here's where I go with this.

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I don't think we need to go to nature to escape stress.

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I think that being in nature is part of regulation.

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So I think we're just, rather than burned out, we're probably just really distracted most

of the time.

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So when you pause, when you go out for a walk and you take a look at a tree or a hedgerow

or you stand at the top of your favorite field like I do and you look at it,

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not to take a photo or do a checklist and you're just looking at it and you're having that

mindful moment.

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We're updating, aren't we, that information in our brain.

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We're basically giving it a bit of feel-good, oxytocin.

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We've got serotonin, dopamine, you know, that expectancy.

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And that's why it's such a good thing to do.

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So even, mean, if you're into hooking trees, go ahead.

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It's not my thing, but if that works for you, brilliant.

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But looking forward to hooking a tree is the thing that's going to really help.

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So here's your experiment for the week.

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Find your tree, make it meaningful, and bring attention to it.

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You don't even have to be rigid with this, you know, just be curious.

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And want you to notice what happens when you let yourself expect this, you know, this

piece of connection or joy.

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And every time you do do this, ideally you're then strengthening the neural pathways that

link your perception of your nature, connectedness, with things like reward and

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resilience.

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So you're essentially, hypothetically, we're laying down this...

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nature-connected habit that buffers stress before it even begins.

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How cool is that?

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So maybe next time you pass a tray you'll remember that's where my nervous system

regulates itself.

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So today we've heard about new research from the University of Derby showing it's not how

many trees that surround us that matters, but how connected we feel to them.

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And also I've looked at earlier research which shows that it's not how much stress we're

under, but how we perceive it that shapes our biology and essentially, you know, how aged

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we look.

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And I'm ex-

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I'm basically inviting you to think about expectancy as a regulation tool, so looking

forward to going and standing at the top of your hill or looking at your favourite tree

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and let that anticipation itself become both calm and joy in your life.

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That's all for today on Psychologically Speaking.

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I'm really looking forward to the next couple of episodes.

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I am going to have my first male guest on the podcast.

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And this hasn't been an intentional or unintentional thing.

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But I have Adrian Ashton joining me.

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We're going to talk about the opposite of joy.

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We're going to talk about how not being joyful might be helpful too in business.

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Just as an update, I've done the first two recordings with my goal setters for next year

and they are fantastic.

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You're going to love them.

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So I have spoken to Jen and she runs a yoga business and I've also spoken to Becky who

works in PR.

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They've got amazing goals and I can't wait to share these with you in November.

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Just a reminder to like and rate my podcast.

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It really helps independent podcasters like me.

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And if you want to get the latest news and views on psychology, head to my website,

www.leelaange.co.uk forward slash research.

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I am so excited to be able to say that our Good Girl Economics research, this is the

research I've done with Nikki Danson-Elliott, on women's views around pricing and the

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kinds of things that we were told as we grew up about, you know, money has now been

published.

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It's available to download.

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All you need to do is go to www.leilaainge.co.uk/reserch forward slash research and click

on get the PDF.