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Restore human connections with nature to improve our well-being, regenerate planetary ecosystems, and cultivate regenerative values and practices.
Regenerating our relationship with nature can improve our health, enhance cognitive function, boost our immune systems, and reduce stress. Reconnection can foster regenerative attitudes and behaviors that benefit the Earth. Diverse solutions exist at all levels of agency, from daily practices by individuals to integrating nature connection across education, health, urban design, conservation, and social policy. Many people in industrialized societies have become physically separated and emotionally disconnected from nature in their daily lives, with serious consequences for both human well-being and planetary health. Nearly 60 % of humanity – over four billion people — live in cities. Some people spend 90 % of their day indoors and in front of screens, a condition particularly prevalent among children and young people. Disconnection has society-wide effects, including an ignorance of the natural systems that sustain us, a lack of empathy for non-humans, a perception of nature as a resource without intrinsic value, and a resistance to environmental justice. Traditional and Indigenous cultures are deeply connected to nature, and their diverse experiences and knowledge can provide inspiration and guidance.
With Canada’s vast forests, grasslands, lakes, and rivers, nature can seem limitless, but it’s not. Our society sees nature as a resource, fueling an extractive economy that puts essential ecosystems under threat and increases environmental degradation. Canada is in the top 5 countries for natural resource consumption per person. We underestimate the need to restore wild spaces, which support local ecosystems, help prevent flooding and wildfires, and curb biodiversity loss.
With each generation, we are becoming more disconnected from nature. Urbanization, the loss of wild spaces, and technology have reinforced our human-centered worldview. 86% of Canadians live in cities, but 40% aren’t connected to green spaces in their community, and the uneven distribution causes urban heat islands and increased health issues. Because connection with nature comes from direct experience in nature, creating a sense of “naturehood” in our neighbourhoods through nature trails and urban ravines supports belonging and wellbeing. Indigenous knowledge-keepers challenge us to see all of nature as kin, as in the phrase “all my relations.” This respect is expressed in several treaties, such as the Dish with One Spoon wampum covenant between the Anishinaabek and the Haudenosaunee, which now includes everyone in the Great Lakes region.
Integrate nature into your daily life. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for cultivating a relationship with nature. Your options differ according to your culture, location, and socio-economic context. Find ways to connect with nature that feel accessible and comfortable to you.
Get outside. Get to know your local natural spaces—parks, gardens, or tree-lined streets. In Toronto, explore the extensive ravine trails, the Meadoway, and venture further into the surrounding Greenbelt and beyond. Learn the native plants in your region, and follow the annual migration of birds and butterflies. You can identify, record, and share your observations through citizen science apps, such as iNaturalist. Discover more with a group like Lost Rivers or use an app like AllTrails.
Learn about wild animals in the landscapes around you. Taking the time to consciously observe and learn from other animals can nurture a sense of compassion for and relatedness to other living beings. This can be as simple as learning bird language or as intensive as tracking bird migration like at Tommy Thompson research station in Toronto. Here are some tips to help beginning birdwatchers identify local birds. Participate in community science efforts with Ontario Nature, or learn how to support local bees and pollinators. Volunteer to protect turtle nests in High Park or help injured turtles at the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre in Peterborough. Consider a local nature centre like Kortright or the Pine Project to cultivate more in-depth nature experiences.
Try your hand at gardening. Growing flowers or vegetables, indoors or out, is one of the simplest ways to deepen your relationship with nature. Try backyard composting or indoor vermiculture to learn how to enrich your soil. Wherever you can, create habitats for bees and butterflies with native plants, even share your lawn. Join the efforts of WWF re:grow or the Carolinian Canada’s In the Zone, and in Toronto, learn more through the city’s pollinator strategy and resources. Collect seeds and share them through Seedy Saturday events organized by Seeds of Diversity. When you have a question, ask a master gardener.
Adopt simple nature-based practices. Find simple ways to deepen your connection with nature. Try practices that focus your attention, release stress and nurture your curiosity. Start small with regular practices that speaks to you.
Deepen your relationship with nature. Even if you have limited access to natural spaces, there are simple actions you can take to get a dose of Vitamin N (nature). Watch the clouds or spend time observing natural cycles, such as sunrises and the phases of the moon; or compare them through the months with the Anishinaabe lunar calendar. Connect to your local watershed through your conservation authority, in Ontario or in the Toronto area, to find events, projects and places to explore.
Practice nature-based meditation and mindfulness. The sit spot practice involves finding a place — such as your garden or a tree in a nearby park — and simply sitting and noticing what emerges. Try forest bathing, a slow immersion of your senses in the forest, or forest therapy, where you work with a guide. Rewilding is a hands-on guide to practices that combine yoga, mindfulness, and other practices to deepen connections with nature. If in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), check out the forest bathing club. Observe the phases of the moon through the month with moon meditations or try moon bathing. Join in the free daily nature meditations by Awake in the Wild live on Zoom.
Connect with nature through journaling and the arts. Nature-based writing and practices like story walks and earth landscape prompts create deeper connections with nature. To get started, check these tips from Ontario Parks, Kew Gardens and the Nature Journaling Week. Read poets who explore people’s relationships with nature, such as Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, Wendell Berry, Robert Macfarlane, and Rainer Maria Rilke. And check out the lists from the League of Canadian Poets here and here. Explore photography as another way to share what you observe. Find nature-inspired musicians; these five Canadian songs are just a start.
Learn about the benefits of connection to nature. Restoring our relationship with nature is beneficial both for humans and the natural world. Relating to nature has countless positive effects on our physical and mental health. It also has the potential to shift behaviors and values towards respecting, caring for and restoring nature, including efforts at greening our urban environments. How each of us connects to nature varies greatly and can manifest itself in many different ways.
Impact on physical health. Exposure to and connection with nature has been widely studied for its health benefits for both adults and children. Extensive research shows reduced stress, boosted immune function, and reduced anger and aggression, even with only two hours a week. Immersion in healthy forests lowers heart and respiratory symptoms associated with stress and positively affects one’s state of mind. It can also help our bodies shift to the parasympathetic nervous system, enabling rest and regeneration.
Impact on mental health. Nature connection can positively impact moods and boost imagination and creativity. It improves our mental wealth and helps create a deeper sense of meaning. Time in nature can help with our ability to focus, restoring our concentration and attention, as in the symptoms of ADHD. It can reduce feelings of loneliness, anger, depression, and even the symptoms of PTSD, by boosting confidence and self-esteem. Horticultural therapy has great curative power for healing, recovery, rehabilitation, and coping with chronic conditions, such as dementia.
Human need for nature. As a result of our long evolutionary history, humans have an innate affinity with nature. The concept of biophilia suggests that there is a genetic basis for our intrinsic need to connect with the natural world. This goes beyond our purely physical needs and extends to emotional and spiritual ones as well. These needs might also explain the current emphasis on including more nature-based patterns in architecture.
Learn about human disconnection from nature and its impacts. Our separation from nature in the modern world has occurred gradually through the agricultural, industrial and—more recently—technological revolutions. In the Global North, its roots can be traced back to the Enlightenment, which saw nature as a resource to be exploited for human needs. Propelled by colonialism, this mechanistic disconnection from nature has become a dominant narrative globally, and especially in nature-rich countries like Canada. It’s often viewed as the driver of the converging socio-ecological crises we face, including deforestation, land degradation, global warming, and biodiversity loss.
Nature as a resource. In most parts of modern industrialized societies, a human-centered worldview is predominant, resulting in a loss of respect for the natural world. In recent decades this worldview has grown due to urbanization, the loss of wild spaces, and technology. Canada is the fourth richest country in natural resources, and with our vast forests, grasslands, lakes and rivers, nature can seem endless. However, in our current economic system, natural resources make up half our exports. The result is substantial impact on our air, land and water, leading to unsustainable natural resource extraction, widespread environmental degradation, and more extreme weather.
Nature Deficit Disorder. The growing human disconnection from nature impacts our health, including decreased immune function, higher levels of stress and anxiety, and feelings of loneliness and alienation. The loss of desire to interact with the natural world is having dire consequences on the environment and biodiversity that we depend on. As a promising response, doctors in Canada have started writing prescriptions to spend time in nature for mental health. TRCA offers discount admission to conservation areas with a PaRX prescription.
Species loneliness. We have cut ourselves off from kinship and relationships with non-human beings, even though we long deeply for this connection. Our plant blindness keeps us from noticing the plants around us as more than just sources of air and food. Family pets enrich our lives, but don’t replace the need for contact with other creatures. This estrangement from animals and plants shapes human behaviour, fueling over-consumption, individualism, and an inclination for power and violence.
Learn about cultures, communities, and philosophies that are deeply connected to nature. The diverse knowledge systems and wisdom traditions of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities can serve as models to help us move to more nature-connected societies. Scientists are only now coming to understand the long held ecological wisdom of Indigenous cultures around the world.
Indigenous ecological wisdom. Indigenous peoples have always lived in deep relationship and reciprocity with the rest of nature. Most Indigenous cultures are kincentric, viewing all life as interconnected and having intrinsic value. Indigenous knowledge offers critical guidance to foster reciprocal ways of living with the Earth. The widely used phrase “All my relations” honours this belief, spoken to give respect to all those with whom we share this life and planet. Much work is going on to rediscover indigenous ways of reading and caring for the land. One example in the Great Lakes region is the Dish with One Spoon treaty between the Anishinaabek and the Haudenosaunee Confederacies that emphasizes the land as a dish to be shared and cared for to ensure ongoing sustenance and life for all.
Elements of non-western faith traditions. Shintoism, Buddhism and Taoism can inspire cultivating reconnection to nature. The book Web of Meaning explores how we can integrate components of these spiritual traditions, Indigenous knowledge and belief systems, and Western thinking to forge a new worldview of deep interconnectedness.
People. Many people and organizations working today show how to restore our relationship with nature and cultivate regenerative societies. Here are just a few:
The work of Potawatami scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer centers gratitude, reciprocity, and humility in viewing plants and other non-human entities as sources of knowledge and wisdom, showing how to reconcile scientific understandings of nature with Indigenous ways of knowing and relating.
Deep Ecology is a philosophy developed by ecologist Arne Naess that recognizes the complex web of all life, the intrinsic value of all beings, and the importance of deep human experience in nature.
The Gaia Hypothesis, developed by chemist James Lovelock, sees the Earth as a living, interconnected, and self-regulating system in which humans are innately enmeshed.
Author, peace activist and environmentalist Joanna Macy developed “active hope” work to foster the ability to counter despair and find resilience in the healing of our world. The Work That Reconnects network is carrying on this work around the Great Turning.
Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist David Suzuki, host of The Nature of Things for 44 years, created the David Suzuki Foundation as well as an institute to help people understand and act on global and regional environmental issues through groundbreaking projects like the national Blue Dot movement.
Activist, scientist and author Vandana Shiva returned to India after Canadian studies to start the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology and co-found the Navdanya movement and Regeneration International. Their work is about seed saving, soil health, organic farmers, and the corporate food system.
Environmental education. Immersive educational programs in ecology, economics, and spirituality, such as those offered at Schumacher College and Pachamama Alliance, teach how to connect with nature in innovative and restorative ways. Extensive research shows that the best learning environments for children are unmediated outdoor nature-scapes for play, exploration and discovery. Try David Suzuki’s Superhero Challenge with your kids, or visit the Royal Ontario Museum’s biodiversity gallery. Forest and nature schools help students build empathy and strong relationships to nature. Check out this list of Canadian schools and the Council of Outdoor Educators, and in southern Ontario, Nurture the Nature, Evergreen Brick Works, and the Pine Project, which also offers programs for adults. For educators, explore online resources at the Ontario Society for Environmental Education and Outdoor Learning School & Store.
