Gibran: Earth delights to feel your bare feet...

Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

5 Minutes Outside Can Boost Your Mood A new study shows being outside, even for just 5 minutes, makes you feel good about life and about yourself.

5 Minutes Outside Can Boost Your Mood
A new study shows being outside, even for just 5 minutes, makes you feel good about life and about yourself.
By Emily Main

Find ways to get 5 minutes of outdoor exposure into your day: A quick walk or a short gardening session is really all it takes.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The next time you're looking for a natural mood elevator, turn to nature itself. A new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology confirms what anyone who's experienced a sunny-day high already knows: Nature is almost foolproof at boosting your mood and self-esteem. And, amazingly, it only takes five minutes.

THE DETAILS: Professor Jules Pretty and colleagues at the University of Essex in the UK analyzed findings from 10 separate studies that measured self-esteem and mood after people engaged in "green exercise": cycling, walking, running, gardening, farming, and water-based activities like fishing or sailing. In each of the studies, participants' self-esteem and mood were measured before and after the activities using a standard psychological test. The Essex researchers also assessed study variables such as exposure time outdoors, exercise intensity, type of green space (urban parks, rural setting, forest, and so forth), as well as subjects’ age and mental-health status.

Regardless of what they were doing or where they were doing it, all subjects saw improvements in self-esteem and mood after exercising outdoors. People saw the greatest self-esteem changes while doing light-intensity exercise and after being outside for just five minutes. The biggest mood changes occurred after light- and vigorous-intensity workouts—also after just five minutes. (Note: Self-esteem and mood continued to improve with longer workouts, but the changes were greatest after five minutes.) Around water seemed the most uplifting places to exercise, and while all age groups saw mood and self-esteem boosts, people between the ages of 30 and 50 experienced the greatest lift.

WHAT IT MEANS: "For 300,000 generations, humans were hunter-gatherers and farmers,” says Pretty. “Yet for the last six to eight generations, we have been living in an increasingly industrialized world. The disconnection from nature is deeply felt." Which is why a mere five minutes of nature can have such a profound impact, he says.

Please read the full article: http://www.rodale.com/natural-mood-elevator?cm_mmc=DailyNewsNL-_-2010_05_07-_-Top5-_-NA

Share this on Facebook: Share

Kids Have a Part-Time Job: Watching TV

Kids Have a Part-Time Job: Watching TV
Kids are watching more than 28 hours of television every week. How to get your kids out from in front of the television, and outside to play.
By Dan Shapley
10.27.2009 Link to full article below

Man, what a grind.

Kids are putting in serious hours: before school, after school, while doing homework, instead of going outside to play. ... They're watching television. More than 28 hours every week.

That's according to the latest data from the Nielsen Company. The new numbers represent yet another increase in media consumption.

Pre-schoolers, aged 2-5 spend 32.5 hours a week in front of the television, watching TV directly, watching shows recorded by DVR, watching DVDs or playing video games. Older pre-teens, aged 6-11, are still spending 28 hours, a decrease that Nielsen chalked up to this: "They are more likely to be attending school for longer hours." Read another way, school and homework still only manage to cut out 4 hours of TV-watching from their schedules each week.

And consider this: The data only includes television-based media. The Internet, cell phones and other technology is left for another survey.

As the National Wildlife Federation's Green Hour campaign points out, all this time indoors in front of a screen is coming at the expense of unstructured play outdoors. This phenomenon has been called variously nature deficit disorder and videophilia, and there are symptoms to the disease, including obesity and possibly ADHD. Unstructured outdoor play also has been shown -- intuitively and by some science -- to have tangible benefits: It's unstructured time that helps kids develop problem-solving skills, self-reliance, creativity ...

Please read the full article: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/kids-television-47102701?src=nl&mag=tdg&list=dgr

Cherokee prayer to respect and honor nature

"Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hand respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise, so that I may know the things you have taught my people, the lessons you have hidden in every rock and leaf." -Cherokee prayer, early 1800s

Wendell Berry

"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

~ Wendell Berry

Some of his most awesome books:
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader's Guide
The Mad Farmer Poems
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

Who Will Help? - by Heather Havey, M.A.

"Who Will Help?" by Heather Havey, M.A.

This is the vow for the Friends of Compassionate Earth Awareness, a group of people who have devoted themselves to caring for and honoring Earth and all of its inhabitants. To join this group, please visit their site at www.ourbelovedearth.com/friends.html

Who will help the animals?
Who will help stop the poisoning of the Earth?
Who will help the rivers that are filled with pollution?
Who will help the oceans that are heating up?
Who will help the trees that are being cut down?
Who will help the air that is being filled with poisons and greenhouse gases?
Who will help all the reefs that are bleaching and dying?
Who will help promote alternative energy - solar power, wind power, geothermal power?
Who will help promote local organic farms and farmers? Who will help people to be treated with kindness, care, and respect? Who will help to feed everyone? Who will help to bring comfort? Who will help us all to learn ways of living that honor all life and create beauty, rather than harm or destruction? Who will spread the idea of peace through kindness? Who will spread love rather than fear in this world?

Who will help? This is your answer...Say to yourself....


Who will help the animals? I will help.
Who will help stop the poisoning of the Earth? I will help.
Who will help the rivers that are filled with pollution? I will help.
Who will help the oceans that are heating up? I will help.
Who will help the trees that are being cut down? I will help.
Who will help the air that is being filled with poisons and greenhouse gases? I will help.
Who will help all the reefs that are bleaching and dying? I will help.
Who will help promote alternative energy - solar power, wind power, geothermal power? I will help.
Who will help promote local organic farms and farmers? I will help.
Who will help people to be treated with kindness, care, and respect? I will help.
Who will help to feed everyone? I will help.
Who will help to bring comfort? I will help.
Who will help us all to learn ways of living that honor all life and create beauty, rather than harm or destruction? I will help.
Who will spread the idea of peace through kindness? I will help.
Who will spread love rather than fear in this world? I will help.

We cannot expect random overstressed politicians to save the world. We ALL must save the world, one person and one animal and one plant at a time. Our world is a Garden of Eden and we treat it like it is a fallen, sinful place; this is our greatest error. Our world is our greatest gift, and it is healed and upheld in its true essence when we live as Christ and the great spiritual teachers live: LIVE LOVE.

Every choice you make - makes a difference!
Please make a vow to yourself, that you will practice making a difference.
The world REALLY needs your help.
The world REALLY needs your love and care.
This means - the world really needs your compassionate ACTION. With your every step, your every choice, you either help or you harm. Just try; do the best you can. Try harder. Put your passion into it. You can do amazing things! When you throw one starfish back into the ocean,
you save that one starfish's life. Every life makes a difference. Every choice makes a difference.

This is a choice to live from a deep place of spirit - faith - and courage, rather than from the fear that most of the world lives by. This is the place that motivates all the great spiritual leaders of our world: Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and so so many more. You can live this way also. Every moment of kindness makes a difference; the world needs your love and care.

Please join us. Make a vow: "I will help." We are the Friends for Compassionate Earth Awareness; join us. There is no cost. It is simply a vow that you will care for the life around you. This will be our shared passion, action, and mission, and together we can inspire each other. It will be a never-ending process, for there is much love and care that is needed in our world.

For more information, please see www.ourbelovedearth.com or www.peacethroughkindness.com.

Nature May Ease ADHD Symptoms

Nature may ease ADHD symptoms
by TRALEE PEARCE
Globe and Mail
October 17, 2008

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081017.wladhd17/BNStory/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081017.wladhd17/BNStory/)
specialScienceandHealth/home

Most adults know the restorative benefits of taking a walk among the trees.

But new research suggests that a nature stroll can also improve the
attention
span of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that children with ADHD
showed
greater focus immediately after a 20-minute walk in a park than after a
similar walk in a neighbourhood or downtown area.

Frances Kuo, one of the co-authors of the study, said the research builds on
her previous work that found green walks for children in general improved
both
their attention and their impulse control - two of the chief issues in ADHD
children.

After conducting two surveys of parents about the after-school and weekend
activities that seemed to ease their children's ADHD symptoms, Dr. Kuo and
Andrea Faber Taylor zeroed in on the seemingly positive effects of walking
outdoors.

"We thought maybe this is real, and the parents aren't just hallucinating,"
said Dr. Kuo, an environmental psychologist.

The children, who were unmedicated at the time of the testing, were each
taken
on three different walks. After the walks they were given a neurocognitive
test called the Digit Span Backwards, in which they were told a series of
numbers and asked to repeat them backward.

After the green walks, the 17 children who participated in the study did
"shockingly better in general," Dr. Kuo said. The children, between the ages
of 7 and 12, appeared to catch up with their non-ADHD peers in the moments
after the walk.

Dr. Kuo said she doesn't know whether it's the greenness of the park, the
lack
of buildings or some other mechanism at work, but she speculates that the
natural environment gives kids with ADHD a chance to recharge their
attention
spans without any effort.

"[This study] is just a small piece of evidence," she said. "We can't say
this
exposure to nature completely erased ADHD symptoms - but that's our best
guess
at this point.

She added that studies have shown that inner-city children suffer from ADHD
at
about three times the rate of children in rural areas.

Umesh Jain, a child psychiatrist at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and
Mental
Health, calls the psychological boost most people get in nature "the Muskoka
effect." The benefits, he said, could include a sense of grounding, and -
possibly more relevant to kids with ADHD - a sense of freedom from
containment.

Vikram Dua, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at BC Children's Hospital,
said the small size and narrow design of Dr. Kuo's study precludes making
any
generalization about the implications for ADHD.

"At the same time, the principles are something I would support," said Dr.
Dua, also an assistant clinical professor at the University of British
Columbia. "You want the kids out there in the green parks."

Dr. Jian agreed, saying the study is too preliminary to suggest an ADHD
treatment application. But, he said, other studies have shown, "What's good
for ADHD children is good for all kids."

Dr. Kuo said the next step is a randomized clinical trial to test the
effect.
She is especially interested in testing "around the margins" with children
for
whom ADHD medications work poorly or not at all.

Parents of children with or without ADHD might consider adding a walk to
pre-homework routines, since there is really no downside, Dr. Kuo said.
"We're
pretty sure going outside is not terribly risky."