Vedic wisdom consistently promotes spending time outdoors, as much time as possible. Sadly, in the West people spend more than 95% of their time indoors.
Recently, researchers at the University of Illinois report that third graders at a Midwestern elementary school were significantly more attentive and engaged in their indoor studies following a 40 minute lesson conducted outdoors in a natural setting. Called the "Nature Effect" it allowed the two educators who participated in the project to teach their 50 students uninterrupted for almost twice as long as would have been possible if the students never left the classroom.
Writing up their study in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers concluded that the positive effects on students of spending part of the day outside in the natural world were consistently apparent day after day throughout the 10 week project. They recommended that schools seriously consider offering regular "refueling" in nature.
Recently, researchers at the University of Illinois report that third graders at a Midwestern elementary school were significantly more attentive and engaged in their indoor studies following a 40 minute lesson conducted outdoors in a natural setting. Called the "Nature Effect" it allowed the two educators who participated in the project to teach their 50 students uninterrupted for almost twice as long as would have been possible if the students never left the classroom.
Writing up their study in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers concluded that the positive effects on students of spending part of the day outside in the natural world were consistently apparent day after day throughout the 10 week project. They recommended that schools seriously consider offering regular "refueling" in nature.
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