Exploring the human experience of nature.
We explore how immersion in nature intersects with attention, emotion, mindfulness, meditation, nature connectedness, meaning and wellbeing.
Our interest is not only in whether something changes, but in how experience unfolds, what seems to matter, and why people may experience the same environment differently.
Beyond asking whether nature “works.”
Research on nature and wellbeing often asks whether stress decreases, mood improves or questionnaire scores change.
Those questions are useful, but they represent only one part of the human experience.
We are also interested in what happens during the encounter between a person and nature: how attention moves, how emotion changes, how connection develops, what makes an experience meaningful, and why an encounter may be restorative for one person yet neutral, difficult or uncomfortable for another.
For this reason, many projects are designed around qualitative, phenomenological and reflective inquiry, sometimes complemented by simple established quantitative measures.
What happens in the encounter between person and nature?
Research begins with curiosity.
Rather than starting from the assumption that nature must produce a particular outcome, we are interested in the variety and complexity of lived experience.
What changes?
What happens to attention, emotional experience, awareness, bodily perception or thought during immersion in nature?
How does change happen?
Which moments, sensory experiences, thoughts, relationships or environmental qualities appear to contribute to a shift?
What does not change?
Nature does not automatically make everyone feel better. Neutral, ambiguous and difficult experiences are scientifically important too.
What becomes meaningful?
How do belonging, beauty, awe, identity, spirituality or meaning emerge within nature experiences?
What is the role of attention?
Does mindful awareness lead to nature connection, does connection facilitate mindfulness, or do both develop together?
Why are we different?
How might culture, place, familiarity, weather, expectations and previous experience shape what nature means to us?
Six areas of inquiry
Each research area can eventually lead to its own page containing current projects, developing questions, relevant publications and opportunities to participate.
Nature Immersion
What happens psychologically and experientially when we intentionally spend time immersed in natural environments?
Explore Area →Emotion Regulation & Nature
How do people experience, process and regulate emotions in relationship with natural environments?
Explore Area →Mindfulness in Nature
How does attention change when mindfulness is practised with nature rather than simply occurring outdoors?
Explore Area →Meditation & Nature
How does the phenomenology of meditation change when contemplative practice occurs within a natural environment?
Explore Area →Nature Connectedness
How does a relationship with nature begin, deepen, fluctuate, disappear or change through experience and time?
Explore Area →Meaning, Wellbeing & Human–Nature Relationship
How are meaning, identity, belonging and wellbeing experienced through relationships with the living world?
Explore Area →Three particularly interesting starting points
These studies focus on process, variation and lived experience rather than assuming in advance that nature must produce a beneficial outcome.
What Actually Happens to Emotion in Nature?
Rather than asking only whether an emotion becomes stronger or weaker, this study examines how emotional experience unfolds and what participants believe contributes to change.
Explore Study →When Nature Does Not Make Us Feel Better
Nature encounters may involve discomfort, boredom, fear, loneliness, grief, rumination or simply no noticeable change. Those experiences deserve study as well.
Explore Study →The Moment of Nature Connection
Participants explore a particular moment of strong connection with nature and what happened immediately before, during and after it.
Explore Study →24 research projects and developing questions
Some may become active participant studies, while others can remain part of the developing TMT and GINC research agenda.
What Changes During 20 Minutes in Nature?
What changes from the beginning to the end of a short period of sitting or slow walking in nature?
View Study →How Does Nature Help Us Regulate Emotion?
Investigate what happens to an everyday emotion during a nature encounter and what appears to contribute to change.
View Study →When Nature Does Not Make Us Feel Better
Explore neutral, uncomfortable or difficult nature encounters without assuming universally positive responses.
View Study →Nature as Background or Relationship?
Explore moments when nature moves from being perceived as scenery toward something experienced relationally.
View Study →The Moment of Connection
Examine what happens before, during and after an especially strong moment of nature connection.
View Study →Meditation Indoors and Outdoors
Compare the lived experience of the same short meditation practised indoors and within nature.
View Study →The Space Between Thoughts in Nature
Explore silence, thought and the experienced spaces between thoughts within natural surroundings.
View Study →Where Does Attention Go in Nature?
Explore where attention moves spontaneously during an unguided period of nature immersion.
View Study →Which Sense Opens the Experience?
Investigate whether sound, smell, texture, temperature, movement or vision initiates a meaningful shift in awareness.
View Study →Nature and the Body
Explore how interoception and bodily awareness change in relationship with natural surroundings.
View Study →Guided versus Unguided Nature Immersion
Compare what guidance adds, restricts or changes in a participant's experience of nature.
View Study →Invitation or Instruction?
Explore how differently worded guidance influences autonomy, curiosity and engagement.
View Study →Silence, Sound & Emotional Experience
Investigate how natural soundscapes participate in emotional and attentional experience.
View Study →A Single Tree
Explore how sustained attention toward one tree may change perception, relationship and meaning.
View Study →Ordinary Nature
Can meaningful nature connection arise through a garden, street tree, balcony plant or small urban green space?
View Study →Seven-Day Nature Connection Practice
Follow the development of experience across seven short daily encounters with nature.
View Study →After the Forest
Explore what remains immediately, one day and potentially one week after a nature immersion experience.
View Study →Nature, Meaning & Spiritual Experience
Explore meaning, sacredness, transcendence, unity and experiences that may be difficult to name.
View Study →Belonging to Nature
Investigate the experiential difference between being physically in nature and feeling oneself to be part of nature.
View Study →Mindfulness: Cause, Consequence or Companion?
Explore whether mindful awareness facilitates connection, emerges from it, or develops alongside it.
View Study →Different Cultures, Different Natures
Explore how understandings of nature, connectedness and human–nature relationships vary across cultural contexts.
View Study →Season, Weather & Connection
Explore how heat, cold, wind, rain, season and changing light influence nature connection.
View Study →The Role of the Guide
Explore moments when a guide supports, interrupts, deepens or becomes unnecessary within a nature experience.
View Study →Degrees of Freedom in Nature Invitations
Compare structured and open-ended invitations to explore how choice influences engagement, agency and experience.
View Study →
Experience cannot always be reduced to numbers.
Depending on the research question, projects may combine qualitative inquiry with simple descriptive measures.
Reflexive Thematic Analysis
Used to identify and interpret recurring patterns of meaning across written reflections or interview material.
Phenomenological Inquiry
Used when the central question concerns the structure, qualities and meaning of lived experience rather than an outcome score.
Longitudinal Reflection
Useful for examining experiences across repeated encounters, several days, changing seasons or follow-up after nature immersion.
Light Quantitative Measures
Brief measures can be included where useful, without allowing statistical outcomes to replace participants' descriptions of their experiences.
Numbers can complement the story.
Where appropriate, short measures can sit alongside qualitative responses. Their licensing, validity and appropriateness should be checked for each study.
NR-6
A short six-item measure of subjective nature relatedness.
Nature Connection Index
A brief measure addressing aspects of people's relationship and emotional connection with nature.
Simple State Ratings
Descriptive 0–10 ratings may be used when clearly identified as simple state markers rather than validated scales.
Open Reflection
Written reflection remains central when the purpose is to understand process, meaning and lived experience.
From everyday nature experience to research.
Many projects can be designed to be low-burden and accessible internationally. The exact procedure, eligibility requirements and ethics information should always be explained before consent.
Read
Review the study information, eligibility, possible risks, privacy arrangements and researcher contact details.
Consent
Decide freely whether to participate after receiving understandable information about the research.
Experience
Complete a simple nature, mindfulness, meditation or observation activity according to the study protocol.
Reflect
Share observations through open questions, brief questionnaires, reflective journals or, for selected studies, interviews.
The participant comes before the research question.
Human-participant research requires careful consideration of consent, privacy, data protection, risk, researcher responsibility and independent ethical oversight where appropriate.
Participants should receive understandable information about the project before choosing whether to take part.
Participation is voluntary. Study-specific procedures for stopping participation and withdrawing data should be explained clearly.
Research procedures should minimise physical, psychological, social and privacy-related risks wherever reasonably possible.
Only information relevant to the research question should be collected, and identifying data should be limited whenever possible.
Each project should explain how data are protected, anonymised or pseudonymised, retained and eventually deleted.
Participants should know who is conducting the research, why it is being conducted and how findings may be disseminated.
Participation in a research project does not constitute psychological therapy, medical treatment or clinical advice.
Participation should not affect training assessment, certification, membership or professional relationships with TMT, SYA or GINC.
Each project should receive an appropriate level of independent ethical consideration according to its risks, participants, methods and intended publication context.
Human relationships with nature deserve to be explored in all their complexity.
Participate in research, explore developing studies and follow emerging work on immersion, emotion, mindfulness, meditation, nature connectedness, meaning and wellbeing.