Nature Prescriptions

This is absolutely brilliant!

Today I went on my usual early morning bike ride. I always go out about six o’clock, just for 15 minutes and experience the dawn. Then I always slow down as I cycle through Castle Park here in Lancaster when I go through the trees – and just listen to the birds. It’s magnificent. I always say, “Good morning, good morning.” Haha I know I’m a bit  crazy.

I was feeling great when I got back this morning and I opened this message, it’s a web link from Chris Lindsay. Chris is a health coach who lives in Edinburgh in Scotland. He sent me this link… 

It’s now absolutely official that doctors in the Shetland Islands are prescribing nature.

Let me just read you this. It’s fantastic, these are actual prescriptions: 

1. “Draw a snow drop.” Haha This is stuff that I have been doing for years and it’s now official. I love it. 
2. Number two, follow the course of a Burn. A Scottish burn is a stream. You wouldn’t know that if you weren’t a Scot! 
3. Number three, buy a notebook and write to yourself. Sketch or jot down your thoughts and your feelings, adding insights about nature as you go. This is what I do all the time. I love this.
4. Look for tracks and signs of animals whilst you’re out. 
5. When you get home, make a bird bath, an upside down dustbin lid will do. 

This is for February, these are the prescriptions for February. This is just brilliant, I love it. Thank you, Chris, by the way.

I’ve done a bit of research since I received this and apparently this trend, this idea started in California in about 2008. 

Dr. Daphne Miller pioneered the idea and wrote some really interesting things about it. 

She said that she found by formalising it, by writing a prescription, up to 80% of the patients who got the prescription actually carried this out. They actually went through with it and most of them stuck with it afterwards as well. 

Something about formalising it, writing it down, makes it ‘official’.

So doctors are prescribing nature.

Apparently people find it easier than joining a gym. 

You don’t have to buy fancy clothes and equipment. In fact – I’m dead against gyms. You don’t need to join a gym. You can get all the exercise that you need literally by walking out  of the door.