Dear Friends,
This month we talked about the benefits of being in green spaces and asked for photos of the great outdoors. We advocated taking awe walks. However, looking at the photo submissions to SeeingHappy you will notice that many photos include water – the sea, the beach, etc, and at least one of us (Mandy) has spent most of the last few weeks on one lake or another – Lake George, Lake Luzerne, and Lake Huron. This made us wonder about the benefits of the blue outdoors versus the green outdoors. Turns out there is not as much research into the benefits of being around water as there is into the well-known benefits of being in green nature, but there are hints:
Being in or around water, visiting just a few times a week, leads to better physical and mental wellbeing. Walking by water increases mood and well-being. People who live close to the coast enjoy better physical and mental health. There is even the suggestion that people have better mood in blue spaces than in green. Being by water calms, it increases creativity, it heals. Obviously there is much work to be done and one place to watch is BlueHealth at the University of Exeter in the UK. They are a relatively new organization that links environment, climate and health.
We will be subscribing.
To continue our theme this week we are spotlighting a photograph by David Evans.
Take a look here:
Children, ducks and water – makes us happy 🙂
We look forward to seeing and hearing from all of you.
The Team here at SeeingHappy
