How Water 💦 Can Boost Your Wellbeing
Hello, and welcome.
Our topic this month is water, and in my last blog I described how you can enjoy even the rainiest of dog walks simply by changing your mindset. This is because our psychological wellbeing is determined more by how we interpret what happens to us than what actually happens.
I have to confess, however, that I chose one of the easiest examples. It’s not that difficult to change how we feel about water, because it’s so fundamentally important for us. All life on this planet needs water to grow and flourish, so we’re biologically prepared to feel happy when we see, hear, or even just smell water.Â
To illustrate this, Richard Coss and David Keller at the University of California Davis asked some participants to gaze at bodies of water, while others looked at trees and still others focused on a grassy open space. Those who looked at water felt most relaxed.
Listening to water as it moves has also been shown to induce a feeling of calm and relaxation. In fact, the effect is so strong that the sound of a flowing stream or of waves coming into a shore is used for some meditation and mindfulness apps. These sounds are also used to help people fall asleep more easily.
The scent of water matters, too. Think how ‘clean’ and refreshed you feel when you smell rain.
Water is such a tonic that Matthew White at the University of Exeter, who studies the effect of nature on our wellbeing and helped create the ‘Blue Gym’ (which studies the many benefits of aquatic environments), found in one of his surveys that people living closer to the coast in England reported better health. He concluded that living - or if that’s not practical, spending time - near the sea can significantly improve our wellbeing.Â
And if you can’t be near outdoor bodies of water very often, you can still experience the relaxing effect of water either by going for a swim at your local pool, or setting up a small fish tank at home so you can watch goldfish moving about effortlessly.
Until next time, enjoy the many ways water can contribute to our wellbeing.
Happy water wishes,
Linda