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A man and a woman reaching across a raised garden bed to pass a plant to the other.

The fifth letter in MY SCORECARD from the NCHPAD MENTOR Program, O, can have a powerful effect on improving your health. It stands for Outdoor Time in Nature. Spending time outside may seem like an obvious way to improve health, but it has more benefits than you might think. Being in nature with trees, flowers, plants and birds has enormous physiological and mental health benefits.

We spend so much time indoors looking at screens, so connecting with nature has become even more important. If you have recently acquired a disability or have a new diagnosis, spending time in nature can help you reconnect with your inner self and identity.

When you fully immerse yourself in the outdoors (parks, forests, trails or gardens), your mind, body and spirit connect. Some areas of the world refer to this as forest bathing, a term used to describe the connection to all forms of life found in nature, including animals, birds, trees and flowers.

Benefits of Being Outdoors

Research shows that a significant part of a person’s health is influenced by their physical environment, including access to green spaces, outdoor recreation and community gardens. The mind tends to thrive when surrounded by trees, flowers, plants, water and other natural elements.

Research is also beginning to reveal that the part of our brain responsible for negative thoughts, or rumination, is less active when we are in nature. This helps us stay more mindful and spiritual, two essential aspects of wellness [1].

In a significant study conducted by researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK, findings published in June 2019 in the journal Scientific Reports analyzed data from nearly 20,000 participants in England who completed a survey about their outdoor activities. The study revealed that individuals who spent at least two hours per week in natural environments or parks reported better health and a heightened sense of well-being compared to those who primarily stayed indoors with minimal or no exposure to nature. [2].

Getting outdoors is easier for some than others. Depending on your level of mobility or your availability of green spaces, it could be a challenge to feel connected to nature. If you spend less than two hours a week outdoors in green space such as parks, trails, community gardens and other nature areas, try one of these inclusive strategies to add more nature into your wellness routine!

A Purpose-Driven Outdoor Activity – Gardening

Gardening is considered one of the most engaging ways to interact with nature and is a great way to consistently get outdoors!

Gardening requires physical exertion (e.g., planting, pruning, watering, fertilizing), naturally increasing your levels of physical activity. There are also many ways to garden, including boutique gardens such as rock gardens, herbs and flowers.

If you don’t have space for a home garden, consider utilizing a publicly available community garden. Many community gardens can be found through the American Community Gardening Association at https://www.communitygarden.org/. Plan before your visit to ensure the garden has accessibility features that allow individuals with mobility disabilities to participate in gardening using raised boxes and access to water.

If access to a community garden is not feasible or transportation is limited, consider growing an herb garden. You can cultivate herbs outdoors, or if you live in an apartment, create a small windowsill garden to bring nature indoors. Examples of herbs to grow include rosemary (great for chicken or fish), oregano (useful for many dishes), mint (for hot and cold teas), basil (for cooking and salads) and parsley (for fish, meats and vegetables).

Bring a Little of Nature into the Home

Plants and Flowers. If you have limited outdoor access, purchase a plant that you can place in your home. Plants are living, ‘breathing’ gifts of nature and caring for them can provide a sense of purpose. Even flowers can add some perspective of being outdoors in nature. Many grocery stores sell them at inexpensive prices.
Spend Time in a Room with a View. Whenever possible, spend time in a well-lit room with a window (tracking with the sun as it moves from east to west) to connect with sunlight and greenery. Views of trees, bushes and other vegetation can brighten your mood and be good for your mental health.
Frame Photos of Nature. Even hanging photos or inexpensive paintings of nature can have a positive impact on your mood.

Combine Wellness Domains for an Even Greater Health Effect

Combine one of our other MENTOR wellness domains, Mindfulness, with your time outside and have a mindfulness session outdoors! Sitting in the grass, enjoying the breeze and sunlight on a bench or feeling elements of nature allows you to stay grounded and in the moment. Practice mindfulness your way, or try a guided meditation outdoors to connect with nature!

After practicing mindfulness, take notes and make mindfulness in nature part of your wellness routine. Acknowledge the feelings you felt during your mindfulness session. Find out ways to avoid any distractions that might have come up while you were connecting with nature. Try mindfulness in other outdoor settings like the forest, parks or even your backyard.
Find what benefits you and commit to frequent exercises like these!

Take your normal tasks outside!

If you have a meeting planned for work at the office, suggest a meeting on the go so everyone can take a break from the routine indoor schedule and get some fresh air and sunlight. Do you have a normal dinner planned with the family? Make it a picnic and connect with family and nature in a new spot. Shaking up the normal routine can be a fun new way to enjoy your daily life.

Take a break from technology

While technology feels like a nice escape from reality, it can negatively impact your daily life. The constant desire for stimulation is temporarily satisfied by social media or other time-consuming apps, but it can increase stress, envy, fear, depression and poor concentration.

Rather than craving entertainment through media, find a way out of mind-based stress and suffering through the stillness and silence of parks, gardens and other quiet outdoor spaces. Instead of spending hours on your phone or other devices, find a new hobby to try outside that can be done from your home like painting or bird watching.

Get Active!

Try a new physical activity like hiking or biking to make exercise seem less like a chore and more of an adventure going to new places. Join an exercise group that goes running together or participates in yoga together. Find an organization that offers adaptive outdoor team sports for people with mobility disabilities. There are more options than you know. Get creative and get active! You can find resources for outdoor activities in our recent Get Outdoors Month Resources blog!

References

1- Bratman GN, Hamilton JP, Hahn KS, Daily GC, Gross JJ. Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Jul 14;112(28):8567-72. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510459112. Epub 2015 Jun 29. PMID: 26124129; PMCID: PMC4507237.

2- White, M.P., Alcock, I., Grellier, J. et al. Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and well-being. Sci Rep 9, 7730 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3

A meditation bell on a mantle with small lit candles.

Spiritual practice is an important method for improving and maintaining mental and physical health. But what is spiritual practice? How can it help me? How do I implement it into my life?

This topic is the second blog in our series about MY SCORECARD, an acronym we use to explain the domains of wellness that we focus on in the NCHPAD MENTOR program. The second letter in MY SCORECARD, Y, stands for “Your spiritual practice.”

What do we mean by “Your spiritual practice?”

First, it’s important to know that for the MENTOR program, “Your spiritual practice” is not associated with religion. It can be part of the spiritual tradition or religion that you practice in life, but it does not have to.

In MENTOR, “Your spiritual practice” means maintaining a strong relationship with yourself and others and realizing the broader purpose of life in relation to the ‘source’ of all forms of life.

Spirituality has more to do with the connection of all things and a deep understanding of our connection to each other.

While there isn’t one specific definition for spiritual wellness, there are terms that are associated with this practice: peace, harmony, compassion, connection to others, purpose and transcendence (something beyond this universe).

The National Wellness Institute defines spiritual well-being as “the search for meaning and purpose in human existence, leading one to strive for a state of harmony with oneself and others while working to balance inner needs with the rest of the world.”

The essential foundation of spirituality is an understanding that everything connects to the whole.

When the life of others becomes more important than your own life, and your level of faith to an outside source gives you reason for hope and optimism, you are gaining a sense of spirituality that connects you to the rest of the world.

How does Spirituality benefit me?

In a 2016 study, Australian researchers conducted a review of 28 studies focusing on spirituality among individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). This comprehensive review explored how spirituality contributes to the adaptation and resilience of individuals and their family members following SCI.

This review highlighted three key findings that showed the significance of spirituality:

Higher levels of spirituality were associated with improved quality of life, life satisfaction, mental health and resilience for individuals with SCI.
Families and people with SCI would like health professionals to use spirituality in their practice.
The researchers concluded that there is great potential for conducting more research in spirituality to determine how and why this important practice leads to better health outcomes.

Following a recent injury or new diagnosis, engaging in spiritual practice can offer solace to individuals seeking to regain a sense of balance in their lives. For some, the path to recovery may involve spirituality, offering a profound insight into their inner purpose and ultimately fostering a heightened sense of peace and serenity.

How to apply “Your Spiritual Practice” in your daily life

From NCHPAD Director Dr. James Rimmer

Upon awakening every morning, seek out a place in your home where there is stillness and silence and meditate for about 5-15 minutes (start with one minute if five minutes is too long). Make this your daily practice.

While meditating, connect with whomever or whatever is your spiritual source, that is, your understanding of how you arrived into this world.
During your meditation practice, focus on compassionate thoughts for a) family, b) friends and c) those you don’t know who are suffering anywhere in the world.
Use your meditation practice to reach a state of consciousness where you understand how to remove fears, doubts, anxieties and other emotions. Replace them with peace (acceptance of this moment only – no thoughts about the past or future).
Set up your daily mantra (a saying that keeps you grounded in your spiritual practice) to use whenever you fall back into an emotion (fear, anger, jealousy, etc.). For me, it is – “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it yourself.” – Eckhart Tolle
Remember that the focus of spiritual practice in MENTOR is that ‘outflow equals inflow.’ The more you give to others, the more you receive in return. Positive relationships with whomever you meet or with family IS the central aspect of a strong spiritual practice.

The path to good health starts with better daily habits. Part of our MENTOR program is to increase awareness of the multiple domains of wellness, so we created the acronym ‘MY SCORECARD.’

Every day is made up of 24 hours and 1440 minutes, and the ‘scorecard’ concept helps participants remember that every minute of their day counts. By using MY SCORECARD in the MENTOR program, we take a holistic approach to helping participants learn to optimize their health across a 24-hour period. MY SCORECARD encourages participants to map out their health behaviors across the day, offering a much broader perspective on how everything fits together — and why every wellness domain must be considered.

Using the scorecard daily helps participants think about winning and losing efforts to engage in good health behaviors. Eat an apple and register a win; drink a sweetened beverage and record a loss.

Assigning a hypothetical score to each behavior will help participants understand that health is a game of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ that we all experience. It can change day-by-day and even minute-by-minute. Isolating healthy behaviors from unhealthy ones allows participants to set up short-term goals on where they need to focus to round out a day that has more wins than losses.

MY SCORECARD helps make small, incremental changes across the three dimensions of health — and across the entire day.

The road to success in the MENTOR program starts with a simple and effective way to monitor behaviors throughout the day using the 11 wellness domains (shown in the MY SCORECARD image to the right).

We live such complex lives that if we don’t monitor our health more carefully and regularly, life situations can creep up on us. Before we know it, we are more stressed, sleep less, eat unhealthy foods and get no exercise. The many things thrown at us each day can often distract our interest, awareness, or ability to stay healthy or become healthy.

The goal of the MENTOR program is to help participants live life fully and with active lifestyles. What makes the program unique is how it is customizable or adaptable based on what participants need to be successful. Our expert program coordinators help resolve any barriers that participants are experiencing in self-managing their health. And so, MENTOR (and MY SCORECARD) entails several things:

It’s a useful way for participants to identify and respond to certain areas of health that they may not have considered.
It teaches participants to address their health across a 24-hour day.
It provides participants with the understanding that they can change how they feel by changing what they do.
It’s an acknowledgment that setbacks will happen – expect them – but it’s important to move on and not give up. Each day is its own individual scorecard.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all set of solutions. MY SCORECARD gives participants a variety of helpful, holistic options for improving overall health and wellness.

To learn more about the MENTOR program or join today, visit our MENTOR page here.