Your Body Knows Before You Do

When you live in the Alps, hiking isn’t something you plan for the weekend. It’s part of everyday life. You head out on the evening round, drift off and something happens. It’s unspectacular but it’s a feeling you keep looking for. The body moves, nature calms the senses and at some point you stop thinking much. For me it’s the same as for most others. I walk through the forest and look at the mountains, take in the impressions, the sound of the stream, the wind, and I enjoy the state that suddenly appears. At some point I switch off completely and most hikers report this when they walk.

When I walk during the day I usually aim for a hut. A small drink and a chat with the innkeeper. But because I take different routes most of the time, that’s where it gets interesting. I like stepping into a new hut. The menu can look as good as it wants, but if the atmosphere isn’t right I’m out again fast.

This space is kind of the risk on a hike. It works or it pushes you away. Which is something nature never really does, but rooms do. The smell, the noise, the cold, the tile floor instead of wood, the neon light. The kitchen reeks of fat and all of that makes up a room atmosphere you can’t choose. Really you want nothing but to enjoy this idyllic cosiness, but the reality is often coldness and that quickly puts you off.

When the naturalness from outside continues inside, it feels completely different. With wood, warm light and an open fireplace the state is different. The transition from outside to inside is harmonious. But a cool room with hard contrasts, modern materials, black-and-white design language tips the state immediately.

I currently live right at the big ski resorts in Tyrol and a shift is becoming more and more visible. Where there used to be nostalgia, there are now central phone charging stations and modern furniture, surrounded by plenty of exposed concrete. They bring the modernity from the city into the mountains. We all seem to feel most comfortable when everything works and the phone is charged. That’s why efficiency is the visibly more important brief when building in the Alps. At least for tourism. First it was mass processing with the dripping currywurst and fries to the rim of the plate on the tray, now modern design, open spaces, lots of light and still more efficiency are added. Slowing down, lingering, leisure, the actual reason for a trip to the mountains, all of that recedes into the background.

I ask myself whether that’s just my sensitivity or whether there is also science that confirms what I feel.

Four to Seven Minutes

Roger Ulrich ran an experiment in 1991 that is still among the most cited in environmental psychology (Ulrich et al., 1991, Journal of Environmental Psychology). In it 120 subjects watched a stress film about workplace accidents. Then they watched either a nature video or a city video. The following body responses were measured: heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance and facial muscle tension.

Skin conductance reacted fastest. Within the first three minutes the difference was significant. After four to seven minutes all four indicators had diverged. The nature group recovered faster and more completely. The heart rate slowed to the lowest level since the stress film. With the city videos it sped up.

What was remarkable wasn’t just the speed. Nature didn’t simply bring the subjects back to their baseline. It took them beyond. The mood after the nature video was more positive than before the stress film.

Forest or Water, Heavy or Light Traffic

Ulrich showed two different nature videos. One with forest, one with water. No significant difference was detectable. That means the intensity isn’t what matters, it’s the category. Whether it’s nature or not. The body makes no difference between forest and lake. But it immediately distinguishes between nature and city.

A State Like Meditation

Ulrich voiced a hypothesis that he couldn’t prove but that stayed in my head on the next hikes. He wrote of a parasympathetically dominated state, of “wakefully relaxed attention”. That sounds like a state of meditation with open eyes. Awake but deeply relaxed.

After I started paying attention to this, I experienced the state more consciously. After hours in nature I’m awake and at the same time so calm that any disturbance stands out immediately. Ulrich measured that in 1991. I’ve experienced it hundreds of times in my own body.

He found 36 correlations between positive feelings and the body measurements. All in the expected direction. The better the mood, the slower the heart, the lower the blood pressure, the less skin conductance. The body and the mood speak the same language.

What Happens When You Enter a Room

Twelve years after Ulrich, Terry Hartig moved the experiment into the field (Hartig et al., 2003, Journal of Environmental Psychology). This time one part of 112 subjects walked through a nature reserve and the other through a city. Before and after, each group sat in a room. The nature group in a room with a view of trees and the city group in a windowless room.

In just the ten minutes of sitting, the following happened: Diastolic blood pressure dropped significantly in those with a view of trees. In those without a window it didn’t. Then the walk. After 30 minutes the systolic blood pressure of the nature group was about 6 mmHg below that of the city group. That matches the effect of light blood pressure medication.

But then something unexpected happened. When the subjects turned around and walked back to the lab, the values converged again. The body reacted to the direction too, not just the environment. Turning back meant the time in nature was ending. The body registered this right away.

Two Separate Processes

Hartig found something else that is less known. Attention and blood pressure developed differently in both environments. But they didn’t correlate with each other.

That means: Nature calms the body and sharpens attention, but through two different paths. Attention didn’t actually get much better in nature. Nature simply offered regeneration from city life.

When I enter a hut after a long day of hiking, both systems are active. My body is deeply relaxed. My attention is sharpened. I notice more. The cold floor, the wrong light, the smell. In the city I would ignore all that because my attention would already be worn out.

Science has no direct proof of this. But Koivisto showed in 2022 (Koivisto & Grassini, 2022, Journal of Environmental Psychology) that childhood nature exposure moderates the response to cities. People who grew up in nature find cities more unpleasant. The sensitivity rises, it doesn’t dull. I feel confirmed in the fact that it’s good to go outside every day.

Anger in the City, Calm in Nature

But the dimension goes much further and may provide answers to modern social phenomena. Anger is a very current topic. In Hartig’s study anger fell in nature and rose in the city. The authors highlighted this because anger is clinically relevant. It’s connected to heart disease and to violence. A city that creates anger produces illness and conflict. In a natural space anger breaks down.

The car drive to the test site was itself a stressor. 40 minutes of driving raised systolic blood pressure by almost 8 mmHg. That wasn’t part of the experiment. It was the drive there. And for many people it’s a normal part of daily life.

The Data Speak Clearly

Ulrich’s 1991 paper has over 3,000 citations. Hartig’s study is among the most cited field studies in environmental psychology. The data are neither new nor disputed.

But huts in hiking and ski areas are still built with tile floors. Efficiency replaces cosiness and science everywhere: Children play in windowless kindergartens, employees sit in air-conditioned open-plan offices and hospital patients lie in hospitals often without the important view of trees.

Parents should ask themselves what rooms their children play in when they can’t be outside. Employees should examine why they’re more exhausted after eight hours in the office than after eight hours in nature. Business owners should calculate what productivity loss through bad spaces costs, and investors in these spaces should calculate how many sick days would be avoidable through better buildings.

The body knows it four to seven minutes before you consciously perceive it. The data is quite precise. But it also has to be read and applied.