Nature in Our DNA: Why Open Spaces Bring Peace and Forests Heal

Have you ever wondered why the sight of the sea or ocean brings you such joy? Or why you feel a sudden lightness when you emerge from a forest into an open meadow? Or perhaps that moment in the mountains, when after meticulously watching your step during a trek, you lift your head and see the vast expanse before you? This moment, when we behold an open space, is when we feel a sense of bliss; our breathing eases, our chest expands, and we feel more peace, perhaps even joy.

This feeling doesn’t stem from a childhood memory of a guardian teaching you to admire mountain views or telling you to “breathe deeply.” This moment, when seeing an open space, we experience these emotions and sensations in our bodies, is biologically and genetically conditioned. We are savanna hunters, who preferred open spaces because they allowed us to spot potential threats, like a lion, from a distance. They also revealed game that could be hunted. The savanna offered the added security of being an open area, but with clumps of greenery where one could find shade, or a tree to escape a buffalo or hippopotamus (perhaps not a lion, but trees still offered some refuge).

This is also why small children are so fond of climbing various objects: trees, playground structures, even large boulders. They also love walking on curbs, which mimics walking on branches. We are simply animals that had to learn these techniques to survive in the future, to escape predators, and to move agilely through tree canopies.

There are many such moments in nature that make us feel blissful and happy. Nature strengthens our physical health. Plants produce many substances that heal animals, and trees “benefit” from birds nesting in them because the birds hunt insects that threaten the trees. These same bactericidal and immune-boosting substances that affect forest animals also benefit Homo sapiens. Nature wants to serve us; it wants to heal us.

Being in nature genetically predisposes us to happiness because it’s where our DNA evolved and adapted for survival. Not in apartments with small windows overlooking other buildings, nor with the hum of city cars or the roar of airplane engines above our homes. These aren’t sounds our brains recognize as familiar and safe. The civilization we live in is only a few decades old. Before that, we lived in smaller communities, and it was barely 12,000 years ago that we started farming, but still in small tribes, close to nature, washing clothes in rivers. Our brain recognizes the conditions of the savanna as its home.

So, during the upcoming holidays, be outside! Not on a balcony overlooking a bypass, but try to spend as much time as possible in the forest, in a meadow, by a lake. Listen to the sound of a river. Give yourself time for your brain to once again be saturated with all the sounds of nature that it recognizes as indicators of happiness and security.