Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild

Product Information

Many people believe that worrying about the natural world is a privileged concern – something only the wealthy bother themselves with. But when proximity to nature can determine your health outcome, caring about the natural world is not a luxury. Research by Professor Rich Mitchell of Glasgow University posits that greener neighborhoods could reduce the health gap between the rich and poor and thus make our society more equal – a concept known as equigenesis. Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health. Travelling from forest schools in East London to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault via primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists’ couches, Jones takes us to the cutting edge of human biology, neuroscience and psychology, and discovers new ways of understanding our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the earth. One of the best - and I don't doubt one of the most important - books I've read this year. A real eye-opener for many ways in which nature can affect not only our physical but mental wellbeing, and ways in which it is disappearing from our day to day lives. The author's personal story weaves through the text, providing the overarching example of just how much nature is intertwined with our lives, and how important it is to our wellbeing. I thought that she did a great job of combining horror-esque stories and statistics about destruction and loss with a sense of hope for what we might achieve if we work together - it seems that on the whole we do need to be scared into action. Look at what we might lose! What we are losing. Would highly recommend for anybody who is (rightly) concerned about the climate crisis, and anybody who wants to understand a little more the effects that spending time with nature can have on us.

Delicately observed and rigorously researched, Losing Eden is an enthralling journey through this new research, exploring how and why connecting with the living world can so drastically affect our health. Travelling from forest schools in East London, to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, via Poland's primeval woodlands, Californian laboratories and ecotherapists' couches, Jones takes us to the cutting edge of human biology, neuroscience and psychology, and discovers new ways of understanding our increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the earth. Urgent and uplifting, Losing Eden is a rallying cry for a wilder way of life – for finding asylum in the soil and joy in the trees – which might just help us to save the living planet, as well as ourselves, from the destructive clutches of ecological grief. Lõpp ei olnud lõpumaiguline nagu eeldasin, vaid lootusrikka tooniga, mis oli igati teretulnud vaheldus doomscrollimisele. Igal juhul ju 5 tärni! Loodus on ressurss, mida vajame eelkõige elusana. Nii, nagu raamatu tagaküljel sedastatakse, tahan nüüd tõepoolest ringi korraldada nii linnaruumi, haridussüsteemi, tööl käimist kui ka oma elu. The benefits of experiencing nature may be far greater than is commonly appreciated [...] A fascinating exploration of the new science of our connection to the natural world [...] written in such lush, vivid prose that reading it, one can feel transported and restored."But Reddy is also a product of her parents’ hard-won social mobility, her father getting help to study in the UK, before the family moved to Canada when she was young. Here, her childhood experiences of Quebec landscapes are transporting: “Into this weird, wild winter wonderland, I was delivered, agog… the space, the nature and the quiet were exactly what an inquisitive, imaginative seven-year-old needed.” Her interest in more shamanic relationships with nature also feed into her heritage, particularly her connections with her mother’s Hindu faith. As a child she had a shrine to Shiva and Lakshmi, and writes about how goddesses are believed to be present in trees, flowers, water, and the sun. The American West is defined as that which lay west of the 100th parallel, an appropriate definition since that land receives less rainfall than the land to its east and requires a very different land management ethos.

I realise the irony that I am sitting in front of a laptop screen typing this review about a book that advocates us getting out and about in the natural world. I spend most of the day in an office and factory and drive to and from there. But I do try to get out and about whenever I have the opportunity either by walking down to the woods or the river nearby. It may not be much some days but it is enoughIs our modern-day estrangement from the natural world bad for our mental health? That's the question Lucy Jones explores in Losing Eden and, in doing so, visits forest schools, ancient woodlands and a seed vault in Scandinavia's frozen north. Lucy is a friend, so I've known about this book for a couple of years and, as someone with a fascination for neuroscience, I was curious to see how much evidence she could assemble to show a link between mental health and nature. The answer is, a lot. E.O. Wilson argues that humans have an innate animacy of life. That is, we prefer biological activity over non-biological activity from the time we are born – a squirrel is more interesting to our eyes than a stuffed toy, for example. This was tested in a 2008 study in which newborn babies were shown images of random dots and the movement of a walking hen. Babies preferred to watch the “biological motion display” of the hen (represented by dots) – suggesting that our visual perception has evolved to attune us to the movements of other animals. Nowadays, most of us spend the majority of our time indoors, and this alienation from the natural world is impacting our health. We’ve become so disconnected from nature that we now think of the earth’s flora and fauna as either an unnecessary frill or something to be dominated and exploited. And yet, new scientific findings show that our dismissal of the natural world actually goes against human nature. Our estrangement from the planet that sustains our existence is causing us severe psychic harm.