+
upworthy
Family

If you're super outdoorsy, this is the awesome way it's changing your brain.

True
REI

J. Phoenix Smith lost her job during the Great Recession.

Smith is from Oakland, California, and she has worked in community health for her entire career. But in 2010, with the economy stumbling along, Smith suddenly found herself without a job.

"I was having a rough time," says Smith, in a voice that immediately makes you feel like she's an old friend. Like many people in California at the time, losing her job gave Smith a lot of free time — and a lot of anxiety. So, as her own form of therapy, Smith turned to the outdoors.


"Everyday I'd go for a hike," Smith says.

Image courtesy of J. Phoenix Smith.

Oakland might be just a hop, skip, and a jump from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but it's surrounded by a wealth of wild places, which Smith started discovering once she was unemployed.

"I was doing more hikes by myself. I didn't grow up going camping with my family or anything, but I started doing that," she says. She describes visiting groves of redwoods at Joaquin Miller Park, hiking up the remains of an ancient volcano at Sibley, and volunteering at a local farm.

Over time, she says the hiking actually made her feel better, even during one of the hardest transitions of her life.

This feeling Smith experienced actually has a name: ecotherapy.

And here we see the extremely rare Prozac tree. Image from iStock.

It might sound like a weird, new-age buzzword, but it's actually a pretty interesting. Ecotherapy is, in basic terms, using nature or natural spaces as a form of or tool for psychotherapy.

Today, in addition to continuing her public health work, Smith has a graduate certificate in ecotherapy. She has a practice focused on sharing the incredible benefits of being outside, and she helps doctors, nurses, and nonprofits learn how to add ecotherapy's ideas to their toolbox.

This isn't just feel-good stuff, either. It turns out there are serious studies about the power of the outdoors.

Shortly after this, Dave learned to tame condors. He lives with them now. Image from iStock.

Anyone who's been stuck in a rut of destructive, intrusive, or worrying thoughts knows how awful that feeling can be. Smith knows this firsthand, too.

"I'm a ruminator, which means I overthink things all the time," she says.

The problem is that our brain's response to a stressor can be to try to turn it around over and over again until we come up with a solution. But sometimes a quick fix just isn't possible, and our brains can end up trapped in a cycle of self-reproach, stress, and anxiety.

According to one study, though, nature could help us break this self-inflicted cycle. Scientists at Stanford got two groups to go for walks, one in an urban setting and one in nature. Compared to a walk in an urban setting, people who took to nature didn't ruminate as much. Scientists even saw differences in brain activity between the two groups.

Being outside could also make us more creative.

Another study looked at creativity and problem-solving, with researchers talking to people before and after a hiking trip. They found that the hikers were about 50% better able to come up with solutions after four days out in the wild, maybe because the nature hike helped people reset their ability to pay attention.

And if nothing else, a hike or walk is really, really good exercise. We know that exercise, beyond being good for the body, can help our brains, too, by reducing stress and anxiety.

So you know those wild-looking, long-distance hikers who seem zen all the time? Maybe they're onto something.

Hey, so, what's the Wi-Fi password? Image from iStock.

Smith says that if you're a newbie, one of the best things you can do is to unplug (like, really unplug and leave the music and headphones at home) and go out into nature with a journal or sketchbook. Maybe find one place you love and come back to it several times over the weeks. Notice what changes in your brain and your life.

As for Smith, she says she loves being outdoors because it makes her feel free. "I'm able to connect with different parts of myself, the creative person, the physically strong person, the quiet person and the spiritual person," Smith says.

"When I connect with nature, I also am able to tap into a sense of wonder and a deep sense of gratitude for this amazing place called Earth."

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less
Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less