Why Biophilia Needs To Be Part of Your Next Holiday

Engaging with nature on vacation can not only make you feel more rested and restored, it can also enhance wellbeing when you’re back home. It’s a cool but sunny spring morning as I step over rocks and past mountain laurel bushes into a wooded Connecticut land preserve. Only the trill of titmice and robins overhead and the crunch of dead oak leaves underfoot punctuate the still air.

“We’re folding into the forest,” says Regan Stacy, a forest therapist who’s guiding me. Our agenda: forest bathing – something that increasing numbers of resorts and hotels, even museums, are offering their guests. As the world gets more tech-filled, noisy and distracting, nature’s call becomes louder. I can’t help but listen.

I’ve always felt calm and at peace in nature but never stopped to consider why. The reason is what’s known as biophilia: the innate love for and connection we feel to the natural world. This desire to interact with all forms of life was popularised by the naturalist Edward O Wilson in his 1984 book Biophilia….Story continues…

By: Amy Thomas