So much of healthcare, especially in the United States, is pay-to-play — the more money you have to spend, the better your health is. It’s actually sickening, no pun intended.
That’s just one of the many reasons I’m so passionate about grounding — because it puts one of the most powerful healing modalities possible right in your own hands, freely, and you really just have to be intentional about grounding in order to implement it and reap head-to-toe health benefits.
So I see it as a free healing modality that is empowering to all of humanity, regardless of age, race, sex, income, mental or physical health constraints — it’s a constant, freely available source of support that you can 100% count on.
Spending time in nature on the earth is so powerful it may helps dissolve the inequality to healthcare access we have. At least partially. Published in The Lancet, researchers found that the disparity in lifespan between income levels was lowest in areas that had access to green spaces. Especially for mortality rates that were related to circulatory diseases (heart attack, stroke, etc…) the larger the available green spaces, the less income mattered — mortality rates were much lower across the board regardless of how much money one could spend.
Another study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health, found that the larger greenspace area in a living environment was associated with over all improved health, and that access to green spaces should not be considered a luxury but a health care necessity. Populations that typically are under served — such as the elderly, children, and those in lower socioeconomic groups — benefitted the most from the presence of green areas.
So if having access to a natural area boosts health so much that it helps improve health outcomes and remove health care inequalities, how big does the green area have to be? Not big at all, it turns out.
This study, published in Science Advances in October 2020, suggests that adding even a very small greenspace to an urban setting boosts immune function in a measurable and meaningful way — quickly! Researchers found that by adding a small green play area to urban playgrounds, they boosted the immunity of the children using the play area in less than a month.
Researchers in Finland added a very small, low cost green area in the corner of existing playgrounds in several different urban daycare centers. They added a little grass patch, some small plants and a planter box with garden crops the kids could tend to. This is what one of the modifications looked like:
After just 28 days, not only did the children who played in this urban greenspace have boosted immune markers in their blood (like boosted T cells) they also had an improved microbiota (both on the skin and in their gut biome) similar to children that lived and played in rural areas with large greenspaces and forests. These changes were statistically significant compared both to controls and to their own baseline measurements.
Another study in 2021 confirmed these findings, showing that forest therapy effectively boosted immune function in multiple research trials.
Another study in 2022 found that school aged children with access to green spaces had improved ability to sustain attention spans and a boosted working memory capacity.
Another study found that simply living on a street that had more trees was enough to significantly lower childhood asthma rates.
This study found that spending just 30 minutes a week in an urban park decreased high blood pressure and improved mental health compared to not sending any time in nature at all… just 30 minutes a week!
That’s just one half hour lunch or walk through a park every weekend.
Many studies have found that having access to a greenspace decreases depression rates, anxiety rates, and dramatically reduces stress. One study, called the MIND study (conducted in 2007) found that simply walking through a garden or greenway significantly improved mental health, while walking through areas without greenery (such as a shopping mall) significantly decreased mental health.
A meta-analysis of the medical research on nature based activities in 2021 found that outdoor activities were effective for improving depression, reducing anxiety, and improving over all mental health, even in adults with pre-existing mental health conditions. This was backed up by a huge meta-analysis the next year, in 2022 of the current medical literature on walking in nature, which confirmed a significant improvement in mental health.
Even indoor plants can positively impact on your well being, so don’t discount the power of a windowsill garden or a simple house plant to support your health. An exciting study published in 2015 in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology, showed that simply adding plants to an indoor computer room not only boosted the worker’s productivity, it also significantly decreased their blood pressure. Another study published in 2007 in the American Society for Horticultural Science found that workers with potted plants in close proximity to them while working took less sick leave.
Being physically near plants is so impactful to our mental and physical health that it turns out, even just seeing a plant can significantly impact our recovery from stressful health events. We have such an innate need to be submersed in a world with foliage and plants around us that a study (published in 1984 in Science) found that patients who simply had a view of plants through a window while recovering from surgery had better moods, used less pain medications, had less surgical post-op complications, and even decreased their length of stay in the hospital.
Less pain during recovery and getting to go home sooner after surgery just by looking at plants?
That’s an awesome health strategy that I wish more hospital and clinics would take into account when designing their architecture.
But what if you can’t get outside in nature daily, or even weekly?
Does it make a difference if all you can do is get out in nature once in a while? Yep, it’s still worth it to go. Even if just for an hour, one single time. For example, even just a 50 minute walk in a natural setting can significantly increase memory span.
Almost every vacation destination has evolved to be a vacation spot because of how good it feels to be grounded, even though most people don’t realize grounding is why: beaches, lakeside resorts, camp grounds, even in ground pools and hot tubs in spas and hotels … it’s all grounded and it all feels amazing.
While you relax connected to the global electrical circuit of the earth, grounding is at work decreasing cortisol, decreasing whole body inflammation, and significantly boosting mood — all perfect to decrease stress levels and restore your naturally energetic, creative and optimistic inner child.
Other studies have shown that just one single weekend spent in nature has significant health benefits —reducing stress, reducing inflammation, and even boosting the body’s immune response, compared to staying in an urban environment for the weekend.
Researchers found that subjects that had a two day immersion in nature had measurably boosted immunity markers in the blood, lowered blood inflammatory markers, lower cortisol levels, boosted natural killer cells, along with improvement of several other markers of immunity and inflammation.
And here is the best part: not only was this health boost significant immediately, but it persisted for an entire month after just that one single weekend in nature! So one weekend in nature sustained an improvement in health for weeks, well after the subjects returned to their urban living.
Cumulative anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer benefits from one weekend a month in nature?
That’s a pretty good deal. If you can strive to take monthly breaks from your daily grind in order to support your long term health, you can reap the benefits for much longer than your weekend getaway lasted. Weeks of boosted health, even if you can’t live in nature…. turns out even just a venture outside every few weeks does a body good.
This “dose of nature” Nature Pyramid was first developed in 2012 by professors at the University of Virginia, and I like the idea of looking over a Nature Pyramid, much like the old food pyramid from days gone by. I feel it’s a great way to consider scheduling in some nature therapy to boost your health all year long.
See if you can come up with a daily way to at least view nature for a few minutes, a weekly 30 minute dose, a monthly 2 hour dose, and a yearly weekend or more in nature.
For example, your Nature Pyramid might be:
Daily (A Few Minutes):
- Take my cup of coffee outside to watch the sunrise each morning
- Notice the trees I pass on my morning and afternoon commute to work.
- Get grounded by touching a signpost in my office parking lot for three deep breaths before entering the building
- Looking up at the moon and stars for a few minutes before going up to bed
Weekly (30 Minutes):
- A 3o min picnic lunch every Sunday at my local park
- a 30 minute walk through my neighborhood greenway every Saturday morning
- heading to my local dog park with my pup for a half hour every Saturday afternoon
- laying down outside to watch clouds roll by every Sunday afternoon
Monthly (2 Hours):
- Visiting a local natural body of water that is within a day drive
- Taking 2 or 3 mile hike to my favorite scenic overlook
- Playing golf one afternoon a month
- Forest bathing for several hours at my favorite nearby state park
Annually (A Long Weekend):
- An RV or camping trip
- A trip to do an outdoor activity I love, like birdwatching
- A weekend stay at a national park
- A wellness retreat, like these amazing Grounding Retreats (my personal pick!)
If you want to enjoy nature from the comfort of your own private room at a gorgeous retreat center with me, join my Spring Grounding Retreat in a just few weeks and lets do grounding breath work sessions, grounding meditations, grounding yoga and tons more grounding self-care activities — I’ll personally lead you through them and I can’t wait!
As of writing this blog post, the spring retreat is almost fully booked… I only have three spots left. Snag one of those right now, right here:
If the spring retreat is fully sold out by the time you read this, secure your spot in the only other retreat I’m hosting in 2026 — my fall grounding retreat in September. Those spots are also already filling, so you might want to reserve your cabin today, as this is the last grounding retreat I will run in all of 2026:
Better yet, reserve a spot in both so that you know that you have at least two weekends in nature this year that will boost your health — not just at the retreat, not only for weeks after the retreat ends, but for the rest of your life… as you have the tools and experience to boost your health through grounding, improving your wellspan and longevity, naturally.
I can’t wait to heal and renew — grounded — with you.
xoxo,
Laura Koniver MD
